felt the loss immediately. Craved more. Mentally chastised herself for being stupid.
He turned away, giving her time to put her clothes on while he took care of business. She didn’t like seeing his back. Not when their fronts had connected so well.
Remorse, swift and stabbing, flooded her.
What the hell had she been thinking, having sex with a stranger?
However, when he turned back to her, his expression open, his smile satisfied, she couldn’t be sorry.
‘You were incredible.’ He cupped her face between his hands and brushed a soft kiss across her lips.
To Charlotte’s horror, the burn of impending tears stung her eyes and she blinked, forcing a smile as she pushed him away.
‘So were you,’ she said, sounding flippant, while inside a little part of her crumbled at his unexpected tenderness. ‘But I really need to get this tidied up now.’
It was a curt dismissal he didn’t deserve but she had to get him out of here before she cried.
‘Sure, I hear the landlord is a slavedriver.’ He seemed completely unfazed by her rudeness but he stared at her with a newfound intensity that bordered on uncomfortable. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around?’
‘Maybe,’ she ground out, refraining from adding, ‘like never.’
Scorching sex with a stranger hadn’t been on her to-do list today but now that it had happened...did she feel different? More confident? More womanly? Just more?
She had no freaking idea because in seizing the moment, she’d moved so far out of her comfort zone she’d ended up on another planet, one where good girls did bad things and didn’t regret it. Especially when that bad thing had been oh, so good.
But no matter how incredible her momentary lapse had been, it couldn’t happen again. She needed to move on and refocus on the priorities in her life. Like finding a genuine guy who’d want more than a quickie on a table in the back room of a warehouse.
He paused at the door, as if he wanted to say something. Ask for her phone number? Ask her out to dinner? Her inner romantic yearned for some gesture to indicate that this hadn’t been just sex to him.
She should have been relieved when he half shrugged and held up a hand in farewell before closing the door behind him.
She wasn’t. All she could think was that she’d found the bad boy she’d been craving but had let him go far too easily.
ALEX HAD DONE something bad.
The kind of bad that could get him a lifetime membership to hell alongside the naughty guy with horns and a pitchfork, ensuring he danced on hot coals for all eternity.
On his first day back in Sydney, he’d envisaged having a quiet afternoon inspecting his property investments.
He hadn’t expected to have sex with the woman he’d earmarked to take The Number Makers into the future.
Even now, hunkered behind a solid wooden door in a rather ugly office, he couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to have sex with Charlotte Baxter.
Not that he’d recognised her until it was too late, with her hair down, no glasses and wearing the kind of lingerie to fuel wet dreams.
Because the woman he’d researched online once he’d taken this job looked nothing like the woman he’d had scorching sex with in that warehouse.
The headshot on The Number Makers website depicted a prim woman wearing a bland white blouse, minimal make-up, steel-rimmed glasses and a dorky headband, with her hair pulled tight in a high ponytail.
Never in his wildest dreams had he expected Charlotte to be wearing leather underwear and looking nothing like her picture when they first met.
There’d been a vague familiarity about her at the time, but he’d put it down to wishful thinking. His little head overriding his big one because he’d wanted to get laid and the intriguing woman in the leather underwear had seemed up for it.
It wasn’t until they’d done the deed that the truth had detonated. The moment he’d heard her say, ‘I really need to get this tidied up now,’ he’d known.
Charlotte had used that same phrase many times over the last few weeks when he’d assigned her tasks. Usually in reference to cleaning up work, where she had to deal with the mess left by the old manager.
When it came to work, she’d always been agreeable. It was only when he tried to be friendly, to get to know her better, that she became abrupt and shut him down.
I really need to get this tidied up now.
Fuck. He’d been struck dumb when he’d realised he’d slept with an employee. That was when he’d taken a closer look and realised that without the uptight hairdo and the glasses, she had the same eyes. A captivating slate grey that held secrets.
Like the fact she could masquerade as a vixen after hours once she shed her librarian persona.
He should have trusted his gut that she looked vaguely familiar, should have taken a closer look at her face. Unfortunately, he’d taken one look at her lithe body and lost it. Not because she was a bombshell—she had small, pert breasts thrust heavenward by that saucy bustier, a trim waist, slim legs and an ass that fitted in his hands nicely.
No, he’d lost it because he’d seen something in her eyes...a wistful yearning, a war waged between boldness and fear, like she wanted to jump him but didn’t know how.
It had captured his interest like nothing else.
After he’d realised her true identity, he hadn’t been able to get over the startling contrast between the woman he’d imagined and the woman who’d made him hard by fixing those cool grey eyes on him.
He could read most people. But after he’d twigged that he’d screwed Charlotte, he couldn’t fathom how the hell she’d been so into it. How did a no-nonsense woman switch from being contained at work to confident enough to strip down, try on raunchy underwear and fuck a stranger in a warehouse? It left him completely baffled.
She’d intrigued him during their many phone conversations and he’d wanted to see how far he could push her. He’d deliberately teased her over the last few weeks, chuckling at the curt shutdowns she reserved for him—and probably every male on the planet.
To think how she’d responded to his touch...at the time, he hadn’t been able to explain rationally his over-the-top urge to possess her. Sure, he’d been too busy to date lately and hadn’t had sex in three months, but he’d never been driven by urges before. Celibacy didn’t bother him, especially when he had a new job in the pipeline. Yet he’d taken one look at Charlotte—not that he’d known it was her at the time—and wanted her.
His cock hardened and he shifted in the uncomfortable ergonomic chair. First item of business on the agenda at The Number Makers: change the
