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He let out a low sound, not wanting to think about that right now. He just had to fight this impossibly overwhelming urge to put his hands on her shoulders and haul her to him, to claim that pink, perfect mouth with his, just like he had a lifetime ago.
He seemed to have no control where Isla Sinclair was concerned, and yet suddenly he couldn’t bring himself to care. The rules he’d made for himself—rules that had worked flawlessly all these years—had been in disarray ever since she’d walked onto his ship.
Or even before that, when he’d been called to that damned bar brawl.
This wasn’t how things were meant to be. His career wasn’t supposed to merge with his personal life. It couldn’t. Because each needed to be kept in its own box—one that he could pick up easily when it was time and put down just as easily when he needed to. But Isla didn’t fit that black and white mould.
She didn’t fit any mould.
She was too fluid, and vibrant, and...challenging. She was upturning all those carefully ordered boxes, spilling the contents of his life out onto the floor and mixing them up. And, for all his statements about not blurring the lines, he wasn’t really preventing her.
Worse, he was encouraging her. He was the one who had kissed her back at the banana plantation, and he was the one who had come to her cabin now.
‘I came to apologise,’ he lied. Because that hadn’t been in the forefront of his mind when he’d stalked the corridors to get here—though it should have been.
‘To apologise?’ Her eyebrows shot up, as if she didn’t believe him either.
She already knew him too well, and what did it say that he liked the idea of that?
‘You’re right.’ He dipped his head. ‘It was me who called you a distraction, but kissed you today. It is me who is seeking you out now, to try to make things...less fraught between us. To make sure that, after this afternoon, I haven’t given you false hope.’
‘False hope?’ she echoed again, this time in disbelief.
Though there was something else in her tone that made him feel he should tread warily. He just couldn’t put his finger on what that something was.
‘That there could be a repeat of what happened between us, in Chile.’
‘I understood what you were referring to,’ she managed stiffly. ‘Sex. You can use the word, Nikhil, I’m not prudish.’
No, she wasn’t. A reel of X-rated images rolled through his head, from the unabashed way she’d come apart in his arms to the wild way she’d shattered under his tongue. All of which threatened to break his resolve.
His body was heating at the mere memory, his heart beginning to drum out a beat in his chest. Low, and deep, and carnal. A call to action.
She was so close that he could smell the fresh scent of her shampoo, stirring his memories and telling him that she’d only recently emerged from the shower. Giving him a whole new set of images to contend with. Testing his apparently already fragile resolve.
‘Sex then,’ he growled, fascinated at the way she fought not to react.
‘Sex,’ she managed, and it was all he could do not to bend his head and lick the promise-laden word from her lips. ‘We had it. And it was...fine.’
‘Fine?’ The exclamation was out before he could stop it.
‘Good, then,’ she amended. ‘But you’re mistaken if you think that I spend my days dreaming of more.’
‘Indeed?’
Without really knowing what he was doing, Nikhil edged closer to her, ignoring the voice in his head shouting that this was the perfect way out. It allowed Isla to save face whilst giving him what he wanted—what he said he wanted—distance. It wasn’t a challenge; he shouldn’t take it as one.
‘You don’t think of it at all?’ His voice sounded odd. Not himself.
‘No.’ Her voice was insubstantial. ‘Never.’
Before he could think better of it, he dipped his head to her ear.
‘Liar,’ he murmured. ‘You want a lot more.’
‘No.’ She jerked her head a little, as though trying to shake it. ‘You’re not the only one with no-go rules about colleagues.’
‘I’m not talking about other colleagues, Isla. I’m talking about you and me.’
