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She turned to him, careful to keep any emotion out of her expression.
She came across as haughty, yet he knew she wasn’t. He didn’t know how he could say that with such confidence, given her suddenly untouchable demeanour. It made him ache to shake her. Or to show her how very, very touchable and hot-blooded she was.
“Have dinner.”
“No thank you,” she smiled with a saccharine sweetness.
“Then stay the night. There is much fun yet to be had.”
Her smile was tight. “I don’t think I can take more fun tonight.”
It was no lie. Her insides were quivering with a combination of absolute delight and exhaustion. She curled her fingers around the handle of the door, but he was there first.
Her eyes flared to his. She wasn’t afraid. She’d only met him hours earlier, but she knew she could trust him. She was more surprised than anything. “Just sex, remember,” she reminded herself as much as him.
“I remember.” He was naked. Gloriously, sublimely visible to her in his entirety. “Here is my card. It has my personal number. If you need any more fun … or anything, please call me.”
Cassie had a photographic memory. She wondered if it was something she’d perfected back in her Dark Days. For whatever reason, she had the ability to look at something once and recall it in picture perfect clarity in her mind’s eye. Therefore, she took great care never to look at something unless she knew she wanted to retain the information.
She folded her fingers around the card and nodded. “Good bye.”
He didn’t want to say the words. She was leaving, and it had taken this long for Layth to realise that he didn’t want her to.
And yet he watched her go. He watched her step into the lift, and then he moved to one of the windows that overlooked the street. Several moments later, Cassie emerged, her pale blonde hair blowing behind her in the evening breeze. She was easy to see; his suite was not so high from street level, and Cassie was distinctive. From her impressive figure to those sexy red shoes, she was a woman who stood out in technicolour against a greyscale world. As he watched, she reached her hand out over one of the London’s many garbage cans and dropped something small inside.
And he knew, with a sinking feeling, what it was.
His card.
She’d wanted a single sexual encounter, and she’d got it.
That would be it for them, and Layth told himself that it suited him fine.
3
She’d stayed away for a week.
It had been easy to tell herself that work was busy, demanding client dinners and early starts. And it was true.
But that wasn’t the reason she’d stayed out of her favourite Bond Street bar. She’d kept clear of the fertile hunting ground for eligible men because of one very hot, very sexy stranger.
Even now her stomach lurched at the idea of seeing Layth Sati again. She scanned the bar, her heart in her chest as she searched him out. He wasn’t there.
She told herself the swell in her chest was relief.
It was packed, but then that was the norm for a Friday night. Office workers, ready to unwind after a busy day, were jammed against the bar. Cassie, in a bright green off-the-shoulder dress and a strappy pair of stilettos stood out like a strawberry in a potato box. She glided through the crowds, her eyes focussed on the front.
The usual staff were there. She smiled at Renee, the French barman she’d known for years. When he saw her, he let out a low whistle. “Cass, you’re getting more beautiful each time I see you.”
She grinned back at him. “You’re a charmer.”
“Oui,” he pulled a cocktail shaker from the edge of the bar and began to toss ice and fresh lime into it. “Your week has been busy?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “I’ve hardly even seen Melinda. Lots of late nights for me. And for her.”
“Ah, the divinely unattainable Melinda. You do not bring her here more than twice.”
“No,” she smiled, as she always did in the face of his beautiful accent and slightly incorrect sentence construction. “She doesn’t really share my enthusiasm for … mojitos,” Cassie shrugged.
