Then he kissed her between her legs, a gentle kiss, blowing softly before inserting his tongue into her wetness. Her instinct at this shocking show of intimacy was to snap her legs together. This was a place to which she had never gone before and an experience she had never had. However, he kept them open and she sank into the most shatteringly exquisite sensations she had ever had.
She squirmed against his questing tongue and groaned uncontrollably as it delved deeper into her, finding the pulsing beat of her clitoris and staying there to tease the swollen bud until she felt the spiral of pleasure soaring out of control. Her orgasm was unstoppable and she arched against his mouth and cried out, her whole body racked with a shuddering, climactic loss of control that blanked everything out of her mind.
Surfacing should have been horribly awkward. Mortification should have been tearing through her as cold reality took grip and made a mockery of her loss of inhibition. Instead, there was no time for searching questions, because now he guided her to pleasing him and, once again, she was lost in the moment and wonderfully present for the first time in her life.
Every touch and every sensation exploded in Technicolor. The feel of him and the taste of him as she explored his body the way he had explored hers was an exquisite voyage of discovery, and it felt weirdly right, even though a little voice in the back of her mind was telling her that it was anything but.
The ripple of muscle under her fingers and the sinewy strength of his body made her giddy with wanting. The sound of his low, urgent groans and the thick shakiness of his voice as he encouraged her where to go, where to touch and how to touch, made her melt.
Swept away on a surge of never-before-felt sensory overload, she only really came back down to earth when at last they lay next to one another on the queen-sized bed, utterly spent. Shyly, she reached for the sheet, but he flipped onto his side to look at her and gently steered her away from covering herself.
‘You have an amazing body,’ he murmured, sliding one hand along her waist to rest on her hip.
‘James...’
‘I know exactly what you’re going to say.’
‘Do you?’ She angled herself so that they were facing one another. The silvery light filtering into the cabin made the shadows dance around them and on their faces, but she could see that his eyes were both serious and ever so mildly amused.
His casualness relaxed her. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting post coitus. Maybe horror and embarrassment from him at what had taken place between them. She had steeled herself to deal with his recriminations as well as her own but there was a smile tugging the corners of his mouth.
‘You’re going to remind me that I’m your boss and that what we just did was the worst thing we could have done...’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘We are two adults who gave in to the chemistry between us. I don’t make a habit of sleeping with my employees...in fact, I have never been tempted to do anything of that sort...but we slept together and I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Are you?’
‘I’d planned on doing that, now that you mention it.’
He laughed and stroked her cheek. ‘There’s that sense of humour again...don’t beat yourself up, Ellie.’
‘It’s easy for you to say. I don’t do this sort of thing.’
‘Never?’
‘I... Life has always been a serious business for me,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve had one boyfriend, but flings? Hopping in and out of bed with strangers? That life belongs to some other girl...’
‘We’re not strangers to one another.’
‘I know but...’
‘Shh.’ He rested one finger against her lips, silencing her. ‘Did you enjoy what we just did? Did you enjoy making love with me?’
His words invoked a rush of heady pleasure and she briefly closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. There was no way she could lie, and she liked his honesty. She nodded, and he laughed softly and told her that she’d have to speak up because he didn’t quite catch what she was saying.
‘I enjoyed it.’ Ellie glared at him, then smiled and tentatively outlined his mouth with her finger.
‘So did I. Plenty. Think we should go there again?’
‘We can’t!’ Her grey eyes were confused when they met his. ‘How can we? We would never be able to work alongside one another again. It would spoil the relationship we have, and I enjoy my job too much to risk losing it.’
‘Don’t you think it would be worse if we cut it short now?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Think about it, Ellie. We turn our backs on one another and agree to move forward and put this down to a one-off escapade...’
‘Yes, exactly!’ But there was already a coldness seeping inside her at the prospect of that, even though she knew it made perfect sense.
‘Hold on. I’m not finished quite yet.’ He sifted his fingers through her hair, twirling a silky strand into a ringlet and then letting it fall, slippery straight again. ‘We take that road and how does that play out for us working together, with all that pent-up chemistry still sizzling between us? It would be impossible to relax back into anything approaching a decent working relationship.
‘There would also be the danger of everyone eventually sussing that something was going on between us. Some of those employees of mine can trace the scent of something off with the accuracy of a bloodhound. They would see the change between us, and it wouldn’t take long for them to put two and two together. And how do you think you would be able to deal with that?’
Ellie could feel tears pricking behind her eyelids but she had no one but herself to blame for this situation. She could have pushed him away. He wouldn’t have persisted. Instead, she had allowed curiosity through the front door so that it could kill the proverbial cat.
‘You’re firing me,’ she said bluntly, swinging back and resting one arm across her face.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not firing you, Ellie! Why would I do that when you’re the best PA I’ve ever had? Probably the only person on the planet who can put up with me!’
‘Then what?’ She sneaked a glance at him from under her lashes and her breath caught in her throat as their eyes collided.
‘I’m saying we give in to this thing between us...let it run its course as it will. We’re here, far away from prying eyes. Let’s enjoy this, and trust me, by the time I’m back in London after my brother’s wedding this will be nothing more than a pleasant memory which we will be more than happy to relegate to the history books. We’ll be able to face one another as we always have done and, if there’s an extra added facet to our relationship, then it won’t interfere with anything. In fact, it might make what we have even better...’
Ellie’s brain seemed to get stuck on the bit about relegating it to the history books, but she swept past that discomfort, because he was right. This was lust, and lust never lasted.
He was also right when he said that to end this prematurely would make things impossible between them because there would be that charge, that electricity, waiting to be snuffed out.
Another week here... She thought about this, about the freedom to touch him when she wanted, and she felt faint.
She would return to London ahead of him. He would fly to Hawaii shortly after she left. He had already mentioned drumming up some business there that could dovetail with the Barbados deal. He would have time to explore that before the wedding and then, by the time he was finally back in London, she would be back to her normal self.
She almost laughed because she felt that, once those prim suits were back in place, she would revert to the person she had always been. Her personality was way too ingrained for it to be thrown off-course by a week of giddy passion.
‘Maybe...’ she whispered, looking down at unknown depths beneath her feet, poised to take a leap. ‘Maybe you’re right...’<
br />
CHAPTER SIX
ELLIE LOOKED OVER the top of her book towards the horizon and James, now just a little dot moving in the blue, blue sea in an apparent bid to reach that invisible point.
Pure bliss.
At a little after four in the afternoon, the sun was still beating down, as golden as honey. The families had started drifting off, but even when the beach had been full, at midday, Ellie and James had still managed to secure a private, quiet spot on the never-ending stretch of powder-white sand. There they had settled down with their lavish picnic, prepared with care by the chefs at the hotel.
What lay round the corner was something she had put on hold, a bridge to be crossed when the time came, and that time wasn’t now. What lay round the corner was a little thing called reality.
She hadn’t been born yesterday. They were in a bubble. In this bubble James was charmed by the novelty of being with a woman who wasn’t high maintenance, who didn’t come with myriad potential complications and who was fundamentally sensible enough to walk away without kicking up a fuss—unlike his ex. But those were details she had set aside for tomorrow.
Now was...this. A beach, a book, the sun and that disappearing dot... James... Her lover...
Yes, the days were going by, but slowly. This was day three and it felt as though time was standing still, everything moving with a casual lack of urgency. This was an island where no one saw the need to rush, and it was incredible how quickly both of them had adapted. The deal was just about there, going through the last-stage formalities where lawyers swarmed all over documents like flies. But there was no sense of speed because the guys all took the stance of, ‘Hey, it’s going to happen, so why the rush? Enjoy the island first!’
So plans had changed accordingly, with James’s trip to Hawaii being put back by several days to accommodate their easy going business partners. He would be cutting it a bit fine, but he would still have time to spare before the wedding.
Ellie had been overjoyed, but she had concealed it well, because he had made it very clear that this was all about living for the moment and that was a concept she was eager to embrace. ‘Living for the moment’ didn’t involve any dangerous, unstable waters, any currents that could drag her under.
‘You understand me,’ he had told her only the day before as they had lain on the deck of the Catamaran, out in the middle of the deep blue sea, with nothing on and pleasurably sated from making love.
The compliment had been a double-edged sword, though, because he had continued, smiling, lying on one side so that he could tease her nipple with a finger. ‘You know I don’t believe in permanence so there’s no chance you would ever get the wrong idea about this, about what we have.’
He’d been lying back, squinting at the azure sky for a few seconds, his hands behind his head. ‘I made a mistake with Naomi,’ he had mused. ‘I believed her when she told me that she was into her career, that she was on the same page as I was, that what we had was fun.’
When he’d looked at her again, his dark blue eyes had been serious and yet lazily appreciative. ‘You and I...’ he’d grinned crookedly ‘...have been together long enough for you to know just where I stand on that subject.’
So, yes, Ellie knew just what the limits of this relationship were. She had realised very quickly that a display of anything that might be interpreted as her looking for more than what was on the table would be a very bad idea indeed.
But was she looking for anything more than what was on the table? She told herself not, but was she being completely truthful?
It was a question that had lodged itself at the back of her mind and exploring that would open a Pandora’s box which she might find impossible to shut once the lid had been lifted.
She knew that as instinctively as she knew that he would be able to put this brief distraction behind him without any difficulty. He knew how to compartmentalise. It was what made it impossible for his emotions to take the lead. In so many ways, he had imparted that information to her without her even really realising it. In so many ways, his values were the polar opposite of hers...so wasn’t that protection enough against anything...dangerous?
When they were with their business contacts, James was all business. He didn’t try and pretend that there was nothing going on between them, but she knew that his focus was elsewhere, on the deal finally waiting to be sealed, with signatures on all the right lines. Work was his priority and all else was pushed into the background next to it.
It was why he could operate a constantly revolving door situation with the women he dated. He gave them one hundred percent of his undivided attention while the romance was running hot, but the second he began walking away was the second they became part and parcel of his past.
She was in a different category, because she would still be working with him, but she knew that the same principle would be applied. Once back in London, she would revert to being his PA, and if there was an added dimension to their relationship then that was something he would find amusing but certainly not a distraction.
And for her that worked...didn’t it?
Like he’d said, she thought, with just the faintest stirrings of unease as that distant dot began to head back to shore, once this was out of their system normality would return. The electricity would fizzle out. That was how it had always been for him and for her...
She might have had next to no experience but she certainly knew what her head told her. He fundamentally wasn’t her type, which meant that what she felt was purely lust, and everyone knew that lust and longevity were not things that went hand in hand. Lust wore thin very quickly. The fact that he would set the example by switching off would help their working relationship. She would simply follow his lead and it would be fine.
Of course it would!
She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest, watching as he swam back to shore. Next to her was the camera he had bought at huge cost two days ago. She would never have guessed that he was a spectacularly adventurous photographer, but it was a hobby that somehow fitted his unpredictable, highly creative yet incredibly driven personality.
It also gave an insight into someone who enjoyed a sense of solitude, which no one would ever have guessed, given the charming, extrovert nature of his personality. Those glimpses of his complexities had fired up her curiosity and imagination, but she knew that that too was a dangerous response, because it sucked her in, dismantling the necessary distance she was trying to maintain between them.
But, good heavens, keeping him at arm’s length was tough to maintain when he made her body soar, her mouth run dry and scrambled her brain so that thinking straight felt like an effort demanding huge will power.
She watched as he stood up, shook the water off, raked his fingers through his hair and began walking towards her, every movement poetry in action.
Behind him, the backdrop of crystalline, azure water and the deepening blue of the late-afternoon sky was so picture-perfect that she wanted to grab the camera and capture it before it was lost to time and memory.
His wet swimming trunks clung to his muscular thighs and dipped down below his belly button, perfectly emphasising his six pack. Hiding behind her sunglasses, Ellie watched, mesmerised by his sheer animal beauty.
He was grinning when he stopped in front of her and held out his hand for her to grab.
‘I can’t see the expression on your face when you’re hiding behind those things,’ he teased. ‘But I’m hoping that it’s unfettered joy at the thought of us heading back to the bedroom...’
Ellie shielded her face and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
The modest black swimsuit she had brought with her had been replaced with a racier number in the sort of bright colours she would previously have avoided.
Shopping for non-essentials, that enjoyable leisure activity beloved by most twenty-somethings, was something she’d had n
either the time nor the inclination to indulge. Here in this lazy heat, and basking in the open appreciation of the least suitable guy on the planet, she had discovered that it was something she rather enjoyed.
She glanced down at his long fingers entwined with hers and shivered, because there was something so intimate about the simple gesture. It was as though they were two lovers holding hands, maybe with a future stretching out in front of them.
She quickly whipped her straying thoughts away from any such cosy notion. There was no ‘maybe’ future for them on any romantic level. What they had was the here and now, and that was a good thing, because he could break a girl’s heart. Her heart, were she to be foolish enough to give it to him.
‘I forgot to mention,’ he said, scooping up the remains of their picnic and stuffing it all into the basket provided by the hotel. ‘I had a text from Izzy.’
‘Your sister?’ Ellie had met Izzy in passing a couple of times and had liked what she had seen. She was a stunning blonde girl who clearly adored her slightly older brother.
‘She doesn’t want to ruin Max and Mia’s big day, but she said she couldn’t keep the secret to herself any longer...’
‘She’s getting married?’
‘To the guy of her dreams, it would seem,’ James drawled, eyebrows raised with amusement. ‘It seems my family are falling like ninepins.’
‘Are they waiting for it to be your turn next?’ Ellie said lightly. Staring straight ahead, with swaying coconut trees on one side and the gently rolling blue water on the other, her bare feet leaving footprints on the powdery, pale sand, she wondered what it would feel like to have the love of the guy holding her hand.
‘Not if they’re in their right minds,’ he returned wryly.
‘I’ve only met your brother once, but he didn’t strike me as the sort who was keen to walk down the aisle...’ She remembered a striking, dark-haired guy with scarily forbidding features, as tough as James, but without the easy charm that made his brother so accessible.
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