by Kim Lawrence
She struggled to adjust the narrow straps of the dress so that they left the delicate architecture of her collarbones exposed, before slipping into the heels. She was viewing the overall effect with a critical eye when there was a knock on the door, a polite reminder from Selene.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t pretend this wasn’t really going to happen any longer, but she could pretend her stomach wasn’t churning in apprehension.
Smile in place, projecting a confidence she was far from feeling, she pulled the door open. Her smile wilted and died like a rose exposed to an icy chill. A myriad sensations and emotions that were impossible to detangle hit her simultaneously as she saw the tall figure, no longer in running shorts and vest, but in the dress suit, dark hair still visibly damp as though he had just stepped from a shower. An image that did not help her composure, or her heart, which literally stalled. For several moments she felt as if it would never start again.
‘You scared the life out of me!’ Breathless, and sounding it, she lifted a hand to her throat, where she could feel a pulse that was trying to fight its way through her skin.
Zach cleared his own throat. It had been less a jolt and more an earth tremor to see her standing there and for several heartbeats he’d stood, literally transfixed.
‘I really didn’t think you scared that easily.’
She was the most fearless woman he had ever met and—as he looked at her standing there now, there was no use pretending otherwise—the most beautiful.
Against the dark fabric her skin gleamed pale gold. Her body, under the figure-enhancing cut of the midnight fabric, was slender and sensuous. The way she wore her hair displayed the length of her slender neck and her delicate collarbones. She looked exclusive and sexy—a hard look to pull off.
He leaned a hand on the doorjamb above her head. ‘If you are dressing to impress you have succeeded. You look very lovely.’
Her breath caught at the compliment.
‘I wanted to blend in,’ she said in a small husky voice, worrying that he might assume she had made the effort to impress him. Worried even more because she couldn’t swear she hadn’t!
It was hard to smile with the ache in his groin, but he did anyway. ‘Ah, well, you failed.’ Straightening up, he gestured to her to walk beside him and after a short pause she did, her perfume making his nostrils flare.
‘How was your run?’
He flashed her a frowning look. ‘Hot.’
‘When is Alekis’s surgery scheduled for?’
‘First thing Thursday if the rest of the tests are clear.’
‘Should I go there to see him before?’
‘If you want to.’
‘Is the surgery dangerous?’
‘Another bypass and a valve replacement, I believe.’
It was weird but hearing all this life-and-death stuff suddenly made the lies she’d been telling herself all day seem petty and ridiculous.
For someone who had spent her life avoiding excitement and danger, it was not easy to acknowledge the idea that had been growing in her head. Because if danger had a name and a face and a really incredible body, she was thinking of throwing herself at him, giving herself to him. The thought was scary and liberating at the same time.
Zach just tapped into a reckless part of her. It had required no effort on his part; just breathing did it. Her response would require more effort. Forget instincts, she needed to use her brain.
It would have been helpful if he had remained the unacceptable but very handsome face of capitalism; instead, she knew more, knew there was nothing two-dimensional about him. She understood when people did not want to discuss their backgrounds for fear of others assuming they were using it in some way, but why hide the things he was giving back to society?
She took a shallow breath and closed down the conflicting theories whirring around in her head. She had to get through the next couple of hours first.
‘Well?’
He arched a brow. ‘Well, what?’ And carried on walking, requiring her to skip on her heels to catch him up.
‘Well, isn’t there a list? Don’t eat with your mouth full, don’t get drunk and dance on the tables, don’t talk politics, insult the guests or slag off the powerful and influential even if they are total sleazes?’
‘I think you have covered the essentials and the file had everything you need in it.’ He paused. ‘But actually no one here should give you a hard time. This will get easier.’
‘Well, at least I won’t get drunk so there will be no online pictures of me dancing on the table. I only got drunk once and I didn’t like it.’ The memory made her wince, but underneath she was feeling moderately pleased she was proving they could have a normal conversation without any sex stuff getting in the way. It had all been in her head anyway.
He looked amused. ‘It rarely stops anyone repeating the process.’
‘I had my drink spiked.’
The amusement slid from his eyes. She had the impression he didn’t even know that he put his hands heavily on her shoulders, but she knew they felt very heavy; she couldn’t move.
Actually, she wasn’t really trying.
‘What happened?’
‘I was at a nightclub for someone’s birthday. It was all right, my friends got me out of there.’ She chose not to think what might have happened if they hadn’t, if the two men trying to half-carry her out to the waiting car had succeeded. ‘For a while I struggled with trust, but then I realised I was letting fear rule my life.’ She stepped a little ahead of him, paused and twirled around to face him, hitting him full blast with her golden stare, leaving him no escape route.
‘You have to trust someone sometime, don’t you think, Zach?’
He could feel the pulse pounding in his temple. ‘Is there some sort of message in there for me?’
She shrugged. ‘Just throwing it out there. Some people are bad. They hurt you, but there are a lot of people that are good, too. You miss such a lot by pushing them away.’
‘And if someone spikes your drink?’
‘I refuse to live in fear...’ Her beautiful smile flashed out. ‘I had friends to look out for me and here... I have you, I think?’
He ignored the voice in his head that yelled coward, his eyes sliding from hers. ‘Tonight you do, but there are a lot of tomorrows. There is such a thing as too trusting, Katina.’
‘How so?’
The exhaustion came over him in a tide; fighting the uncontrollable urge to take her in his arms became in the space of a heartbeat just too much. He stopped fighting and surrendered to the roar and the hunger, the ache of wanting.
Holding her wide eyes with his, he placed one large hand in the small of her back, noting the flare in her golden eyes as he curved his free hand around the back of her head and dragged her into him.
She did register that the combustible, exciting quality that she was always conscious of in him was not in the background but right there, in her face, reminding her he was too male, too everything. But nothing running through her head had prepared her for what his intention was. She was in denial right up to the moment that his lips covered hers.
The warm, sensuous movement of his mouth drew a deep, almost feral moan that emanated from deep inside her as her lips parted. Her fingers closed around the fabric of his shirt as she raised herself up on her toes, her body stretching in a slim, urgent arc as she invited the invasion to deepen, expanding the cell-deep hungry ache until she simply hung on for the ride, helpless to resist the tide of attraction, the sparking electricity between them. She felt the deep quiver run through his body.
Then it was over. She wasn’t quite sure how, but she was on her feet and not plastered up against him and he was standing there looking down at her as though... Actually, she wasn’t sure he was seeing her at all. There was a hot blankness
in his eyes that slowly receded.
‘So what,’ she began in a voice that really sounded nothing like her own, ‘was that about?’
‘Does the unknown that waits for you in there suddenly look so very scary?’
It didn’t, but as explanations went that seemed more than thin. ‘Why did you kiss me?’
Breathing hard, but looking insultingly composed considering the chaos inside her body and head, he brushed an invisible speck off his shirt before replying.
‘A moment... I...I wanted to know how you tasted.’
The blunt words, drawn from him almost against his will, sent a slam of hot lust through her body.
CHAPTER NINE
‘OH!’ HER RESPONSE gave inadequate a new meaning, but she didn’t know what else to say. What would be an improvement?
Don’t do it again wouldn’t be appropriate, or, more likely, don’t stop...
‘We’ll be late.’ Suddenly she was the one that couldn’t hold his eyes.
‘It’s allowed—you’re the guest of honour.’ He dragged a hand over his dark hair, thinking about how warm and perfect she had felt in his arms. The promise of passion he had always sensed in her had burnt up into life the moment he’d touched her.
It was easy to see that Kat could become the drug of choice to any man, so long as he didn’t mind sharing her with a multitude of good causes.
Theos, he really didn’t envy that man!
Even as he congratulated himself he recognised that, but for the obligation he felt to Alekis, he would be that man, at least for a night, which was in itself another problem.
The insight he had gained into Kat’s character led him to doubt that she had a casual attitude to sex. He doubted she would look on it as a healthy physical outlet. For her it would come wrapped up in sentiment. Of course, there were many men out there willing to accept those terms for the joy of bedding her.
Nothing of his thoughts showed in his face as they continued to walk side by side the last few yards, not touching, but he could still sense her leaping pulse.
‘You’ll be fine, you know.’
She gave an odd little laugh and lifted her head at the abrupt comment. ‘Will I?’ At that moment she didn’t feel as if she knew anything. She ran her tongue across the outline of her lips and gave another laugh. Hell, she hadn’t even known her own name when he’d kissed her.
‘Be interested...’ he said, the effort of dragging his eyes off her mouth making him sweat. ‘Be yourself.’
Kat swallowed down another bubble of hysterical laughter. How was she meant to be herself, or even sane, after he had just kissed her like that? Being herself and kissing him back was part of the problem. Herself would be grabbing him and making him do it again.
‘Now that is something I never thought I’d hear you say!’ Wow, not even a quiver. She was extremely proud of herself.
He arched a sardonic brow. ‘Why?’
‘Because I get the impression me being me irritates the hell out of you tonight.’ Maybe he had kissed her to shut her up, she thought, nursing her resentment.
He stopped short of the open door, from which the sounds of music and the hum of conversation and laughter emanated, and looked down at her.
‘It isn’t you I find—’
‘Irritating?’ she supplied, slightly confused and at the same time excited by the intensity in his manner, though next to the post-kiss confusion that still blocked her normal thought processes it barely even registered.
‘Not the right word but it will do. It’s the situation, Katina, that I find extremely...irritating.’ Theos, wanting her was killing him.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, thinking of the warm, clean but musky male smell of his body when he had kissed her. Would he do it again?
‘Are you sure about that?’
She looked away, suddenly more nervous of the glow in his eyes than what lay in the room. Not nervous, excited. She ran her tongue across the dry outline of her lips. It was just a kiss...stop trying to read things into it.
She hefted out a deep sigh. ‘Right, let’s get this thing over with.’
He nodded.
She was incredibly glad for the light touch of his hand on her elbow as they walked into the room, because walking into a room beside Zach made it a dead certainty most of the room would not be looking at you. When Zach walked into a room, any room, he would always be the focus of attention.
There was a short static pause in the audible social hum as more and more people turned to look at them, from where they were already gathered in small groups, chatting, laughing, drinking the wine being offered by the staff.
The sea of faces was actually more a small pond, she told herself as she willed her feet that felt glued to the floor to move.
‘Showtime, Kat.’ He heard her whisper before flashing him a look from her topaz eyes and lifting her chin and walking away from him.
Zach watched her, while he wrestled with the flood of unfamiliar emotions surging inside him. He knew how scared she was but no one would ever have known it, despite her pallor, and even if they had it would have been her warmth they remembered, a warmth that could not be feigned.
He surprised himself with that thought.
He watched as she approached a man who stood excluded from a small laughing group nearby. Zach’s admiration and pride went through the roof as he watched her smile and move forward, touching the arm of the housekeeper before she lifted her head to the solitary man that Selene was offering the drink to.
Zach stood, his shoulder braced on one wall, his attitude possibly not as nonchalant as he intended because nobody approached him, not even one of the guys with the fizz, which was a pity because he could really have done with a drink.
He finally managed to grab one and downed it while fighting a strong urge to march over there and tell Kat that it didn’t matter what anyone thought and this wasn’t a test.
What the hell was wrong with Alekis, making her jump through all these hoops? And what was wrong with him for helping? If anyone needed to change it was them, not her.
He was shocked by this thought that came from he knew not where—unlike the urge to kiss her; that source was no mystery.
He willed himself to relax. He knew she could cope and so could he. He took a swallow and grimaced, finding he was holding an empty glass. If he could relive the moment...but he couldn’t so why waste the energy? The kiss, while not being ideal, had at least taken the edge off his rampant hunger.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, Zach.
Tuning out the ironic voice of his subconscious, he watched as the austere diplomat melted under Kat’s charm offensive and took a drink for himself before handing her the fruit juice option she must have requested. He saw her press a hand to her temple and carry on smiling... It was not the first time he had seen the gesture since she had begun to circulate.
The diplomat leaned in and said something that drew a laugh from Kat, a laugh so warm and spontaneous and genuine that it made other people smile, including him.
In the periphery Zach was aware of two people separate off from a nearby group and move to join Kat and the diplomat. One was a journalist that he didn’t actively dislike, the other... He frowned as he recognised the other was Spiro Alekides, the business rival who had not been gracious in defeat and had made his humiliation worse by giving several unwise interviews that had harmed his reputation more than his financial losses.
Zach began to slowly weave his way through the jostle of bodies, not questioning or analysing the protective instincts that directed his feet.
Even without Zach’s warning Kat would have summed up Spiro Alekides, who she had instantly recognised from his photo, in a heartbeat. She had encountered the type before. He smiled a lot, but not with his eyes, and tried very hard to say what he thought you wanted to hear.
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‘Oh, yes, I so agree all that talent out there is going to waste. It’s not about charity, it’s about investing in our future and the youth are our future.’
The man sounded as though he were reading the label on a packet of cereal, but Kat nodded, repressing a wince as the headache moved behind her eyes. Experience told her if she didn’t take measures it would become a full-blown migraine and all that entailed—which was just what she didn’t need.
‘Not everyone understands that,’ she said, thinking, Like you, before adding, ‘Sorry, Mr—’
‘Call me Spiro, my dear.’
‘Spiro.’
The older man turned quite slowly, arranging his features into a smile. ‘Why, Zach, what a nice surprise, meeting you here like this.’ He beamed at Kat and the journalist and extended a well-manicured, plump hand to Zach, who raised both of his. One was holding a glass, the other a plate.
Zach smiled, making Kat think of a large sleek predator. She suspected that every woman present would have jumped straight into his mouth if the occasion arose—she had. The thought made her blush.
‘So where is your lovely lady tonight?’
The reference to the woman that they had both slept with increased the tempo of the throb behind Kat’s eyes. If she was going to get a migraine every time anyone mentioned a woman Zach had bedded she could spend her life with a headache!
‘She couldn’t make it.’
‘Such a shame,’ Zach murmured. ‘Well, gentlemen, I hope you’ll forgive me for stealing away our lovely hostess.’ He planted a hand lightly in the small of Kat’s back. ‘But there is someone who is dying to meet her.’
Not happy that she liked the supportive feel of his hand as much as she did, she frowned and asked, ‘Who?’ without enthusiasm as they wove their way across the room.
‘Do you have a headache?’ Zach asked without looking at her.
Kat’s jaw dropped and her eyes flew to his face, which sent a fresh spasm of agony along her nerve endings. ‘How...?’
His hand went to her elbow as she caught her heel in the hem of her dress and lurched. ‘I thought as much,’ he said grimly.
