The CEO(34)

‘It saved time,’ she said, quick as a flash.

‘Still don’t like me?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Still don’t like you.’ Her smile and the way she breathed in deep, revealed the truth.

He caressed her hair all the way down to its ends and then let go. The strand fell on to her breast, round and full and tightly enclosed under that white singlet top. She probably meant it to look like work wear, but it was about the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. He glanced down and made sure she knew he was looking.

‘That makes two of us,’ he said, trailing his eyes slowly up her neck, her lips and her shining eyes. ‘Ava the Terrible.’

‘What did you just say?’ she said.

‘That was what I called you from that first time we met.’

‘Ava the Terrible, huh?’ She didn’t look hurt by it, but amused. She smiled and it lit up her face.

‘You’re not pissed at me?’

She shrugged. ‘Why should I care what you call me? I don’t like you, remember?’

‘Right,’ he said.

‘And don’t forget,’ Ava said as she turned away from him and rolled up the plans, slipping them back into the white cardboard tube. ‘I hold a grudge for a very, very long time.’

He watched her every move as she slipped the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and tucked the tube under her arm.

‘This is going to be good,’ he said. He meant the garden. Of course he did.

‘Of course it is,’ she replied. ‘I’d better be off and let you pack.’

‘Thank you.’ He picked up the keys and held them out to her. ‘You’ll be needing these.’

Ava held out a hand. He made sure he trailed his fingers across her palm as he let go of the keys. They dropped with a metallic clatter in her palm.

As he watched her slowly enclose them in her fingers, all rational thought disappeared.

He stepped in to her, reached for her face, cradled her warm cheeks, and looked into her eyes.

He saw what he wanted to see.

He saw yes.

Callum leaned down and pressed his lips to her mouth, and when Ava moaned against his lips he closed the gap between them, deepening the kiss, surprised as hell when her tongue found his, urging, exploring, crumbling every defence he’d built up about being involved with any woman ever again.

Because this wasn’t any woman.

The bag slipped from her shoulder and the cardboard tube fell to the floor with an echoing thump and her hands were free to roam his body. Her fingers gripped his arms, tightened on his pecs and then moved lower, down across his abs. She met his every move with one of her own, and they kissed more, deeper, hotter, wetter.

Until she tore her lips from his and stumbled backwards.

For a long moment, they simply stared at each other, their breathing fast and deep, their hands aching for each other.

Ava bent down to pick up her things but Callum got their first. He looped the strap of her bag on her shoulder and handed her the tube.

‘I’d better …’ Ava pointed a finger towards the door.

‘Ava …’ And he was that close—that close—to cancelling the whole goddamned trip. Fuck Singapore. Fuck the deal of a lifetime that he’d almost secured for the company. Because he wanted her. Hell, it was more than that. He needed her. He needed to take her to the brink and tease her and watch her lose her breath as she came. He needed to bury himself inside her until he forgot his own name. Thinking about his life without her in it suddenly seemed unthinkable. Empty.

Before he could finish, she turned and walked away.





Chapter Eleven




‡


Oh no. No no no no no no no.

What the hell had just happened?

Ava had no clue how she’d got home. All she knew was that one minute she and Callum Malone had been kissing each other senseless and the next she was standing outside her own front door with her keys. Traumatic amnesia was a thing, wasn’t it?

She may not have remembered the journey home but she remembered that kiss. There was no ever-loving way on earth that Ava could forget that. And she’d been so deliriously thrilled when he kissed her that she had kissed him back. And, if she hadn’t finally seen sense, been struck by blind panic and a deep-seated sense of guilt and pushed him away, who knew what would be happening right now?

Ava closed the front door behind her, plodded into her living room and threw herself on the sofa. What would be happening right now if she hadn’t pulled away? She’d probably be having sex, that’s what. One more second and she would have thrown all caution to the wind and asked him to fuck her right there and then on those expensive but no doubt extremely hard floorboards.

Something real and seemingly unstoppable was happening between them; something that had no connection to their past and who they once were to each other, and everything to do with being a man and a woman in the here and now who were attracted to each other.