deep and low inside her belly, like a satin ribbon running away from its spool.
Suddenly the game she’d been playing turned deadly serious.
The battle of wills she was so sure she could win shifted its power balance. She felt it in the immeasurable beat of time where his gaze grazed her mouth again. It provoked a visceral reaction inside her body, a lightning strike of lust that all but knocked her off her feet.
She sent her tongue out over her lips to try and quell the fizzing sensation that was fast becoming an ache. His warm, faintly mint-scented breath skated over the surface of her lips as, centimetre by centimetre, millimetre by millimetre he ever so slowly began to close the distance. Her own breath felt painfully restricted as she drew it into her lungs, as if the space inside her chest was already taken up by something big and suffocating. She rose up on tiptoe, closing her eyes, waiting, waiting, waiting for that first blissful moment of contact...
Her eyes sprang open when she heard him take a step back from her. His expression was as stiff and formal as the wallpaper on the wall behind him. ‘I’ll deposit the money in your bank account once I have a legal contract drawn up,’ he said.
She arched a brow. ‘The terms being?’
‘If you speak out of turn to the press you’ll have to repay the amount in full plus twenty per cent interest.’
Aiesha pushed her pursed lips from side to side. ‘Twenty per cent seems a bit steep to me. Let’s make it ten.’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Five, or I tell the press right here and now we’re having a tawdry little affair that will be over once this snow melts.’
His jaw worked for a moment before he gave a curt nod of agreement. But she wasn’t sure if he was agreeing because he thought the deal fair or because he couldn’t wait to get away from her. His brusque statement suggested the latter. ‘I’m going to the study to work for the rest of the evening.’
Aiesha hitched one hip higher than the other in her best femme-fatale pose. ‘All work and no play makes James a very dull boy.’
His eyes held hers in a tight little lock that made the backs of her knees tingle. ‘I know how to play. I’m just a little more careful than most over choosing my playmates.’
She curved her mouth in a mocking manner. He might find it easy to resist her now but she wasn’t finished with him yet. She would bring him to his knees before the week was out. He would not be so straitlaced and sure of himself once she had him where she wanted him. She could hardly wait.
‘I bet Phoebe Frozen-Face doesn’t do it up against the kitchen bench or outside under the stars on a hot sweaty night. I bet she’s a bed and missionary girl with all the lights off. Am I right?’
His lips came together in a flat white line. ‘Please spare me the sordid details of your sexual practices. I’m not interested.’
‘Yes, you are.’ Aiesha all but purred the words at him. ‘I bet you’re wondering what it would feel like to do me right here and now. On the rug at our feet. So rough one or both of us gets carpet burn.’
The words were provocative, goading, tempting. The erotic images they triggered in her mind even more so. She knew she was being utterly brazen but something about his steely resistance fired her determination to have him finally admit his desire for her. It was the ultimate challenge.
He was the ultimate challenge.
James gave her a dismissive look but she noticed the hammer was back in the lower quadrant of his jaw. ‘Keep your Vegas-showgirl tactics for someone who actually gives a damn,’ he said. ‘I have far better things to do with my time.’
Aiesha watched as he turned and strode purposefully out of the room, his back and shoulders as stiff as a plank, his hands balled into fists as hard as cannonballs at his sides.
An anticipatory smile turned up the corners of her mouth.
I am so going to win this.
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