The Rules of Engagement

by Ally Blake

  * * *

  Dax found himself alone for the first time all evening, conversational muscles aching from the kind of networking a marquee ripe with testosterone brought about. He took the opportunity to discreetly stretch his stiff cheeks.

  And to watch Caitlyn. Her strapless green cocktail dress with a shimmer that caught the light. Her smoky eyes. Her silken hair.

  Two young men nudged their way into the circle of prospective clients milling around her. One gave her champagne, which she accepted with a friendly smile before launching back to her story.

  He felt a proprietary thrill that the cashed up young bucks could use whatever moves they had at their disposal; but she’d still be going home with him.

  After the weekend at the manor he’d made the executive decision to cool it with Caitlyn. Things had become rather more...intense than he’d ever intended them to be. That was something he’d done a bang up job of ignoring until Lauren had forced him to admit it. In the time apart he’d taken stock, re-evaluated the bounds of their dalliance. Something any businessman worth his salt would do if contract negotiations were on the horizon.

  It had been one of the hardest weeks of his life, and that was saying something. He’d been crotchety, hard-assed, quick to temper. Everything had felt off kilter, prickly, and wrong, especially the parts of his life that he’d believed had finally achieved balance.

  And that was because the time and space had only given him room to see that it hadn’t been balance. It had been resignation. He’d decided his life was what it was and that was that.

  Which had been sufficient. Until Caitlyn. He hadn’t understood the full extent of the impact she’d made on him until he’d felt the lack of her.

  She’d found a way under his skin, deep in his bones. She’d entwined herself inextricably with his deepest desires. But only because he’d let her.

  It had been a scary thing, letting her get that close. He’d found it virtually impossible to trust much of anything after his parents had proven to him how well even those closest could hide the darker parts of their nature.

  But the more he knew of her, the more he was certain that Caitlyn was different. What you saw was what you got. And what he got was an open, honest, fragile, funny, sexy, impertinent woman who made him feel—

  He felt so much, far beyond anything he’d ever known, that he breathed in hard and deep through his nose to quell the unfamiliar rise of emotion. But even the cooling night air did nothing to still the warmth that beat through him at the sense that if he played his cards right there were as many nights with her in his future as he wanted.

  In the distance Caitlyn laughed; one hand closing around her throat, another slapping riotously against her thigh. She shook her hair from her face and Dax imagined the feel of it slipping through his fingers: soft, silky, and warm.

  He imagined the taste of her skin as he scraped his teeth over the ridge of her shoulder.

  He imagined the sound of the zip of that saucy little dress grating against his taut nerves before it pooled to the floor, leaving her in nothing bar whatever sliver of underwear she had on and those crazy, sexy high heels.

  He imagined that hot, languorous look she got in her eyes in the last moment before he kissed her. Each and every time. As if he were all she’d ever been waiting for and more.

  As if she could perceive the power of his feelings, her gaze swept to him, caught, and she didn’t look away. Even from that distance he could see the extreme rise and fall of her chest, could feel the restraint it took for her not to brush away her groupies and come to him.

  How many more nights did he want with this woman?

  He wanted them all.

  * * *

  As Caitlyn kiss-kissed the last of the guests goodnight, she could feel Dax waiting for her. She looked around until she found him leaning on the bar. She caught his eye, and gave him a quick frown of apology.

  He nodded.

  A nod wasn’t usually something she read much into, but that nod was different. It was serious. It was intense. It literally gave her goose bumps.

  All she could put it down to was that he must have been mulling over their conversation by the fortune teller’s caravan all damn night, wondering about the ghosts of boyfriends past. She sure had. She could all but hear them whispering to her, Tell him. He’s a good man. He deserves to know what kind of woman he’s mixed up with.

  Caitlyn looked away to frown at her shoes. She wanted to smack Franny. She really did. If only Franny hadn’t already gone home with one of the billionaire tech nerds Caitlyn would have found a way to shake her friend ’til her teeth rattled. Of course Franny might have hooked up with both tech billionaires. The thought of Franny’s disappointment when she discovered they only spoke Klingon at home was small consolation.

  ‘Night, Cait.’

  She smiled and waved to a bunch from the engineering lab whose night had clearly only just begun.

  ‘Wanna come?’ One of them did a horribly intoxicated version of the twist, which she assumed was an invitation to go dancing.

  ‘Thanks but I—’ She glanced at Dax again. He was watching her still, his face a study in shadows. The sudden urge to party with the engineers was a strong one. But the magnetism of the tall, dark, gorgeous man waiting for her was stronger still. ‘Next time, okay?’

  They waved and blundered away.

  No, tonight was not a night for dancing. Tonight had brought to a head the knowledge that she’d managed to get this far into her thing with Dax without getting hurt, or hurting anyone else for that matter, by sheer luck alone.

  She needed to slow things down. To give herself some real room to think. To decide once and for all what she and Dax were to one another. Because all she was really sure of was what they weren’t.

  He wasn’t a booty call. He wasn’t a casual acquaintance who shared her bed every now and then. From the moment they’d first touched they’d never been so awfully dry. And he wasn’t so wholly unimportant to her that she could tell him the least flattering stories of her past and not care what he thought.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Dax’s voice echoed in Caitlyn’s ear.

  She blinked to find all of the guests were gone. The tent was empty bar a cleaning crew who had materialised from nowhere and were busily wiping away any sign that they’d ever been there, so by that weekend the ground would be as ready for a game of Aussie Rules football as it had ever been.

  ‘Yes. No. Fine.’ Caitlyn shook her head, not knowing the answer. Just knowing she felt a sudden desperate need for fresh air. Air that didn’t smell so deliciously of clean laundry and fresh cotton and pure soap. Of Dax.

  ‘Ready?’ Dax put a hand on her waist, but, rather than sinking into it as she usually did, that time she flinched. Her reaction must have been so out of the norm, and so obvious, as Dax’s hand was suddenly gone.

  A napkin scattered past her feet in the suddenly cold breeze. The beep beep beep of the truck reversing to take the Z9 home to bed split the night. She risked a glance at Dax to find him staring hard at his shoes, a muscle clenching in his jaw. He was a bright guy. He wasn’t immune to her mood.

  ‘Not ready quite yet,’ she said, her voice strained. ‘I ought to do one last sweep to make sure nobody needs anything. But it’s late. You go ahead. I’ll be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow. Or next week at the latest. Because I’ll be super swamped. Tonight we wooed. Tomorrow we strike. Okay?’

  It was rubbish. A lame excuse to prolong the inevitable conversation she knew she had to have about who she was. And what she’d done. Eventually. Soon. Weeks ago.

  Suddenly she felt mentally and physically exhausted, so drowsy she could barely see straight. Her knees buckled under the weight of it and she swayed. Naturally, Dax caught her. He was just that kind of guy.

  He swore beneath his breath, his arm wrapping tight around her waist. ‘You’re shattered. I’m taking you home.’

  ‘Smooth talker,’ she mumbled.

  He laughed, and sh
ook his head, his eyes finally connecting with hers. ‘Whatever did I do in my life to deserve you, Caitlyn March?’

  She swallowed, and tried to look away but couldn’t.

  At the tone of his voice, the glint in his eye, her body found some latent untapped well of energy. The urge to slide her hands beneath his coat and rest her cheek against his hard chest, selfishly absorbing every bit of his latent heat and strength she could, was staggering.

  Get some space, she reminded herself, slow down. Back away from the beautiful man! Whatever you might have done in the past you always had the will power to do the right thing when you truly needed to. That time is now!

  Somehow she gathered every bit of strength she had left in her weary body and eased away. An inch was all it was, but an inch away from Dax might as well have been a mile for the pull he had over her.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, his voice deep, rough, gorgeous.

  Her eyes caught on his, but all she saw was the reflected gleam of the stadium lights. He jutted out an elbow and she slipped her hand through, the contact at once too much and not nearly enough.

  In silence they took the long walk through the MCG grounds and onto the city street in which she’d parked so many hours before. When they reached her latest Pegasus company car, a cruisey little sedan in rocket-ship red, their steps slowed as one.

  She turned to Dax, arms crossed to stave off goose bumps pricking up all over her skin even beneath her warm coat. The words ‘Goodnight, Dax’ danced on the tip of her tongue, but the look in his eyes stopped her short.

  Franny had said he was hers for the taking, and, standing there in the muted moonlight with the noise of the Richmond train station clattering in the near distance, Caitlyn wondered if she might be right.

  Her eyes flicking from one of his to the other, she felt herself bombarded with emotion. With affection and desire, and something else so big, so powerful, she didn’t dare attempt to name it, knowing how wrong about that kind of thing she’d always been in the past.

  Unfortunately, not naming it didn’t stop her feeling it. Feeling as if her skin were being pummelled with a million warm raindrops. As if her bones had turned to milk. As if he were filling every nook and cranny of her being until her entire body pulsed.

  Dax reached out, slowly this time, and ran his thumb over her cheekbone, as if he was waiting for her to flinch again. She didn’t. The sensation of his skin sliding against hers felt so good. Too right. He gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. He rested his big, warm, protective hand on her neck.

  Then he leaned in to kiss her.

  Time, space, and slowing down entered her mind for a split second before her lips met his with the most gentle of contacts. Then just like that she lost the fight.

  She pulled him close, and kissed him hard. As if a dam had broken inside him his kiss became brutal, fuelled by an avalanche of yearning the likes of which Caitlyn had never known.

  Fear and confusion and logic were pulverised beneath the combined forces of their desires and in their place was a ferocious rising heat that no one small person could ever hope to contain.

  Only when a horn sounded over and over as a car of laughing drunken louts roared by did they pull apart, breathing heavily.

  She rested her forehead on Dax’s hard chest, her shaking hands on his waist. He felt so heavy against her, as though he needed her strength to keep himself upright.

  After a long, long while, Dax slid a finger beneath her chin and lifted her face so that she looked into his eyes, and, while the moon had gone deeper behind the rows of feathery clouds drifting across the sky, she could still see every nuance in his dark gaze.

  And like the addict she clearly was, and would be until the end of her damnable days, she stood there and lapped up every last bit.

  ‘Caitlyn—’ he began.

  She placed a finger on his lips and said, ‘Take me home.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  CAITLYN stared at her face in Dax’s en suite mirror, and barely recognised what she saw.

  It had nothing to do with the dark smudges of day-old eyeliner and exhaustion under her eyes, or the tangle of knots making a mockery of what had been sleek and sophisticated hair the night before. Neither was it the red marks peeking out from the neckline of Dax’s borrowed T-shirt from where he’d nipped her shoulder, or the swollen appearance of her lips, which felt bruised from the hours upon hours of kissing.

  It was something deeper. Uglier. It was the knowledge that while sex the night before had been breathtaking, mind-numbing—it had been sorbet sex.

  Caitlyn rolled her shoulders and lowered her gaze, literally not able to look herself in the eye.

  There was no kidding herself now that every other time she’d slept with Dax it hadn’t been about forgetting what had been before. It had been about being with him. She’d been swept up fully, by the thought of him and the reality of him, from the first moment she’d seen him, touched him, wanted him.

  But last night, faced with the probability that her efforts to break the dating habits of a lifetime might mean pushing Dax away before it was too late, she had used sex to forget. Only, this time, the man she’d wanted to forget was him.

  She heard a rustle of sheets and a deep masculine groan from the next room. Her shaken gaze shifted, catching Dax in the edge of the mirror as he stretched his muscled arms over his head, his large feet nearly poking off the end of his huge bed. He ran long fingers over his face, then through his hair, creating a mess of spikes.

  The best sex of her life. The only man who’d never let her get away with anything. The only man strong enough to keep her honest. The best man she’d ever known.

  She rubbed her knuckles across her chest, about the spot where her pathetic excuse for a heart ached. No wonder. It was a feeble, sorry thing, weakened by too many missteps, too many false starts, too many direct hits.

  ‘Morning, sunshine.’ Dax loomed suddenly behind her, sweeping her hair aside to lay a warm kiss on her neck.

  ‘Morning,’ she scratched out.

  ‘I have something for you.’ His voice was deep and throaty, making her skin tingle and her hands clench on the sink.

  Whatever he had she didn’t want it. And she wanted it more than life itself. If she had one working nerve left at the end of the day it’d be a miracle.

  ‘So long as it’s a long shower and a toothbrush, I’ll take it,’ she said with false brightness.

  ‘Well, then, lucky for you...’ His arm slid around her, and in his hand, tied up in a big black satin bow, was a new red toothbrush. For her. To leave at his place.

  Her hand shook as it reached out and curled around the plastic handle.

  ‘Red,’ she said, the only word she could manage while her heart coughed and spluttered and tried to spark to life, but the fractures merely widened until it threatened to shatter for good.

  ‘Of course it’s red. Red’s faster.’ Then, ‘Coming in?’

  She blinked into the mirror to find him standing by the shower naked. A god.

  Her mouth went dry at the thought of being hot, wet and slippery with him. But the toothbrush, and what it represented, was burning too significant an impression into her hand.

  She backed away slowly. ‘Maybe later. I’m ravenous. Going to whip up some breakfast.’

  ‘Make mine a double.’ He gave her a kiss on the nose. Then, as his eyes grew dark he pulled her to him and kissed her more thoroughly on the mouth.

  She closed her eyes tight as she fell into a well of desire. At the edges of her subconscious something deeper and warmer ebbed gently through her.

  She snapped back to reality as Dax spun her around, gave her a pat on the backside, and sent her padding out of the bathroom.

  Once in the kitchen, she placed the toothbrush carefully on the bench, not letting it out of her sight for long as if it might rise up and bite her if she didn’t watch it closely enough. Clearly she was delirious. No wonder. She hadn’t eaten a thing the night before, and h
ad been far too busy doing other things all night to sleep a wink.

  She’d be able to think better with a full stomach.

  Scrambled eggs, she decided when she realised Dax had little else in his bachelor-friendly fridge. But no matter how many of the trendy deep drawers she went through, or frosted-glass cupboards, or doors that swung open and concertinaed closed, she couldn’t find a pan, much less a whisk.

  She opened her mouth to call out when she heard the shower turn on.

  A thin drawer tucked away in the corner was her last hope. She slid it open. She’d never have noticed a whisk even if it was hot pink and covered in glitter as her eyes had snagged unwaveringly on something else: a small black velvet box. The very same size in which one would usually find a ring.

  Her heart jerked so suddenly she could almost feel the fractures splintering into a thousand tiny little pieces, like a crystal orb that had been lobbed from a great height onto a slab of unforgiving concrete.

  But even as her body went into a state of shock, she reached for the box, her fingers curling around the soft edges as she pulled it out of its dark hiding place and into the light.

  It was meant for her, of that she had no doubt. She’d seen the look in Dax’s eyes the night before. She’d known what it meant. Hell, she’d dated the guy for the past few months. She’d been right there as they’d grown closer, become more intrinsic to one another’s lives. But no matter how often she’d swapped her metaphorical blinkers for the next size up in an effort to deny it, her chickens had just come home to roost.

  Damn it! Damn him! She’d never asked for this. She’d specifically told the guy she only wanted something casual. She’d been so careful to seem cool and uncompromising, even when she hadn’t felt it. To make him think she was cruising along, even when she felt her armour slip time and again. To not let him know her inevitable weakness for men who cared, and most specifically her even deeper weakness for him. And now...?

  Infuriation—white hot and resentful—propelled her towards Dax’s bathroom where the air was now thick with steam, or maybe that was her mood. She slid open the shower door in a rush.