Chapter Fourteen
HARRIET WOKE IN the same position she’d fallen asleep, lying on her side with Alex’s body wrapped around hers like two spoons. His arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, her bottom pressed up against his stomach. She didn’t dare move, but whilst her body remained still, her brain was active, reliving their long night of lovemaking.
No, not lovemaking, she amended. Your long night of sex, dummy. Don’t start thinking of it as lovemaking.
But it had felt like lovemaking at the time, she conceded, Alex proving to be a surprisingly tender lover. Imaginative, yes, and totally uninhibited—the things he did with his tongue!—but never had Harriet felt one second of disgust, or even embarrassment. He had a beguiling way about him which bypassed such feelings, caressing her at length between acts of actual intercourse, playing with her body with sometimes shocking intimacy. Yet she had never felt shock, only excitement and pleasure, along with the most amazing orgasms. So many that she had lost count.
Alex had been so right when he’d said she’d fallen in lust with him. She had. Totally.
Her sigh was the sigh of a thoroughly sated woman.
She should have been appalled with herself. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t even appalled with him. Yet she definitely should have been. If truth be told, Alex was nothing but an arrogant devil with the morals of an alley cat, who thought he could indulge in a strictly sexual affair with his PA, then just shrug her off when he grew bored with her in bed. Which he would. That was the nature of the beast. His admission that he’d always fancied her went some way to excusing his behaviour. But if that was the case, then he should never have hired her, damn him. His lust had become a time bomb waiting to happen.
I never stood a chance, she realised.
Her sigh this time had nothing to do with satisfaction.
‘Will you stop all that sighing?’ Alex muttered into her hair.
Harriet automatically stiffened, her buttocks tensing when her legs straightened.
He groaned, his hands lifting to cup her breasts as he rolled over onto his back, taking her with him. Panic filled Harriet as the evidence of his erection sent jabs of desire rocketing through her own infatuated flesh. She tried to wriggle away from him, but he held her tight.
‘Hand me a condom, beautiful,’ he purred into her ear. ‘My hands are otherwise occupied.’
Which they were, his palms rubbing over her still-erect nipples, sending unnecessary messages to that part of her which seemed always to be ready for him. Her legs fell apart of their own volition, her belly tightening.
‘Haven’t you had enough?’ Harriet protested, but weakly, her hand already reaching for the condom.
‘Not even remotely,’ he replied.
* * *
Alex had plenty of opportunity to think about that telling reply during the drive back to Sydney. Harry had refused to put off her Sunday lunch with her friend, despite his doing his best to persuade her over breakfast to stay another night. Whilst she was extremely compliant in bed—and in the spa bath this morning—she became a different woman once she was up and dressed, reverting to the difficult one who was not amenable to persuasion.
Alex’s decision when he woke this morning to change the rules of their affair looked in danger of failing. When he’d suggested that they meet up at least one night during the week, she had been quick to say no, reminding him that that wasn’t what they’d agreed on. She would come to his apartment next Friday night and not before.
Alex couldn’t contemplate waiting that long before he made love to her again.
It came to Alex after he’d been driving in a somewhat frustrated silence for over two hours that his PA’s hot-as-hell behaviour last night might be worrying her. In his experience, women weren’t as pragmatic about sex as men. They read into things. They sometimes invented complications where there weren’t any.
Slanting a quick glance her way, he saw that the set of her mouth was tight, her hands gripping her handbag in her lap with unnecessary force. Silly girl. Didn’t she know that there was nothing wrong with what they’d done last night? They were consenting adults. Grown-ups. Yet she was sitting there, acting like some guilty schoolgirl or an adulterous wife. Okay, so the suddenness of their affair—and the fieriness of their passion for each other—was on the startling side. But why fight it? Why not just go with the flow and enjoy what they could share till the fire had burned out, after which they could call it quits and she could go back to the life she’d mapped out for herself?
Another reason for her grim mood suddenly crossed Alex’s mind. Maybe she was worried that their affair might cost her her job.