‘And you think he does,’ Erica finished for her. ‘Don’t look so bemused! Personally, I think he’d be crazy not want you.’
Lane sighed. ‘I’d feel more confident if I could get Adam interested enough to—’ She stopped, and laughed, and took a sip of her margarita. ‘Never mind.’
‘Give it time, Lane,’ Erica said.
‘I don’t have time.’
‘You’ve got three months! A lot can happen in three months, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Sheesh, Lane,’ Sarah said. ‘I can go through four guys in three months! And Adam? He’d consider that almost the length of a marriage, so relax. From what I know, you’ll have enough skills to hire yourself out as a courtesan at the end of it, which I do not want to know about, okay?’ Sarah said, sighing as she swapped her empty glass for her full one. ‘You know that old adage, Lane, set a thief to catch a thief? Well, we’ve set the thief all right. You’re in good hands.’
‘Ha, yes!’ Erica crowed. ‘It sounds to me like David and Adam are so magnetically attractive to women, they could carve up Sydney between them—which makes Adam the perfect instructor.’
Lane shook her head. ‘David’s quite different from Adam. Older, more sophisticated and … and … very charming.’ Another stricken look at Sarah. ‘Not that I’m saying Adam isn’t charming.’
Sarah snorted. ‘Except that he’s not.’
‘And he doesn’t have to be to be, Sarah,’ Erica said. ‘But if Lane can charm your brother, she’ll charm David. Seduction success guaranteed. So she should at least try to charm him. It’s not all about hot Adam being the perfect practice fuck for hot David!’
Sarah made a noise that sounded like ‘Blergh.’
‘What’s that, Sarah? ‘ Erica asked sweetly.
‘Can we not put it in those … those terms?’
‘You mean the “fuck”! God, you are so squeamish about language.’ She looked from Sarah to Lane. ‘Both of you! No wonder you found each other at university.’
‘It’s not the f— Not the language. It’s the sentiment. The principle. This is my brother you know, and I have to see him again after it’s all over. It’s bad enough knowing there’s a contract in place let alone knowing about the particular shenanigans. Thank God there’s a confidentiality agreement underpinning it all because otherwise you’d probably force me to hear all the gory details every time we’re together and that would totally freak me out. Buttongate is as far as I want to go, okay?’
Erica waved a dismissive hand. ‘Yes, well as I said, you started all this. You’re the one who volunteered him.’
‘Yes, but you know why.’
‘Yes, but I should have met him first.’
‘Yes, but you weren’t here.’
‘Yes, but it could have been delayed.’
‘Yes, by which time Adam would have been occupied elsewhere.’
Lane was starting to feel a little like a spectator at a tennis game. ‘Hello?’ she said. Erica and Sarah stopped, then looked at her.
‘Just to put both your minds at rest,’ Lane said, ‘this is nothing more than a business transaction. I’m grateful for your advice, and for your warnings, and for your concern, but please note well: I am not going to fall in love with Adam, and he is not going to fall in love with me. I know it’s possible to have sex with a man without falling in love, because you two have done it quite a few times yourselves. Why should I be any different?’
‘Because you are different,’ Erica said.
‘I don’t want to be different. That’s what this whole thing is about. I want to catch up, then I want to just … see. See what happens.’
Erica leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Well no rushing off to have grandchildren with the first guy who comes along, okay? No matter what Jeanne-the-Martyr says.’
‘Oh, that’s a definite promise.’
One moment of silence, and then Erica laughed. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘So what’s the plan, Laney? Once the three months with Adam are up, what happens with David?’
Lane frowned. ‘I thought I’d just ask him to have sex with me.’
Erica and Sarah exchanged a look.
‘What?’ Lane asked.
‘Nothing,’ Erica said through twisted lips. ‘Just that if that’s how it’s going to go down, there’s no time to lose. Go home. Luxuriate in the bath in my en suite. Primp yourself. Put on the pink silk. If Adam does that back up, we’re ripping up the contract and starting again with someone else, even if I have to lend you Jeremy.’
‘Jeremy!’ Sarah scoffed.
‘What’s wrong with Jeremy? Erica asked.
‘Oh nothing,’ Sarah said airily. ‘Only that that Adam would eat him for breakfast and not even bother spitting out the bones.’
***
Bath—check.
Primp—sort of check. She’d brushed her hair and tied it back, hadn’t she? And dabbed on a few drops from her one and only bottle of perfume—Frederic Malle’s Musc Ravageur. Which didn’t sound like her at all—being kind of sexy and mysterious—but somehow felt like her. The hidden her, maybe. The fire-under-the-ice her. Or the delusional you, Lane!
Dress— Well, no.
She’d told the girls the dress wasn’t for Adam and now she couldn’t bear to put it on and make an eye-flicking liar out of herself. And anyway, the contrast to the blue suit was too great. He’d know. Know she was wearing it particularly. And all right, she knew she was being stupid obsessing over a dress, and she didn’t care what Adam thought of her, and of course she wasn’t going to fall for him (clearly he would never fall for her), but she just hated to appear so eager, so desperate, so … so vulnerable to a man who was so effortlessly sure of himself.
‘Clothing is incidental in our case,’ she reminded herself, as she zipped up the blue skirt of the suit he’d seen her in twice and buttoned up a white shirt from her endless supply.
But when she opened her door to Adam, the laugh that erupted from him got under her skin just the same.
‘Half a blue suit,’ he said. ‘Is that progress?’
‘I’m an economist. I’m supposed to look boring,’ Lane said, not quite as nonchalantly as she would have liked.
‘And there we have Lesson Number Three,’ Adam told her. ‘Clothing can be many things, but boring should not be one of them. To the bedroom, please.’
Lane walked ahead of him into her room, her insides churning. Nerves. Anticipation. Something else she couldn’t name. The night was young—young enough for him to take off her boring clothes and do it to her. ‘It.’ Hmmm. Her sexual vocabulary needed some work.
When she turned to face Adam, she found him watching her with a predatory gleam in his eyes. It was as though he were waiting for something. Waiting for her to … what? He’d said he liked women who took the initiative. So maybe …?
She took a hesitant half-step towards him. Then stopped. She didn’t know how to touch him. Where? His arm? Face? Chest? He would have to teach her even that.
The silence in the room stretched. But she couldn’t move. And he still waited.
Flustered, she forced her hands to rise to the first button of her shirt. But before she could touch it, Adam was there, right there, his hands on her shoulders, yanking her close. He kissed her—hot, hard. She opened her lips, welcoming the swirl of his tongue. And then—over. His mouth was gone, and she was simply standing there, feeling dazed and a little woozy. It took her a moment to blink herself back to reality.
Could she learn to kiss like that? So that it was all-consuming and thought-zapping and incapacitating? Or did she only feel like this because it was so new? Only their second kiss, if she didn’t count the tiny kisses on her eyelids the other night. Maybe she’d get used to the shivery, out-of-control feeling that hit her when he put his mouth on hers.
Lane braced one hand against his chest. Felt the hard and fast drum of his heart beneath her palm.
She looked up, startled that his heartbeat was going a little crazy, and he gave her a crooked smile.
‘You’re learning fast,’ Adam said.
‘Do you mean you liked that? Kissing me?’
‘Yes, I mean I liked that. Kissing you.’
He liked it. Hope and nerves and some weird kind of heat made her stomach clench. ‘So … what next? Should I …?’ Her hands went again to her top button, hovered there.
Adam shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He pointed to the bed. ‘Sit.’
Gingerly, she sat on the edge of the bed. She saw him glance down once—a quick, darting glance—to where her hands were clasped on her lap. She looked down, saw her knuckles were white. Nerves. Stupid, stupid nerves. She wriggled her fingers, really fast, forcing her hands to relax. Look now, she urged him silently, nothing to see here.
But Adam had moved on. He was walking to her wardrobe. ‘Now, there’s nothing exactly wrong with the navy blue suit—businesslike, classic lines, very much a suit for a control freak.’
He gave her an assessing look. She forced herself to look calmly back, even though this was agonizing.
‘But I can think of sexier garments,’ he continued. ‘Especially for a meeting that’s supposed to end with us in bed.’
‘I wasn’t really anticipating us spending so much time clothed.’
‘Sex is not all about being naked, Lane,’ Adam chided, and opened the wardrobe doors.
Lane was off the bed like a shot, hurrying over. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Now this,’ he said, unerringly going straight for the newly hung pink silk dress—of course! ‘is more like it.’
She stood there, frozen.
He smiled at her. ‘Okay. Now let’s get your clothes off.’
‘I’ve never worn that,’ she said.
‘I know—the tags are still attached,’ he said, and promptly snapped them off.
She reached for the hanger, but Adam didn’t move his hand, so her fingers ended up covering his. Adam gazed into her eyes with such focused intensity that Lane—horribly, awkwardly shy—found herself holding her breath.
Then, leaning down, Adam kissed her again. Slowly, letting his mouth linger. When he drew back, he slid his tongue across his lips, like he was tasting her still. That intense look was still in his eyes: dark, a little frightening.
Oh. Wow. Third kiss. Still incapacitating. What had they been talking about? Clothes? Yes, clothes. She looked at the hanger in her hand. His hand was still there, too. Under hers. Dark and rough and large.
‘I want to see you in this, Lane.’
Giving herself a mental shake, Lane took the hanger from him and moved a few paces away. Better. She could think more clearly, away from him. But now what? He wasn’t making any move to leave the room. Should she go into the bathroom to change? Or strip off in front of him? Her mouth went dry at the thought.
But of course he’d be expecting her to strip off in front of him. He was supposed to see her naked or they’d get nowhere. And maybe if she stripped, full frontal, right now, it would prompt him to get on with the job. Then the worst would be over, the almost unbearable anticipation at an end, and she could start to regain some control over her galloping nerves.
She risked a quick glance at Adam’s face, hoping for a hint of what he expected. Caught that predatory gleam in his black eyes.
And headed for the bathroom.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Adam didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He’d thought for a moment she was going to strip right there in front of him. On the one hand, he really, really wanted to see her naked. On the other, he had a sinking feeling it would have been all-over-red-rover in approximately two seconds if she’d chosen that option, which was not the deal! Slow was the deal. Slow, sloow, slooow.
But God, the way she’d gazed up at him after that kiss was hot.
Hot wasn’t the same thing as begging, though. She was nowhere near begging. He was closer to begging than she was. And didn’t that just suck? What sucked even more was that he hadn’t had the mental capacity to drum up a nice, neat lesson about kissing that would make his loss of control excusable. Something like … hell, he still couldn’t think of anything. He focused again. Nope. Nothing. He’d just wanted to kiss her. No reason.
His heart thumped uncomfortably. She was just a few steps away, stripping. He could have her. Now, right now, if he wanted. She expected him to. Wanted him to. All he had to do was open that unlocked door and she could be his. Just like that. No flirtation, no get-to-know-you conversation, no foreplay. He could—
No. He could not. He’d chosen his path. He had to stick to it, for the sake of his pride if nothing else. She’d have to beg him first. Beg. Beg, dammit!
Okay, he had to move. He couldn’t stand still a moment longer. He walked around the room once, dragging his hands over his head. He ended up at her wardrobe and restlessly started shifting hangers around in there. Thank God, something he could concentrate on while she got changed.
He laughed softly as looked at the first four hangers—four suits in varying shades of gravy and dark blue. The next six hangers—white shirts. What a horrible selection! Horrible. He repeated that word in his head. Then he said it out loud. Trying to drown out the muted sound of clothes being removed in the bathroom just three steps away. ‘Horrible,’ he tried again, as the faint rustling connected straight to his groin.
He closed the wardrobe doors sharply. Damn! How long did it take a woman to get out of one outfit and into another?
He paced the room again, forcing himself to notice the almost Spartan furnishings. Pale, nondescript carpet. Plain cream walls. No paintings, no knick-knacks. Chunky, boring furniture, whose only saving grace was that it was not, in fact, glass. Bed. Bedside tables, one per side—one with an alarm clock, which told him Lane slept on the right side of the bed. A dressing table with one bottle of perfume, a brush and comb set, a small jewellery box, and one of those perpetually changing electronic photo frames.
He recognized Sarah in one of the shots—so tiny, blonde and sparkly, nobody would believe they’d come from the same parents. There was another girl, shapely, dark-haired, dark-eyed, beautiful and confident—had to be Erica, the sex-blogging flight attendant. A woman he assumed was Lane’s mother faded in next, standing with a young guy who looked like a male version of Mum. The brother. He figured they had the same genetic dynamic he and Sarah had going on, each sibling taking after one parent.
He heard the bathroom door open and breathed a sigh of relief—at last! He turned to face Lane, who was holding the dress against her chest, looking delectably flushed and coquettish in a way that he wouldn’t have expected in a control freak … and yet also ridiculously appealing.
‘Sorry that took so long but the zipper’s stuck.’ She turned her back to him and gave a graceless half-shrug. ‘You’re going to have to help me.’
Holy mother of God. She had her flaming hair pulled out of the way to expose the skin of her back and that skin was milk-white and looked like it had never been touched. Was she doing this on purpose? The old ‘please zip me’ routine he’d had tried on him more times than he could count? If so, she might have chosen a sexier bra than the sturdy, flesh-coloured model she was wearing.
But even if she was forcing his hand, did he care? He found himself stepping forward, slipping his arms around her from behind, pulling her back against him. Okay, the answer clearly was no, he did not care.
One hand moved up to cup the fullness of her breast through the silk. He heard the catch in her breath. Felt the instinctive stiffening of her body. She held still, so still, for a long moment, and then he found her nipple through the fabric of the dress and her bra, circled his fingers there, pinched gently, and her head lolled back, languid against his shoulder.
He kissed behind her ear. Licked there. Kissed again. God, you feel so good. Her nipple was bullet-hard. What would it look like? Pink, pebbled, re
ady for his fingers. Almost without realizing he was doing it, Adam pushed the silk off her shoulders. She was bared to the waist, where the dress caught, held there by the half-closed zipper. His hand slid inside the cup of her bra, moulding the flesh, feeling the nipple as he stroked, smoothed. His mouth was against her neck and he was breathing like a marathon runner on the home stretch.
He needed more. His other hand moved downward, slipping over the flatness of her belly, then lower, lower, resting on top of the delicate silk. He tried to envisage what was hidden beneath. What would she look like there? Feel like?
Surely she could feel him, prodding her backside with his almost painful hard-on. He longed to slip it between her legs, rub against her, feel her around him. He could do it, if he wanted. She was paying him to do it. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he strained not to.
He heard Lane whimper as he hitched the skirt of her dress up, up, up. He nudged her legs apart and edged the dress higher still, until his fingers could play over her panties.
‘Oh,’ she gasped out, as he snagged a finger underneath the elastic.
He could feel the heat, the moisture. She shivered and he felt it through his whole body. She gasped again as his fingers slid back and forth, so close, so close, as he rolled her nipple with the fingers of his other hand.
He groaned into her ear and she shuddered, whispered his name, and his hands went completely still.
Where the dart of sanity came from, Adam didn’t know, but it arrived just in time. Mind battling body, he moved his hands, resting them at her waist until he was enough in command of himself to turn her around to face him.
Her face was pink, eyes startled, lips parted as though she needed the space between them to breathe.
‘What lesson was that?’ she asked, all breathy.
Adam thought quickly, not about to tell her that he’d simply lost control of himself. ‘I’m showing you what you can expect from me over the next three months. Which is … the unexpected. All the best sexual relationships have an element of surprise. And I guess you could call that Lesson Number Four.’
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