Off Limits

‘Just... Only you would want to know more and decide to look it up rather than ask.’

‘Asking would have taken time,’ he says with an unapologetic lift of his broad strong shoulders.

‘And we don’t have time?’

‘I’m impatient.’ He grins.

‘I had no idea.’ Sarcasm is rich in my murmured tone.

His hands are on my knees and then they’re tracing higher, his fingertips barely brushing my flesh as he searches for the softness of my inner thighs.

‘Is that weird?’

I pause, concentration almost impossible. ‘Is what weird?’

His lips are buzzing mine, just the smallest hint of contact making every nerve ending in my body sing. ‘That I ran an internet search on you.’

‘Oh.’ I frown. ‘It should be. But, no. For you it makes sense.’

His laugh is breathed across my skin, sending it into a break-out of goose bumps.

‘Because I’m weird?’

‘Because you’re you,’ I correct. ‘Domineering, determined, somewhat wonderful you.’

He’s still for a moment. Frozen by the compliment he didn’t expect. Then he relaxes again, his lips are on my skin and my heart is flying out of my body, soaring above me. This is so right. So perfect. Out of nowhere I am in heaven.

‘Are you saying you haven’t done a search on me?’ he teases, his hands lifting to the zip at the back of my dress and catching it lower, snagging it over my spine. My body is hypersensitive; I feel every single kink of his touch.

I have. I’ve looked him up and his wife. Something I am naturally hesitant to confess.

‘I applied to work for you,’ I say with a shrug. ‘Of course I did.’

His laugh shows he knows me to be lying. Or at least being liberal with the truth.

‘Why did you move your office from the City?’ The question is blurted out of me before I even realise I’ve been wondering.

He pauses, the zip halfway down my back, his mouth so close to mine I want to push up and find him. But he’s still, and the question hangs between us, and I realise I do want to hear the answer.

‘Sorry?’

‘I just... Speaking of questions...’ My throat thumps as I swallow. ‘Is it because of Lucy?’

His expression flashes with something. Anguish?

I shake my head quickly. ‘Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘No.’ It’s a gravelled denial. ‘It’s fine.’

But I might as well have lashed him with a stick dipped in lava.

‘It was because of Lucy. She was sick at the end. I set my home up so I could be near her all the time. The room...the bedroom near my office... That was her room.’

Oh, God. How did I not know that? His little ‘den of sin’ held his dying wife’s sickbed.

A shudder rips through me as the macabre sadness of it all washes over me.

‘After she died I just... I didn’t want life to go back to normal. I resented the implication that it would.’