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His expression was tight and extremely grim as he looked down at her darkly for several seconds, before turning away to lift the receiver beside the lit panel. ‘No assistance needed, Max,’ he barked into the mouthpiece.
‘Are you sure, sir? The lift appears to be stuck between the thirteenth and fourteenth floors…?’
‘Not stuck, Max, just not moving,’ he assured the other man tautly. ‘Miss Bartholomew and I will be descending to the ground floor in a few moments.’
There was a brief, telling silence before the other man spoke again. ‘Very good. Thank you, sir.’
‘Miss Bartholomew’ had quickly pulled up the bodice of her dress while Drakon spoke to his Head of Security, the heat now in her cheeks due to intense embarrassment rather than arousal. Not only had she almost made love with Drakon in a lift—which was surely mortifying enough?—but after that brief conversation with his employer, no doubt Max was also fully aware of exactly why the lift had been stopped between floors!
Good Lord, she had almost made love with Drakon in a lift!
Drakon Lyonedes…
Even more frustratingly, his hair smoothed back into style and his suit jacket and tie now straightened, he now looked just as smoothly self-contained as usual. Whereas she—goodness knew what she must look like, with her dress still unzipped at the back and her hair in a tangle about her shoulders, her cheeks hot and the peach gloss kissed from her lips!
‘Turn around.’
Gemini raised startled lids and looked warily up at Drakon. She moistened her slightly swollen and sensitive lips before speaking. ‘Sorry…?’
His own mouth was a thin, uncompromising line in the arrogant planes of his face, his eyes as hard as the onyx they resembled. ‘If you turn around I will re-zip your dress.’
Gemini clutched the material to her breasts and quickly turned away from him, trembling when she felt every cold inch of that zip against her heated skin as Drakon deftly refastened it. She wondered what on earth she was supposed to do now…How was she supposed to behave towards the man she had almost made love with in a lift? Was there a precedent for that sort of thing? Some sort of protocol that she—never having made love in a lift before—didn’t have a clue about?
Of course there wasn’t a protocol for this type of thing! And hysteria really wasn’t an option either—which meant Gemini had to get a grip as quickly as possible and stop behaving like an inexperienced idiot. Even if she was one…
Oh, she had dated often at university—had even thought she might have been in love a couple of times and mildly experimented with lovemaking. But once she’d bought and started to run the shop her time had pretty much been taken up with making it into a success, leaving little opportunity for dating, let alone falling in love. In fact, now that she gave it some thought, dinner this evening with Drakon was as close as she had got to having anything that even resembled a date for well over a year.
Which was absolutely no excuse—and definitely not an explanation—for the explosion of arousal and passion that had just happened between the two of them!
She might be inexperienced, but Drakon certainly wasn’t. And after her behaviour just now she doubted that he would believe she was either…
‘Do you intend to stare at that wall for the rest of our journey down?’
Gemini flinched at the hard amusement she could hear in Drakon’s voice as she felt the lift begin its descent. ‘Not at all,’ she denied briskly, and she turned, bending down to retrieve her clutch bag from the floor of the lift before forcing herself to look up and meet the hardness of his gaze. ‘Well, that was certainly…different,’ she said lamely.
‘Yes.’ Drakon’s mouth twisted in self-derision. ‘Different’ was certainly one way of describing the way in which the situation had totally spiralled out of his control once he had taken Gemini into his arms!
He hadn’t meant to kiss her at all, let alone touch her in that intimate way, but once he had done so and she had responded…! It hadn’t mattered to Drakon at all that at that moment they were in a lift together. Nor had he given any thought to the fact that stopping the lift in between floors in that way would alert whoever was on security duty this evening. He had just wanted to touch her, taste her—damn it, he had wanted to eat her up until he had totally devoured her! He still wanted to do that…
His jaw tightened. ‘I do not fly back to New York until next week. Perhaps we could have dinner together again tomorrow evening?’
Those beautiful sea-green eyes widened incredulously. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?’
Drakon raised dark brows. ‘Why not?’
Gemini shook her head. ‘I’m sure I don’t really have to explain that to you!’ She glanced gratefully out into the hallway as the lift doors opened out onto the ground floor.
‘Nevertheless…’ Drakon stood back to allow her to precede him out into the dimmed hallway, his expression grim. ‘We have already established that neither of us is involved with anyone else.’
That might or might not be true—the fact that Gemini had believed Drakon when he’d claimed not to be involved with Angela didn’t mean that he didn’t have someone else waiting for him in New York! And it certainly didn’t mean that they should see each other again before he left England.
Not when agreeing to see him again would no doubt be seen by him as a tacit agreement from her for a repeat—no, a conclusion of that explosion of passion that had just occurred between them in the lift…
CHAPTER SIX
GEMINI gave a definite shake of her head. ‘I’m sure to be exhausted after working on the wedding flowers all day tomorrow, but thank you for asking.’
Drakon had regretted making the invitation virtually as soon as he’d made it! Regretted it and inwardly berated himself for even thinking of seeing her again.
