It was all totally soulless, functional but impersonal, and therefore unwelcoming. And not at all the sort of place he would have thought that he would end up in tonight.
But then, nothing tonight had gone the way he had expected it.
He had certainly never anticipated ending up in an anonymous hotel room with a woman who stirred every single one of his most primitive senses, but whose first name was the only thing he knew about her.
‘We’re strangers,’ she had said, ‘and I want to keep it that way. You don’t know me and I don’t know you—that’s the way it has to be.’
No way! That was his first response. He actually stiffened, half turned to walk away, but she was still so close to him, he still had his arms around her, and the hot blood racing through his veins, the hungry need that clamoured at his senses, blurred his thoughts.
He couldn’t let her go.
He had known that in the moment that he had seen her turn to hail a taxi to take her away and out of his life. And if she went now, then she would be gone for ever. He would have no way of tracking her down. She would disappear into the night and he would never see her again; never know anything more about her.
‘You ask a lot, lady,’ he managed, his voice husky and rough.
She didn’t show any sign of reconsidering. Her light-coloured gaze held his unwaveringly, and her soft mouth firmed to a determined line.
‘It’s that or nothing,’ she said, reaching up a slim hand to smooth it across the front of his shirt, and the small movement brought a waft of her scent up to his nostrils, tantalising his senses and drying his mouth.
Beneath the caress of her fingers, his skin burned and his heart kicked savagely, making his pulse throb, his senses swim.
‘That or nothing,’ she repeated and he knew that he could never live with ‘nothing’. He would always curse himself if he let this woman get away from him now.
‘Whatever you want, lady,’ he said, knowing it was nothing less than the truth. ‘Whatever you want.’
And what she wanted was this.
For tonight at least.
Well, he would let her get away with it for tonight—after all, she wasn’t the only one who had been a little…economical with the truth. But tomorrow always came.
Tomorrow he would be asking a lot of questions. And he’d want some very definite answers to all of them.
Meanwhile, he’d spend tonight convincing her that it wasn’t ‘that or nothing’ at all.
‘Skye?’ he questioned now when the woman who had come into the room just behind him didn’t answer. ‘What is it? Have you changed your mind about tonight? Do you want to go back on this—renege on what we agreed?’
Did she?
Did she want to back out of the deal? Was that what she wanted?
They were the questions Skye had been asking herself ever since they’d come upstairs. No—before that. The truth was that her courage and conviction had been seeping away from the moment that she had agreed to stay with him.
It was obvious that she’d shocked him to the core with her blunt announcement that if she stayed then he must never ask her her full name, and never give her his.
She’d thought that he was going to walk away when she’d said that. Certainly his expression had seemed to promise that he was going to reject her outrageous proposition out of hand. His whole face had closed off, shutters seeming to come down behind the brilliant black eyes, until every one of his features had appeared to be carved in cold, unyielding marble.
But then he had blinked once, very slowly, and nodded his dark head.
‘No,’ she said now, miserably aware of the way that her own inner tension made her voice sound tight and hard, coldly distant. ‘No, I’m not reneging on anything. It’s just…’
Just that I’m no good at this.
The words were burning on her tongue, but she swallowed them back hastily, closing her eyes against the terrible anxiety she was feeling. She couldn’t say them, not here, not now, not in this situation. Her stomach muscles were tying themselves into tight, painful knots, twisting each nerve harder and harder with every heartbeat.
‘Just what?’
His voice sounded disturbingly close and when her eyes flew open again it was to find that he had taken several long strides forward. He was standing right in front of her, so near that if she just lifted her hand she could touch him without even stretching out her fingers.
And she wanted to touch him. The tips of her fingers tingled with the remembrance of the way his skin, his hair had felt to their touch. Her palms felt again the heat of the muscles beneath his shirt, sensed the thudding of his heart under the strong bones of his chest.
If she slicked her tongue along her lips, she could still taste him, clean, musky, intensely masculine, making her heart skip a beat. And she wanted that taste, those sensations all over again. She wanted to lose herself in that wonderful, sizzling feeling that flooded her senses, swamping her mind and leaving her incapable of thought, knowing only need.
She wanted this man.
‘Just what?’ he prompted again, more roughly this time.
I want you to hold me—to make me forget…
‘Just that I wish you would kiss me again.’
‘Oh, that!’
It was edged with laughter, threaded through with a knowing triumph.
‘You only had to ask.’
He was already moving forward, taking her in his arms, drawing her close to him with the confidence of a man who was sure of his appeal; who had no doubt that he was wanted.
‘So tell me, sweetheart…’
A caressing hand slid under her chin, lifting her face to his, and his glittering black eyes locked with her cloudy grey ones, holding her gaze, keeping her so still that even her heartbeat seemed to freeze.
‘Where shall I kiss you? Here?’
The warm pressure of his mouth on her forehead was like a butterfly landing, light, delicate, there and gone again so swiftly that she barely even noticed it was there until she felt its loss. And when she did, her lips parted on a sigh of melancholy delight.
‘Or here…?’
This time he caressed her cheek, dropping a kiss just below her temple, on the left and then again on the right, making her breathing deepen, her senses start to stir.
‘Or perhaps here…?’
Softly, deliberately, he kissed her eyes shut, his lips lingering on the lids just long enough to seal them closed. At least, that was the way it felt to Skye, who found herself locked into a world of sensual darkness where every other sense seemed heightened and sharply sensitised to everything about him.
She could hear each breath he took, low and steady, matching the beat of his heart. His scent was on the air around her, that warm, clean, male essence, subtly blended with the tang of lime and spice in his cologne. When he took her hands in his, the heat seared across her skin like an electric current making her fingers curl in instant response, her breath catch sharply in her throat.
And it was all happening again.
She was melting inside, all the tension seeping out of her body so that she almost expected to see it pool on the floor at her feet. The honeyed pulse of desire was starting through her veins once more, sending the waves of yearning along the path of every nerve and setting them alight with need.
‘That will do for a start,’ she managed, amazed at her own boldness. A daring that was bolstered by