‘And the rest.’
His face lit up and she admired his enthusiasm for his work. She’d never had it, the boring number crunching at the merchant bank less than inspiring. Quitting her job not long after quitting her marriage had been another faux pas according to the vigilante press.
‘Tell me about your job.’
‘Sure you’re interested?’
She nodded, increasingly intrigued. Action, adventure, extreme, encapsulated a lifestyle she could only dream about. What would it be like to live life on the edge? To take risks? To never have to worry about what other people thought of you?
She’d never known but for this brief, surreal interlude with a guy she’d never see again she could live vicariously for a while.
‘Yeah, tell me about the dangerous speeds and hair-raising heights and stunts you do for a living.’
‘So you do know about extreme sports.’
Her hand wavered. ‘A little.’
When he raised an eyebrow, she shrugged. ‘I may have caught a few events in a competition on television last summer.’
‘Go on, admit it, you were dying to hang-glide and wake-board.’
His animation snatched her breath and she unconsciously leaned forward.
‘Considering I like both feet firmly on the ground, that would be a resounding no, but it was cool watching competitors battle environmental challenges while competing against each other.’
‘Wind, snow, water, mountains, you name it, we do it.’
‘So you’re basically an adrenalin junkie?’
She made it sound as though he killed cockroaches for a living but he didn’t mind, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening; by the creases her rescuer spent a lot of time laughing.
‘You bet. Nothing like a shot of endorphins to get the blood pumping.’
He crooked a finger and she leaned closer. ‘Throw in a kick of dopamine and serotonin and you’re on a high almost as good as …’
His pupils widened as he trailed off, giving her fair indication what he’d been about to say.
The safe thing to do would be to change the subject. But she’d done safe her entire life and hadn’t it only been a day ago when she’d arrived in Melbourne that she’d vowed to loosen up? To start living a little?
Yeah, she’d had a gutful of safe.
‘As good as?’
She held her breath as a flicker of lust lit a spark to his eyes, a flash of caramel in all that gorgeous brown.
‘Sex.’
He didn’t blink, didn’t look away and she could’ve sworn the invisible thread binding them tugged.
The flirt’s response would be ‘that good, huh?’ but she’d used up her limited chutzpah supply in the last few seconds.
Besides, the thought of sex being anything other than routine and lacklustre was as foreign to her as this guy and his extreme sports.
‘What else do you do besides skydive and snowboard and cliff diving?’
He chuckled at her sidestep. ‘You really want to hear about nine air sports, eighteen land sports and fifteen water sports?’
‘Maybe not.’ Impressed by his mile-wide daredevil streak, she shook her head. ‘You seriously do all that stuff?’
‘Yeah, all that and more.’
He paused, his gaze momentarily flicking to her lips. ‘Much more.’
And just like that the thread binding them tugged harder, like an intangible, irresistible force dragging her towards him.
‘Are you impressed?’
‘I think you’re crazy,’ she blurted, wondering if she could’ve picked anyone more different to while away a few minutes.
‘So I’ve been told,’ he said, not in the least offended by her outburst. ‘What do you do for kicks?’
In that moment the drudgery of her life flashed before her eyes: being the daughter of the prime minister, the private school, the chauffeurs, the bodyguards, the etiquette and deportment lessons, the expected marriage, being a politician’s wife, the civilised divorce no matter what lies the press printed.
All of it, every constrained, uptight second of it rose up to suffocate her, as it had her entire life.
But she wouldn’t put up with it. Not any more. She needed to wipe those memories, needed to start creating new ones.
Starting now.
‘What do I do for kicks?’
Buoyed by his talk of adrenalin and a soul-deep craving to let loose, she lay her hands on his shoulders and tugged him towards her, murmuring, ‘This,’ a second before her lips touched his.
CHAPTER TWO
THE moment Ava’s lips touched the sexy stranger’s she deliberately blotted out every sane reason why she shouldn’t be doing this and simply allowed herself to feel.
His warmth was the first thing she noticed, the heat from his lips moulding hers, melting, mesmerising, as she moved her mouth experimentally against his.
In response his hand slid into her hair, cradling the back of her head but this time there was nothing remotely gentle or therapeutic in his touch.
Uh-uh, this time his fingers splayed and pulled her towards him while his skilled mouth coaxed hers into opening.
As his tongue touched hers starbursts exploded in her head as she belatedly wondered if she had sustained a concussion.
Surely that could be the only explanation for this dazed, stunned confusion clouding her usually immaculate rationale and making her want to kiss a guy she barely knew for ever.
Yeah, he was that good and when the pressure of his lips eased she wanted to scream ‘no-o-o!’
For this was when her reliable logic would kick in, the logic that had helped her breeze through tense seating arrangements at foreign embassies, the logic that had prompted her to give up her writing dream and undertake a sensible economics degree, the logic that had insisted marrying a family friend would be a solid basis for a sound marriage.
Screw logic.
‘Can I blame that on concussion?’
The lips she’d just ravaged kicked up at the corners. ‘That depends.’
‘On?’
‘How bad it is.’
With a fake wince, she pointed to her head and pretended to swoon. ‘It’s beyond bad.’
‘In that case, I insist I walk you to your room.’
His gaze dropped to her mouth for a moment. ‘Just in case you impulsively kiss every stranger you come into contact with.’
Just like that, her bubble of illusion popped. For that was what she’d done. Kissed a stranger, some random guy, she’d met in a hotel.
Sheesh. What had she been thinking? It was one thing to abandon boring logic, another to lose sight of the facts completely.
‘Hey, I was kidding.’
He touched her arm and a spark of something zapped her, reminding her of the reason she’d ignored logic in the first place.
‘Though introducing ourselves should take care of the stranger problem?’
He smiled and her chest constricted. Smooth, sweet-talking