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The single-storey cabin was surprisingly compact. All on one floor, the larger part of the cabin on the land end housed the two bedrooms, each with windows that displayed more of the dark and twisted coastline, along with the most exquisite bathroom Henna had ever seen. At the end of a room covered in bronzed golden tiles was the largest bath she’d ever seen, pressed right up against the window—the only thing separating the bather from the sea.
She’d been staring at it when Aleksander had called her to the table where their evening meal had been served. Dinner had been silent, the delectable food lost on Henna as her stomach roiled as much as the waves. Cured fish, celeriac remoulade, gently pickled beets, caviar—it was as if the chef had known her favourite things and brought them together in a dish that should have torn her attention from the man opposite her, but didn’t. The silence was building between them into something that had become impossibly loud and she really didn’t know what would break it.
She saw his reflection in the glass behind her, saw the whisky he offered her.
‘Drink with me?’
His request was strange to hear when, before, he would simply have demanded. She reached for the glass, avoiding his fingers as she retrieved it from his grasp. The cut crystal was still warm from the palm of his hand, her skin, her body, instinctively seeking it out.
She refused to meet his gaze, instead turning back to look out at the sea as she took a sip of the whisky and all she could think of was that she would never see this incredible coastline again. She would never come to this unimaginable hotel again. She would never be alone with a man as powerful and devastating as Aleksander again. It had become an urgent refrain in her mind and she couldn’t make it stop. It hurt, and it was loud, and she was tired of fighting the desperate need she had to feel his hands on her skin, to let him finish what he’d started in his office on his desk.
Maybe then it would stop, she lied to herself. Maybe then she wouldn’t react to just the thought of him, she wouldn’t pant his name in the midnight hours from dreams that had fuelled night sweats. Maybe then she would finally be able to say goodbye and take up the promise of the next phase of her life in a new job and a new city.
She bent her head over her glass of whisky, defeated by her desires, and just when she was about to give up, to run away and hide in her room, she felt the faintest trace of his breath against the back of her neck. Heat exploded between her legs and her heart raced as if she were running, long and hard towards a finish line that felt impossible to even consider. First it was his breath, then it was the pad of his thumb, pressing lightly at the bottom of her hairline, down her spine to the collar of her silk shirt. She felt the skin flush at her cheeks and between her breasts, and thought she heard him curse, but the pounding of her pulse was so loud in her head she wasn’t sure.
Her nipples pebbled beneath the oyster silk of her shirt, cold and aching for his touch, while the heat of his body drenched her from behind, a tantalising promise of what could be. She turned beneath his touch, his palm cupping her neck, and they were finally face to face with barely an inch between them.
The moment their eyes locked, she wished she could look away. The heat in his gaze burned so hot she felt it soul deep and knew she would never be the same again. She began to tremble and even the gentle warmth of his palm on her neck couldn’t steady her.
He cursed and drew her towards the wood burner in the centre of the living area. He took plush pillows and soft throws from the sofa and chairs and gently led her to the floor. She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t cold. Wanted to tell him that only one thing would make the trembling stop, but she couldn’t form the words and once again Aleksander pressed a glass of whisky into her hands and she drank from it as she couldn’t from him.
Aleksander shifted back on the floor so that he rested against the sofa opposite to where he had led Henna closest to the heat of the fire—even though he was half convinced that she hadn’t been trembling from the cold.
Elbows on bent knees, he watched her drink from the glass of whisky, her eyes shielded from his gaze by the turn of her face towards the fire. Slowly the shakes racking her body began to lessen and with it a little of the concern in his chest, but not enough.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
She nodded, but he needed more. ‘I need to hear it, Henna.’
She looked away from the fire and pierced him with her gaze. ‘I’m okay.’
Her words were steady, but her breathing was too controlled to be natural. He ran his hand across his forehead and threaded his fingers into his hair and gripped. He needed to hold something because Henna would see that she wasn’t the only one trembling. He’d felt it in his fingers as she’d turned in his hand; her skin against his had been almost too much for him to bear. And while she was brave enough to wear her desire, to own it, he knew instinctively that should he betray just how much need he felt for her they would both burn that night.
She cleared her throat. ‘You’ve been here before?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ignoring the train of his thoughts.
‘So, this is a regular thing, these meetings?’ she asked, reaching for her glass, her fingers shaking less.
In that moment he doubted he would ever come back here again. His request to move the meetings elsewhere would be granted without question. But he’d never be able to look out of that window again without seeing Henna’s head bowed, without feeling her skin beneath his touch, hearing the hitch in her breathing hardening his arousal to the point of near pain.
‘Twice a year in person,’ he replied, forcing the words out through the haze of desire he was taunting himself with.
‘Huh,’ she said, swallowing a delicate mouthful of the rich amber alcohol he’d poured for her, his tongue curling in his mouth as he imagined that she’d taste of the orange peel, smoke and sea salt the whisky was renowned for.
‘What?’ he asked, trying to distract himself from needing to taste her.
‘You have a secret cabal of billionaires.’
His gaze left her lips, jerked up to her eyes, twinkling bright with tease, and he barked out a laugh. His reaction made her smile and for a moment they shared a lightness that banked the tension from before.
‘I will neither confirm nor deny,’ he said, the smile on his lips forming the tone of his words.
‘Because the first rule of the cabal is—’
‘Not to talk about the cabal.’
He reached for his own glass, not because he wanted to drink but because he needed to taste her, and this was as close as he could let himself get. He could lie and tell himself that the reason he couldn’t touch her was because of her friendship with Freya, or because they worked together...but he hadn’t lied to himself for a very long time. The truth was that Henna already challenged his emotions. He had made decisions based on what she would think or do, he had created a charity for children that had been inspired by the loss she had overcome as a young girl because she had been there, entwined with his emotions, for years. He threw the whisky back, relishing the burn of alcohol as a punishment. Because, no matter how much he knew she was a risk to him, he still wanted her. And when he looked back to Henna, he saw the same need in her eyes.
