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His deep voice was sleep-rough, his warm breath stirring her hair.
Miller stilled, wanting to run and wanting to stay at the same time. In the end she wasn’t strong enough to resist his magnetic pull and subsided back against his hard body.
‘Where were you going, anyway?’
‘I really need to start making tracks.’
‘Now, there’s a very Aussie expression.’ He rolled her onto her back and rose up on one elbow, his gunmetal-grey eyes lazily intense between thick, dark lashes.
Feeling exposed, Miller pulled the sheet up over her breasts. His gaze lingered on the sheet and she had the vague impression that he was about to flick it off her.
Glad when he didn’t, she let her breath out slowly.
‘Why are you so determined to run off, anyway? You don’t strike me as the one-night-stand type.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then stay one more day. I have a sponsors gig tonight. You can come with me.’
Alarmed by just how much she wanted to accept what she suspected was an unplanned invitation, Miller immediately reacted in the negative. ‘I can’t. I have to work.’
Annoyance flickered briefly across his face. ‘Work from here. You have your computer.’
Miller smoothed her eyebrows. He was doing his steamroller thing again, but what was one more day to him? And when would she go home? Later tonight or in the morning?’
He stroked a strand of hair back off her forehead. God, she must look a mess.
‘I know what you’re thinking. You don’t like the uncertainty of it.’
Miller’s eyes flashed to his. Did he really know her that well, or was she really that easy to read?
‘It’s not hard to figure out, Miller. I know you hate surprises so it follows that you wouldn’t like half-baked plans. How about we make it the whole week?’
The whole week!
‘Five days, to be exact. That way you can come to my mother’s gala event, which TJ is expecting to see you at anyway, and watch me race on Sunday.’
Miller felt her brows scrunch together. ‘Why would you want me to come to your mother’s ball?’
Tino rolled onto his back and gave her a reprieve from his intense scrutiny. ‘Honestly? My mother invites every debutante in the known universe to this thing and expects me and my brothers to meet every one of them in the hope that we’ll fall in love.’
His apathetic attitude to falling in love stabbed at something inside her. ‘Oh, poor you. All those single women in one room. I would have thought it was every man’s dream.’
Her words were sharper than she had intended, but she was slightly insulted that he would talk about other women while he was in bed with her. Even if they were women he apparently didn’t want.
The reminder that he would never want anyone permanently—not even her—struck a chord, because permanence was all she did seek! She’d just never sought it with a man before.
‘Hardly.’ His dramatic tone nearly made her laugh, despite her aggravation. ‘Debutantes come with strings attached, stars in their eyes and pushy mothers. That’s no dream any man I know has ever had.’
Suddenly, he lifted onto his elbow, looming over her again, and Miller caught her breath. His gaze roved over her face and he trailed a finger over the sensitive skin of her neck just below her ear, winding a slow, sensual path downwards.
‘I did you a favour last weekend. The least you can do is protect me from women I’m not interested in on Saturday night.’
His voice had lowered with intent, and Miller’s body responded like one of Pavlov’s dogs. She pushed his hand away. ‘Stop that. I can’t think when you’re this close.’
‘That’s only fair since you have the same effect on me.’
‘I do?’ For some reason, his admission startled her.
‘Well, I can think, but it’s usually about one thing.’ His hand returned and his fingers circled her nipple, making her arch off the bed. ‘Say you’ll stay.’
She tried to organise her thoughts. ‘Because of the sex?’
She was breathless, and his smile as he rolled on top of her was one of pure male triumph. ‘The sex is phenomenal, but the more I think about you going to my mother’s party the more I like it. With you there I can relax, and I might even enjoy it. And Caruthers will expect it.’
‘Since when do you care what Dexter thinks?’ Miller asked breathlessly, catching a moan between her clamped lips as his fingers traced a figure eight over first one breast and then the other, skimming over her nipple just a little bit too lightly each time.
