So she could have this memory for ever.
She didn’t need to look up to do that, though. His every feature was already branded on her brain. She knew that dark stubble peppered his jaw. Alex needed to shave every day, but he’d skipped that chore this morning, eager to get started on the painting instead. Her palm itched to sample that roughness, her tongue burned to trace it, to taste it…
to tease him.
Today he looked more like a disreputable pirate than a civilised businessman and a thril coursed through her at the danger she sensed simmering just beneath the surface.
Final y obeying the silent command she sensed in him, she lifted her gaze to his. At the edge of his right eyebrow was a tiny nick, as if he’d once had a stitch there. She’d always meant to ask him about it, but her breath came in shal ow gulps and her pulse had gone so erratic she didn’t trust her voice not to give her away.
His eyes burned dark and hot as they travel ed over her, and her soul sang at the possessiveness that transformed his features. No longer afraid of revealing her desire for him, she lowered her gaze to his lips. Need, hunger, thirst al speared into her. Her lips parted. Her eyes searched out his again, pleading with him to sate her need. If she couldn’t taste him just one more time she thought she might die.
Something midway between a groan and a growl emerged from his throat. His hand tightened on her stomach. Her hand tightened over his. Yes! Oh, please, yes!
Stil Alex held back, his eyes devouring her face as if he was picturing in vivid detail every caress he meant to place there. He didn’t lift his hand from her abdomen and it felt like a promise. His fingers splayed, sending darts of need right into the core of her, making her tremble with the intensity of her desire.
His other hand came up to cup her face, his thumb traced the outline of her bottom lip, dipped into the moistness of her mouth, traced her lips again, moved back and forth over them as if to sensitize them to the utmost limit of their endurance before taking her to the next level with his lips and mouth and tongue.
She started to pant, wanted to beg him for his lips, his mouth, his tongue, but stil his mouth didn’t descend. With a low growl she flicked her tongue across his thumb. He stiffened as if electrified. She drew his thumb into her mouth, circled it with her tongue, suckled it until his eyes darkened to obsidian.
And then final y, slowly, inexorably, his head lowered and her blood started to sing. His body blocked out the sun and, as he moved closer and closer, al she could see was the light reflected in his eyes. His lips touched hers, moved over hers—
surely, reverently, thoroughly—her eyes fluttered closed and, as the kiss deepened, light burst behind her eyelids. Every wonderful Christmas, every sun-drenched summer and visiting dolphin, every bright and beautiful thing that had ever existed in her life gained a new vitality in that kiss.
The need and the energy, it took her and Alex and merged them into a sparkling, flaming oneness until, body and soul, she didn’t know where she ended and Alex began. It was the kind of kiss to shape and Alex began. It was the kind of kiss to shape worlds and change lives. It shifted the foundations of her world and al she believed about herself.
The hope is greater than the fear.
For the first time where Alex was concerned, her hope was greater than her fear.
Alex eased away from Kit. He didn’t know for how long they’d kissed. He barely knew which way was up. Very slowly he drew his hands away—one from her face, one from her stomach. He tried to stop his legs from jerking in reaction.
‘Are you okay?’
Her voice came out soft and husky, as if he’d kissed al her breath away. Served her right for kissing his breath clean away too.
He nodded and cleared his throat. ‘And you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
She had stars in her eyes! No woman should look at him like that.
An imaginary noose pul ed tight around his neck, and yet for a moment al he could see was the shine on her lips and he ached to sample them again.
‘I’m…’ He cleared his throat again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not.’
‘It can’t happen again.’
‘I’l be holding my breath til it does.’
He closed his eyes. He was in way over his head.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE phone rang. Alex stared at it and then down the hal way towards the bathroom, where he doubted anything could be heard over the blast of Kit’s hairdryer.
The phone rang again.
He opened his mouth to hol er for Kit. He snapped it closed again. She wouldn’t hear him. Or if she did she’d ask him to answer it for her.
He snatched it up, barked, ‘Hel o?’ into the receiver.
He hated answering her phone. There would always be a strategic pause, like now, as the person on the other end of the line—one of the very many of Kit’s community of friends—tried to weigh him up by the sound of his voice.
‘Hel o, I’m hoping to speak with Kit Mercer.’
Female. It wasn’t a voice he recognized, but something about it made his shoulders loosen a fraction. ‘I’l just get her for you. May I ask who’s cal ing?’
‘Candace Woodbury. I’m her mother.’
Kit’s mother! His shoulders immediately clenched up twice as tight. ‘Uh…right.’ He headed down the hal way and knocked on the bathroom door. And then he gulped. He hoped Kit was decent.
‘I’m sorry—’ that pleasant voice purred down the line ‘—but I didn’t catch your name.’
His teeth ground together for a moment. He unclenched them to mutter, ‘Alex Hal am.’
‘Ah…you’re Alex.’
He grimaced and rol ed his shoulders, knocked on the bathroom door again. Louder.
Muffled muttering came from behind it, then it was flung open and Kit stood there in a white terry-towel ing robe that stopped short of her knees, her hair fluffed around her face. She literal y glowed with that golden light he found almost irresistible. He wanted to reach out and cup her cheek, slip the robe from her shoulders and explore her new lush curves.
He wanted to kiss her like he had on the breakwater the other day.
He wanted to please her. Pleasure her.
His jaw clenched. He had to remember al the reasons why that was such a bad idea.
‘Is that for me?’ she said, al sass and fire as if she was aware of the effect she had on him.
She raised an eyebrow and pointed downwards.
Did he have an erection? He’d done his best to quash—
The air left his lungs in a rush. She was pointing at the phone. He shoved it into her hands. ‘It’s your mother.’ And then he fled.
It didn’t prevent him from hearing the start of her conversation. ‘Mum, I see you’ve met Alex. I think you scared him off.’ And then the bathroom door closed and he was out in the living room again and could breathe. After a fashion.
Kit’s mum hadn’t scared him off. He stretched his neck to the right and then to the left. He dropped down onto a sofa. Who was he trying to kid? Al of it
—Kit’s whole life—scared the heck out of him.
Everyone here, they had expectations of him. He’d rather deal with the savage cut and thrust of a boardroom coup than Kit’s family and friends.
He leant his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands. He didn’t have a lot of friends to speak of. Loads of acquaintances, but not many friends. He had a couple of mates from his building trade days, another from university and one from school.