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As though it hadn’t only been this morning that he’d left her bed.
As though it had been a whole eternity.
Part of her felt as though it must surely have been that long. And she didn’t understand how, though her mind had replayed last night several times already—in spectacular detail—it had somehow failed to recapture quite the intensity of the effect Nikhil had on her.
Her mind had somehow played it down. That didn’t seem possible. But it wasn’t playing it down now; it was sending her wild and flooding her with a sense of lust that she could hardly believe she’d denied existed only twenty-four hours before.
Before she’d met Nikhil.
Now, she could do nothing but give into that fervour. More than that, she was practically racing tow
ards it.
It was ludicrous the way her body reacted with memories and anticipation, and all she could do was press herself against him—hot steel against her softest part. Full of promise.
It was a noise outside the cabin door that finally broke into their fragile, fictitious little bubble. The voices of crew who could only be officers, talking confidently outside the room—reminding Isla and Nikhil exactly where they were. And what they were supposed to be doing.
Or perhaps, more the point, what they weren’t supposed to be doing.
In one smooth movement, Nikhil swung her away from him and set her down, turning to stalk back to his desk whilst Isla scrambled to get her head together. And her clothing straight.
‘This was a mistake.’
His words lashed through the air, and she was almost surprised when they didn’t physically cut into her flesh.
‘How very clichéd of you.’ She barely recognised her own voice in her effort not to fold under his glower. ‘Disappointingly so, in fact.’
‘Is everything a joke to you, Dr Sinclair?’
‘Dr Sinclair?’ She was proud that her voice didn’t waver too badly. ‘Do you think that addressing each other formally can erase what just happened between us?’
‘Clearly, we need some boundaries.’
‘Boundaries?’ She narrowed her eyes at him.
‘I warned you that nothing more could happen between us again. And yet here we are.’
Isla busied herself tucking her shirt in, not quite trusting herself to answer straight away.
How had it come to this? She’d been so careful all her life, and then last night she’d met Nikhil and she’d decided that one night—just for once—she could throw caution to the wind.
And now she was standing in her boss’s office—technically her boss’s boss’s office—her clothes in disarray, a low, molten ache deep within and her legs threatening to buckle beneath her at any moment. And now Nikhil seemed to be laying it all at her feet.
It was too much to bear.
‘You say it like you think this is entirely my fault,’ she managed at last. Then lifted her eyes to his with as much defiance as she could muster. ‘Or have I misunderstood?’
* * *
He’d called her pyar.
My love.
Nikhil glowered across the room, torn between contemplating the madness of having sent her away from him just now and the lunacy of having brought her to his office in the first instance.
He had no idea how he’d managed to tear himself away from her. He had even less idea how he managed to stand in place, around the other side of the desk from her, as though it could provide some barrier between them.
As though it made her any less of a siren, and him any less the mariner drawn inexorably to her.
