Off Limits

‘I find that impossible to believe.’

‘Why?’

‘You could fit in anywhere.’

‘Trust me—I didn’t want to feel at home in that crowd.’

His frown is just a very slight twist of his lips. ‘So your parents are stuffy. What about your friends?’

‘Most of my closest friends I met later. At university. Then at Goldman. Deloitte.’

‘And here? With me?’

For a second my heart skids to a stop, because I think he’s talking about himself and there is something so delightfully needy about the question that I ache for him.

But then he continues. ‘Wolf. Barry. You seem to know everyone who works for me.’

‘Oh, right...’ Emptiness is a gulf in the pit of my stomach. ‘That happens. Your parents must be proud of you.’ I shift the conversation to him, hating the vulnerabilities he’s able to expose in me so easily.

‘Yes.’

He moves a little, bringing his body closer to mine, and then, before I know what he’s doing, he lifts me onto the bench, spreading my legs and standing between them.

He’s so close I’m sure he must be able to hear the thundering of my heart; it is surpassed only by the storm outside.

‘My parents thought I would—at most—become an accountant. Like my father and his father before him. I was always good at numbers. It fair skittled them when I told them I’d bought my first company.’

‘Yeah, I can see how that would bowl them over.’

His laugh is husky. He brushes his lips against the soft skin at the base of my throat, chasing the wildly beating pulse-point with his tongue. I moan, deep in my mouth, the sound strangled by my own hot, thick breath.

‘You make it sound easy. Like you didn’t want to be an accountant so you did this instead.’

‘This?’ He laughs, flicking the strap of my dress so it falls haphazardly down my arm, revealing my shoulder to him.

His kiss is sweet, like nectar. He finds the exposed skin and possesses it as only Jack Grant can, gliding his mouth over it, making me feel I have never before been kissed. It is at once intimate and simple and my back arches forward. Or backwards. Who can tell? The normal rules of gravity and physics seem not to apply.

‘How do you know my family dates back to the Magna Carta?’ I ask, though the words are squeezed tight from my chest, not quite coming out clearly.

But he hears. He understands. ‘I looked you up,’ he says unapologetically.

‘You...?’

His mouth drops lower and at the same time he lifts my hand, drags the kiss to my inner wrist. I squeeze my eyes shut as he finds another pulse-point, tracing it with his tongue.

‘I searched you on the internet,’ he confirms, dropping my hand gently and cupping my arse, pulling me closer to him.

I wrap my legs around his waist. ‘Why?’

‘Because you surprised me the other night. I realised I should have known this stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘All of it. Your dynastic birthright.’

I laugh.

‘What’s funny?’