At Her Boss's Pleasure

by Cathy Williams

  That stopped Kate in her tracks. It wasn’t just what he had said, it was how he had said it—it was the way he was pointedly not looking at her, the way he had flung himself back in the chair and was staring around him as though fascinated by his surroundings.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway.’

  ‘This is not the place for this conversation.’

  ‘It’s exactly the place for this conversation!’ She breathed deeply and then sighed. ‘Look, I don’t need this. What we had is over. Finished. I just need you to get out of my life—and if you can’t do that then I’m going to have to hand in my resignation.’

  ‘It’s not finished,’ Alessandro muttered in a low, unsteady voice.

  He leaned towards her. He was a man with one foot dangling over the side of a cliff and he knew he was going to jump and damn the consequences.

  ‘Not for me. Please, Kate. Let’s go somewhere— anywhere. It’s too small here...too packed...too mundane and busy for what I have to say...’

  ‘Which is what? No, let me guess! You want me back so that you can have a little more fun before I end up next to the lawyer who never made it past first base before boring you...’

  ‘Something...happened...’

  ‘Yes, I know what happened,’ Kate intoned bitterly. ‘You couldn’t stand the thought of me walking away from you, so you decided to prove to me that I still wanted you. That’s why you summoned me to your office, isn’t it? So that you could play with me?’

  ‘I summoned you because I...I needed to see you...’

  Needed to see me to prove a point.

  ‘You’re just so arrogant that you didn’t see why you should let me get on with my life. It didn’t matter that you were busy getting on with yours. As far as you were concerned, I didn’t have a life to get on with because I still felt something for you. You just couldn’t accept that I wasn’t interested in carrying on with a fling that wasn’t going anywhere, because in your world the only thing that matters is sex.’

  ‘I wasn’t getting on with my life,’ Alessandro muttered under his breath.

  There was no guidebook when it came to this kind of conversation, but he was still condemned to have it... Because she just mattered so damn much...

  ‘I tried,’ he continued. ‘But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t because something happened when we were in Toronto...’

  ‘Something happened...?’

  ‘I never meant to...to get involved...’

  He raked his fingers through his hair and his hand was not as steady as it should have been.

  ‘Let’s get out of here...please—’ He broke off gruffly and, without giving her the chance to lodge another protest, signalled across to the waitress and asked for the bill. ‘And you can stop fishing around for money, Kate,’ he grated. ‘I’m getting this.’

  ‘Well?’

  This when they were outside, heading towards the grass, joining the milling crowds of couples who had made smart choices. She turned to him, shading her eyes from the glare of the sun, and he just looked at her.

  ‘Come on.’

  He reached out, clasped her hand, and her whole body quivered. The feel of his fingers linked with hers was like an electric charge, and under its impact her brain shut down. All those protesting voices were silenced as they found a shady spot close to the Cathedral and sat on the ground.

  ‘Just say what you’ve come to say, Alessandro, and don’t bother dressing it up with words you don’t mean. You didn’t get involved with me...not in the way that most people think of involvement. You sexually connected with me and you weren’t ready for it to end. You couldn’t produce proper involvement out of a hat, but you still had to show me that it wasn’t over...’

  She hugged her knees up to her chest, suddenly drained.

  ‘How was I to know the difference between involvement and a sexual connection?’ he said, half to himself. ‘How was I supposed to recognize the difference when I had never been presented with the situation before in my life? When we returned to London I figured that I could put you behind me by dipping into someone else...’

  ‘That’s just horrible.’

  ‘I’m being as honest as I can. It’s what I’ve always done. I’ve gone from woman to woman, never realizing that the time might come when I would find myself incapable of doing it...’

  ‘You’re doing it again, Alessandro,’ Kate whispered. ‘You’re confusing me with words.’

  ‘I’m using words to tell you how I feel... You asked me why I followed you. Well, I followed you because...because I couldn’t stand the thought of you touching another man, seeing another man, laughing with another man...’

  ‘You were only jealous because you weren’t ready for me to let you go—you would have seen any man as competition—but that’s not real jealousy. Real jealousy has its basis in something bigger...stronger... It’s different.’

  But hope flared...

  ‘In my world there was never a place for jealousy of any kind. It’s not an emotion I’ve ever experienced. But I...I recognized it...’ He smiled crookedly. ‘And you’re right. Real jealousy does have its basis in something bigger—much, much bigger than lust. It wasn’t just imagining you getting into bed with another man...’

  He clenched his jaw and shook away the violence of emotion that assailed him when he thought about that.

  ‘What I felt... I couldn’t even bear the thought of you looking at anyone else...talking to anyone else...’

  He risked grazing her cheek with his finger. It was enough to send his libido soaring into overdrive and he wanted nothing so much as to take her hand and place it firmly on his erection, so that she could feel what she did to him. He wondered whether she was feeling it too...the current zipping between them, electric and impossibly alive.

  ‘I’d never planned to... God, Kate, you have no idea how much I want you right now...’

  ‘Wanting just isn’t enough for me,’ she whispered, and a wave of misery threatened to engulf the fragile shoots of hope that had been growing.

  ‘And it’s not enough for me either...’

  He tilted her face so that she was gazing at him, locking her in their own private world even though they were surrounded by people.

  ‘I never planned on losing control of my emotions,’ he told her seriously. ‘I’ve seen what that can do. I watched my parents get lost in each other and I lived through the ramifications. I thought that it was just about money...’ He hesitated.

  ‘But it wasn’t, was it?’ Kate said softly. ‘It was more than just having feckless parents who encouraged each other to blow their respective fortunes, who had no self-control... It was about being shoved aside, wasn’t it?’

  ‘They were very good at employing nannies. My parents were so wrapped up in one another that they had no time for a kid. No time for anything. I resolved never to let myself succumb to that kind of emotional excess—and, for me, falling in love with a woman constituted that kind of emotional excess...’

  Kate found breathing difficult. She feared that if she exhaled she would somehow blow apart the atmosphere.

  ‘But I fell in love, my darling... I didn’t plan to, and I don’t know when it happened... I just know that when you walked out on me my world stopped turning...’

  ‘You hurt me. I know I walked away, but I still waited for you to come—waited for you to just...miss me so much that you couldn’t help yourself. I waited for you to catch up with me, and how I felt about you, but then there was that woman in your office and suddenly it was like my whole stupid world really and truly fell apart.’

  ‘I thought I could find myself some clever woman who would give me an uncomplicated life...with none of the inconvenient loss of self-control that came with you. It was a knee-jerk reaction. You had me wrapped around your little finger and I knew that the second I saw you in that dress. God, you have no idea what that did to me...’

  ‘I love you,’ Kate said simply. ‘I fell in love with you and I knew I had
to walk away because I would just end up getting more and more hurt. You couldn’t commit and I couldn’t settle for anything else.’

  ‘You love me?’ Alessandro said shakily, enjoying this loss of self-control with the woman he had given his heart to. ‘I guess your mother is going to be in for the surprise of her life, then, isn’t she?’

  Kate chuckled, delirious with happiness, sliding close to him and knowing that he was as aroused as she at their physical contact. ‘I think that she’s already had the surprise of her life—when I confided in her, when I stopped pretending to be an emotional robot and showed her that I was human and fallible and an idiot...’

  ‘And how do you think she’ll react when we tell her that we’re going to be married? Because I can’t imagine my life without you, Kate. So...will you marry me? Be my wife? Never leave my side? Have lots of babies for me?’

  Would she marry him? Try stopping her!

  ‘Wild horses couldn’t stop me!’ She laughed and flung her arms around him.

  Who said that fairy tales couldn’t come true?

  * * * * *

  Read on for an extract from CAPTIVE OF KADAR by Trish Morey

  Chapter One

  HE SAW HER in the Spice Market, just another tourist strolling through Istanbul’s ancient marketplace, famed for selling spices and dried fruits and a thousand different kinds of tea. Just another wide-eyed tourist, even if she did come complete with blond hair and blue eyes and red jeans that hugged her curves like a second skin.

  Not that he was interested.

  It was mere curiosity that slowed his footsteps as she lifted her camera to take a photograph of a shop hung with glass lanterns of every imaginable design and colour; nothing more than curiosity that kept him watching as the stallholder took advantage of her stillness, holding out a plate of his best Turkish delight for her to sample. She took a faltering step backwards when she realised she hadn’t gone unnoticed, murmuring apologies and shaking her head, setting the messy knot of blond hair at the back of her head and its loose tendrils dancing, but the plate followed her retreat, the eyes of the seller joining in his entreaties for her to just have one tiny taste.

  Kadar’s feet faltered at the stall opposite—it wasn’t his usual but he was curious, he told himself, and this shop would do—and ordered the dates he had come to buy for Mehmet, before looking over his shoulder to see whose will was stronger, the stallholder’s or the tourist’s. The vendor had her attention now, all the time smiling, a toothy smile in a crinkled face as warm as it was persuasive while he continued to engage her, plucking countries from the air as they did here, guessing where she was from—America? England?

  As if knowing when she was beaten, the woman gave in, and said something he couldn’t make out, but the owner grinned and assured her exuberantly that the Turkish people loved Australians, as she plucked a piece from the plate before her and raised it to her lips.

  A long way from home, he registered vaguely, his attention diverted as he handed over a large note in exchange for his dates and was asked to wait a few moments while someone fetched his change. He didn’t mind. It was no hardship waiting. The tourist had a mouth worth watching. Her lips were lush and wide and still wearing the shadow of a smile as she popped the sweet into her mouth. A moment later her smile was back in full force, her blue eyes wide with delight and, even surrounded by bright displays of every dried fruit imaginable, every sweetly scented tea and vat of brightly coloured fragrant spice, still she lit up the vaulted marketplace like a lantern.

  He felt that smile in a kick of heat that stirred his loins and turned his thoughts primal.

  It was a long time since he’d had a woman.

  It was a while since he’d felt himself tempted.

  He was tempted now.

  His eyes scanned just long enough to be sure there was no hint of a partner lurking nearby, and no sticker on her jacket to indicate a tour group nearby ready to swallow her up and spirit her away.

  She was alone.

  He could have her if he wanted.

  The knowledge came to him with the certainty of one who had rarely been turned down by a woman who was available, and after being propositioned by plenty who were not. It wasn’t arrogance. Call it history or call it experience, the percentages were in his favour, nothing more.

  She was still smiling, her face animated. She was like a burst of sunshine and colour amidst a sea of black winter coats and dark headscarves and she was ready to buy, already reaching into her bag.

  He could have her...

  And that same unerring certainty that told him he could take her assured him that she would be worth the taking.

  Oh yes, she would be worth it.

  He could picture himself lazily peeling away the layers that covered her, one by one. Slowly unzipping and stripping away the leather jacket that lovingly hugged her breasts and moulded to her waist, before peeling away those shameless red jeans from her long legs. What layers remained would be similarly discarded until she was revealed, in all her fair-skinned splendour, and then he would unwind the honey-blond hair behind her head and let it tumble down over her shoulders to curl and whisper against breasts plumped and peaked and ripe for the taking.

  Her mouth would taste sweet, like the Turkish delight that she’d sampled, and her blue eyes would be dark with heat and she would smile with moistened lips and reach for him...

  He could see it all.

  He could have it all, and it was all within his grasp...

  Then, as if she was aware she was being watched—almost as if aware of what he was thinking—her eyes fell on him—eyes not just blue, he realised in that moment, but vividly so, almost the colour of lapis lazuli itself. As he watched they darkened, like stone heated over flame, almost as if she recognised him, almost as if she was responding.

  She blinked once, and then again. He watched her smile slide away then, even as her eyes turned smoky with recognition as they kept that connection across the bustling marketplace.

  Until the stallholder alongside her said something that snagged her attention and she blinked again, and this time turned away. A shake of her head and wave of her hand later, and she was practically fleeing from the market, leaving the disappointed vendor wondering how his in-the-bag sale had gone so wrong.

  A tap on his own shoulder saw Kadar presented with his change and an apology for making him wait.

  He accepted both the same way as he accepted her vanishing act.

  Philosophically.

  Because he wasn’t interested.

  Not really.

  After all, he did have plans to visit Mehmet.

  Besides, he told himself again, with maybe just a pang of regret, he wasn’t looking for a woman. Especially not one who would flee like a startled rabbit.

  He left the rabbits to the boys who liked to chase.

  In his world, the women came to him.

  * * *

  What the hell had just happened?

  Amber Jones stumbled blindly through the market, past shops with their displays of dried fruits and spices and all manner of bright and beautiful souvenirs, ignoring the calls and the banter from stallholders on either side as she passed. Because everything was fuzzy. Nothing was distinct or clear, the sights and sounds of the market that she’d found so fascinating just minutes ago now all a blur. All because she’d been blindsided by a man with golden skin and whose eyes had burned bright like a brazier at midnight.

  A man who’d been watching her through those heated eyes.

  It had been more than any niggling prickle of awareness—it had been a compulsion that had made her turn her head to catch him staring—and she’d felt the gaze from his dark eyes like a rush of heat—a darkly heated wave that had sent a ripple of promise down her spine and collected in a hot swirling pool deep down in her belly.

  Why had he been watching her?

  And why had she seen sex in the dark depths of his eyes?

  Hot sex.

  Jet l
ag, she thought, searching for logic to lend explanation for the sensation. She was bone weary and operating in a time zone nine hours later than her own. In three hours her body would expect her to be tucked up for the night in her bed back in Sydney, whereas here in Istanbul it was barely time for lunch. No wonder it suddenly felt so crowded in the marketplace. No wonder it suddenly felt so hot.

  Fresh air was what she needed—to feel the late winter breeze on her skin and let the sea air cool down her heated, clearly travel-weary body.

  She stepped outside the entry to the marketplace, reefing off her scarf and then her jacket, breathing deep of the cool air as it stripped away her heat and soothed fractured nerves and calmed a panicked mind.

  And with relief came logic and rational thought along with a little disappointment in herself.

  So much for being the strong, independent woman she’d promised herself she’d be when she’d decided to venture halfway around the world to follow in her great-great-great-grandmother’s footsteps. Clearly the old Amber was still lurking, the risk-averse Amber who’d settle for second best rather than chase after what she really wanted, if she could be spooked by a look from just one man.

  Because it hadn’t been jet lag at all.

  It had been him, with his face drawn in slashes of the artist’s charcoal.

  Him, who owned the space he occupied with such a supreme confidence, so that the air fairly shimmered around him.

  She shivered, this time nothing to do with the cool January air, irrationally—insanely—missing that sudden flush of heat that had warmed her core and made her think of long nights and hot sex. How had that happened in just one moment in time? In all the two years they’d been together, Cameron had never once managed to turn her thoughts to long, hot sex with just one heated look.

  But the stranger in the market had.

  How could that even be possible?

  And yet his eyes had drawn her, compelling and insistent and communicating to her a dark promise that her body seemed instinctively to understand—and instinctively to respond to.

  A dark promise that had spawned dark thoughts of all kinds of forbidden pleasures.