by Amy Andrews
Ali returned his smile. He didn’t look like a man whose ego was easily dented. ‘So what is your sign? Really?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Sagittarius.’
Ali bit her lip as the image from earlier returned with full force, enhanced further by his intoxicating scent. Despite the suit she had no trouble imagining him as the famed archer. Half beast, half man.
All animal.
Max watched her eyes darken again and his gaze was drawn to where her teeth dug into the fullness of her lip. His stomach clenched and his hand tightened on her arm a fraction. ‘What?’
Ali shook her head, trying to dispel the image. ‘Nothing … it’s nothing,’ she said and dropped her gaze to the hollow in his throat.
Hair sprung from her head as he looked down on her crown but she hadn’t been fast enough to hide the rise of colour in her cheeks. ‘You blush easily,’ he murmured.
Ali clamped her eyes shut as more heat suffused her face. ‘Yes,’ she said, then risked a glance at him. ‘Sorry.’
Max shook his head. It was refreshing to meet anyone who could still blush these days. It didn’t happen often in his line of work and it did tend to colour his world view.
‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘It’s …’ he made a show of searching for the right word, then smiled at her ‘… cute.’
Cute? She was never going to hear the end of that one, was she?
She opened her mouth to say so but he was looking at her with those solemn, sad eyes, his smile not quite reaching them. And the heat at her elbow was radiating to her fingers. And the jostle of the line kept pressing them together, creating more heat wherever they touched. And his scent filled her nostrils. Invaded her brain.
And she felt more like a woman right now than she’d felt for an entire year. Maybe ever felt.
Ali could feel herself melting on the inside.
And she totally lost her train of thought.
It was crazy. She’d known the man for two seconds. Yet here she was liquefying into a puddle at his feet because he had sad eyes and looked at her as if she was a woman.
She shook her head as Kat’s treacherous voice murmured moving-on sex in her head.
Ali cleared her throat, determined to pick up the thread of her last coherent thought. ‘You’re not going to let me forget the Pisces thing, are you?’
Max chuckled. ‘Not a chance.’
The queue moved forward and it seemed only gentlemanly to Max to slide his hand to the small of her back and usher her along. Still his fingers tingled and he rubbed them absently against her blouse to erase it.
‘Nearly there,’ he murmured as the front of the queue came into sight.
Ali swallowed as Max’s fingertips seared through the fabric of her shirt and set fire to every cell in their vicinity. She shut her eyes briefly as her nipples beaded against her bra and long forgotten muscles deep inside her trembled.
God, this was insane!
Was it possible to orgasm through a completely non-sexual touch to an area far away from the usual erogenous zones?
With a stranger?
In public?
She squeezed her thighs together, shifting back slightly, and was thankful when his hand dropped away.
Ten minutes later they were about five groups away from the head of the queue when they were given the chance to jump it to complete the numbers for a share cab. Max raised an eyebrow at her and Ali leapt at the chance to shorten the agonising experience of constantly being bumped against him.
His warmth was way too compelling.
His voice way too smooth.
And he smelled way too male.
It was not her intention to do anything other than go home but her libido seemed to have roared to life tonight and she wanted to get out of his orbit pronto.
Just in case.
Her life was complicated enough.
Max grimaced as Ali’s body was jammed against him by the third person climbing into the back seat. He could smell the alcohol on the other passenger and he turned slightly, his arm along the back of the bench seat shielding Ali from the worst of it.
It did however push them even closer together and he was excruciatingly aware of her breast squashed against his ribcage, her thigh pressed along the length of his, her curls springing against his jaw, tickling his neck.
It won’t be long. It probably won’t kill me.
And then she shifted, her fingernails accidentally scraping against his thigh, and the sensation travelled all the way to his groin and inside his underpants. He went very still as his arousal intensified.
What the hell was happening to him tonight? He hadn’t thought about being with another woman for over a year and now he was acting like a teenager on a first date. Every move, every breath, every whiff of her perfume headed directly south.
Maybe it was as Pete said. Maybe he did need to get laid.
But not her. Definitely not her. He had enough baggage of his own without picking up hers too. Maybe when he got home he’d go find his little black book.
Dust off the cobwebs …
Because he definitely was not going to ask her to come up for a coffee. He was not going to kiss her. And he was not going to sleep with her.
Ali had complicated written all over her.
And then she turned her olive-green eyes on him and gave him a small smile. ‘Thanks so much, for tonight,’ she murmured. ‘For rescuing me from the Kat-and-Pete show and distracting me from a day I didn’t want to have to think about.’
Max swallowed. Her mouth was so close, it would be too easy to move his in closer …
‘I think we rescued each other,’ he said, returning her small smile. ‘We both needed a laugh. I had a good night too. Better than I’d expected.’
Ali nodded. It was nice to know she’d helped him too. It gave her something else to ponder other than the trip of her pulse and the scorching heat of his body against hers.
Despite that, however, Ali also felt overwhelmingly tired. How she could be in such a heightened state of awareness and simultaneously sleepy wasn’t a conundrum her brain cells were up to. She could only assume four daiquiris had something to do with it. It was certainly their usual effect.
She yawned loudly. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised.
Max smiled. She blinked at him slowly through heavy-lidded eyes and he felt another fiery dart to his groin.
‘It’s fine,’ he dismissed. ‘Lay your head on my shoulder. Go to sleep.’
At least then she wouldn’t wiggle so much.
Hopefully.
Ali opened her mouth to protest but the very small part of her that wasn’t utterly turned on was so very tired and somehow she felt safe here next to him with his heat and the daiquiris and the rock of the cab lulling her.
What could it hurt to drop her head against his very inviting shoulder? To sigh as he shifted to make her more comfortable? Place her hand across his chest, burrow it beneath his jacket lapel, feel the scrape of cool satin lining as she snuggled in closer?
#x2018;Ali? Ali?’
Ali murmured as the low sexy notes of a saxophone disturbed her pleasant slumber. The smell of man surrounded her and it had been long—so long—since she’d been held that she pushed her face closer to the source. The warm cushion beneath her cheek was fragrant, a steady boom soothing her into a state of bliss.
‘Ali?’
The voice was more insistent this time and she fluttered her eyes open, shifting to look up towards the source of the rumbling beneath her ear. It took a few seconds for the world to come into focus. For the steady grey gaze to register, the purr of an engine, the glare of an internal light.
Max smiled as the woman he barely knew bathed him with her sleepy olive gaze. He hadn’t felt remotely like moving away from her when they’d got rid of their other back seat passenger and had decided it wasn’t right to disturb her.
Besides she’d been warm and soft and smelled like woman and as agonising as it had been he’d forgotten how good
it felt to have curves and perfume pressed against him.
‘Hey, sleepy head. This is my stop.’
‘Sorry.’ She smiled back but didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was utterly reluctant to leave this strange cocoon that balanced on a precipice between platonic and promise.
There was something about his smile. Ali had got the impression from the beginning that he didn’t smile much. Or certainly hadn’t had much reason to since his marriage had crashed and burned. And God knew she got that. The slightly wounded air about him had loaned him a tragic edge that had tugged at her heartstrings back in the bar.
But right now his smile was tugging in other places and she couldn’t deny they’d made a connection tonight, no matter how reluctantly.
Their proximity and the glow from the internal light gave her a close-up she hadn’t had as yet. She noticed for the first time his brown hair was lightly streaked with grey. It gave him a bucketload more virility and in that hazy half-world between sleep and arousal it seemed only natural to move her hand up to stroke his matching stubble.
And natural too, to follow with her mouth, pressing it briefly against his. And even though his lips didn’t react she felt the thunder in his chest beneath her hand and saw his pupils dilate.
Max shut his eyes and felt all his earlier resolve disappear. ‘Do you want to come up?’
Ali nodded.
Hell, yes!
CHAPTER THREE
BETWEEN the taxi, the lift and his apartment door, Ali was having second thoughts. ‘I don’t usually do this.’
Max paused, the key in his hand hovering near the lock. He could hear the tremor in her voice, see the way she wasn’t quite meeting his eye. It was curiously touching.
He dropped his hand. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t either.’
Ali glanced at him, surprised at the genuine note of sincerity in his voice.
‘There’s been no one since my wife left.’ He grimaced and corrected himself. ‘My ex-wife.’
Their eyes locked and held. She caught a glimpse of his unhappiness again, a swirl of misery in his open honest gaze.
‘We don’t have to do this,’ he murmured. ‘We can get in my car and I can take you home.’
His voice stroked her skin in all the right places and she could feel her nipples tighten. She could go home—he was obviously a gentleman. Or she could go through his door.
And feel like a woman again. Attractive, wanted, desired.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘Does it make me a bad person if I want to stay?’
Max smiled. She was very, very cute—all puzzled and indecisive. Wanting to and yet not. They were close, so close and the mix of her perfume and almost maidenly hesitancy was a potent combination.
She was staring at his top button. He placed a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face until she was looking straight at him.
‘It makes you even more desirable,’ he said, his voice husky. And he followed it up with a swift hard kiss, catching her sigh as he pulled away.
Ali stumbled against him slightly, reaching for him as she reeled from his cataclysmic five-second, closed-mouthed lip-lock. How on earth would she survive anything more lingering?
Desirable. He’d said desirable.
She looked up at him shyly, heart hammering, aware suddenly that her hand had bunched up his shirt. She smoothed it automatically as he looked at her expectantly.
Waiting.
She cleared her throat, afraid he might well have kissed her voice away. ‘Wow.’
Max gave a half-smile. ‘Indeed.’ Her bow mouth was parted and she had a kind of stunned look on her face and he had to admit to wanting to see that look again.
Preferably with her clothes off.
‘There’s more where that came from,’ he murmured.
Ali responded to the gentle tease in his tone and his weary smile. It made her want to soothe his brow and let him get lost in her body at the same time.
She held her breath and jumped in. ‘Better open the door then.’
It might be crazy but maybe, tonight, crazy was just what she needed.
Max inclined his head before turning to put the key in the lock. He twisted it and shoved the door open. He glanced back at her and gestured for her to precede him.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
This was really going to happen. Her pulse thrummed a little faster, her breath hitched a little higher. She took a step and faltered, her mind racing ahead, mentally preparing.
‘Wait.’
Max dropped his hand and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’
‘What about … do you have condoms?’
She might be practically vibrating with sexual need but having already interrogated Kat it would be hypocritical to not take charge of her own situation. The doctor in her had seen too many women duped into having unprotected sex by men who were prepared to lie to them to get it.
She knew it was a lot harder to say no when you were almost at the point of no return.
Max blinked at the unexpected question. Did he? They hadn’t used condoms in their marriage … Wait, yes, he did. Pete had bought him a box shortly after Tori had left and shoved it in Max’s bedside-table drawer but not before he’d slipped two into Max’s wallet.
Neither supply had been touched.
Max leaned against the doorjamb and grinned at her suddenly fierce-looking face. ‘Yes. An entire box.’
Ali ignored the light teasing note in his voice. ‘Sexual health is no laughing matter.’
Max attempted a sombre nod. ‘I agree.’
Ali couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at her mouth. ‘I suppose you think I’m being ridiculous?’
Max shook his head. He pushed away from the doorjamb and held out his hand. ‘I think you’re cute. Very cute.’
‘Great, more with the cute,’ she grumbled.
But her pulse skipped madly and she didn’t hesitate a moment longer. The tingle as his fingers folded over hers streaked heat up her arm, confirming the rightness of it all.
Max stepped backwards, tugging her gently forward, over the threshold of his apartment. Then inside. Shutting the door with a careless shove, he shrugged out of his jacket and pulled off his tie, his gaze firmly fixed to her softly parted lips.
He crowded in close to her, backing her up until she bumped against the door. Her perfume seemed to thicken as the heat between them intensified. He could hear her breath shorten and knew his had followed suit. His whole body had tightened in anticipation.
Everything was tense.
Everything was hard.
Everywhere.
He placed a hand either side of her head and watched her watch him. Watched her olive eyes darken a shade or two as he picked up that errant curl, stretched it out and let it go.
It sprang back, flopping once again across her eye.
‘Cute curl,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her eyebrow, the curl brushing his lips.
He ran his index finger down the straight neat line of her nose to where it tilted up slightly at the end. ‘Cute nose.’ And he dropped a kiss there too.
He moved his palm down to cup her jaw, tracing the outline of her lips, feeling it right down to his groin as they parted on a soft whimper. ‘Very. Cute. Mouth,’ he whispered.
Ali waited for the inevitable kiss, practically drowning in a fog of desire. She felt as if he’d been stroking her insides instead of dropping chaste kisses, nibbling around her edges. And she needed more. It was as if he’d drugged her and she was craving that next hit.
Max took his time stroking her lips, sweeping his thumb across the glossy cushions. Her breath was warm against the pad of his thumb, the beat of her pulse was wild beneath his palm and her throat moved convulsively as she swallowed. Each sweep intensified his longing but he was determined to hold back.
He knew when he let go and kissed her, really kissed her, there would be no holding back.
No more gentle.
No more slowl
y.
No more easy.
It had been a long time. And his appetite was back.
Ali had reached screaming point. How could a simple brush to her mouth be felt everywhere? How could it bead her nipples to unbearable hardness? How could it undulate through muscles so deep inside she didn’t even know she had them until now? How could it pool liquid heat in places that it hadn’t even touched?
‘Cute, cute, cute,’ Max whispered.
Ali groaned. ‘Shut up and kiss me properly.’
And then she took matters into her own hands, standing on tippy-toes and dragging his face towards her, closing the maddening distance.
Max inhaled as their lips met, sucking in her heat and her breath and her sweet, sweet perfume and it was like rocket fuel through his already charged bloodstream.
He exploded.
He ground her against the door, pinning her with his mouth and his hands and his hard, hard body. Demanding entrance into her mouth with his tongue and sweeping inside like a conquering general. She tasted like rum and strawberries and his hunger intensified. Angling her head back, he plundered every moist morsel of it.
She moaned beneath his onslaught, clutched his shoulders, pulled him in deeper and he gave her more. His hands slid to her hips, gripping them hard then releasing only to grip them again, pulling her harder, closer, nearer each time. His erection strained against the maddening friction, getting harder, more demanding.
His lips left hers to explore all the soft, sweet places of her neck and she moaned again. He’d forgotten how soft women were. How they fitted to a man’s body, how they yielded against all the hard angles and planes and moulded just right.
Her fingernails dug into his back and she gasped, ‘Max,’ as he laved the frantic pulse in the hollow of her throat.
He claimed her mouth again revelling in her noises. He’d missed those mysterious womanly noises. The gasps and the whimpers. The little sighs and moans and the desperate, unintelligible urgings that came from deep inside when you hit a sweet spot and they did-not-want-you-to-stop.
She opened for him wide, matching the fervour of his mouth with her own and it was a very potent mix. Heady and sexual and dirty.
