CHAPTER SIX

      ‘THIS 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.