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 …
‘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