His arm was around her, almost protectively, and she was wholly conscious of fitting far too well to the shape of his body. As if they were designed to fit together. He moved with such grace, propelling them on, with every step taking them closer and closer to her hotel.
To end the night? Or to begin it?
Her head was warring with the rest of her body, as everything started to pull gradually tighter and tighter. It pooled in her chest, her belly, and lower. She ought to speak. To stop this. One-night stands weren’t her thing, but lord, the temptation to stay silent and simply indulge in the moment made her mouth dry up completely.
In the end, it was her legs that stopped her. Slowing her down, as though against her will.
‘What if I’ve changed my mind?’
‘Changed your mind?’ he asked, stopping beside her, his arm still around her waist.
Still making her blood fizz and her head spin.
‘This,’ Isla managed. ‘Us. You said it yourself. When I go onto the Hestia I’ll be the heartbroken girl with a broken engagement who needs fixing. They’ll all be telling me I need a rebound...unless I can tell them I’ve already had my rebound.’
Isla ignored the voice whispering that if she felt that was a solution then she could still pretend that she’d had a rebound without actually having one. She prayed that Nikhil wouldn’t point it out either.
She wanted this one night. It would put what had happened with Bradley firmly in the past. Drawing a line between that life and this new one on the Hestia. Perhaps she really did need it.
Although she didn’t care to analyse the fact that no other man had made her want to do something so uncharacteristic—only Nikhil.
‘I don’t have anything else to offer,’ he said quietly, as she wondered if she imagined that tinge of regret.
‘I
know.’
‘Be sure, Little Doc, because I’m not in the habit of talking a woman into a situation she might later regret.’
‘The perfect officer and gentleman,’ she quipped, wondering why he wasn’t kissing her already.
He was trying to make sure she had really considered it and, as gentlemanly as that was, it left her with a faint afternote of disappointment rather than relief.
And then his voice grew edgier. Raw. ‘I’m an officer but I’ve never been a gentleman.’
‘Good, then maybe you can start by being a little less gentlemanly now.’ She didn’t know what had got into her, but her mouth seemed to run away with itself, egged on by more carnal parts of her body.
His eyes gleamed in the faint yellow-orange light and a kind of reckless desire poured through her, making her stomach clench—in a good way. Impulsively, she stepped forward, reached up and pressed her lips to his—finally, finally kissing him.
And in that incredible moment it felt as though her whole life was turning on its axis.
CHAPTER FOUR
NIKHIL COULDN’T HELP himself any longer. Or, more aptly, he didn’t want to, not now Isla had initiated their kiss. It was perhaps the hottest thing he could recall experiencing.
He pressed her into the wall until every last inch of her delectable body, with all the delicious heat spilling out of it, was pressed against every last inch of his. And he lowered his mouth to her neck, and indulged. As if he couldn’t help himself.
Perhaps he couldn’t.
Never, in all his years, had Nikhil ever felt so hollow, and needy, and raw. As if he’d die if he didn’t have her. If he didn’t bury himself inside her. Right here. Right now. He, who prided himself on never losing control.
Not since that bleak, black night less than some twenty-odd years ago when, his body black and blue, his ribs cracked, his face bleeding, he’d finally stopped cowering to that monster who’d had no right to ever call himself a father. He’d unfolded himself from a heap on the floor and he’d shown that demon what it really felt like to be a punchbag.
Not that he could remember a moment of it.
To this day, Nikhil still didn’t remember the moment when he’d actually killed his pathetic excuse for a father. He had, of course, because there was no other explanation. Yet he couldn’t remember it. He remembered his father raging, and he remembered wresting the knife from his father’s hands...but then it all went hazy, and the only thing he could remember was being led out of the apartment by a sympathetic policeman whilst they’d put his father in a body bag.
So what other explanation could there be?