‘You look...amazing...’ As a high-powered lawyer, it was rare for him to be lost for words but right then Drake could barely get a full sentence out.
Aerin gave a tentative smile, her cheeks going a delightful shade of pink. She swished from side to side and the skirt of the dress swirled like a blue wave around her. ‘Do you think so? I wasn’t sure about the off-the-shoulder style. I normally don’t show this much flesh.’
‘You look stunning.’ He was having trouble keeping his eyes away from her small but perfect cleavage.
‘Could you help me put this on?’ She opened her palm to reveal a fine gold chain with a sapphire and diamond pendant on it. ‘The fastening is too fiddly for me to put on by myself.’
Drake took the pendant from her hand. ‘Turn around.’ He came up close behind her and looped the chain around her neck. Her flowery perfume teased his nostrils and dazzled his senses, the fragrance redolent of a summer garden. He wanted to bury his head beside her neck and breathe more of her in. He frowned in concentration as he worked to fasten the catch, but the chain and its clasp were tiny and it didn’t help that his hands weren’t as steady as he would have liked. And nor was his heart rate. Damn it.
‘It’s a tricky fastening,’ Aerin said in a husky tone.
‘I think I need to get my eyes checked. There, that’s it.’ He stepped back and she turned around to face him. The pendant glinted from just above her cleavage.
‘Thanks.’ Her hand went to the pendant and shifted it back and forth along its chain. ‘My grandmother gave it to me for my last birthday, along with the earrings.’
‘They’re very beautiful. And so are you.’
Her blush deepened and her hand fell away from the pendant. ‘Thank you.’ She glanced at his as yet untied bow tie. ‘Do you need some help with that?’
Drake didn’t but he couldn’t resist the opportunity for her to touch him, even if it was simply to do up his bow tie. ‘Go for it. I’m too much of a snob to buy one of those clip-on ones.’
Aerin stepped closer and he breathed in another heady draught of her fragrance. He would never be able to look at a rose or a sweet pea again without thinking of her. She took the ends of his bow tie and deftly knotted it around his neck. The movement of her fingers so close to his neck sent shivers rolling down his spine. He could not stop thinking of those soft little hands moving on other parts of his body. A low rumble of lust moved through his blood like a distant earthquake, sending shock waves and tremors through his entire body. How was he supposed to keep his hands off her when all he wanted was to draw her close and kiss that delectable mouth? To crush her slim frame to his hard one and feel every feminine curve stir his body into fervent heat?
Once she had completed tying the bow tie, she patted his chest with one of her hands. ‘There you go.’
Drake caught her hand before she could step back, holding it against thetump-tump-tumpof his heart. His eyes held hers in a silent lock, her pupils instantly flaring like pools of ink. The point of her tongue slipped out to sweep over her lips, and a rocket blast of lust slammed him in the groin.
Drake drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I told myself I wasn’t going to do this again.’
Her look was innocent and yet her words were breathlessly delivered. ‘Do what?’
He gave a rueful smile. ‘You know what.’
‘You want to kiss me again?’
He brushed an imaginary hair away from her forehead. ‘Don’t sound so surprised, Goldilocks. I can’t get our first kiss out of my mind.’
‘It was my first kiss, not yours. You’ve probably kissed hundreds of women.’
‘No one like you.’ Drake lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the backs of her bent knuckles, his eyes holding hers.
She shivered and moved a little closer as if unable to withstand the magnetic pull of attraction, the same magnetic pull he was feeling towards her. ‘Why no one like me? Am I so different from everyone you normally date?’
‘Different in too many ways to list.’ Drake let go of her hand and gave a crooked smile. ‘Now, we’d better get to the dinner before they think we’ve been waylaid up here doing something else.’
A vivid blush swept across her cheeks and she turned away to check her reflection in the mirror, catching his gaze for a brief moment before repositioning the pendant around her neck.
‘I feel bad about lying to my friends. I know I should’ve just been honest and told them I haven’t found the love of my life yet but I don’t want our last reunion to be all about me and my high expectations and so far unfulfilled dreams.’ She let out a long sigh and added, ‘I wish I didn’t have to stay the whole weekend. I’m not good at acting, or lying for that matter, which in our case amounts to the same thing. I’m worried I’m going to make a fool of myself in front of them all.’
Drake came over to her to stand behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror once more. He placed his hands on her bare shoulders and tried to ignore the rush of heat burning in his groin. ‘We don’t have to stay the whole weekend. We can stay for the dinner and overnight and then leave first thing. We can tell them we’re heading someplace else for a bit of couple time.’ Even as he was saying the words, a red flag was waving in his head. But he found he wanted to be alone with her, not surrounded by her friends and their partners, but just to be with her.
Her grey-blue eyes widened. ‘You’d be okay with that? I mean, heading somewhere else tomorrow?’
‘Sure. It will take the pressure off us both, pretending all the time to be something we’re not.’ He shouldnotbe okay with it. He should be telling her no, no, no, we shouldn’t be alone together. Not totally alone. But somehow he couldn’t find the words to say it. The desire to do the opposite was taking command of the control centre of his brain. His brain that was normally so rational and logical and risk averse and here he was suggesting a secret getaway.
Just the two of them.
And if that wasn’t a risk, he didn’t know what the hell was.