gasps and blushes meant and what her body was capable of. Of what they’d be capable of together, because when she’d looked him as if she was somehow imagining him naked he’d nearly combusted.
The strength of his reaction to this woman didn’t make any sense. She was by no means the most beautiful woman he’d ever met and he’d always preferred sophisticated experience over naivety. He had absolutely no reason to behave and feel the way he did around her. It was too visceral, too dramatic, and wholly unacceptable.
Why did he even care about her issues anyway? And why had he taken such umbrage to her registration to that site in the first place? As she’d repeatedly told him, none of it was any of his business. She was obviously perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He wasn’t responsible for her in any way. Yet hammering away inside him was the conviction that for some unfathomable reason it was his business and she did need his protection.
He’d never felt anything like it before, he thought grimly as she uncrossed her impossibly long bare legs and put her hands on the arms of the chair. He certainly didn’t want to feel anything like it. In fact, he’d spent the majority of his adult life avoiding precisely this kind of thing. He’d experienced enough horror, confusion and unpredictability growing up to like his life now controlled, ordered and sterile.
The way he responded to Kate threatened that. It screwed with his head and made a mockery of everything he considered vital. So he ought to just let her go. She wasn’t even making it difficult. By getting to her feet, smoothing her clothes and turning to head for the door, clearly taking his silence for acquiescence, she was actually facilitating the best outcome he could have hoped for this evening.
And yet, it wasn’t the outcome he wanted. Not by a long shot. He wanted her horizontal and beneath him. He wanted to spend the evening running his hands over every glorious inch of her to see if she felt as silky smooth as she looked. He wanted to find out what sounds she made when she came, and with a primal instinct he’d never have dreamt he possessed, he wanted to be the first man to make her make those sounds.
The battle for control was one he was losing with increasing momentum. The desire thundering through him had grown too powerful to ignore. With every step she took away from him his self-restraint slipped that bit more and he found himself caring that bit less. By the time she reached the door, a hair’s breadth from walking out of his life for ever, which should have been perfectly fine but wasn’t, all reason had fled. His blood pounded in his ears and his body ached unbearably, and all he could think was, so what if he did respond to her with an unfathomable intensity? Was he really going to let her walk out of here with her self-esteem needlessly non-existent, thinking no one wanted her when someone very definitely did?
Was he hell.
‘Stop,’ he said roughly, pushing back from his desk and standing up barely before he knew what he was doing.
At the door, her hand on the handle, Kate froze, then turned, and he saw a combination of wariness and surprise filling her expression as she watched him stride across the carpet towards her. ‘What is it?’
He came to an abrupt halt a foot in front of her, close enough to see the rapid rise and fall of her chest and hear the breath hitch in her throat. Close enough to reach for her.
‘There is one more thing,’ he said, jamming his hands into his pockets before he could act on the instinct hammering away inside him.
‘Oh?’
‘You’re wrong.’
She stared at him, bewilderment flickering in the shimmering cobalt depths of her eyes. ‘You don’t have a lot to be getting on with?’
‘About your desirability.’
The pulse at the base of her neck began to flutter wildly. ‘What?’
‘Those boys were fools.’
‘In what way?’
‘You are very, very desirable.’
Her eyes widened for a moment and then she frowned. ‘And you are very, very funny,’ she said. ‘Or not at all funny, actually.’
‘You think I’m joking?’ said Theo darkly, gripped once again by an irrational desire to locate everyone who’d ever decimated her self-esteem and string them up. ‘I am not joking.’
‘Nevertheless,’ she said dryly, ‘experience would suggest otherwise.’
‘You have no experience.’
‘Which kind of proves my point.’
‘And I can prove my point.’
‘Oh, yes?’ she asked, lifting her chin an inch and arching an eyebrow. ‘How?’
Now was the time to retreat, yelled the little voice of reason banging away in his head, demanding to be heard. Now. He’d achieved what he’d set out to do when he’d told her to stop. He’d corrected her misconceptions. His work was done. He should take a step back and reinstate some desperately needed distance.
Yet he couldn’t move. Her wide-eyed innocence and intoxicating scent were drowning out that voice in his head. The tilt of her face and the challenge in her voice were tugging at a viscerally primitive part of him deep inside. And then he noticed that her breathing was rapid, shallow, that she was staring at his mouth, and now, heaven help him, she was actually leaning towards him, and as a strange feeling of fate enveloped him what little remained of his control simply evaporated.
‘Like this,’ he muttered, and with one quick step forwards, he took her face in his hands and slammed his mouth down on hers.