She wore no jacket, just a long-sleeved knitted peacock-blue dress that hugged her figure. The shoulders were cut out, revealing her honey-gold skin. The zipper ran the length of the front. It was the kind of dress that opened on both ends. The tab at the top had been pulled low down her chest, showcasing the round inner swells of her modest breasts and offering a glimpse of dark blue lace. The bottom tab was high between thighs that were already well exposed by the short skirt. Her long legs were anchored into six-inch heels, popping her calf muscles. The shoes gave her a sensual swagger as she walked toward him.
“I need to speak with you,” she said, giving her loose hair a shake.
He would have sworn he hadn’t forgotten a thing about her, but he hadn’t remembered what a pretty shade of caramel her hair was, naturally picking up glints of gold. The long waves softened her square jawline, framing her hazel eyes and skeptically angled eyebrows. Her mouth was wide, neither too thin nor very full. It was painted scarlet and he had not forgotten at all how well it fit under his own.
He wondered if someone had slipped him drugs. This must be a hallucination. How was she here when he had just been thinking of her?
Of course, she was in his thoughts daily, so this was no real coincidence.
“I don’t know how she got up to this floor,” his assistant said.
Look at her, Rocco thought ironically. He couldn’t be angry with his security team for believing whatever lie Mira might have spouted to them, not when his own brain was short-circuiting.
“Leave us,” he said crisply. Into the phone, he said, “I have to call you back, Gio. Something’s come up.”
He’d never said anything more literal in his life. He was instantly straining the zip on his trouser fly.What the hell?
He ended his call and casually picked up the remote on the corner of his desk. As his assistant left, he touched the button that turned his office windows opaque and locked the door with an audiblesnick.
Mira glanced behind her at the sound. When she looked back at him, there was a hint of wariness in her otherwise confrontational demeanor.
“Yes?” He leaned back in his chair.
Her chest was heaving as though she’d run up all forty flights of stairs. Her lashes fluttered as she met his stare. She pushed her shoulders back and her chin up, but her hands were in fists at her sides.
It struck him that she had come here for a fight, but she didn’t know how to have one. She was a cat who had scrambled her way up a tree, not expecting any other creatures to be here. She was in a fix and didn’t know how to get down.
She hadn’t come prepared for the chemistry that charged the air between them, either.
He was barely prepared for it himself. It had exploded from the first moment he’d seen her in London, when it had doubled and redoubled as they talked, building to a fever pitch by the time she had fallen apart in his lap.
Every time he’d seen her since, this simmering heat had hit full boil the second she entered the room. With his office door locked, the pressure built, but it was tempered by the enmity in her expression.
She had never forgiven him.
And yet, here she was.
Her gaze flickered across his chest in a way he found very gratifying, then followed his arm to the hand that still held the remote.
“Can I help you?” He lifted one eyebrow and set the remote aside, vividly recalling what button he’d pressed that day in London.
Her blush deepened. Thinking of it, too? She stepped forward as though prodded by a knife in her back. She rubbed her lips together and tangled her hands at her middle, twisting a nonexistent ring.
Wait. He narrowed his eyes, experienced a woofing sensation as the doors in his mind were blown open.
“You broke off your engagement.”
“Is it online?” Her lashes flared wide with dread.
“You’re not wearing a ring.” His pulse was a drumbeat in his ears. “When?”
“Three days ago.” She looked at her bare hand as though she didn’t recognize it.
Ah. Now he knew why she was here: rebound sex.
The knowledge burned out anything close to rational thought. This same haze of lust had happened once before, when he’d drawn her onto his lap next to a pool in London.
His memory of that day had locked him into some kind of medieval torture device, one that had kept him caged and in pain, incapable of finding relief with anyone else.
