Chatsfield's Ultimate Acquisition (The Chatsfield: New York Book 1)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  There was no sign of her date when she entered the bar so she took one of the comfortable wing chairs in the more private section and ordered a champagne cocktail.

  The head bartender, Carlos, came over with her drink. ‘Good evening, Miss Harrington.’ He glanced at the empty chair opposite hers. ‘Will I order a drink for Mr Chatsfield?’

  Isabelle frowned. ‘I’m not meeting Mr Chatsfield. I’m meeting a...a friend.’

  ‘Oh, my mistake,’ Carlos said. ‘Ah, there he is now with his date.’

  His date?

  Isabelle swivelled in her chair to see Spencer walk in with a stunning blonde on his arm. The girl looked like she was barely out of her teens. She was slim to the point of thin, with long coltish legs that were spray tanned a gorgeous honey brown, and she was wearing such high heels her hips swayed with every step she took.

  Isabelle felt something bitter like acid spill inside her stomach. Well, two could play at that game. Just wait until her date showed up. She crossed her legs and sipped her cocktail and waited.

  And waited.

  And watched as Spencer Chatsfield chatted to the blonde at the other end of the bar area. He hadn’t even glanced Isabelle’s way. It was as if she were invisible. He only had eyes for the gorgeous model-like goddess perched on one of the brass-stemmed stools.

  Isabelle dragged her gaze away and scrolled through her emails. Read a few Twitter posts. Made a few inane comments on some friends’ pages on Facebook. Then finally her phone beeped with a message. It was probably her date saying he was caught up in traffic or on the subway or something, she thought. She clicked on the message icon. Date not show up? Spencer.

  Isabelle glared at him from across the room. He lifted a hand in a casual wave and then returned his attention to the vision of loveliness beside him. Isabelle ground her teeth, her stomach burning and churning as the girl trailed a talon-like fingertip around his mouth. The mouth that only an hour ago she had been kissing.

  Her phone beeped again. This time it was the man from the dating app saying he’d changed his mind about meeting. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. The worst of it was she now had to sit and watch Spencer flirt with his young date unless she left, thus showing him she had in fact been stood up.

  Carlos came over with another cocktail. ‘Compliments of Mr Chatsfield.’

  Isabelle wished she could have told him to throw it in Spencer’s face. She gritted her teeth behind a polite smile. ‘Thank him, will you?’

  She drank the cocktail with a little more haste than usual. Her head started to spin but then every tense muscle in her body began to relax. So what if her date hadn’t shown up? She could still have a good time. She might still get lucky. Show Spencer he wasn’t the only one who could pull a date. There were plenty of good-looking men coming into the bar, and not all of them were partnered like he was. She caught sight of one looking at her from across the room. He wasn’t as tall as Spencer and he was carrying a little more weight but he had a nice smile.

  He came over to her. ‘Hi, there. I saw you sitting here all on your own. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Sure,’ Isabelle said, smiling back. ‘I’ll have a champagne cocktail.’

  ‘No, she won’t,’ Spencer said, suddenly appearing beside her chair. ‘Darling, do you really think you should be drinking alcohol in your condition?’

  The man stepped back as if he’d been slapped, his cheeks going a dull red. ‘I didn’t realise you two were together.’

  ‘We’re not—’

  ‘Telling anyone until it’s official,’ Spencer cut her off neatly.

  ‘Congratulations...’ The man looked a little bewildered and more than a little intimidated by Spencer’s towering presence. ‘Look, I’m really sorry if I offended you. She was sitting over here by herself and I thought...’

  ‘No problem.’ Spencer was all Chatsfield charm. ‘I shouldn’t have left her all alone. She always gets into mischief when I turn my back, don’t you, darling?’

  ‘But that’s what you love about me, isn’t it, honey pie?’ Isabelle said with a simpering look while inside she was boiling with rage. ‘You never know what to expect next.’

  How could he joke about something so serious? Even though he had no idea of the hurt he was causing, she hated him all over again for being so unspeakably cruel. The nerve-scraping pain travelled from the deep well inside her, threatening to overwhelm her. Her loss, her guilt, her shattered hopes—the whole confusing mix swirling around inside her head, pressing on her heart like the weight of an anchor, churning in her stomach in acidic waves. She fought to contain herself, to gather her spiralling emotions. She could not—would not—break down in front of Spencer. She would not allow him the power to dismantle her, to reduce her to a weeping, snivelling, shattered mess.

  The man slinked away and Spencer’s charming smile was quickly exchanged for a savage frown. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ he said.

  Isabelle glared at him, her voice lowered to a hiss. ‘Are you out of your mind? You told that guy I was—’ she swallowed before she could get the word past the choking knot in her throat ‘—pregnant.’

  ‘At no point did I say the word pregnant.’

  Her throat was raw from holding back a wellspring of bitterness and pain. She could barely breathe for the suffocating ache pressing against her chest. ‘You implied it, then. What if he tells someone? What if he knows who we are? It’ll be all over the press or social media before—’

  ‘Since when do you go picking up strangers in a bar?’ His frown was so deep it created a crevasse between his eyes.

  Isabelle lifted her eyebrows in an arch. ‘What about you coming in with that girl you picked up from the nearest child-minding centre?’

  He gave her a hardened look. ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘No one special.’

  She made a huffing sound. ‘No one is special to you, are they? You just pick them up and drop them when it suits you.’

  He took her by the hand. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here. The staff are watching.’

  Isabelle tried to pull against his hold but his fingers were so firm they felt like an iron clamp. But rather than cause a scene she had no choice but to leave with him. She adopted a cool and poised posture as if there was nothing unusual about him leading her out of the bar towards his office.

  He opened the door and ushered her through, closing it behind him with a firm snick. ‘I thought you said you had a boyfriend.’

  Isabelle held her chin at a haughty height. ‘I was supposed to be meeting someone but they cancelled at the last minute. I thought I’d take a leaf out of your book and see what fate dished up instead.’

  His eyes were so dark she could barely make out his pupils. ‘Who were you supposed to be meeting?’

  She pinched her lips together. Folded her arms. Defied him with a stare-down look. Anger was good. She could deal with anger. It was sadness and regret and grief that ambushed and confused her.

  He stepped up to her and took her by the upper arms. ‘Tell me, damn it.’

  Isabelle winced even though his touch electrified rather than hurt. ‘Ouch! You’re hurting me.’

  His hold instantly softened but he didn’t release her. His dark blue gaze was intensely focused on hers, his mouth set in a firm line. ‘You don’t have a regular boyfriend, do you?’

  Her cheeks heated as she tried to out-stare him. How galling to have to admit her singleton status. To admit she didn’t have anyone in her life who wanted her. ‘I fail to see how that’s any business of yours.’

  His fingers moved in a gently massaging manner on her upper arms, his thumbs in particular stroking the inside of her arms near her armpits, a sensitive area she’d forgotten she’d possessed until he reclaimed it with
his mesmerising touch. ‘I’m making it my business.’

  She jutted her chin. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not going to stand by and watch you hook up with someone just to prove a point,’ he said. ‘If you want to hook up with someone, then you can damn well hook up with me.’

  Isabelle gave a choked laugh. ‘You think I’m that desperate?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and tightened his hold as he drew her closer as his mouth came down towards hers. ‘But I am.’

  It was a hot searching kiss. A kiss of longing and yearning and frustration and maybe even a little bit of anger thrown in too. Isabelle didn’t fight it. Didn’t dream of fighting it. She could do this. She could have mindless sex without feeling anything for him. It was what was lacking in her life. Passion. Adventure. Excitement. Satisfaction.

  But this time she would have him on her terms.

  She was as hungry for his mouth as he was for hers. She succoured on it, savouring his taste like imbibing a prohibited drink. She was heady on it, her mind and her senses spinning in delight as he deepened the kiss with a thrust of his tongue that mimicked the red-hot desire she could feel in his body where it was jammed up against hers.

  His jaw was prickly against hers as he repositioned to explore her mouth in further depth. She surrendered to it, taking him in and playing with him in a dance that was eons old. He made a sound of approval, a deep groan-like murmur that made her insides shiver in recognition. Oh, how she loved that sound! How many times over the past decade had she thought of that utterly male sound, the way it reverberated in his chest where it was pressed against hers? The way it signalled the need that pulsed and throbbed in his body as it pulsed and throbbed in hers. The way their bodies fitted together like two pieces of a complicated puzzle. There were no awkward angles or shuffles. It was pure magic, a complex and yet perfect choreography they alone knew and responded to intuitively.

  His hands splayed through her hair, his mouth locked to hers as his tongue swept over and under hers in a lust-driven duel. She came back at him with the same level of daring, brazenly taking him deeper into her mouth, then sucking on him, tugging at him with her teeth, reminding him of the fire and passion that burned and bubbled like molten lava in her body.

  Her hands went to his head, holding him down to her mouth by pressing on the back of his skull, her fingers delving into the lush thickness of his hair. He made another low deep sound and pulled her even closer, his hardness against her softness, want against want, need against need.

  Isabelle gave a gasp as one of his hands deftly released the zipper at the back of her dress. It slipped to the floor leaving her in her bra and panties and heels. There was something so sexy, so wicked and risqué, about being in his office in just her underwear.

  She reached for his zipper and slid it down and went in search of him. He muttered an expletive as her fingers wrapped around his hardened length. That was another sound she loved—the sound of a man who was pushed to the brink of control. No other man had ever made her feel quite so desirable. She could feel the pounding of his blood against her fingertips, the primal need to mate so intense in him it echoed the aching throb between her thighs.

  No one aroused her like this man. No one made her ache with a need so frantic it totally consumed her. She could not think of anything but how it would feel to have him driving into her with that first deep blood-thickened thrust.

  He went for the fastener on her bra, his hands skating over her breasts in a teasing touch that made her nipples tighten almost painfully. His mouth left hers to blaze a hot moist pathway to her breast but she was too impatient for him to dawdle there. She pushed her pelvis into his, urging him in breathless little mewling sounds to do what they were both here to do.

  He held her back from him, looking down at her with lust-glazed eyes. ‘You’re in rather a hurry, aren’t you?’

  Isabelle gave him a sultry look. ‘It’s what you want, isn’t it? A quickie on your big brand-new CEO desk?’

  Something shifted in his gaze, his hold relaxing as if the tension was ebbing out of his body. ‘Maybe this isn’t the right time to do this.’

  She cocked an eyebrow, refusing to acknowledge how much his drawing back disappointed her. ‘I thought you wanted to scratch that itch?’

  His lips moved in and out as if he were pondering over something. Then he dropped his hands from her waist and stepped back and zipped up his trousers. He pushed a hand backwards over his head, his hand stopping to rub at the back of his neck as if it was causing him discomfort. ‘This doesn’t feel right.’

  Isabelle perched on the edge of his desk, crossing her legs and positioning herself with her arms braced behind her body to look like a high-class hooker paid to service him. ‘Come and get me, English boy. I’m all yours.’

  He tightened his mouth, a muscle moving in and out on the hinge of his jaw as if he were gritting his teeth. ‘Put your clothes on.’

  Isabelle raised her chin. ‘You took them off. You can put them back on.’

  She saw his hands clench and unclench before he thrust them in his trouser pockets. It looked as if the biggest battle was with himself far more than it was with her. She could see it in the way he held himself: the set to his jaw, the flat line to his mouth, the squarely braced shoulders and the ramrod-straight spine. ‘I’m not going to play your game, Isabelle.’

  This was one skirmish Isabelle was determined to win. She wanted him to admit his need for her, if not verbally, then physically. It was the perfect payback, to have no-strings sex with him, a hot fling that had nothing whatsoever to do with emotion or intimacy or bonding. She would reduce him to his most primal. She would do whatever it took to get him to break. The challenge of it surged in her blood, making her reckless and daring in a way she had never realised she could be. It was as if a part of her personality she had always suppressed in the past was now out and ready to play.

  She uncrossed her legs and brazenly spread them, hooking a finger inside one edge of her panties so he could see a tantalising little glimpse of what he was missing. ‘Come on, Spencer.’ Her voice was low and husky and breathy. ‘You know you want to.’

  She saw the steely control that was so tied up with his personality being bombarded by the way she was pushing him, goading him, teasing him. It gave her such a rush of power it was almost as exciting as the passion he had stirred just moments earlier.

  His jaw was so tightly clamped his lips barely moved as he spoke. ‘No.’

  Isabelle arched her brow and tugged her panties a little further aside. ‘You sure about that? I’m all wet and hot for you. Want to touch me and see?’

  He sucked in a harsh breath but remained six feet away from her. Every muscle on his body was locked tight. He was like a marble statue, all except for his blazing eyes. ‘Don’t cheapen yourself.’

  She laughed a throaty laugh. ‘No, that’s your job, isn’t it?’

  A dull flush rode high on his cheekbones. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  She blinked at him guilelessly; stretching back even further on her arms, her hair swinging to one side as she tilted her head at him. ‘Why am I doing what?’

  He let out a filthy curse and strode to the bank of windows that overlooked the New York skyline. His back was so rigid she could see every taut muscle straining beneath the fine cotton of his shirt. He lifted his hands to shoulder height and rested them on the panes of glass, his head hanging between them as he released a long breath. ‘Get out.’

  Isabelle casually rolled her top ankle where it was crossed over the other. ‘I told you before. I won’t take orders from you.’

  His hands were pressing so hard upon the glass it was a wonder the panels didn’t fall out to the street below. Every muscle in his arms was bunched so tightly they, too, looked as if they might burst out of the restraints of his shirtsleeves. ‘I’m warning y
ou, Isabelle.’ His voice contained a thread of steel that made her shiver in reaction. ‘Get out before your little game backfires on you.’

  Isabelle was getting so turned on by their war of wills she could feel the tingles of it in her core. He wanted her as badly as she wanted him. But like her, he refused to be seen as the one weakened by it, vulnerable because of it.

  She slipped down off the desk and came towards him. It was like approaching a tiger in a paper cage. Dangerous. Foolish. Reckless. Any moment he could spring at her but she couldn’t stop herself from having one last poke at his self-control.

  She trailed a fingertip down the length of his spine from the base of his neck to the small of his back. She felt him flinch. It reminded her of the way a stallion’s coat quivers in order to shake off the brush of an annoying fly. She pressed herself against him, her breasts pushing against his shoulder blades. ‘You sure you want me to leave?’ she asked in a smoky whisper.

  He drew in a sharp breath and turned, roughly fisting a hand in her hair while the other grasped her by the hip, his fingers digging in almost painfully. His eyes were a dark inky blue, the pupils wide and deep and bottomless with arousal. But his mouth remained in a cynical slant that belied everything his body was telling her. ‘You think I can’t resist you?’

  Isabelle moved her pelvis against his, shamelessly rubbing her tingling mound against the swollen ridge of his erection. ‘I bet right now if I got down on my knees I could make you come with just a couple of licks.’

  His eyes combatted with hers for a long throbbing moment.

  She could sense the erotic excitement in him. Her brazen promise had triggered something primitive and dangerous in him. The primal heat was thick and humid in the air. The atmosphere was electric, pulsing with sexual energy looking for an outlet.