‘Well, sometimes a bit, but then I remind myself that you are just a hunk of good-looking...’ She liked his slow smile. ‘I remind myself how mean you can be...’
‘Mean?’
‘Oneglass of champagne at my interview!’
He smiled for he thought she hadn’t noticed the absence of a bottle.
‘Ah, that.’
‘A meal at your bar instead of your restaurant...’
‘You make it sound like the local dive.’
‘Perhaps, but even so Ideservedfive stars last night. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when I do find myself fancying you, I remind myself how remote you can be and how humourless you are.’
‘Well, it’s good you’ve come to your senses,’ Gian said, ‘especially as I don’t have condoms with me. I tend not to keep them in my funeral suit.’
She stared back and resisted smiling, determined to prove her humourless point.
‘Except we wouldn’t need them.’ He held up a purple foil packet of contraceptive pills. ‘What are these for?’
‘You’ve been snooping.’
‘Not really, I wanted toothpaste. I just wondered what you were doing on the Pill if you’re not sleeping with anyone...’
‘Yet!’
His jaw was set in a grim line. He had this vision of Ariana chasing some bastard who sensed her fragility, yet she was not fragile now. Ariana was looking right at him and there was none of last night’s desperate need for comfort, just the desire that had always been beneath it.
‘So?’ he asked. She looked at the purple Pill packet and was about to lie, as she so often did, and say she was on the Pill for her skin, or so that it made her cycle more predictable, or whatever she would say if her mother found them.
But Gian was certainly not her mother.
And with Gian there was no reason she could see to lie.
‘I went on it because I feel like the only person in the world without a sex life, and when I go away with friends I don’t want them to know I’m the only one...’ She shrugged. ‘Pathetic, huh...’
‘No more pathetic than when I was younger and would have condoms on me, just to have them on me...’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
They shared a smile in the thin dawn light but then hers wavered. ‘Look, I’m sorry I’ve made things even more awkward between us. I should never have foisted myself on you. I was all a jumble.’ She looked at his suave good looks and then at his chest. His tie was gone and his shirt unbuttoned, though just at the top—enough to see a glimpse of chest hair—but she reminded herself of how empty a vessel his chest was and again tried to salvage some pride. ‘And it’s not as if I enjoyed kissing you last night. In fact, it was like kissing a screen. I felt nothing...’
‘Really?’
The thin morning light disappeared as his face came closer, but she refused to be moved by the brush of his lips and the softness of his mouth, just as he had refused to be moved by hers.
Except his kiss was more refined, more skilled, more measured and she found she could not quite catch her breath as her mouth fought not to relent.
‘Like kissing a screen?’ he checked.
‘Yes,’ she said, and felt the scratch of his chin drag on hers. As his fingers came to her jaw, his tongue slipped in, and she absolutely refused to moan at the bliss. In fact, she held her mouth slack as his tongue moved in and out. He tasted divine, all minty and fresh, but there was nothing clean about his kiss—it was filthy, in fact. Thorough, probing and potent with skill, his tongue felt like it ran a wire straight down between her legs and she bunched her hands into fists rather than reach for his head.
‘Still nothing?’ he checked, and now his hand was stroking her breast through her top and Ariana was sure that if she hadn’t been lying down she might have fainted.
‘Nothing,’ she lied.