The Morning After the Night Before: Love & Lust in the city that never sleeps! (5 page)

‘Not if it's only token.'

‘—and because, surprising as it might seem, I appreciate spirit in women.'

‘Like horses?' She snorted.

He wisely ignored that. ‘Spirit and brains.'

‘Uh-huh. So all those times you and I ended up locking horns, that was…
appreciation
making you flush red?'

He did it again now and it added a dangerous kind of gleam to his eyes.

‘You tell me.'

She crossed her arms angrily and it only served to plump her minor cleavage up a tad in the aperture of her blouse when viewed from virtually above. Which, naturally, he took full advantage of. Izzy dropped her hands by her side, instead, to take away his toy. It left his eyes nowhere to go but back to hers, all simmering and smart and way,
way
too close.

‘Come on, Dean,' he purred, ‘you can't say our…discussions didn't give the daily grind a productive boost.'

There were times she'd have liked to have
boosted
Harry Mitchell right out of his twelfth-floor window. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, my productivity goes up when I'm respected professionally.'

His eyebrows shot up. ‘You think I don't respect you?'

‘You don't respect my opinion. Anyone's really.'

‘Disagreeing with it and not respecting it aren't the same thing. Anyway, occasionally I did agree with you.'

She knew. And weren't those days the most confusing of all? Because he did so unconditionally. And wholeheartedly. She bit her lip and his gaze went straight to the childhood gesture.

‘You know what I'm starting to think?' he murmured, still checking out the nibble of her teeth on her lips.

‘Enlighten me.'

‘Maybe all our fighting was just sexual tension in disguise.'

The room was way too small for her bark of a laugh. It fairly ricocheted off the walls. ‘You must be joking.'

‘Not at all.' He grinned and it was the most predatory she'd ever seen from him. And smug.

‘Because you're so irresistible?'

‘Because we have chemistry. I thought it was just me but Wednesday put a big question mark over that.'

No, they didn't. Not chemistry and not Harry Mitchell. Hot or not. ‘Maybe you're just projecting your own hormones.'

‘You don't feel it?'

Challenge, not question. As if he already knew the answer. As if she did, too. But they bred them tough in Manchester. She tossed her short hair back. ‘Not particularly.'

Liar, liar…

‘February twenty-first this year,' he challenged. ‘We shared the same lift and the end-of-day rush pushed us together at the back. We didn't speak a word to each other and the only uncovered parts of us touching were our ungloved hands.' He stepped a tiny bit closer. ‘But we both walked out of the building rubbing the tingles away.'

‘No, we—'

‘April third.' He lifted his chin. ‘I knocked back one of your ideas and you spent a good portion of the day glaring at me through the walls—all flushed and infuriated and eyes spitting—and I spent a good portion of the day with half a hard-on, as a result.'

No way her gasp should have caught quite that tightly in her chest. She should have been outraged, not breathless.

Not excited.

Her glares across her crowded open-plan office to his lofty glassed-in one
had
simmered,
and not always with anger. She'd felt it but had no idea he'd been able to see it.

God…

‘You're making these up.'

‘Check your diary,' he dismissed, plunging his hands even deeper in his pockets. ‘June eleventh, just before lunch. You stood in my office giving me hell about the new ratios and I just let you run because I was curious.'

She swallowed back a lump of dread. She remembered June eleventh. The room had been practically soaked with awareness and she'd come away fairly throbbing from the argument. And then she'd beaten herself up all day about the inappropriateness of it all. He was her boss. He was the
bad guy.

Words formed themselves despite her best intentions.

‘Curious about what?' she croaked.

His lips twisted. ‘Have you never heard the saying that a person fights like they f—?'

‘Stop!' Air sucked hard into her lungs and then froze there, trapped, making it harder to squeeze out, ‘I thought that was dancing.'

‘I found June eleventh extremely illuminating on that front. But nowhere near as illuminating
as Wednesday. Wednesday was a real eye-opener.'

Her only hope of salvation here was in channelling a bit of Tori's hearty sexual confidence. She tossed her hair back and met his eyes directly.

‘You never let on.'

‘Of course not. It wasn't appropriate.'

Hysteria bubbled dangerously close. ‘And this is?'

‘You're not exactly moving away from me.'

She glanced at the junk all around them. ‘That's more a statement about my hoarding than your hotness.'

Crap.
Not what she'd meant to say. At all.

His left eyebrow lifted. ‘I'm hot?'

‘You're insufferable.' That smug grin sure was.

‘You think I'm attractive.'

‘I think you're dangerously close to a lawsuit.'

His laugh echoed her earlier bark. ‘For what?'

‘Employee sexual harassment.'

He waggled her ID tag. ‘You quit, remember?'

‘Then, sexual harassment just generally.'

He shuffled closer. ‘You still haven't asked me to leave. That's all it will take.'

No. Why was that…?

‘Maybe I'm hoping chivalry isn't dead.' Maybe,
deep down inside, she wanted to give him one more chance to be a decent man.

‘Grand chivalric gestures were the only outlet for all the unrequited sexual frustration in the twelfth century.' He shot her his best Cheshire grin. ‘Like our fighting.'

‘Well, then, perhaps your grand gesture could involve sweeping heroically out the door and nicking off.'

His smile this time was half laugh. And it was annoyingly appealing. ‘Or we could find a more traditional outlet for all the tension.'

‘No.' It would be laughable if the very thought hadn't divested her of the oxygen she'd need to do it.

‘Are you already in a relationship?' he challenged. ‘I'm not.'

Izzy grasped desperately at the edges of the conversation. Harry's eyes said he was dead serious, but how could he be? This sort of thing never happened to her. Despite her best efforts.

She sucked in some much-needed air. ‘Except with your career.'

His eyes dimmed oh-so-briefly. ‘My career and I have an understanding.'

‘When it gets you laid?'

‘Is that what you think this is about?' He looked genuinely wounded. ‘Sex?'

Doubt crept in at the corners. ‘Unless you're proposing a rollicking game of chess?'

‘Something tells me you'd be quite good at chess,' he murmured. ‘I'm talking about exploration. A bit of good old-fashioned groping. Tangling tongues and heavy breathing. When was the last time you had that?'

Ah…no. Not a question she was going to answer. ‘You're assuming rather a lot, don't you think?'

‘You still haven't asked me to leave.'

The simple truth of that stripped Izzy bare. He was flirting and she was, too, in her own clunky way. They were standing in a darkened, tiny bedroom close enough to get right into that groping without even needing to reach. They no longer had any kind of professional relationship to protect or reputation to preserve. She knew him well enough to know he wasn't some kind of weirdo or monster. And there
was
a strange kind of hormonal haze going on thanks to the intriguing fingertip preview of the hard body under his McQueen business shirt.

He was offering her a few hours of healthy distraction and making it clear that it didn't
have to end in sex and, most importantly, he was exactly the right kind of guy for a one-night-only appearance.

And she wasn't throwing him out.

‘A good time but not a long time? Is that it?' she murmured.

‘A
great
time, Izzy,' he clarified, ‘but no…not a long time.'

Yes, yes, yes,
her three champagnes ganged up to whisper violently in her ear. But everyone knew champagne was a tart.

‘Because you have your career?'

‘Because I'm not looking for a relationship.'

‘But you're open to a fun night.'

‘That's up to you, Iz.'

Iz…

That one diminutive sealed her fate, seducing her with its simple masculinity and emboldening her with its intimacy. That one diminutive made it easier to imagine—to stick her fingers in her ears and go
la la la
for a few hours—that they knew each other even vaguely well enough for what he was proposing. For what she suddenly realised she was contemplating.

And was desperately, obscenely hungry for. And maybe always had been.

What was there to know? He was gorgeous,
he was Australian, he smelled like a god. What if he kissed like one, too? And what if she never found out, first hand? And she wouldn't because, without turning up in his building at eight every morning, this was the last she was ever going to see of infuriating Harry Mitchell.

Intriguingly sexy Harry Mitchell.

Maybe he was right about their office bickering, maybe it was just the only work-appropriate way for the chemistry to get out.

Because she could sure feel it now, surging like a tidal current between them, urging her closer, urging her to say yes. Urging her to give in to the speculative curiosity she suddenly realised she'd always had about him.

‘Can I touch your suit?' she asked, eyes not quite meeting his. Not believing she'd asked.

‘My…suit?'

She ignored his rich chuckle and stretched her fingers towards the same jacket he'd been wearing on Wednesday. He stood perfectly still as they feathered down onto the curve of his shoulder and even stiller when she flattened them against his breast.

Her suspended breath released on a strangled half groan. ‘It's beautiful.'

Those blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did you just climax?'

‘I wanted to do this on Wednesday,' she confessed, smiling.

‘Well, you're in luck. You can do whatever you want to me tonight.'

Whatever you want…

Her fingers curled back into a fist of their own volition and she reluctantly lowered it.

‘This is awkward,' she whispered, all truth. Because she'd never, ever done the one-night stand thing. ‘I don't know what to do.'

‘Tell me to leave. Or step forward. Or touch my suit again.' His shrug was the merest shoulder flick. ‘Totally up to you.'

Ugh…

She'd wanted chivalry but now that she had it she really wanted him to sweep her up into his arms in the boorish manner he usually conducted himself in and take the choice away from her. The responsibility. But his apparent ambivalence wiggled in under her carefully erected self-confidence and poked uncomfortably at the place where all her old insecurities still lived. Shouldn't he be gagging to kiss her? Wouldn't that be more romantic? The fact he wasn't triggered her old insecurities—thoughts of every
boy at school who preferred the racier girls, the prettier girls.

The cleaner girls.

Isadora couldn't be poorer…
the old voices echoed.

Except she didn't feel poor tonight. She felt obscenely rich with opportunity. And, despite his nonchalance, Harry's heartbeat under her fingertips just now hadn't thumped as if she wasn't good enough.

She locked eyes with his and stepped forward into his body, then linked her hands behind his head.

‘When I imagined wrapping my hands around your neck,' she whispered, ‘this wasn't quite what I had in mind.'

Now, that muscular neck was a convenient place for her to hook herself—like any of the fine outfits dangling from hangers around her new room—so that her lips were more levelly placed with his.

The surprise in his eyes was swiftly succeeded by masculine anticipation. His perfectly manicured hands slipped straight up to her ribs and bonded there.

And his lips met her more than halfway.

Soft flesh met its mate. Tongue touched on
teeth. Large hands slid over her body—one up below her breast, its friend around and over the curve of her bottom—as his mouth plundered hers.

Thoroughly.

Indecently.

And she realised that all those secret glances she'd cast at his sexy mouth were shamefully under-informed about his talents. Of course he was a good kisser—the unspeakable ego had to come from somewhere—but Izzy hadn't expected the haste with which she would slip from
technical enjoyment
to outright
gluttony.
She gave as good as she got, throwing aside the last of her self-control in the hormonal haze he generated, and giving herself fully to the experience.

Why not? Wasn't this a time for new beginnings? Maybe the new Izzy took more risks than just professionally.

Plus it had been a long time since she'd been kissed like this. Not just well but…fantastically. And with intent. What would it be like to channel all the competitive challenge between them into a sensual encounter?

‘Oomph…'

It was only when she fell backwards onto her
tiny bed that she realised something other than their lips had been moving.

‘How do you sleep on this thing?' Harry gritted between kisses, settling himself awkwardly over her.

She gasped for air. ‘Badly.'

Then it was all about the kissing again. And the promised groping. Pretty darned good groping, really. The kind of flesh massage that made an A-cup girl feel like a supermodel. She returned the favour, grinding herself into his hip until the heat billowing out from between put their clothes at risk of spontaneous combustion.