The Rules of Engagement

‘Alas I left my tap shoes in my other car.’

Tango done, she levelled him with a stare. ‘At least promise me you had fun?’

‘More than I can possibly say.’ Having a nubile redhead wrapped about him a definite highlight, though he knew better than to let Lauren in on that score.

‘Fine,’ she said, sighing dramatically. ‘Go. Get your beauty sleep. It wouldn’t behove you, or the foundation, if you appeared anything less than implacable.’

After blowing him a kiss, she shimmied and boogied away into the crowd. Whatever things he might wish to change about his past, bringing her up wasn’t one of them.

Dax resisted the urge to look towards the bar one last time and turned towards the exit.

Something slithered down his neck. It felt as if it had legs long enough to belong to a bird-eating spider, so he flapped his suit jacket madly ’til whatever it was either flew away or was summarily squished.

He took a step, only to feel his foot slipping out from under him. He caught himself just in time, took a moment to find his breath, then lifted his shoe to find something twinkling at him from the dark wooden floor.

Braving the possibility of disease by letting his fingers stray that close to the layer of sticky ooze, Dax bent to pick it up.

It was long. It was shiny. And it was no bird-eating

spider.

* * *

‘What are you doing?’ Franny asked. ‘The cab’s waiting.’

Caitlyn, who was at that moment on her hands and knees—with paper napkins keeping all four from actually touching the precarious Sand Bar floor—blew a strand of hair from her mouth. ‘I’ve lost an earring.’

Franny threw out her hands in supplication. ‘It could be anywhere by now!’

‘Which is why I need to get a move on looking for it.’ With a shiver Caitlyn flicked a stray piece of random cocktail fruit from her wrist. ‘They were Gran’s. The chandeliers with the little flowers at the clasp.’

‘Oh,’ Franny said, looking suitably understanding. She knew the history those earrings had. Still she glanced longingly towards the door where the guy she’d spent half the last hour dirty dancing with was waiting to take her to heaven and back.

They’d promised to drop Caitlyn home on the way as her lift had evaporated once Cutey Patootey was no longer around to escort her. He’d disappeared into the wee hours after Caitlyn had made it clear, by not letting him stick his tongue in her ear, that she wasn’t going home with him that evening.

Caitlyn wasn’t all that disappointed. Not about that. Her gran’s earrings on the other hand... They meant something deeply. Her heart clenched hard at the thought of losing them for ever.

‘You go,’ she said, giving Franny a shove on the ankle, which was the only part she could reach from the floor. ‘I could be a while.’

Franny bit her lip, looked from Caitlyn’s no doubt pathetic position and back to the brooding blond in the leather jacket lounging mysteriously by the door.

‘Go!’

‘All right!’ Franny blushed furiously, then leant over the bar, getting the attention of the bartender. ‘Ivan! See to it our mate Cait makes it safely to a cab all right? And if anyone hands in an earring, it’s hers.’

Ivan peered at Caitlyn, grinned and nodded.

Franny said, ‘I won’t be home tonight. Usual place tomorrow for a warm down?’

‘If I must.’

Franny grinned, and took off at a sprint.

Caitlyn spent the next ten minutes peering at the floor and getting nowhere. Every minute down there had felt like an hour and the further she got, the more concerned she became.

She and her dad had picked out those earrings for her gran when she was eleven years old. No matter how short a stay he’d had at home between tours, he’d always made time for just the two of them, but she remembered that trip to the shops with him with such clarity. The next time he’d gone on tour he’d never come back.

Something glinted at her under a barstool! She pulled to a crouch, tucked herself into ball, peered underneath and—

‘Cait?’

At Ivan’s unexpected call, Caitlyn looked up so fast she bumped her head on the underside of the stool. Biting her lip to keep from swearing like a sailor, she rubbed her head and frowned up at him, only to find him holding a long glinting earring made of a dozen pieces of cut glass with a flower at the clasp.

She scrambled most ungracefully to her feet and grabbed the earring and held it to her chest, spinning around so that her hair slapped her in the face, but she didn’t care. ‘Oh, Ivan! My dear darling Ivan! I love you more than you could ever know!’

‘Love him,’ Ivan said with a grin, cocking his head to the right. ‘He found it.’

Caitlyn spun to a halt, spat a clump of hair from her mouth, and found herself looking into a pair of familiar dark eyes.

‘Dax,’ she said, his name a breathy sigh upon her lips.

Up close and personal he’d been impressive. At enough distance to get a load of the whole lot of him in one go he was...breathtaking. Dark, serious, cool, and with a face that got a girl to thinking she was wearing far too many clothes for comfort.

He seemed not to notice the feminine tremblings she’d resorted to, thank goodness. He just leaned comfortably against the bar, looking as if he’d been standing there watching her shuffle about on her hands and knees for some time and had been perfectly happy to do so.

‘You found it?’ she asked, somewhat redundantly. Though she was pretty impressed she’d been able to get any intelligible words out at all, considering the loudness of the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

‘I stood on it,’ he said, his deep voice reverberating inside her so that she might as well have been hollow. ‘If not for my natural grace you and your earring might have single-handedly laid me flat on my back.’

Dax, flat on his back. The image that created was a keeper. One she knew she’d be trotting out on long, cold, lonely winter nights.

‘It must have come loose when we...met.’ The guy made the word ‘met’ sound like a dirty word. Good dirty. Behind-closed-doors dirty.

Dax nodded to Ivan, who seemed to understand whatever signal he’d sent and moved away.

Something made Caitlyn almost call out for Ivan to stay. As if being left alone with this man without the aid of loud music, a tightly packed crowd, and low lighting was a kind of peril she knew she couldn’t withstand alone.

Dax pushed away from the bar and moved closer. Caitlyn curled her toes so as not to sway away. Even in her high heels she had to tilt her head to maintain eye contact.

He reached out and took her hand. Caitlyn’s breath caught in her throat. Then he turned her hand over and uncurled her fingers one by one.

Her gran’s gorgeously gaudy earring glinted back at her.

Relief poured through her, partly because she remembered why he was really there; not for some random seduction scene, but to return her lost property.

She took a deep breath, centred herself as best she could with his warm male scent curling about her, and turned the earring over in her now moist palm.

‘Is it okay?’ he asked.

The bar at the back was slightly bent, but other than that it was in perfect nick. ‘You’re light on your feet for a guy of your size. You could have mashed it completely. She’s barely bruised and with a little TLC she’ll be as good as gold.’

She risked looking at him. Her eyes locked to his. Hazel. Her new favourite colour in the whole world. Her breath came hard, for there was no hiding from the patent desire in his gaze. Desire for her.

The house lights slowly lifted, encouraging the dregs to stumble on home. Panic set in. Her hair would be a mess, her lipstick bitten away, her mascara ever so delightfully smudged. Yet his expression didn’t change. The glint in his eyes if anything grew. Scorched.

OH, GOD!

And for a girl who in the past had lived for the adrenalin brought on by the mere possibility of a new relationship, she felt as if she were free falling into those hot hazel eyes.

In the past being the most important part. She wasn’t looking for that brand of blistering intensity that could sweep a girl off her feet before she knew what was happening. She wanted fun and frivolity. She needed...

Sorbet.

All of a sudden parts of herself began to click and slide, like the tumbling open of a combination lock.

What she needed most was emotional catharsis.

What she wanted was to clear the bad taste in her mouth that her most recent failed engagement had left behind.

Sorbet sex.

What kind of sorbet sex she couldn’t be certain, since it was her first time going down that route. Sorbet came in a million different flavours, and if hers came in the guise of a tall, dark, handsome stranger she had no doubt could wipe away the memory of every man she’d ever met, well, then, who was she to argue?

‘Closing time,’ Ivan called out, dragging Caitlyn to the present.

Her breath shook as she wondered how exactly one went about picking up a sexy stranger in a bar by asking for no-strings sorbet sex.

‘Hungry?’ she asked, before she even felt the word coming.

‘Ravenous,’ Dax said without missing a single beat.

Well, she thought as he slid his hand around her waist, resting it possessively on her hip as he led her towards the door, even that gentle touch making her feel as if lava were sliding through her veins, that’s how.

CHAPTER TWO

CAITLYN stood in the long hall outside her apartment, hand shaking as she tried to slide her key into the door. It didn’t help that Dax was right behind her, his body heat doing crazy things to her nerves.

They hadn’t said a word after piling into the back seat of a taxi, where Caitlyn had barked out her address in a voice that made her sound as if she were impersonating a seal with laryngitis.

Their knees had almost bumped as the taxi rounded each corner, but not. Little fingers had almost touched on the rough fabric seat, but not. Gazes had clashed as they’d sought one another out again and again, threatening to entangle in such a way that had made Caitlyn’s heart feel as if it were about to burst from her chest, but not.

By the time they’d reached her South Yarra apartment block Caitlyn was so wired she was amazed she could walk in a straight line.

‘Let me,’ Dax’s deep voice rumbled behind her. He reached around, pried the key from her claw, and slid it into the lock as if the little hussy had just opened up for him with an easy sigh.

Any pretence at actual food being on offer went out the window when with a sigh Caitlyn spun in Dax’s arms, slid her hands into his gorgeous hair, pressed as high onto her tiptoes as humanly possible and kissed him for all she was worth.

* * *

Postponing gratification as she’d done so many times before had clearly been ass backwards. She’d had barely two conversations with the guy, didn’t even remember his last name, and had never been kissed so thoroughly in her whole life.

He was a pro, or at the very least gifted beyond the constraints of natural law. He did things with his tongue she hadn’t even imagined were possible. Her body didn’t care what was possible or not, it just melted and ached and craved all that and more. More than she possibly knew how to handle.

The intensity brought with it an ache that seemed to fill her very bones, leaving her feeling breathless, and wild with abandon.

Sorbet! she shouted in her head like a mantra when sense threatened to rear its unhelpful head. That was what he was. Sharp, cool, cleansing sorbet. And if by some alignment of the stars he’d had reason to choose her for a one-time thing right when she needed it most, then so be it.

His lips moved to the soft dent below her ear. To the shallow dip at the base of her neck. Nipping along the edge of her collarbone.

Her hands dug into the soft springy hair at the back of his neck, her teeth biting down on her lower lip. Every sense bar the places her body touched his had become so woolly she could no longer feel her extremities.

She only realised that his balance was affected too when they stumbled backwards and the doorknob, key still inside, wedged into her back.

That was when she realised they were still in the hall.

Unknown strength rose up within her and somehow she reached behind her, shoved the door open so hard it was a miracle the doorknob stayed on, and grabbed Dax by the lapels to yank him inside. The door shut behind him, plunging them into darkness. Only a thin vertical stripe of light peeked through the edge of the lounge-room curtains.

They stilled, her fingers curled into his suit jacket, his hot breaths lifting the hair from her shoulders.

The lack of sight made everything suddenly magnified. The whir and clank of her old fridge turning to life. The distant hum of riverside traffic below throbbing in time with her heart.

At the slow, deliberate slide of his hand as it found a happy place in the small of her back, her skin prickled and burned. She pressed deliciously into the hard planes of his body.

And as his lips landed upon hers, insistent and hot as hell, every sound near and far slipped away on a tide of liquid warmth.

He lost his jacket along the way, and his tie. She hoped her shoes had made it inside the apartment but she wasn’t quite sure. All she knew was an almost primal need to get horizontal.

They tumbled backwards through the dark apartment, bumping into couches, lamp tables, a fake potted plant. The folded edge of a twist pile rug almost tripped her up completely.

When something wobbled off some surface and crashed, Dax jerked in surprise, but Caitlyn just grabbed him by the chin and kissed him harder.

Not needing to be told twice, he wrapped his arms around her, lifted her bodily off the floor and found the way to her bedroom without bumping into anything, as though he had some kind of sexual GPS built in.

The moonlight pouring through the sheer curtains at her bedroom window was oh, so thankfully brighter, giving her a perfect view of Dax’s supreme male body. His shirt and trousers were gone leaving him in black cotton boxers. She felt herself smiling at how conservative his underwear was considering what they were about to do. Then he breathed deep through his nose, like a stallion sensing a mare in heat, and took a step her way and what they were about to do took precedence over every other thought.

He found the zip of her little cocktail dress, lowered it slowly, and her vertebrae collapsed in upon themselves in empathy.

Clothes off, protection on, the backs of her knees found the edge of her bed and she sank back, he moved with her. Big, strong, firm, confident, and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Only he would not be breaking her heart. And she would most definitely not break his. As though that was the final permission she needed she reached up, slid her hand behind his neck and pulled him down to kiss her.

The slip and slide of skin on skin made her breathless, as if her body couldn’t process both oxygen and the mad tumble of sensations pummelling her at the same time. Maybe it was the heretofore untried naughtiness of a one-night stand. Maybe because it was a one-time deal she’d given herself permission to just let go.

Maybe it was Dax.

Then he was inside her. It was sudden, shocking, but she was more than ready. Her legs wrapped around him, she needed the feeling intensifying inside her more than she’d known she could. As if this was what she’d been waiting for her whole life. Not that romantic mushy stuff she’d lived on, but this.

His lips created havoc wherever they touched, ravaging her to the point of bonelessness. Making her feel defenceless, vulnerable—

No! This was about her taking back control over her emotional life.

Finding a last vestige of strength, she spun him around until she was on top. His hands found her hips, his thumbs sliding across her hipbone, the tremors shuddering through her all but cutting off any kind of ascendancy she might have had.

She ran her fingernails down his chest, over the solid undulation of slick brown skin. And when his desire-filled eyes closed, and he needed to open his mouth to take in enough breath, she felt formidable. Renewed.

Sensations built, cutting off all thought and feeling bar the desire flooding through her, hot and relentless.

Then all sensation contracted to the size of a pin-head. To some tiny point deep in her core. As swirls of blood-red heat crashed through her mind, through her body, bombarding her senses with more pleasure than she could process, the only vaguely coherent thought was that in her whole short life she’d never known it could feel like that.

Never.

This from the first guy she’d ever looked at and said, This is a one-time deal.

Frankly, considering why she’d gone looking for sorbet sex in the first place, it was more than she deserved.

* * *

Caitlyn sat back in the big leather chair, eyes closed as it hummed blissfully beneath her. A thump to her right told her Franny had finally arrived at their regular Sunday morning date at the Shangri-Lovely Nail Bar.

‘Good morning, sunshine!’ Caitlyn bubbled.

‘How could you start without me?’ Franny grumbled.

Caitlyn opened her eyes to find Franny hunched down in dark sunglasses, her hair pulled back into a scraggy ponytail, grunting as she jabbed in her favourite settings on the massage chair. ‘You weren’t even home when I left; I thought I might have to go solo today.’

Franny gave a double thumbs-up to her usual pedicurist indicating a double espresso, in a mug, before glancing pointedly at the half-eaten packet of biscuits Caitlyn had resting atop the glossy magazine she hadn’t yet found a chance between daydreams to open.

‘Chocolate chip? At this time of the morning? It’s not as though you worked up an appetite after I left.’ Her eyes swung slowly back to Caitlyn. ‘Or did you?’

Caitlyn licked a smudge of chocolate from her finger, images of the night before skipping and tripping through her mind like an old silent film. A slideshow of muscled arms, and broad shoulders, and acres of beautiful warm skin turning red beneath her grasping fingernails as she—

A hot flush landed hard and fast upon her cheeks. ‘Don’t change the subject. We’re here to talk about you and the Leather Jacket.’

But Franny was pointing at the pretty pink polish the pedicurist was sliding onto Caitlyn’s toenails. ‘Look! You did! You got lucky, you dog!’

‘What on earth does my toenail polish have to do with anything?’

‘All last week you were red. Sex-starved, man-eater red. And today you pick this tiptoeing-through-daisies pink? Something happened between last night and this morning.’

Caitlyn blinked, stumped that she’d given herself away so easily. ‘Moody-looking dude in leather jacket first.’

‘Fine. As it turns out all that bad-ass leather stopped at the door. His name’s Eugene and he lives with his mother. They breed ferrets. Inside the lounge room. None of which I realised until I did the walk of shame this morning. Past his mum. Who had folded my clothes into a neat pile on the chesterfield in the lounge room—’

Franny waved both hands madly over her face. ‘I just want to forget the whole thing. Now. Your turn. Did Cutey Patootey come back?’

‘No-o-o!’

‘Who, then? Not Ivan?’

‘The bartender?’ For that Franny deserved no more than a blank stare.

Franny frowned, clearly stumped.

Caitlyn hoped she’d stay that way. Hoped she could hang onto the mild buzz she was still wearing like a cloud of exotic perfume all those hours later a little longer before Franny dissected it to death.

Then Franny’s foggy morning-after eyes focused fully for the first time.

‘The Suit! You hooked up with the Suit! You sly dog!’ Franny squealed loud enough the traffic outside the salon would have heard every word.

‘Shh. I’m sure everyone else here could care less about the intimate details of my nightscapades.’

Franny glanced around. ‘Are you kidding me? Why else do you think women come to places like this? It’s hardly rocket science to slap on a dash of nail polish at home. Details. Please. Before I give up men for good.’

Franny leant so far forward on her chair she almost landed in the tub of water at her feet. Her pedicurist arrived in time, shoved her feet in the water and gave her a quelling stare. Franny looked dutifully chastised. ‘So who is he? Did he live up to all that glorious potential? Are you seeing him again?’

Caitlyn breathed out long and slow. She wasn’t going to get a moment’s peace until she gave Franny something. Then, staring hard at her toes, she said, ‘Fine. His name was Dax. Dax Something Starting With B. Banner? Bale? He looks even better out of the suit than in it. And, no, we didn’t make plans to catch up again. Happy?’

Franny grinned as she shook her head and slipped her smart phone from her purse and plugged in a few letters. ‘Dax Something Starting With B? Miss March, you sit there with your cute freckles on your little nose looking like butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, but you are so full of surprises.’

Caitlyn knew exactly what she was about to do. She tried to grab the phone but Franny was quicker than she looked.

‘Still!’ her pedicurist demanded.

‘This is important,’ Franny said, glaring right on back.

The pedicurist shrugged and set to sloughing away the dead skin on Franny’s soles.

‘Please don’t Google the guy, for Pete’s sake!’ Caitlyn begged.

Franny snorted. ‘Are you kidding me? In this day and age it’s the first thing you should do the second you learn a guy’s name. Heck, if I’d been smart enough to Google Mr Lame from last night I’d have avoided ever knowing what ferret poo smells like. Trust me. I’m doing you a favour.’

Caitlyn set her teeth and stared blindly at the small golden cat with its bobbing head on the cashier’s counter. She knew trying to stop Franny was a waste of time. And while she knew it was unlikely she’d ever see the guy again, no small part of her did wonder how a guy who looked like that, and kissed like that, and who’d learnt how to do the things he’d done to her the night before, had managed to get so far in life without being hogtied and hitched at gunpoint.

When Franny had been quiet for all too long Caitlyn glanced at her to find her eyes growing larger and larger until they looked as if they were about to pop out of her head.

‘I knew it!’ Franny blurted.

‘What?’ Caitlyn asked despite herself. ‘He’s married. Of course he’s married. Oh, God. How could I have been so—?’

‘He’s not married.’

Caitlyn’s rant came to a halt. The relief flowing through her was totally misguided. Especially since it wasn’t relief that he hadn’t cheated on his non-existent wife. It was relief that he was actually on the market.

She wasn’t. Sure it had been six months since she’d broken up with George. Not just broken up, she reminded herself, called off her engagement. But she was done with all that: relationships, and dating, and blah blah blah.

Yet she found herself leaning towards Franny and saying, ‘Then what?’

‘Your Dax Something Starting With B was Dax Bainbridge, as in CEO of the Bainbridge Foundation. Heard of them?’

Caitlyn blinked. Several times. ‘Them yes. A representative of the Bainbridge Foundation is a no-brainer on any launch list, though they never accept. They’re less A-list party-hard types, more old money, right?’

‘You should know your guest lists better.’

Caitlyn crossed her arms. ‘I know everyone who buys sports cars, and everyone who wishes they could buy sports cars. Everyone else is a blur.’

Franny eyeballed her. ‘You’re really sitting there and saying this guy is a blur?’ Franny turned her phone around and shoved it at her. And Caitlyn found herself staring at a picture of the man who’d driven her wild in bed the night before.