Читать книгу The Morning After the Night Before - Никки Логан - Страница 11

‘WATCH YOURSELF,’ IZZY murmured exactly as her ex-boss ducked sideways and down to avoid clipping his egotistically big head on the steel frame of the mezzanine stairs going up to the bedroom above them. Though a scar would probably only make him more handsome.

She shoved her shoulder against her door.

‘You’re kidding me,’ he said over the party music. ‘This is you?’

Spinning revealed him to be much closer than she’d expected. And it only served to remind her how tiny her new room really was. And how chaotic.

‘Much as I’d like to lock you in the store room as a hilarious prank and listen to you beating at the door while no one else could hear you, I do, in fact, need to sleep in here tonight. So I’ll just find my ID card and you can be on your way.’

‘What happened to the turret?’

Why did he look so concerned? ‘Poppy’s renting it to someone else.’

‘Your best friend evicted you?’

‘God, no. She’d never ask that. I swapped rooms. Economies of scale.’

‘Economical is right,’ he murmured. ‘I have a linen closet bigger than this.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Are you always so gracious?’

Colour streaked up his jaw and it confused her as much as a rare trace of humility in him always did. ‘I just … It doesn’t fit.’

‘Nothing fits, as you can see.’

He dragged his gaze the very short distance from the left of the room to the right, taking in her pathetic bed and her mounded-up belongings. ‘Is this because you quit the firm?’

Something about the size of him in her tiny room, the male scent swilling into every corner, the sexy accent and maybe the multiple champagnes in quick succession stole all but the most essential air from her lungs. But not so much that she couldn’t protest his monumental ego.

‘The world does not revolve around you, Harry Mitchell, surprising as that may be.’

‘So you chose to live like this because …?’

‘Because I’m careful with my money.’ Oh, such lies. ‘And because it’s easier for Poppy to rent the best room than this one.’

It had nothing at all to do with the fact that despite earning stupid money for the past few years she’d actually managed to put very little of it away for the rainy day that had now come. That she’d gone a bit spend-mad with the first real money she’d ever had at her disposal and then become ridiculously accustomed to it. Reliant on it. Which made the myriad belongings cluttered around them now very quality belongings … but still clutter.

And not the gently shambolic clutter of her parents’ meagre belongings. The clutter of someone with a life rapidly outgrowing her circumstances.

Much like her ambition.

She’d always had a disconnection between what she wanted and what life had given her. The only girl in her childhood estate with big-city ambitions.

Many people might call it denial.

Behind her, Harry leaned on the wall while she began the hunt for her work ID card. It wasn’t in the pile she’d hastily thrown together at her desk. No, that was because she’d been wearing it that day.

Her jacket … Where was Wednesday’s jacket?

She turned back for the door and paused in front of his inconvenient bulk.

‘Excuse me.’

Harry straightened and she squeezed past, the back of her calves pressing against her bed and her front brushing against the expensive fabric of his open coat. His lips twisted as he stretched taller to give her space and politely focused over her head on a point across the small room. Izzy rummaged around in the clothes hanging on the back of the door they’d just come through until she found the cropped jersey jacket she’d worn on Wednesday, and unclipped the security tag still pinned to its lapel.

‘There you go.’ She pressed it into his front as she squeezed past again.

His fingers automatically came up to catch it before she dropped it, but they snagged hers instead, pressing them into his not inconsiderable chest.

Izzy froze. Hard heat soaked through his cotton shirt and charred her skin.

‘Seriously,’ he urged as her eyes flashed up to him, his fingers still holding hers captive, ‘reconsider.’

His voice had dropped down somewhere much more gravelly and, down there, his accent did its best work.

‘Seriously,’ she mimicked. ‘I don’t go back on my decisions.’

‘Ever?’

‘Ever.’

‘Even the bad ones?’

‘Especially the bad ones. There’s no going back from those, only forwards.’ And she knew that from experience.

She glanced up into his fathomless eyes and heard her next words tumble from her lips. Surprised even herself with her candour. ‘That job was killing me. It was time. Regardless of everything else.’

‘You’ve only been in it for a couple of years.’

‘It’s not boredom. It’s—’ me! ‘—the work.’

‘So, go for a different job within the firm.’

She suddenly became aware that her fingers still pressed into his pectoral region and she tugged them gently free and curled them at her side. ‘What is it to you? Why do you even care?’

‘Because you were a good employee,’ he murmured down at her, all smoky intensity. ‘My best.’

Pfff. ‘We fought every day.’

He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and the move effectively pushed him out from the wall and a smidge closer to her. She didn’t step back. On principle. This was her domain, tiny as it might be. The scented heat pumping off him pleasantly consumed her.

‘You challenged me every day,’ he corrected.

It felt odd testing him now, standing this close and peering up at him. Hardly a position of power. Yet she felt as if the cards were all hers. ‘You made some bad decisions.’

It was only when his lips twisted so fully that she remembered what a nice mouth he had. When it wasn’t issuing ridiculous demands.

‘Clearly you thought so. But they were my decisions to make.’

‘If you just want a bunch of yes-men in your department then why are you here, trying to get me back?’

‘Because diversity is apparently healthy in a workforce—’

‘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.

Harry sorted that. Within a minute they were both shirtless and the only danger was the threat of friction burns on flesh as they pressed hot and hard against each other.

And then, out of nowhere, he announced, ‘This isn’t working.’

Every minor rejection she’d ever had in her life congealed into an aching ball midway down her chest.

Of course he wasn’t actually interested, she jeered at herself. Why would he be?

She reached for the edges of a blouse she no longer wore to pull them over her lace-covered breasts. But before she could do more than half shrivel at the finality of his tone, Harry pulled her to her feet, exchanged positions and then drew her back down with him.

On him.

She had no choice but to straddle his hips.

Oh … right!

Power surged through her as she stretched astride all that hard bare flesh, his eyes and hands roaming all over her torso, and then fell forward to pick up the kissing where they’d left off.

‘You’re very good at this,’ she breathed as he sucked torturously on her ear lobe.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured against her neck.

Not quite ‘ditto’ but infinitely better than ‘practice makes perfect’ and so she’d take it.

The kissing went on for hours. Surely hours must have passed, possibly days. London might have sunk away into the Thames and been rebuilt on stilts while they were kissing.

‘Iz, maybe we should slow it down a bit?’

His voice sounded pained and it occurred to her that maybe he was in physical discomfort. Certainly he had reason to be. She ground her pelvis against him in sympathy and whatever he’d been about to say next turned into an unintelligible gargle.

She’d done it to torture him, but all it did was add a burning kind of need to the pressure ache already resident between her own legs. As she repositioned herself more comfortably on him, she thought about her half handful of post-school partners, who’d ranged from eager but inexperienced to accomplished but in it for themselves. Yet, here she was closer to completion with a virtual stranger faster and more surely than any of them had ever inspired.

And in the next heartbeat, she decided how very much she wanted to see if Harry Mitchell was everything he thought he was.

And the decision was liberating.

‘We’re not stopping,’ she announced between heavy breaths.

Harry’s eyes blazed hot and dark back up at her. ‘Okay.’

Her hands reached behind her but paused at the snaps to one of Agent Provocateur’s most artful and clever lingerie pieces. ‘And you’re spending the night.’

‘Roger.’

Izzy took a breath, knowing what would happen to her slight cleavage the moment she removed the magic suspension. Knowing disappointment would probably stain Harry’s hot gaze when he saw he’d been taken in by false advertising. But this was a one-night stand and he was getting laid and—PS—she didn’t owe him anything. Least of all pendulous breasts.

She flicked the bra free. ‘And you’re going to show me whether you’re worth all your own hype.’

The devil grinned back at her and, bless him, if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed to hers even though a pair of boobs was now on offer. Secret points for that.

‘Abso-frigging-lutely.’

Izzy pressed up on her knees slightly and then reached down between them, fussing at his belt.

‘Look at that,’ she purred. ‘Something we finally agree on.’