Fiancee for One Night (7 page)

‘Because I met an Eve once,’ he continued, his voice rich and smooth by comparison, apparently oblivious to her discomfiture, or simply enjoying it too much to put
an end to it, ‘in an office overlooking Sydney Harbour. She had the most amazing blue eyes, a body built for sinful pleasures, and she was practically gagging for it. Come to think of it, she
was
gagging for it.’

‘I was not!’ she blurted, immediately regretting her outburst, wishing the shifting ground would crack open and swallow her whole, or that her pounding heart would break the door down so she could escape. Because she was kidding herself. Even if it hadn’t been how she usually acted, even if it had been an aberration, he was right. Because if that person hadn’t interrupted them in the midst of that frantic, heated encounter, she would have spread her legs for him right there and then, and what was that, if not gagging for it?

And afterwards she’d been taking minutes, writing notes, even if she’d found it nearly impossible to transcribe them or remember what had actually been said when she’d returned to her office because of thoughts of what had almost happened in that filing room and what would happen during the night ahead.

He curled his fingers under her chin, forced her to look at him, triumph glinting menacingly in his eyes. ‘You’ve been working with me for more than two years, sweet little Miss Evelyn don’t-like-to-deceive-anyone Carmichael. When exactly were you planning on telling me?’

She looked up at him, hoping to reason with him, hoping that reason made sense. ‘There was nothing to tell.’

‘Nothing? When you were so hot for me you were practically molten. And you didn’t think I might be interested to know we’d more than just met before?’

‘But nothing happened! Not really. It was purely a coincidence that I came to work for you. You wanted a
virtual PA. You sent a query on my webpage. You agreed the terms and I did the work you wanted and what did or didn’t happen between us one night in Sydney was irrelevant. It didn’t matter.’ She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself, tripping over the words in the rush to get them out. ‘It wasn’t like we ever had to meet. If you hadn’t needed a pretend fiancée tonight, you would never have known.’

‘Oh, I get it. So it’s my fault, is it, that all this time you lied to me.’

‘I never lied.’

‘You lied by omission. You knew who I was, you knew what had so very nearly happened, and you failed to tell me that I knew you. You walked in here and hoped and prayed I wouldn’t recognise you and you almost got away with it.’

‘I didn’t ask to come tonight!’

‘No. And now I know why. Because you knew your dishonesty would come unstuck. All that talk about not deceiving people and you’ve happily been deceiving me for two years.’

‘I do my job and I do it well!’

‘Nobody said you didn’t. What is an issue is that you should have told me.’

‘And would you have contracted me if I had?’

‘Who knows? Maybe if you had, we might be having great sex right now instead of arguing.’

Unfair
, she thought as she sucked in air, finding it irritatingly laden with his testosterone-rich scent. So unfair to bring up sex right now, to remind her of what might have been, when she was right here in his suite and about to lose the backbone of her income because she’d neglected to tell him about a night when nothing had happened.

‘Let me tell you something, Evelyn Carmichael,’ he said, as he trailed lazy fingertips down the side of her face. ‘Let me share something I might have shared with you, if you’d ever bothered to share the truth with me. Three years ago, I was aboard a flight to Santiago. I had a fifty-page report to read and digest and a strategy to close a deal to work out and I knew what I needed to be doing, but hour after hour into the flight I couldn’t concentrate. And why couldn’t I concentrate? Because my head was filled with thoughts of a blonde, long-limbed PA with the sexiest eyes I had ever seen and thinking about what we both should have been doing right then if I hadn’t had to leave Sydney.’

‘Oh.’ It had never occurred to her that he might have regretted his sudden departure. It had never occurred to her that she hadn’t been the only one unable to sleep that night, the only one who remembered.

‘I felt cheated,’ he said, his fingers skimming the line of her collarbone, ‘because I had to leave before we got a chance to…get to know each other.’ His fingers played at her shoulder, his thumbs stroking close to the place on her throat where she could feel her pulse beat at a frantic pace. ‘Did you feel cheated, Evelyn?’

‘Perhaps. Maybe just a little.’

‘I was hoping maybe more than just a little.’

‘Maybe,’ she agreed, earning herself a smile in return.

‘And now I find that I have been cheated in those years since. I never had a chance to revisit what we had lost that night, because you chose not to tell me.’

She blinked up at him, still reeling from the impact of his words. ‘How could I tell you?’

‘How could you not tell me, when you must know how good we will be together. We knew it that day. We
recognised it. And we knew it earlier when I kissed you and you turned near incendiary in my arms. Do you know how hard that kiss was to break, Evelyn? Do you know what it took to let you go and take you to dinner and not take you straight to my bed?’

She shuddered at his words, knowing them to be true, knowing that if he’d taken her to bed that night, she would have gone and gone willingly. But he’d left her confused. He’d been angry with her a moment ago, yet now the air vibrated around them with a different tension. ‘What do you want?’

‘What I have always wanted ever since the first time I saw you,’ he said, his eyes wild with desire and dark promises that kept those dark, secret places of her humming with sensation and aching with need. ‘I want you.’

‘T
HIS
won’t work,’ she warned weakly, her hands reaching for the wall behind her as his mouth descended towards hers. ‘This can’t happen.’

He brushed her lips with his. ‘Why not?’

‘You don’t sleep with your PAs. You don’t mix business with pleasure. You said so yourself.’

‘True,’ he agreed, making a second pass over her mouth, and then a third, lingering just a fraction longer this time. ‘Never mix business with pleasure.’

‘Then what are you doing?’ she asked, her senses buzzing. He slipped his hands behind her head, his fingers weaving through her hair as he angled her mouth higher.

‘Unfinished business, on the other hand,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. ‘That’s a whole different rule book.’ He moved his gaze until dark eyes met her own, gazing at her with such feverish intensity that she felt bewitched under their spell. ‘Do you want to open that book, Evelyn? Do you want to dip into its pages and enjoy one night of pleasure, one night of sin, to make up for that night we were both cheated out of?’

This time he kissed her eyes, first one and then the other, butterfly kisses of heated breath and warm lips that made her tremble with both their tenderness and
their devastating impact on her senses. ‘Or do you still wish to leave?’

He kissed her lips then before she could respond, as if trying to convince her with his hot mouth instead of his words, and she could feel the tension underlining his movements, could tell he was barely controlling the passion that bubbled so close below the surface as he tried to be gentle with her. He was offering her a night of unimaginable pleasure, a night she’d thought about so many times since that ill-fated first meeting.

Or he was offering her escape.

She was so, so very tempted to stay, to stay with this man who’d invaded her dreams and longings, the man who’d taken possession of them ever since the day they’d first met. The man who had made her want and lust and feel alive for the first time in her life. She wanted to stay and feel alive again.

But she should go. The sensible thing would be to go. She was no longer a free agent, able to do as she pleased when she pleased. She had responsibilities. She was a mother now, with a child waiting at home.

His kisses tortured her with their sweetness while her mind grappled with the dilemma, throwing out arguments for and against. The decision was hers and yet she felt powerless to make it, knowing that whatever she decided, she would live to regret it.

But it was just one night.

And her child was safely tucked up in bed, asleep.

But hadn’t her child resulted from just one such night? One foolish wrong decision and she would live with the consequences for ever. Did she really want to risk that happening again? Could she afford to?

Could she afford not to?

Did she really want to go home to her empty bed
and know that she’d turned her back on this chance to stop wondering what if, the chance to finally burn this indecent obsession out of her system?

And didn’t she deserve just one night? She’d worked hard to make a success of her business and to provide for Sam. Surely she deserved a few short hours of pleasure? Maybe then she could stop wondering, stop imagining what it would have been like to have made love that night, to have finished what they’d started. And maybe he was a lousy lover and this would cure her of him for ever, just like one night with Sam’s father had been more than enough.

Hadn’t she already paid the price?

His mouth played on hers, enticing her into the dance, his tongue a wicked invitation, his big hands skimming her sides so that his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, so close to her aching nipples that she gasped, and felt herself pushing into his hands.

A lousy lover?
Not likely
.

‘What’s it to be?’ he said, pulling back, his breathing ragged, searching her eyes for her answer. ‘Do I open the book? Or do you go? Because if you don’t decide now, I promise you, there will be no going anywhere.’

And his words were so hungry, the pain of his restraint so clearly etched on his tightly drawn features, that she realised how much power she really held. He wanted her so much, and still he was prepared to let her walk away. Maybe because he sensed she was beyond leaving, maybe because he knew that his kisses and touches had lit a fire inside her that would not be put out, not be quenched until it had burned itself to ash. But he was giving her the choice.

When really, just like that first time, there was none.

‘Maybe,’ she ventured tentatively, her voice breathy as she wondered whether in wanting to make up for a lost opportunity she was making the mistake of her life, ‘we could at least check out a page or two.’

He growled his approval, a sound straight from the Stone Age, a dark, deep sound that rumbled into her very bones and shook them loose. She would have fallen then, if he hadn’t pulled her into his kiss, his hot mouth explosive on her lips, on her throat, as he celebrated her acquiescence, his arms like steel crushing her to him, his hands on her back, on her shoulders, capturing a breast and sweeping his thumb over her peaked nipple, sending sensation spearing down to that hot place between her thighs and making her mewl into his mouth.

‘God, I want you,’ he said, echoing the only words she was capable of thinking, as she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and he shucked off his shoes. He released her for only a moment, shrugged the jacket off and let it drop to the floor while she worked desperately at his buttons and his tie, and he turned his attentions to her zipper. She felt the slide down her spine and the loosening of fabric, the electric touch of his hands at the small of her back. Impatient to similarly feel his flesh under her hands, she ripped the last few buttons of his shirt apart, scattering them without regard.

Finally she had him, her hands on his firm chest, her fingers curling through the wiry thatch of hair, lingering over the hard, tight nubs of his nipples, relishing all the different textures of him, the hard and the hot, the wet and the insistent, and if she’d had any doubt at all that he wanted her, it was banished by the bucking welcome of that rigid column as her hand slid down to cup his length. He groaned and pushed her back hard against the wall as she grappled with his belt.

He was everywhere then, his taste in her mouth, his hands separating her from the dress, slipping the straps from her shoulders, letting it slip between them as he took her breasts, the scrap of lace no barrier against the heat from his hands. And then even that was gone, replaced by his hot mouth, devouring her, lapping and suckling at her flesh until she cried out with the agony and the ecstasy of it all. It was everything she had imagined in dreams spun in hot, torrid nights alone and more, and still it was not enough.

She clung to his shoulders as he laved her nipples, gathering her skirt as his hands skimmed up her legs, not taking his time but still taking so much longer than she wanted.

‘Please,’ she pleaded, clutching at his head, gasping as he cupped her mound, his long fingers stroking her through panties wet for him, needing him, hot and hard, inside her. Needing him now, before she came with just one more touch.
‘Please!’

‘God, you’re so hot,’ he said, dispensing with her underwear, pulling free his belt with damn near the same frenetic action.

She saw him then. Her first glimpse of him unleashed and hungry and pointing at her, a compass needle finding true north. Once she might have wanted to believe it. But she was wiser than to believe such fantasies these days, and much wiser to the consequences. Which reminded her…

‘Protection,’ she muttered through the fog of need, but he was already ripping open a sachet with his teeth, rolling it on before pulling her back into his kiss. Her breasts met his chest, the feel of skin against skin taking her breath away, or maybe it was what he was doing with his hands and clever fingers.

Her dress bunched at her waist, his hands kneading her behind, fingers teasingly close to the centre of her, driving her insane with need, as he lifted her, the wall at her back, still kissing her as he urged her legs around him until she felt him, thick and hard, nudging, testing, at her entrance.

She cried out, something unintelligible and primal, lost in an ocean of sensation, drowning under the depths. It was almost too much and yet it was nowhere near enough and she only knew that if she didn’t get him inside her she would surely die of need.

He didn’t keep her waiting. With a guttural cry of his own he lowered her, meeting her with his own thrust, until he was lodged deep inside her.

A moment in time. Just a moment, a fraction of a second perhaps, but Eve knew it for a moment about which she would always remember every single detail, the salt of his skin and the smell of his shampoo, the feel of his big hands paused at her hips, and the glorious feeling of the pulsing fullness inside her.

Could it get any better than this?

And then he moved, and it did, and flesh against flesh had never felt so good, every new moment giving her treasures to secrete away, to add to a store of memories she would take from this night, of sensations she would never forget. Sensations that built, one upon another, layer upon layer, higher and higher, fed by each calculated withdrawal, each powerful thrust.

Until there was no place to go, no place higher or brighter or more wondrous as the sensation, the friction, the furious rhythm of his pounding body all melded together into a cataclysm, taking her with it.

She screamed her release, throwing her head back
against the wall, her muscles clamping down hard as he shuddered his own frenetic release.

She didn’t know how long they stood together that way, she couldn’t tell, too busy trying to replace the oxygen consumed in the fire of their coupling while her body hummed its way down from the peak. But slowly her feet found the floor, slowly her senses and sensibility returned. To the knowledge she was standing barely dressed between a wall and a near naked man she barely knew but with whom she’d just had mind-blowing sex.

‘Wow,’ she said, embarrassed in the aftermath as he dispensed with the condom and she remembered her own wantonness. Had she really pulled his shirt apart in her desperation to get inside it? Had she really cried out like a banshee?

And he laughed, a low rumble in a velvet coat. ‘Evelyn Carmichael,’ he told her with a chaste kiss to her lips, ‘you are just one surprise package after another.’

He didn’t know the half of it
. She found the straps of her dress, pulling it up to cover herself before she started looking for her underwear.

‘Leave it,’ he said, his hand around her wrist. ‘There’s no point. It’s only coming off again.’

‘Agai n?’

His eyes glinted. ‘This book I was telling you about. It’s a long book,’ he said. ‘That was only chapter one.’

She blinked up at him, her dress gathered in front of her, and he pulled her arm away, letting the dress drop to her waist, then slide over her hips in a whisper of silk to pool like a lake on the floor.

And even though they’d just had sex, she felt nervous standing there before him wearing nothing more than lace-topped stockings and spiky sandals. She hadn’t
been with anyone since Sam’s father. She didn’t have the body she’d once had, her belly neat but traced with tiny silvery lines and softer than it had been before bearing a child.

She held her breath. Could he tell? Would it matter?

‘You look,’ he said, ‘like a goddess emerging from the sea.’ And some tiny, futile creature somewhere deep inside her grew wings and attempted a fluttery takeoff.

‘And you look like a pirate,’ she countered, reminding herself it was just a game. It wasn’t real and that pointless tiny creature inside her would soon die a rapid death, its gossamer wings stilled. ‘Ruthless and swashbuckling.’

‘Uncanny,’ he said, his lips turning in a half-smile as he swung her into his arms. ‘However did you know?’

‘Know what?’ she asked, feeling a secret thrill as he carried her into the next room.

‘The goddess of the sea and the swashbuckling pirate.’ He winked at her and he laid her gently on the king-sized bed. ‘That’s the title of chapter two.’

It was a long and detailed chapter. There were passages Eve found agonising going, like when the pirate sampled the goddess, tasting every last inch of her except
there
, where she craved his detailed attentions the most, and then there were the passages that moved at what felt like breakneck speed, where he feasted on her until she was bucking on the bed.

And even when she lay, still gasping, after her latest orgasm, the chapter didn’t end and he joined her in savouring the final few pages together until that final breathtaking climax.

Outside the lights of Melbourne winked at her, the
skies unusually clear, a heavy full moon hanging above the bridge over the Yarra.

Inside the suite, Eve’s breathing slowly returned to normal as she savoured the feel of Leo’s arm lying pro-prietorially over her stomach as he lay face down alongside her, his eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, his thick black hair mussed into bed-head perfection by her own hands. He wasn’t asleep, she knew, but it was a wonder given the energy he’d used tonight. Definitely a pirate, she thought. And very definitely a magic night. But it was late and magic nights had to end, just as goddesses had responsibilities too.

Oh, my, he’d actually called her a goddess
! And she felt that tiny winged creature launch itself for another lurching spin around her stomach.

‘I should go,’ she said, with a wistful sigh for the ill-fated beast before she returned to sensible Evelyn Carmichael again and considered the practicalities of not having a functioning hot water service. ‘Do you mind if I take a shower before I go?’

And his eyes blinked open, the arm around her waist shifting, scooping higher to capture a breast. A smile played on his lips while he coaxed a nipple into unexpected responsiveness. ‘I’ve got a much better idea.’

She swallowed. Surely it wasn’t possible? But still her body hummed into life at the thought. ‘Chapter three?’