She straightened her spine and prepared to follow Ben’s lead and leave the room that shrank the minute she and Ash were alone, compressing the available oxygen.
‘Well, you failed to mention this last night...’
She yanked her stare back to Ash.
Every minute hair on her body stood to attention. Ben seemed to have taken the sun with him, too, because the room’s temperature plummeted as Essie and Ash faced off.
‘Me?’ Was he for real? ‘What about you?’ Playing the charming tourist and allowing her to believe he’d be leaving town in a few days. Laughing at her London anecdotes and listening intently when she’d offered top tips for surviving the capital, when all the time he probably knew the city better than her. If she’d known last night that he owned a sizeable chunk of St James’s, she might have put two and two together and kept her knees and her mouth shut.
And now she and Mr Moneybags had to survive an intolerable working relationship, where every time they crossed paths she’d blush beet red at her folly.
Her phone vibrated in her bag, a reminder it was time to publish the blog post she’d drafted that morning. Oh, the irony. She’d waxed lyrical about casual sex, clutching her shiny new members’ badge to the one-night-stand club. Now the pieces of that newfound air of authority lay scattered around her two left feet.
Perhaps she could quickly pen an alternative piece: How to work with people you want to...jump.
No.
Not jump. Ignore.
Ash stepped close, his big manly body producing enough heat to scorch her bare arms, lobster red. Flicks of blue flame danced in his eyes.
‘I didn’t conceal anything. I just didn’t mention anything personal.’
The unspoken hovered in the air... Unlike you.
Essie wanted to curl in on herself, but she held her head high. Being eager to take off her casual sex training wheels was nothing to be ashamed of.
‘If you made wrong assumptions, that’s your problem,’ he bit out. ‘And what was with the “My phone died. Please take a photo for me...” Why were you playing the tourist? You live here.’
She’d wanted the photo for a future blog post, the wheel symbolic of the spectrum of human emotions and the sun catching the Eye a reflection of hope—a new day. But she couldn’t tell him that, couldn’t tell him about the blog. Not when her reckless, mind-blowing one night with him was the focus of today’s post. When she published it later, this new element of fucked-upness, would give the subject matter even more credence—a cautionary tale of how people concealed what they really were to get what they wanted. To get laid.
The perils of casual sex...
‘You’re the one who lied. Ash the tourist? From what Ben told me, you own half of London.’ Typical. She’d inherited her bad taste in men from her mother...
She bit the inside of her cheek, scalding heat flooding her body. Her mum was a good person who’d raised Essie virtually single-handedly. No, she only had herself to blame for her foolhardy behaviour last night and its humiliating consequences this morning.
Where were all the honest, dependable, upfront men? And why was she a magnet for the opposite type? The ones who evaded the truth, like Ash. The ones who claimed they wanted a relationship but took more than they gave, like her ex. The ones who made promises and then broke them and threw money at the situation so they avoided dealing with real life, like her unreliable, phoney father...
Ash’s stare raked over her features. ‘So?’ He lifted his chin, looking down his nose with a lazy smirk on his face. ‘You didn’t seem to care who I was last night. In fact, all you seemed concerned about was marking your one-night-stand card—or was that part of the act, too?’ He inched into her personal space, invading until the breadth of his chest eclipsed her field of vision.
Essie placed the flat of her hand between his well-developed pecs, ignoring the burn of his body heat and the clean male scent wafting up from his expensive shirt.
‘I’m not the only one who made wrong assumptions. And I rocked your world last night, counsellor.’ Her fingers wanted to curl, to dig, to tug. But she forced them to stay flat. Time to put some boundaries in place. No matter how fantastic their brief, steamy interlude, the after shame currently making her hot and twitchy rendered the high worthless. Another important post–casual sex lesson she could impart to her readers.
His mouth kicked up on one side, and he snorted a soft gust of air.
‘Funny, I thought I’d rocked your world?’
Her internal muscles clenched at the memories of his spectacular manhood. She laughed, stepping away from toe-tingling temptation and heading for the door with a shake of her head. There was no chance of damaging this man’s ego, but she didn’t trust her voice to emerge without the breathiness that made her light-headed.
‘No?’ His hurled question stopped her in her tracks. ‘We could rectify that situation, right now.’ He flicked his stare to the uncluttered slab of a desk, his sinful mouth twisted, but his eyes hot.
Challenging?
Essie imagined herself spread there with Ash, determined to prove something, between her thighs. Thighs that loved the idea if the tremble between them was any indication. She instinctively knew that sex with hot lawyer Ash would be twice as intense as sex with hot tourist Ash. No mean feat.
Tempting.
Lying made sense, serving a dual purpose of bringing him down a peg or two and fortifying her own wobbly defences.
‘There won’t be anything more between us. I’m here for Ben, my brother. And, as you’ll remember from last night, I don’t trust your type.’
His cocky, lopsided smirk lifted her shoulders until they threatened to dislocate.
‘You’re right, there won’t be.’ He closed the distance between them, his dismissive stare dipping down the length of her body. ‘Ben is my friend, this is my business and I don’t trust anyone.’
‘Good. So we agree on one thing.’ That didn’t mean she couldn’t toy with him as he toyed with her. Make him crave a repeat performance. One he’d never get to experience. It was childish and vengeful and filled her with white-hot shame. But she longed to cut the arrogant jerk down to size. To claw back some of the dignity her poor choice and shabby vetting had decimated.
He nodded. ‘It seems so. I made it clear yesterday—one shot is all you get from me.’
Her back teeth ached as she ground them together. ‘What a gent you are. Ladies must be lined up around the block.’ She forced his spicy scent from her nose with a short snort.
He raised his dark brows. ‘I’ve never had any complaints. And you didn’t walk away unsatisfied.’
She wanted to deny his prowess. To tell him he’d been a lousy lay, but that was one lie too far. Instead she stepped closer, fighting the urge to rub her body against his like a cat. ‘As you’re so...experienced in the casual sex department, I’m sure you know this.’ She looked up at him from beneath her lashes. ‘There’s a world of difference between mindless fucking and the ultimate connection found during a real, honest human interaction.’
She dropped her head back with a prolonged sigh, feigning a look of utter ecstasy while she ran her fingertips slowly down the length of her exposed throat. She released a breathy moan, her hand coming to rest at the top of her cleavage.
And then she snapped her head up and dropped her arm to her side. Her expression returned to one of mild scorn while power blazed through her nervous system at the sight of lust glittering in his eyes and the tent in the front