So, instead, she did what he had done to her. Watching him climax was such a turn-on that she couldn’t wait for them to get out of the bath and find the bed.
Was it her imagination or was there an urgency to their love-making that had not been there before? They would be leaving the following evening.
Gabriel could have just kept touching her, making love with her, and skipped dinner altogether but with just an hour to get ready and leave the hotel he turned to her and smiled.
‘So...’ he drawled, nestling her against him. They had barely bothered to dry themselves. They had been too hungry for one another. ‘We leave tomorrow.’
‘We do.’ Alice lowered her eyes and placed her hand flat against his hair-roughened chest.
‘What do you think of Paris?’
‘I think one day I’ll be back. It’s beautiful. I love the architecture, the art galleries, the museums... There’s nothing about it I don’t love.’
‘And London? I don’t think this thing we have has run its course...’ He was as hot for her now as he had been on day one—as he had been even before then, if he was entirely truthful.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, my dear secretary, that I’m not ready for our spate of truancy to come to an end.’
Alice raised clear eyes to his. He wasn’t ready for this to end. She knew exactly what he meant—he meant that he hadn’t yet grown bored with her. But he would, and when that happened she would be utterly destroyed.
More than that, having her around would begin to exasperate him. She would be just another woman to be discarded, except he would find that she was still there, still working for him, still visible. Would she end up buying a bouquet of goodbye flowers for herself?
‘That’s not how I see this panning out,’ she told him and he drew apart and looked at her with a frown.
‘What do you mean?’ He smiled. ‘We’re still hot for one another. No point denying it, Alice. So you work for me and I’ve always had a policy of not mixing business with pleasure—but what’s the saying about stable doors and a bolting horse...?’
‘When we leave, Gabriel, it’s over. That’s what I said at the beginning and I haven’t changed my mind.’ Would she have responded differently if she hadn’t done the unthinkable and fallen in love with him? Would she have been able to keep it as something fun and casual and then, when it was over, cheerfully return to life as she knew it?
Temptation to take that road dug into her and she fought it with the gritted determination of someone swimming upstream against a strong current.
‘You don’t mean that.’
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and began flinging clothes on, eyes firmly averted from his face. ‘I mean every word of it, Gabriel,’ she said. ‘It’s been amazing, but...’
Gabriel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had never suffered rejection from any woman. He had always been the one to do the rejecting.
‘But we can’t keep our hands off one another!’ he exploded, leaping out of the bed and snatching his boxers. He glared at her, challenging her to refute that, which she didn’t. ‘I don’t see what the problem is!’
Fully dressed now, she at last felt strong enough to meet his glittering, bemused, demanding gaze but she still had to keep her distance.
‘The problem is that we don’t think alike, Gabriel. You take because you can and then, when you’re bored, you move on to someone else. That’s not me. I don’t want to waste my time having an affair with someone unless I think it’s going somewhere. Which is not the case here,’ she added quickly, just in case he got it into his head that she was asking him to define what he felt for her.
‘I’m just saying that we need to keep things black and white. This was a bubble. It’s too late to say that it wasn’t a good idea, but what’s done is done, and now we can move forward and continue our working relationship and put this behind us as something enjoyable that won’t be repeated.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this,’ he rasped, still incredulous. ‘I’ve had my fair share of difficult women in my time, but you’re not one of them! Or are you...?’
That cut to the quick. She was anything but, if only he knew. And thank goodness he didn’t.
‘I’m not,’ she said shortly. ‘But I’m realistic. Just like you. Except we have different realities. I want a man for life and I’m prepared to do my utmost to find him. You want a woman for two minutes and you’ll never look further for anything longer.’