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Seeing the heat in his eyes as they met hers, the spike of satisfaction quelled her irritation. Seemed she hadn’t guessed wrong, and his insistence on ‘getting to know her better’ was really just another prelude to sex. Grabbing her coat, she stepped outside, eager to get the evening up and running—towards its inevitable conclusion—and ignored the tiny tingle of disappointment that his motives were just as simple as she’d expected.
He lifted her coat out of her hands and held it up for her. She threaded her arms into the sleeves, not reading too much into the chivalrous gesture. She was entitled to a bit of gallantry after that abominable note this morning.
But then his forefinger brushed across her nape, lifting the curls of hair that had escaped her chignon over the coat’s collar. Sensation rippled down her back. She turned abruptly, dislodging his finger. Cool air brushed her thighs, making her a little too conscious of her knickerless state. ‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see.’ He held out his hand, palm up. ‘But first, hand over your cellphone.’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Because whatever happens tonight is between you and me, and not for your five hundred thousand followers, or however many it is you have by now.’
‘I wasn’t planning to post about this,’ she replied, indignantly. The truth was she’d logged off her Twitter account as soon as she’d returned to her desk after their tryst at the office and hadn’t logged on again since. The crutch that had been so important to her for six months had turned into a shackle around her neck—sharing her dating history with strangers was only fun when it was funny. She wasn’t seeing the humour in this situation anymore.
Not that there was anything serious going on between her and Brent, she told herself staunchly. They were only scratching a long-tormenting itch together. But he had come to mean something important to her sex-starved hormones—and she didn’t want to cheapen that. Any more than she already had. Which was probably why the desire to share tonight’s events with loads of strangers had been conspicuous by its absence.
‘Then there’s no harm in me holding on to your cell.’ He clicked his fingers.
She huffed. ‘Good to know you trust me so much.’ She reached into her handbag, drew out her smartphone and slapped it into his palm, disguising the foolish flicker of hurt with indignation.
Why should he trust her? She didn’t trust him. And why did it even matter if he did or not? After tonight they’d have gotten their fill of each other and that would be an end to their affair. She didn’t expect anything more.
Correction. She didn’t want anything more.
He sent her a rueful smile as he tucked the phone into the breast pocket of his suit. ‘That’s what tonight is all about. Building trust,’ he said, wrong-footing her again. ‘But I’m the first to admit, we’re not there yet.’
Before she had a chance to formulate a suitable response to his unsettling statement of purpose, he cupped her elbow and led her down the front steps to a waiting black cab. ‘Take us to Millennium Bridge.’
He settled on the seat beside her as the cab drove away from the kerb.
She took the opportunity to trail a finger-nail down the lapel of his suit jacket, dropping her voice to a throaty purr. ‘Nice threads. Tom Ford?’ He could build trust if he wanted; she planned to build something much more user-friendly—like sexual tension—and she didn’t plan to pretend this was about anything other than the obvious while she was doing it.
Instead of replying, he caught her finger and brought it to his lips. The chaste kiss he bestowed on her fingertip was somewhat contradicted by the mocking heat in his gaze. ‘I wore it to impress you, so I guess it did the trick.’
She
tugged her finger out of his grasp, knocked off-kilter again by his apparent sincerity. ‘If you’re planning to seduce me, Brent, there’s really no need. We both know what this evening is about. And what we’re wearing isn’t going to matter for very long.’
She sat back, crossed her legs, pleased with the direct approach, and the unequivocal message behind it—but annoyed that he’d made her play her hand so soon. Still, at least now he knew she knew exactly what the score was, and she was more than ready to play.
‘What’s wrong, Tally? Don’t you think you deserve to be seduced?’
The husky challenge arrowed right past the shield of confidence to sink into the tender flesh beneath.
‘I don’t need to be seduced—there’s a difference.’ She slanted a look at him. ‘And that doesn’t make me a whore.’ She saw him flinch and knew she’d scored a direct hit. ‘It simply makes me a woman who knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to ask for it.’
She stared out the window and watched the unflattering rabbit warren of pollution-stained concrete and red brick fly past as the cab drove through the Barbican.
‘Then a seduction won’t bother you, will it?’ His hand settled on her leg, warm and—damn it—seductive. ‘I want to make this morning up to you, Tally.’
‘There’s no need.’ She swung round. ‘If that’s what tonight is all about, don’t bother.’ Good god, was this some kind of pity date he was taking her on?
‘There’s every damn need. We had a great night and I screwed it up.’
She lifted a shoulder, let it drop—the picture of nonchalance, she hoped. ‘It was a mistake. You didn’t know about my Twitter habit when you read the card,’ she said, only to have Henry’s words when she’d confronted him about the lies and the deceptions, the wife he had failed to mention, echo in her head on cue.
Get real, Tal. You were an amazing fuck and you were offering it for free. No man in his right mind’s going to turn that down—especially a married one.
She tramped down the familiar guilt that she’d worked so hard to deny. And the agonising feeling of inadequacy.
