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He kissed her again. Quick and hard. ‘Shut up, Isobella.’ He ran his thumb over the swollen contours of her mouth and was gratified to hear a faint whimper somewhere in the back of her throat. ‘This isn’t about male arousal patterns or physiology or monkeys. This is about me wanting you.’ He kissed her again briefly, for good measure, pleased to feel the almost slavish way she responded. ‘And you wanting me.’
His voice coming out at her from the inky night seemed even more sinful. Like a whisper in the dark. He wanted her. And he knew she wanted him.
‘So what are we going to do about it?’
His voice growled low in her ear, and her fingers curled into her palm as her lower abdominal muscles squeezed tight. She wanted to devour him on the spot. Years of celibacy and an ugly duckling complex had made her ripe for this moment. Alex Zaphirides wanted her. Alex Zaphirides, who could have anyone. It just didn’t make sense.
‘Are you sure this isn’t an any port in a storm thing?’
Alex sighed. ‘Isobella, I’ve been wanting to get your god-awful clothes off all week.’
Isobella supposed she should take offence at his dig over her clothes, but the revelation that he’d wanted her all week stirred her long-suppressed hormones and completely blunted her cognitive powers.
‘But why?’ Once upon a time she wouldn’t have had to ask that question, but it had been a long time since a man had noticed her.
He heard the genuine bewilderment in her voice. She sounded small and impossibly young in the big, dark night. ‘Maybe because I can see beneath all that camouflage? Behind the big glasses, baggy clothes and white coat. You are a beautiful woman, Isobella Nolan.’
How many years had it been since she’d been told that? She’d heard it so often in her younger years she’d never really appreciated it. Until now. And Alex Zaphirides thought she was beautiful.
Her hand was on his bare chest, resting near his shoulder, and he was warm and solid. And he wanted her. He thought she was beautiful. Was he spinning her some pretty lies? No. She believed him. She’d heard enough false platitudes during her modelling years to know sincerity when she heard it.
‘Isobella?’
She heard the question in his raspy voice. The ball was in her court. The sensible thing, of course, would be to get out of bed right now and put as much distance between them as possible. He was her boss, and it was entirely inappropriate. But how often had she dreamed about this? How often had she denied herself the normal urges of a healthy young woman?
It could only be tonight. She knew that. Alex had made himself more than clear on his attitude to relationships, and she wasn’t stupid enough to think that she would be any more than one of Alex’s catch-kiss-and-throw-back girls. And that was fine. In fact it might be just what the doctor had ordered. Get this unhealthy crush out of her system once and for all. And then get back to what was really important—her work.
And what better place then here in the pitch-black? In this haven safe from the raging cyclone and her past? Here she could be an equal. Not poor, scarred Isobella, to pity or recoil from, but a woman indulging her sexual side free from all her usual bodily hang-ups. In the darkness she could be Izzy again.
Emboldened by the impenetrable night and by years of suppressing her feminine side, she trailed her hand down his chest.
Alex felt each and every muscle ripple beneath her hand in turn as it passed over them. ‘Isobella.’
The gravel in his voice was like the rub of sandpaper against her belly, her nipples, her inner thigh. She inched lower.
Alex swallowed as her finger prodded at the waistband to his boxers. ‘Isobella…’
She heard the strained warning and it somehow made her bolder. She pushed into his boxers and her fingers sought a way into his underwear.
Alex swallowed as the tips of her fingers grazed his swollen head. ‘Isobella.’
This time it was a groan. A groan so ragged it was a physical entity stroking, deep inside her. She finally reached her destination, her hand nudging the solid length of him and then enclosing him, her palm filling with his girth.
She sighed and squeezed. He felt like velvet over steel and her hand revelled in the sensation. The moan rumbling from his mouth empowered her further. She moved her closed hand down the length of him. Then back up again. Then down again.
‘Isobella!’ Alex was almost delirious from her touch. It was torture. ‘You’d better be prepared to follow through if you keep doing—’
It was her turn to interrupt him, cutting him off with her mouth, softly at first, tentatively, then with growing confidence as his mouth joined in, his head lifting off the bed to devour her more thoroughly. She broke away as dizziness spun stars in front of her. ‘How was that for follow-through?’ she teased.
