He kissed her harder, as if to warn her perhaps, as if to tell her she could end it here, but she wanted him more than she wanted a neat conclusion.
She wanted the hands that snaked around and slid to her stomach, she wanted the bruise she was sure he was leaving because he kissed low on her neck, so deep she felt like crying, felt like turning her head right round to suck on his mouth, but still she stood there. She wanted, how she wanted, the slight pressure on his fingers, the push back into him that gave her a daring feel of what was waiting, his solid length pressing into her bottom.
‘We could take dessert upstairs,’ Zander said, for he wanted her in his room. He wanted every morsel now that went into her mouth, every sip, to come only from him, everything to be untainted by his brother.
‘I shouldn’t.’ Still she could not face him, still she dared not open her eyes, because if she did, she must make decisions, and she struggled so hard to remember. ‘I’m working.’
‘Not now,’ Zander said. ‘You just clocked off.’
‘Your brother—’
‘Forget about him,’ Zander said, for he must be dismissed from this moment. Zander must not for a second reveal the bitterness that was there or she would run.
‘I don’t want to regret this in the morning.’ It was a plea almost, because around him she could not think.
‘Why would you regret something so nice?’
‘Because …’ she attempted, except his fingers were at the back of her bra and nimbly, easily, through her dress he unhooked her, and she was dressed except she felt naked, exposed. Shamelessly it exhilarated her. What did this man do? He turned her round and he gave her his mouth. He wrapped her in the heat of his arms and cooled her with his tongue. He kissed her, but Charlotte could never, she realised, recall it afterwards as just a kiss, for it stroked and it soothed and it beat in her mouth and dragged at her skin and it was faint-making and delicious and did things to her body that no mere kiss ever could. Even wearing her high heels he was the taller, and their bodies meshed. He pulled her right in, he leant on the balcony so his body was a curve for hers to melt into—and readily she did.
He gave all to that kiss and Zander had kissed many, many women. Had kissed through his youth to assure a bed that night, had kissed just to get dinner when his stomach had been hollow with hunger, had kissed just to survive, but never, not once, had a kiss tasted so good.
Her lipstick was gone, her inhibitions fading, her breasts pressed against him, he caressed her. His mouth adored her in a way that made her feel both reckless and safe.
He took her away with his kiss and then he brought her back with its absence. He handed her her bag, which told her he had come out to fetch her; he draped her in her wrap and covered the swell of nipples beneath her dress, looked into her blue eyes and told her, looked right into them and told her, ‘You’ll never regret this.’
And he lied.
WHY she trusted him she did not know.
Why she so willingly let him lead her to his room was not something she could readily explain.
In the bathroom of his luxury suite, she attempted to scold herself—to tell herself she knew nothing about this man, that he was a client of her boss, that she had known him for just a couple of days.
Not a single lecture worked.
He was the brother of Nico, whom she trusted, but it came down to something rather more basic than that, for there was no man on earth who made her feel the way Zander had in the time they had spent together.
She had not laughed so freely in years, had not talked so readily to another soul—and as for his kiss …
As she rinsed her mouth and looked up into her glittering eyes in the mirror, lifted the hair and saw the bruise he had left, she was also deeply honest with herself—in their few hours of contact he had offered escape. Tonight she was the dress and the shoes and the woman who looked back in the mirror, a woman who could handle things, she told herself as she removed her unhooked bra through the arms of her dress.
It was not love she sought as she walked from the bathroom to the lounge of his suite, it was escape and Zander offered it in spades.
Dessert had been delivered as loosely promised.
Shot glasses filled with mousses and brûlées, tiny pastries and potent custards, and not for a second was she tempted, at least not by the table, for she walked to him and was pulled down to his lap, to a kiss that did not need now to be tamed.
It was not the real Charlotte that kissed him back, it was the Charlotte she wanted to be, perhaps the Charlotte he thought he had met on the beach, a woman who could handle such things, could take the roaming of his hands on her body, could give her all and remember not to love him tomorrow.
For Zander, unusually, there was much at stake.
Wrongly, he assumed she had been his brother’s lover and it was imperative he win before they met.
How delicious the moan in her throat as she sat on his knee and kissed him.
Did he do this? he wanted to ask as he tore down her dress to the breasts he had undressed and suckled at her nipples.
Or this? he begged in his head and stood with her in his lap and pushed her to the bed with his mouth.
Or this? As he slid down her panties.
There was a rough edge to his kisses, an urgency to him that hadn’t been there before, an anger almost, and she pulled back on the bed, confused at the change in him.
‘Zander?’
And he looked up to blue eye that held his, and saw her eyes were darker when troubled. He wanted them pale, wanted her soothed, wanted their night, not the conquest.
Wanted her.
‘I’ve been thinking of you for so long,’ he offered by way of explanation for his urgency. ‘For weeks. Forgive me if I got carried away.’ And he watched as she blinked, still wary. ‘When we spoke, when you were in London and I was in Australia, when you were in bed …’ And she blinked again, for she had thought of him too. Unable to picture him then, still her mind had wandered, so much so that she could now understand his haste. ‘We’ll take things slowly.’ He smiled his lethal smile, except this time he meant it—thought not of his brother or hate, only of her. ‘We’ll go back to the beginning. How did you lie?’
She did not understand his question.
‘How did you lie in your bed when you spoke with me?’ And she could not help but smile at the memory of a dream that had come true, and could now forgive his roughness.
‘On my side.’
‘Show me.’ He rose from the bed and she watched the suited man slowly undress as she rolled to her side and pulled up the covers around her shoulders.
‘You?’ Charlotte asked, as he climbed back into bed.
‘On my back,’ Zander said, and something deep in her stomach tightened. ‘So tell me.’
‘What?’
‘How is the weather?’
And she lay on her side and closed her eyes and imagined the rain on her window and the grey of her life and his voice in her ear, only this time it was better, for it was cool but not cold