The Morning After the Night Before

There were times she’d have liked to have boosted Harry Mitchell right out of his twelfth-floor window. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, my productivity goes up when I’m respected professionally.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘You think I don’t respect you?’

‘You don’t respect my opinion. Anyone’s really.’

‘Disagreeing with it and not respecting it aren’t the same thing. Anyway, occasionally I did agree with you.’

She knew. And weren’t those days the most confusing of all? Because he did so unconditionally. And wholeheartedly. She bit her lip and his gaze went straight to the childhood gesture.

‘You know what I’m starting to think?’ he murmured, still checking out the nibble of her teeth on her lips.

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Maybe all our fighting was just sexual tension in disguise.’

The room was way too small for her bark of a laugh. It fairly ricocheted off the walls. ‘You must be joking.’

‘Not at all.’ He grinned and it was the most predatory she’d ever seen from him. And smug.

‘Because you’re so irresistible?’

‘Because we have chemistry. I thought it was just me but Wednesday put a big question mark over that.’

No, they didn’t. Not chemistry and not Harry Mitchell. Hot or not. ‘Maybe you’re just projecting your own hormones.’

‘You don’t feel it?’

Challenge, not question. As if he already knew the answer. As if she did, too. But they bred them tough in Manchester. She tossed her short hair back. ‘Not particularly.’

Liar, liar …

‘February twenty-first this year,’ he challenged. ‘We shared the same lift and the end-of-day rush pushed us together at the back. We didn’t speak a word to each other and the only uncovered parts of us touching were our ungloved hands.’ He stepped a tiny bit closer. ‘But we both walked out of the building rubbing the tingles away.’

‘No, we—’

‘April third.’ He lifted his chin. ‘I knocked back one of your ideas and you spent a good portion of the day glaring at me through the walls—all flushed and infuriated and eyes spitting—and I spent a good portion of the day with half a hard-on, as a result.’

No way her gasp should have caught quite that tightly in her chest. She should have been outraged, not breathless.

Not excited.

Her glares across her crowded open-plan office to his lofty glassed-in one had simmered, and not always with anger. She’d felt it but had no idea he’d been able to see it.

God …

‘You’re making these up.’

‘Check your diary,’ he dismissed, plunging his hands even deeper in his pockets. ‘June eleventh, just before lunch. You stood in my office giving me hell about the new ratios and I just let you run because I was curious.’

She swallowed back a lump of dread. She remembered June eleventh. The room had been practically soaked with awareness and she’d come away fairly throbbing from the argument. And then she’d beaten herself up all day about the inappropriateness of it all. He was her boss. He was the bad guy.

Words formed themselves despite her best intentions.

‘Curious about what?’ she croaked.

His lips twisted. ‘Have you never heard the saying that a person fights like they f—?’

‘Stop!’ Air sucked hard into her lungs and then froze there, trapped, making it harder to squeeze out, ‘I thought that was dancing.’

‘I found June eleventh extremely illuminating on that front. But nowhere near as illuminating as Wednesday. Wednesday was a real eye-opener.’

Her only hope of salvation here was in channelling a bit of Tori’s hearty sexual confidence. She tossed her hair back and met his eyes directly.

‘You never let on.’

‘Of course not. It wasn’t appropriate.’

Hysteria bubbled dangerously close. ‘And this is?’

‘You’re not exactly moving away from me.’

She glanced at the junk all around them. ‘That’s more a statement about my hoarding than your hotness.’

Crap. Not what she’d meant to say. At all.

His left eyebrow lifted. ‘I’m hot?’

‘You’re insufferable.’ That smug grin sure was.

‘You think I’m attractive.’

‘I think you’re dangerously close to a lawsuit.’

His laugh echoed her earlier bark. ‘For what?’

‘Employee sexual harassment.’

He waggled her ID tag. ‘You quit, remember?’

‘Then, sexual harassment just generally.’

He shuffled closer. ‘You still haven’t asked me to leave. That’s all it will take.’

No. Why was that …?

‘Maybe I’m hoping chivalry isn’t dead.’ Maybe, deep down inside, she wanted to give him one more chance to be a decent man.

‘Grand chivalric gestures were the only outlet for all the unrequited sexual frustration in the twelfth century.’ He shot her his best Cheshire grin. ‘Like our fighting.’

‘Well, then, perhaps your grand gesture could involve sweeping heroically out the door and nicking off.’

His smile this time was half laugh. And it was annoyingly appealing. ‘Or we could find a more traditional outlet for all the tension.’

‘No.’ It would be laughable if the very thought hadn’t divested her of the oxygen she’d need to do it.

‘Are you already in a relationship?’ he challenged. ‘I’m not.’

Izzy grasped desperately at the edges of the conversation. Harry’s eyes said he was dead serious, but how could he be? This sort of thing never happened to her. Despite her best efforts.

She sucked in some much-needed air. ‘Except with your career.’

His eyes dimmed oh-so-briefly. ‘My career and I have an understanding.’

‘When it gets you laid?’

‘Is that what you think this is about?’ He looked genuinely wounded. ‘Sex?’

Doubt crept in at the corners. ‘Unless you’re proposing a rollicking game of chess?’

‘Something tells me you’d be quite good at chess,’ he murmured. ‘I’m talking about exploration. A bit of good old-fashioned groping. Tangling tongues and heavy breathing. When was the last time you had that?’

Ah … no. Not a question she was going to answer. ‘You’re assuming rather a lot, don’t you think?’

‘You still haven’t asked me to leave.’

The simple truth of that stripped Izzy bare. He was flirting and she was, too, in her own clunky way. They were standing in a darkened, tiny bedroom close enough to get right into that groping without even needing to reach. They no longer had any kind of professional relationship to protect or reputation to preserve. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t some kind of weirdo or monster. And there was a strange kind of hormonal haze going on thanks to the intriguing fingertip preview of the hard body under his McQueen business shirt.

He was offering her a few hours of healthy distraction and making it clear that it didn’t have to end in sex and, most importantly, he was exactly the right kind of guy for a one-night-only appearance.

And she wasn’t throwing him out.

‘A good time but not a long time? Is that it?’ she murmured.

‘A great time, Izzy,’ he clarified, ‘but no … not a long time.’

Yes, yes, yes, her three champagnes ganged up to whisper violently in her ear. But everyone knew champagne was a tart. ‘Because you have your career?’

‘Because I’m not looking for a relationship.’

‘But you’re open to a fun night.’

‘That’s up to you, Iz.’

Iz …

That one diminutive sealed her fate, seducing her with its simple masculinity and emboldening her with its intimacy. That one diminutive made it easier to imagine—to stick her fingers in her ears and go la la la for a few hours—that they knew each other even vaguely well enough for what he was proposing. For what she suddenly realised she was contemplating.

And was desperately, obscenely hungry for. And maybe always had been.

What was there to know? He was gorgeous, he was Australian, he smelled like a god. What if he kissed like one, too? And what if she never found out, first hand? And she wouldn’t because, without turning up in his building at eight every morning, this was the last she was ever going to see of infuriating Harry Mitchell.

Intriguingly sexy Harry Mitchell.

Maybe he was right about their office bickering, maybe it was just the only work-appropriate way for the chemistry to get out.

Because she could sure feel it now, surging like a tidal current between them, urging her closer, urging her to say yes. Urging her to give in to the speculative curiosity she suddenly realised she’d always had about him.

‘Can I touch your suit?’ she asked, eyes not quite meeting his. Not believing she’d asked.

‘My … suit?’

She ignored his rich chuckle and stretched her fingers towards the same jacket he’d been wearing on Wednesday. He stood perfectly still as they feathered down onto the curve of his shoulder and even stiller when she flattened them against his breast.

Her suspended breath released on a strangled half groan. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Those blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did you just climax?’

‘I wanted to do this on Wednesday,’ she confessed, smiling.

‘Well, you’re in luck. You can do whatever you want to me tonight.’

Whatever you want …

Her fingers curled back into a fist of their own volition and she reluctantly lowered it.

‘This is awkward,’ she whispered, all truth. Because she’d never, ever done the one-night stand thing. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Tell me to leave. Or step forward. Or touch my suit again.’ His shrug was the merest shoulder flick. ‘Totally up to you.’

Ugh …

She’d wanted chivalry but now that she had it she really wanted him to sweep her up into his arms in the boorish manner he usually conducted himself in and take the choice away from her. The responsibility. But his apparent ambivalence wiggled in under her carefully erected self-confidence and poked uncomfortably at the place where all her old insecurities still lived. Shouldn’t he be gagging to kiss her? Wouldn’t that be more romantic? The fact he wasn’t triggered her old insecurities—thoughts of every boy at school who preferred the racier girls, the prettier girls.

The cleaner girls.

Isadora couldn’t be poorer … the old voices echoed.

Except she didn’t feel poor tonight. She felt obscenely rich with opportunity. And, despite his nonchalance, Harry’s heartbeat under her fingertips just now hadn’t thumped as if she wasn’t good enough.

She locked eyes with his and stepped forward into his body, then linked her hands behind his head.

‘When I imagined wrapping my hands around your neck,’ she whispered, ‘this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

Now, that muscular neck was a convenient place for her to hook herself—like any of the fine outfits dangling from hangers around her new room—so that her lips were more levelly placed with his.

The surprise in his eyes was swiftly succeeded by masculine anticipation. His perfectly manicured hands slipped straight up to her ribs and bonded there.

And his lips met her more than halfway.

Soft flesh met its mate. Tongue touched on teeth. Large hands slid over her body—one up below her breast, its friend around and over the curve of her bottom—as his mouth plundered hers.

Thoroughly.

Indecently.

And she realised that all those secret glances she’d cast at his sexy mouth were shamefully under-informed about his talents. Of course he was a good kisser—the unspeakable ego had to come from somewhere—but Izzy hadn’t expected the haste with which she would slip from technical enjoyment to outright gluttony. She gave as good as she got, throwing aside the last of her self-control in the hormonal haze he generated, and giving herself fully to the experience.

Why not? Wasn’t this a time for new beginnings? Maybe the new Izzy took more risks than just professionally.

Plus it had been a long time since she’d been kissed like this. Not just well but … fantastically. And with intent. What would it be like to channel all the competitive challenge between them into a sensual encounter?

‘Oomph …’

It was only when she fell backwards onto her tiny bed that she realised something other than their lips had been moving.

‘How do you sleep on this thing?’ Harry gritted between kisses, settling himself awkwardly over her.

She gasped for air. ‘Badly.’

Then it was all about the kissing again. And the promised groping. Pretty darned good groping, really. The kind of flesh massage that made an A-cup girl feel like a supermodel. She returned the favour, grinding herself into his hip until the heat billowing out from between put their clothes at risk of spontaneous combustion.

Harry sorted that. Within a minute they were both shirtless and the only danger was the threat of friction burns on flesh as they pressed hot and hard against each other.

And then, out of nowhere, he announced, ‘This isn’t working.’

Every minor rejection she’d ever had in her life congealed into an aching ball midway down her chest.

Of course he wasn’t actually interested, she jeered at herself. Why would he be?

She reached for the edges of a blouse she no longer wore to pull them over her lace-covered breasts. But before she could do more than half shrivel at the finality of his tone, Harry pulled her to her feet, exchanged positions and then drew her back down with him.

On him.

She had no choice but to straddle his hips.

Oh … right!

Power surged through her as she stretched astride all that hard bare flesh, his eyes and hands roaming all over her torso, and then fell forward to pick up the kissing where they’d left off.

‘You’re very good at this,’ she breathed as he sucked torturously on her ear lobe.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured against her neck.

Not quite ‘ditto’ but infinitely better than ‘practice makes perfect’ and so she’d take it.

The kissing went on for hours. Surely hours must have passed, possibly days. London might have sunk away into the Thames and been rebuilt on stilts while they were kissing.

‘Iz, maybe we should slow it down a bit?’

His voice sounded pained and it occurred to her that maybe he was in physical discomfort. Certainly he had reason to be. She ground her pelvis against him in sympathy and whatever he’d been about to say next turned into an unintelligible gargle.

She’d done it to torture him, but all it did was add a burning kind of need to the pressure ache already resident between her own legs. As she repositioned herself more comfortably on him, she thought about her half handful of post-school partners, who’d ranged from eager but inexperienced to accomplished but in it for themselves. Yet, here she was closer to completion with a virtual stranger faster and more surely than any of them had ever inspired.

And in the next heartbeat, she decided how very much she wanted to see if Harry Mitchell was everything he thought he was.

And the decision was liberating.

‘We’re not stopping,’ she announced between heavy breaths.

Harry’s eyes blazed hot and dark back up at her. ‘Okay.’

Her hands reached behind her but paused at the snaps to one of Agent Provocateur’s most artful and clever lingerie pieces. ‘And you’re spending the night.’

‘Roger.’

Izzy took a breath, knowing what would happen to her slight cleavage the moment she removed the magic suspension. Knowing disappointment would probably stain Harry’s hot gaze when he saw he’d been taken in by false advertising. But this was a one-night stand and he was getting laid and—PS—she didn’t owe him anything. Least of all pendulous breasts.

She flicked the bra free. ‘And you’re going to show me whether you’re worth all your own hype.’

The devil grinned back at her and, bless him, if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed to hers even though a pair of boobs was now on offer. Secret points for that.

‘Abso-frigging-lutely.’

Izzy pressed up on her knees slightly and then reached down between them, fussing at his belt.

‘Look at that,’ she purred. ‘Something we finally agree on.’

CHAPTER THREE

IZZY STARED AT the broad, tan back just an inch from her nose and totally got why people would do the legendary walk of shame after a one-night stand. It was all well and good in the heat and hormones of the moment with a virtual stranger, but in the cold hard light of morning it was just plain …

Awkward.

Some time in the night she’d slipped from her exhausted slump across Harry’s chest down between him and the wall. That made it impossible to get out of her small bed without clambering over him, naked and undignified, and tumbling off the other side. And the ornate foot of the tiny bed made sliding out feet-first just as problematic.

Entombed between plaster and hot male body.

Radiating male body. The longer she lay here, the more like a sauna her bed was feeling. Who needed central heating with Harry around?

She could wake him, but she wasn’t at all comfortable about him seeing her body—especially her least favourite bits—in the full light of morning. Not that the tiny boxroom window let in much light at all but it was certainly brighter than the steamy dark they’d shared last night.

So then … what? Lie here, clenching her bladder until Prince Harry, there, deigned to wake?

Screw that.

Izzy arched off the bed and reached one hand beneath herself, grasping the edge of her pretty duvet—king-sized on account of her old bed—then she begged her abdominal muscles to cooperate and pushed up into a sitting position, dragging the covers up with her.

Cool morning air rushed in behind her.

Clambering over Harry’s legs wasn’t quite as confronting as his hips and she twisted left—taking great care to keep the duvet between them—and half crawled, half rolled over his calves, her eyes firmly closed as she robbed him of covers.

She only opened them when the timber floor was beneath her feet and escape was in front of her.

‘Elegant,’ a sleep-thick voice rumbled from behind.

Busted.

‘You sleep like the dead,’ she muttered back over her shoulder, tugging on the pyjama bottoms that had tumbled to the floor from under her pillow with all the on-bed activity.

‘I wasn’t asleep. And you didn’t even try to wake me.’

‘I’ve been lying there, legs crossed, for eternity. You could have let on you were awake.’

It was clumsy but she managed to get her PJ top on, too, beneath the downy protection of her covers.

‘And miss the Cirque du Soleil dismount?’

She had landed with quite a flourish. She threw back her duvet and only turned back when she felt certain it would have fluttered down onto Harry sufficient for everyone’s modesty.

He tugged it back up around him for warmth. But the move looked too easy, as if he was settling in for a long stay. The rest of her squeezed up as tight as her bladder.

‘Do you want first run at the bathroom?’

God, how polite was she?

‘I went earlier,’ he drawled, his accent more pronounced in the morning.

That would explain when and how she’d slid off him into the cool embrace of the wall.

‘Bumped into duffel dude heading out before dawn. A friend of Poppy’s brother. I gather she wasn’t thrilled about him being here.’

So … this morning wasn’t surreal enough. Now her boss was filling her in on her own flat’s gossip. Her pulse started to panic.

‘Hold that thought,’ she said, holding up a hand.

The plethora of hanging things clattered against her door as she opened it and hurried into the bathroom.

Relief only took moments but Izzy hung out in there, standing on the toilet mat to stop her feet from chilling on the stone tile floor, gnawing on the inside of her cheek and desperately trying to pluck reality from this weird fantasy she’d found herself in.

What was the protocol here?

Should she ask him to leave? Should she ask him to stay? Should she invite him with her flatmates to breakfast later? All equally terrifying concepts. They’d had a fantastic night of what Tori would call ‘monkey sex’ and overall she was very pleased with her first crack at a one-night stand.

Possibly her last if this excruciating indecision was always waiting in the morning.

Why couldn’t he have just tiptoed out like the coward he probably was ?

Finger-combing her short hair and briefly checking her face for panda eyes, Izzy turned back for her bedroom and entered with the words already forming on her lips.

‘So—’

But she needn’t have bothered. Harry had re-donned his suit in the time she’d been hovering like a coward in the bathroom. He was just tucking his tie into his jacket pocket. As he did he pulled her ID card back out of it. And held it out.

‘So, see you Monday?’

She just blinked.

‘At the office?’

It hit her then. What he thought their single night had meant. How deluded he was. And how exceptionally arrogant.

She left his extended hand hanging. ‘I’m not coming back, Harry.’

‘Sure you are. We’ll get on fine now.’

Was he joking? ‘Now that we’ve broken the ice with the exchange of bodily fluids?’

Metaphorically. If not for the convenient condoms he’d produced.

He shrugged. ‘We know each other a bit more now. Have each other’s measure.’

Extremely intimate measure.

‘Are you suggesting that our bout of horizontal yoga has somehow increased your level of professional respect for me?’

The outstanding quality of last night’s activity really didn’t deserve her dismissive words. But Harry Mitchell sure did. He frowned. ‘Izzy—’

‘Miss Dean, to you, actually.’

Both his eyebrows shot up. ‘We have four orgasms between us. I think we’re a bit past Miss and Mister, don’t you?’

‘My friends call me Izzy.’

‘And what do your lovers call you?’

No. She wasn’t about to confess how little time she’d given to nurturing relationships with anyone. Let him think she did this all the time. Better than giving him any kind of hint that he might be special.

‘They don’t.’

‘I’m not surprised if this is how you handle the morning after.’

Yeah. She wasn’t dealing with this well at all. But the man was a boor when his mouth wasn’t occupied with kissing and related pleasures.

‘You know what? I think we should probably just call it a night.’

Or morning.

The dark brows sank back down again and then formed a deep frown. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened here. I thought you were cool with something casual.’

‘I’m not hoping for more!’ she shouted far louder than the early hour would recommend. ‘The fact that you think—in a million years—that sleeping with me was all that was required to fix the abysmal mess that is our workplace …’

Because that was exactly it. He believed she was the problem. He had no concept of his own flaws.

‘We talked,’ he said. ‘We got along.’

‘Hell freezes over infrequently. The chances of us getting along again are statistically smaller than before.’

Ah, numbers. The warm sanctuary of maths.

Harry slid the ID card back into his pocket. ‘You’re a strange one, Isadora Dean.’

She straightened until her spine almost cracked and curled her arms across her chest. ‘At least now I’m free to be as normal or as strange as I care. And you won’t need to trouble yourself with how I feel. Thanks for last night and all the best with your career.’

But he couldn’t let it go so easily. He moved towards the door and stopped, a bare inch from her, and breathed his parting words down onto her.