insistence of his gentle hands.
‘You can go now.’
Her words sounded harsh, especially after how kind he’d been but she needed space, needed him to not lie next to her, needed him to be rude and obnoxious rather than easy-going and likeable.
For lying here next to a sexy, kind stranger beside a deserted infinity pool on the top floor of a chic hotel reeked of adventure and daring and romance, three things that couldn’t be more alien.
‘Wish I could, but I can’t.’
He rolled onto his side and propped on his elbow, looking like a poster boy for jump-starting women’s libidos: long, lean, tanned, muscular and dripping wet, with a pair of mid-thigh board shorts moulding to … She gulped and dragged her gaze upwards, meeting the twinkling in his eyes only marginally better.
‘It’s my duty to see you’re okay. Concussions are serious business.’ He tapped his head. ‘Trust me, I know, I’ve had enough of them.’
Intrigued, she wriggled into the pillows, sat up a little higher.
‘Occupational hazard?’
His mouth kicked into a wicked smile that made her belly flip.
‘You could say that.’
Well aware chatting would only encourage him to stay rather than leave she had a momentary battle with her inner well-trained marionette, the one that had told her to sit up straighter and keep her opinions to herself.
In the face of his devastating smile and those liquid chocolate eyes, the battle was over before it began.
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m in extreme sports.’
‘In?’
He laughed at her obvious confusion. ‘I’m CEO of the governing body for extreme sports worldwide. Heard of action sport? Adventure sport?’
Action? Adventure? Two things that couldn’t be further from the sedate, sheltered, proper life she’d led.
‘You mean stuff like bungee jumping?’
‘And the rest.’
His face lit up and she admired his enthusiasm for his work. She’d never had it, the boring number crunching at the merchant bank less than inspiring. Quitting her job not long after quitting her marriage had been another faux pas according to the vigilante press.
‘Tell me about your job.’
‘Sure you’re interested?’
She nodded, increasingly intrigued. Action, adventure, extreme, encapsulated a lifestyle she could only dream about. What would it be like to live life on the edge? To take risks? To never have to worry about what other people thought of you?
She’d never known but for this brief, surreal interlude with a guy she’d never see again she could live vicariously for a while.
‘Yeah, tell me about the dangerous speeds and hair-raising heights and stunts you do for a living.’
‘So you do know about extreme sports.’
Her hand wavered. ‘A little.’
When he raised an eyebrow, she shrugged. ‘I may have caught a few events in a competition on television last summer.’
‘Go on, admit it, you were dying to hang-glide and wake-board.’
His animation snatched her breath and she unconsciously leaned forward.
‘Considering I like both feet firmly on the ground, that would be a resounding no, but it was cool watching competitors battle environmental challenges while competing against each other.’
‘Wind, snow, water, mountains, you name it, we do it.’
‘So you’re basically an adrenalin junkie?’
She made it sound as though he killed cockroaches for a living but he didn’t mind, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening; by the creases her rescuer spent a lot of time laughing.
‘You bet. Nothing like a shot of endorphins to get the blood pumping.’
He crooked a finger and she leaned closer. ‘Throw in a kick of dopamine and serotonin and you’re on a high almost as good as …’
His pupils widened as he trailed off, giving her fair indication what he’d been about to say.
The safe thing to do would be to change the subject. But she’d done safe her entire life and hadn’t it only been a day ago when she’d arrived in Melbourne that she’d vowed to loosen up? To start living a little?
Yeah, she’d had a gutful of safe.
‘As good as?’
She held her breath as a flicker of lust lit a spark to his eyes, a flash of caramel in all that gorgeous brown.
‘Sex.’
He didn’t blink, didn’t look away and she could’ve sworn the invisible thread binding them tugged.
The flirt’s response would be ‘that good, huh?’ but she’d used up her limited chutzpah supply in the last few seconds.
Besides, the thought of sex being anything other than routine and lacklustre was as foreign to her as this guy and his extreme sports.
‘What else do you do besides skydive and snowboard and cliff diving?’
He chuckled at her sidestep. ‘You really want to hear about nine air sports, eighteen land sports and fifteen water sports?’
‘Maybe not.’ Impressed by his mile-wide daredevil streak, she shook her head. ‘You seriously do all that stuff?’
‘Yeah, all that and more.’
He paused, his gaze momentarily flicking to her lips. ‘Much more.’
And just like that the thread binding them tugged harder, like an intangible, irresistible force dragging her towards him.
‘Are you impressed?’
‘I think you’re crazy,’ she blurted, wondering if she could’ve picked anyone more different to while away a few minutes.
‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, not in the least offended by her outburst. ‘What do you do for kicks?’
In that moment the drudgery of her life flashed before her eyes: being the daughter of the prime minister, the private school, the chauffeurs, the bodyguards, the etiquette and deportment lessons, the expected marriage, being a politician’s wife, the civilised divorce no matter what lies the press printed.
All of it, every constrained, uptight second of it rose up to suffocate her, as it had her entire life.
But
