eyes dimmed oh-so-briefly. ‘My career and I have an understanding.’
‘When it gets you laid?’
‘Is that what you think this is about?’ He looked genuinely wounded. ‘Sex?’
Doubt crept in at the corners. ‘Unless you’re proposing a rollicking game of chess?’
‘Something tells me you’d be quite good at chess,’ he murmured. ‘I’m talking about exploration. A bit of good old-fashioned groping. Tangling tongues and heavy breathing. When was the last time you had that?’
Ah … no. Not a question she was going to answer. ‘You’re assuming rather a lot, don’t you think?’
‘You still haven’t asked me to leave.’
The simple truth of that stripped Izzy bare. He was flirting and she was, too, in her own clunky way. They were standing in a darkened, tiny bedroom close enough to get right into that groping without even needing to reach. They no longer had any kind of professional relationship to protect or reputation to preserve. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t some kind of weirdo or monster. And there was a strange kind of hormonal haze going on thanks to the intriguing fingertip preview of the hard body under his McQueen business shirt.
He was offering her a few hours of healthy distraction and making it clear that it didn’t have to end in sex and, most importantly, he was exactly the right kind of guy for a one-night-only appearance.
And she wasn’t throwing him out.
‘A good time but not a long time? Is that it?’ she murmured.
‘A great time, Izzy,’ he clarified, ‘but no … not a long time.’
Yes, yes, yes, her three champagnes ganged up to whisper violently in her ear. But everyone knew champagne was a tart. ‘Because you have your career?’
‘Because I’m not looking for a relationship.’
‘But you’re open to a fun night.’
‘That’s up to you, Iz.’
Iz …
That one diminutive sealed her fate, seducing her with its simple masculinity and emboldening her with its intimacy. That one diminutive made it easier to imagine—to stick her fingers in her ears and go la la la for a few hours—that they knew each other even vaguely well enough for what he was proposing. For what she suddenly realised she was contemplating.
And was desperately, obscenely hungry for. And maybe always had been.
What was there to know? He was gorgeous, he was Australian, he smelled like a god. What if he kissed like one, too? And what if she never found out, first hand? And she wouldn’t because, without turning up in his building at eight every morning, this was the last she was ever going to see of infuriating Harry Mitchell.
Intriguingly sexy Harry Mitchell.
Maybe he was right about their office bickering, maybe it was just the only work-appropriate way for the chemistry to get out.
Because she could sure feel it now, surging like a tidal current between them, urging her closer, urging her to say yes. Urging her to give in to the speculative curiosity she suddenly realised she’d always had about him.
‘Can I touch your suit?’ she asked, eyes not quite meeting his. Not believing she’d asked.
‘My … suit?’
She ignored his rich chuckle and stretched her fingers towards the same jacket he’d been wearing on Wednesday. He stood perfectly still as they feathered down onto the curve of his shoulder and even stiller when she flattened them against his breast.
Her suspended breath released on a strangled half groan. ‘It’s beautiful.’
Those blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did you just climax?’
‘I wanted to do this on Wednesday,’ she confessed, smiling.
‘Well, you’re in luck. You can do whatever you want to me tonight.’
Whatever you want …
‘This is awkward,’ she whispered, all truth. Because she’d never, ever done the one-night stand thing. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Tell me to leave. Or step forward. Or touch my suit again.’ His shrug was the merest shoulder flick. ‘Totally up to you.’
Ugh …
She’d wanted chivalry but now that she had it she really wanted him to sweep her up into his arms in the boorish manner he usually conducted himself in and take the choice away from her. The responsibility. But his apparent ambivalence wiggled in under her carefully erected self-confidence and poked uncomfortably at the place where all her old insecurities still lived. Shouldn’t he be gagging to kiss her? Wouldn’t that be more romantic? The fact he wasn’t triggered her old insecurities—thoughts of every boy at school who preferred the racier girls, the prettier girls.
The cleaner girls.
Isadora couldn’t be poorer … the old voices echoed.
Except she didn’t feel poor tonight. She felt obscenely rich with opportunity. And, despite his nonchalance, Harry’s heartbeat under her fingertips just now hadn’t thumped as if she wasn’t good enough.
She locked eyes with his and stepped forward into his body, then linked her hands behind his head.
‘When I imagined wrapping my hands around your neck,’ she whispered, ‘this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’
Now, that muscular neck was a convenient place for her to hook herself—like any of the fine outfits dangling from hangers around her new room—so that her lips were more levelly placed with his.
The surprise in his eyes was swiftly succeeded by masculine anticipation. His perfectly manicured hands slipped straight up to her ribs and bonded there.
And his lips met her more than halfway.
Soft flesh met its mate. Tongue touched on teeth. Large hands slid over her body—one up below her breast, its friend around and over the curve of her bottom—as his mouth plundered hers.
Thoroughly.
Indecently.
And she realised that all those secret glances she’d cast at his sexy mouth were shamefully under-informed about his talents. Of course he was a good kisser—the unspeakable ego had to come from somewhere—but Izzy hadn’t expected the haste with which she would slip from technical enjoyment to outright gluttony. She gave as good as she got, throwing aside the last of her self-control in the hormonal haze he generated, and giving herself fully to the experience.
Why not? Wasn’t this a time for new
