‘Can you really leave it at just one night?’ The question slid out of him—and wasn’t at all an example of the cool way he’d planned to play it.
Her brows lifted. ‘One night was all I needed.’
Never. ‘What about what I needed?’
‘Oh, Seth,’ she answered slowly. ‘You’ve got a zillion other options to get your needs met.’
True, but that wasn’t the point. ‘Maybe I don’t want other options. I want you to meet my needs.’ He frowned, struck by a nightmare thought. ‘Have you got other options?’
‘No,’ she snapped right back. ‘But maybe I don’t have the same level of need as you.’
He laughed—hard—before thinking better of it. ‘No, we both know your needs are way greater than mine.’
Her jaw became more defined, her chin pointier. ‘You’ve got the wrong impression.’
‘I don’t think so.’
She might be gritting her teeth and his balls ought to be frozen by the dry ice steaming from her eyes, but he was committed now. He saw her bite harder on her lip.
‘Relax, Lena.’ He took her hand and smoothed his fingers across her cold knuckles. ‘Tense doesn’t suit you.’ He knew what did.
‘I’m not tense.’
Her pulse slammed into his fingertips, fast and furious. Her wanting—her not wanting to want. He didn’t really want to want her quite like this, either, but he wasn’t as into denial as she was. Surely she knew if they gave into it, it would go away. It always did. He glanced down and saw she’d curled one foot around her other leg, so she was standing in a weird flamingo kind of way. Totally closed off, with her toes curled in the ends of her sandals. Toe curling was a good sign, wasn’t it? Toe curling meant she was holding something back. Satisfaction made him smirk but she saw and jerked her wrist free.
‘You know, you’re supposed to be highly intelligent, but the most boneheaded rugby boy has got it before you. I’m saying no.’
‘I am highly intelligent,’ he answered patiently. ‘So I can see straight through what you’re trying to do.’
‘Oh, what do you think that is?’
‘You’re playing me, keeping me dangling on your string.’
‘You think I want you on my string?’ she muttered. ‘Your arrogance is something else.’
‘Yeah, but I’m right. Women like to manipulate. You play hardest to get when you want it most, as if somehow it’s wrong to want it so badly and putting up a fight makes it more acceptable.’ He moved closer, needing to be near. ‘But there’s something about a woman who’s honest about wanting it, and who wants it as much as I do. Be honest with me again, Lena.’
‘You’re wrong,’ she said firmly, her ice-chipped eyes unwavering. ‘Not all women play those kinds of games. I don’t. I mean what I say.’
‘But a massive part of you doesn’t want to say it.’ Her toe curling was giving it away. He hoped.
‘You think?’ She glared at him, her ice dissolving in anger. ‘You’re actually a no-means-yes, take-it-willing-or-not brute?’
‘You can try to be as insulting as you like but it isn’t going to work.’ He grinned. ‘You can’t manipulate me into getting angry and walking away.’ He’d literally fought to learn to control his emotions—it took a hell of a lot for him to give way to anger now. And he was miles off angry at the moment, more like amused. Her lashes lowered and he waited expectantly, eager to see her next move.
‘It’s all about the game for you, isn’t it?’ She peeped a look back up.
He smiled because she couldn’t resist that little look. And, yeah, she had his number, but he’d get hers, too. He’d tease it out. ‘I don’t think you can deny this, Lena. You were so hot the other day you exploded at first touch. How long had you been on the boil?’ He angled his head, leaning closer, deliberately trying to bait her because it was working. ‘I don’t actually think it’s me. Clearly working around all this testosterone gets you het up and after a while your safety valve blows. Best it blows with someone like me rather than one of those boys, though, right? You wouldn’t want to get messy in the workplace, would you?’
She went pale. Seth’s radar zeroed in. Oh, that was interesting—was that why she was so stand-offish with the team? She’d once had a messy office affair? His curiosity raged. Yeah, there was the thing. This wasn’t just about getting her back into bed; he wanted to know all about her. Most of all he wanted to know what else would make her laugh.
Lena drew breath and forced history back to the past. Seth thought she’d been horny from hanging with the rugby guys? He was crazy. Those boys were beautiful, but they didn’t light her fire. It was all him. Something in him called to her, something she feared was more than skin deep. But she was happy to let him keep his wholly wrong idea. The sass only Seth sparked bubbled up and she leaned forward, reckless. ‘It’s a once-a-year thing,’ she whispered. ‘Can you hang on that long?’
‘Once a year?’ He laughed, predatory sharpness defining his features once more. ‘You haven’t a hope in lasting that this time. You’re still thermonuclear.’
She pulled back, putting both feet down to stand her ground. ‘And you’re delusional.’
‘No.’ He shook his head slowly. His lashes lifted and the azure-blue eyes gleamed at her thoughtfully. ‘What I am is honoured.’
‘I’m sorry?’ He’d lost her totally now.
‘An annual event at most,’ he said, utterly serious. ‘Given you were worried you’d forgotten how, I’m honoured that you picked me the other night. And as it was such a rare experience for you, I take it to be a real privilege. And a compliment.’
She ground her teeth. ‘The other day you were making out like I was in here getting the entire team off.’
He nodded. ‘Amazing how wrong that first impression was, huh?’ He sidled closer with a snaky smile. ‘What was your first impression of me?’
‘That you’re an arrogant jerk.’
‘See?’ He beamed widely. ‘So wrong.’
She stared at him for a second and then couldn’t help but laugh. Her chuckle deepened as the tension eased. It felt good. ‘You’re…you’re…’
‘Ready when you are,’ he quipped. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
She kept shaking her head but couldn’t pull back her smile. ‘Incorrigible. Unrepentant. Impossible. Please give up.’ She really meant that.
‘I can’t believe you’re asking me to.’ He dropped his joking manner and moved back in on her, closer than before.
Her skin tingled, threatening to burst all over with goose bumps. Oh, he was good. Temptation shook her foundations.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, stepping closer and holding her gaze captive.
Was he saying yes for the both of them?
She swallowed, but she couldn’t stop her honesty. ‘Okay, I won’t deny I’m attracted to you. But it’s more intelligent to walk away.’ And she was so determined to do the intelligent thing, the right thing for her this time.
‘How can that possibly be more intelligent? You know it’ll be good.’
‘I told you.’ Her chest ached while her belly burned. ‘Too much of a good thing leaves you feeling bad.’
‘So we won’t have too much, then.’ He shrugged. ‘Just a little more.’
It wouldn’t work that way for her. She’d fall quickly, deeply, uselessly. It would take nothing to fall hard for Seth.
‘Look at me,’ he said quietly, but with an undertone that made her nerves screech. ‘Just for a second.’
Seth really needed to see into her eyes to try to fathom what she was thinking. Except when he did he still had no bloody idea.
‘I don’t want to have a fling with you,’ she said softly.
He paused, knew he had to be honest with her. ‘Lena, I’m a lifetime off marriage.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I’m not exactly painting the nursery, either.’
‘Okay, but let me tell you why I’m not.’
‘You want to share your sob
story to win me over? Play on my emotional feminine side? Butter me up so I say yes?’
Her sudden cynicism silenced him for a second—someone had to have played a real sob story on her in the past. ‘No, I just want you to understand where I’m coming from.’ Mainly because he wanted to know what her story was and he figured if he shared, she’d share. It usually worked that way. Once he understood the reason for the reluctance, he could see her through it. Carefree didn’t mean careless, after all. He only wanted nice, light, naughty fun for both of them. And while she might sound as if she wasn’t interested, she was all eyes and ears.
He put it lightly. ‘Look, my parents divorced in one terrible mess. Put me off for life.’
‘How convenient for you to have an emotional reason for not committing,’ she said sarcastically.
He bit back a laughing grunt. She had no idea of the reality. That divorce had been too long in coming—months of bitterness and betrayal. Months of his mother trying to make it work. Months of him trying to be the model son.
‘Fortunately I was spared a nasty custody battle,’ he said drily. Yeah, there’d been a total lack of custody battle. The father he’d once been dumb enough to idolise had walked out and never looked back. Too busy with his new family to be interested. His mother had been devastated and Seth hadn’t been enough to help her. And that made it suck all the more. All that hideous turbulence combined with teen displacement had seen his anger threaten to screw his life completely. Control had come in isolation, with him literally fighting it out. And he’d learned what he needed to succeed—just his emotionally unencumbered self.
He forced himself to breathe, to keep the flippant tone, to fast-forward. ‘But of course I do have an evil ex.’
‘Of course you have an evil ex. Do tell,’ she anti-invited, saccharine sweet. There was no softening her.
‘First year uni. Medicine. I scored the girlfriend that all the guys wanted. The hostel hottie.’
Her eyes narrowed; he half hoped the green was glowing deeper from jealousy.
‘But then I started the pizza thing. I’d designed the tee shirts for the delivery guys to wear and they turned out to be as popular as the pizzas. I knew I had a chance at something, so I dropped out to pursue it full-time. According to her I was going to be a loser like my dad—who incidentally was a total loser.’ For a second his mood darkened.
‘And her attitude only motivated you all the more?’
He managed a smile. ‘Of course.’ She’d laughed, then grown scornful. There’d been no attempt to understand, no belief in him. No, he very quickly learned that belief had to come from yourself, success from yourself, happiness from yourself. Dependence on others didn’t get you anywhere. Dependence on others got you hurt—check out Exhibit A, his mother. She’d relied on having a husband and kids to be happy. But her husband had left and she only had the one kid. He hadn’t been enough. Still couldn’t do enough. He hadn’t been enough for the girlfriend, either—not once he’d lost the status of being the top student in his med class.
‘No doubt she lived to regret her decision?’ Lena batted her lashes, still sarcasm personified.
Yeah, she wasn’t taking his confidences terribly seriously. But what had happened had really sucked and stupidly still bothered him—well, to a degree. ‘She started dating my arch rival in med. Until I dropped out, he and I had been competing for class honours. He won both the first-year prize and her. But when the marriage faltered she looked me up.’
By then he was a multimillionaire and had more status and success than any general practitioner. It was only the status and success that had attracted her.
‘Did you have an affair?’ Lena was looking at the floor now.
Seth had been angry at the invitation. His ex had no problem with infidelity, but he did. ‘No, and even when she was divorced I still said no. I don’t repeat my mistakes.’ He’d known what it was she’d wanted—the money and status, not actually him.
‘And since then you’ve done the dumping, right?’
He’d ended every fling—all except for Lena Kelly.
‘Is that why you’re here now?’ she asked sharply. ‘Because I said no?’
‘No.’ He should have seen she’d leap to that conclusion. ‘I’m here because I’m honest enough to admit I want to be with you again.’
‘It’s just sex.’
‘Not just sex, fantastic sex.’ And he had the sinking feeling that wasn’t all it was. The desire to be near her, to know her, was more than sexual. He studied her blank expression. ‘So has my sob story scored your sympathy?’
‘This all happened, what, a decade or so ago and you’re still not over it?’
Ouch. He chuckled. ‘You know how it is, the first cut’s deep.’ And you were landed with the parent dramas for life. He might be able to forget his father now, but his mother still frustrated the hell out of him. He still couldn’t help her the way he wanted to be able to.
Lena was really trying to diminish the effect of his opening up to her. It wasn’t that much of a sob story, right? Loads of people had parental issues and ex issues. She had them herself. ‘You really want my sympathy?’
‘Right now I’ll take whatever I can get. Are you going to try to save my scarred heart?’
‘I have enough awareness of my limitations to know that’s not possible,’ she said with heartfelt honesty. ‘Besides, I’m not convinced you actually have a heart. I think what you have is an overblown need to win. You don’t like me calling time ahead of you.’
‘Well, you have to agree you did it prematurely.’ He grinned. ‘Why did you? What’s made you such a scaredy cat?’
‘I’m not scared, I’m being sensible.’
‘Sensible doesn’t suit you.’ His voice dropped. ‘Your beauty glows when you laugh and when you’re reckless.’
‘The lines won’t work.’ Except they were and now she was desperately trying not to dwell on the tantalising information she’d just learned, but in truth examining every salient fact. So his parents had split, so he had a witch ex-girlfriend. And dropping out of med school to make pizza and print tee shirts with pithy slogans did seem a random path—one that only Seth could make succeed.
She wasn’t supposed to have learned anything more about him. She wasn’t supposed to have become any more curious. He was supposed to have walked out of her life yesterday—for good. Only, now she was beyond intrigued. And the more she knew, the more she wanted. That delicious melting feeling immobilised her. He was watching, smiling, and she knew he knew.
‘You really don’t want me to kiss you again?’
He was so close her skin was doing the alternate sizzle-then-tingle thing.
‘You don’t want me to slide my hand like this?’ To her waist, to draw her close.
She dug in her toes, trying to hang on to the last scrap of sanity she had left. And then, thank goodness, she remembered.
‘You need to step back,’ she whispered jerkily. ‘There’s a camera in here.’
Seth froze, then glanced up at the ceiling and round the walls. ‘In the change room?’
‘The half-time cam for the at-home audience. The guys know where it’s placed so they don’t change in front of it. But we’re centre-screen right now.’
He spotted it, on the wall beside them. ‘Is it filming?’ He was horrified they had a camera in here.
‘Not something I’m risking.’ She had her distance back now, and she was growing it—literally.
‘Not willing to risk much, are you?’ Seth called after her as she scampered off. Fists clenched, he thought about hitting the wall, but it was concrete and he wasn’t that stupid. Damn the camera.
Privacy was important to him. But breaking through her barriers had been more important. So he’d spilled some details he rarely shared—in the hope she’d confide something in return. Only, she hadn’t. Lena Kelly wasn’t like other women. She was saying no, but she still wanted him. That had never happened before. And he sure as hell didn�
��t want to be haunted by her, which right now he was.
He wondered what the mess was she’d landed herself in. It had to have been a big one. He knew the wounded look and he’d seen those shadows pass in her eyes a few times. As a rule he avoided bruised women—they had vampiric emotional needs and he didn’t do angst or drama. Didn’t have the resources within him. Not for anyone. Better to play light and leave the needy alone. But he wanted Lena. He wanted the sparkle he’d seen more often in those same beautiful eyes. He wanted the laughter in his arms again. There had to be a way of making it impossible for her to say no for much longer, but, short of parading round half-naked like some rent boy, he really didn’t know how he was going to manage it.
It would be simpler if he found someone else, but he had the feeling no other woman would be remotely interesting until he understood all there was to Lena. And had her every which way and back again. He was so on her leash and she was jerking him hard. She was proving better than he at this despite not being anywhere near as much of a player.
Breathing hard, he flicked the shower to freezing and gritted his teeth. His muscles twitched, eager to release pent-up energy as if the two hours’ hard-out training had never happened. Dressed, no less frustrated, he thudded up the stairs to Dion’s office. Dion glanced up from his computer and a way-too-amused look crossed his face.
‘She smacked you down,’ Dion said.
Seth shrugged.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Dion soothed evilly. ‘It’s happened to all of us.’
‘You asked her out?’ That really didn’t help his mood.
Dion just grinned and swivelled his chair to stare out of the window.
‘You’re her boss.’ Annoyance tainted his supposedly lazy drawl.
‘Not technically,’ Dion mused. ‘I’m here courtesy of the council, she’s employed by the team management.’
‘Dion.’ Seth glowered. ‘That doesn’t make it any better.’
‘Don’t get steamed.’ Dion raised his hands into the surrender position and laughed, spinning back to face him. ‘I didn’t, okay? I’m not into sexual harassment or power plays.’
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