‘Mr Thorpe, I...’ She started to speak but her words faded when she noticed their fingers entangled as they both gripped the handle of his laptop bag. She stared down at their hands, but she didn’t pull away, as he’d expected her to.
He should break the contact now...immediately. She was his driver, his employee, someone he should not be this close to—ever. But he could no more break their contact than he could stop his heart from beating.
‘You should move back,’ he told her, his voice rough-sounding.
‘I should,’ she agreed, sounding bemused and dazed. ‘I want to, I know I must, but I can’t.’
He released a groan and inhaled a solid hit of her scent, something fresh and unisex, light and lovely. Instead of pulling away, his thumb slid over her knuckles. Passion flared in her eyes, her breath hitched and she tipped her head back, lifting her mouth. What else could he do but lower his mouth to hers?
He was an inch from her mouth, and anticipation hummed through his veins, when she slapped her hand on her chest and pulled back. His eyes connected with hers and he saw panic and a healthy dose of anxiety.
‘Are you married?’ she demanded.
‘No.’
‘Engaged, seeing someone, sleeping with someone?’ she demanded.
He hadn’t had sex in months. He’d been too busy to think about taking a woman to bed. The only woman he had any contact with on a personal level was Melissa, but there had never been anything between them. Okay, they’d kissed once, but that had been at her instigation, not his. She was connected to him through Sam, not because he wanted her in his life.
‘No,’ he told Lex, desperate to taste her.
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Yes, damn it. Can I kiss you now?’
‘We shouldn’t. I work for you,’ Lex told him, the expression on her face yearning. She wanted his mouth on hers as much as he wanted his there. If he pressed her, he knew she’d admit that their attraction, their desperation to see each other naked, was all that was important right now.
‘Tell me not to kiss you, Cole,’ Lex begged.
‘I can’t,’ he whispered, bending his knees a little to meet her mouth.
He was about to make contact when voices coming from the passage—there were two penthouse suites—pulled him back to the present. The door to the suite was open and anyone walking past would get more than an eyeful. Cole stepped away from Lex and a cold dose of reality slapped him in the face. He was in Cape Town to work—Lex was his driver, for goodness’ sake.
He didn’t do this. He wasn’t the type of guy who hit on female employees, not if they were directors, managers or cleaners—or chauffeurs.
He owned the company. He paid her salary.
He. Wasn’t. That. Guy.
At the sound of the lift door opening behind him in the hallway, Cole dropped to his haunches to pick up his laptop bag.
As three people passed his open door, he turned his back to them and gripped the handle of the laptop bag, hauling in long, deep gulps of winter air.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ he told Lex.
She nodded. He noticed that her braid was loose, and he wondered how it would look spread out on his pillow. ‘It’s my job.’
He took a deep breath and she nodded once before turning away and walking down the hallway to the lift. When the lift doors closed, he bent over and put his hands on his thighs, bent over and took a couple of long, steadying breaths. He couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so shaky and off-balance.
How—in the name of all things holy—had things got out of hand so quickly?
Before her younger sisters had arrived, Lex had had a lover or two and thought she knew what attraction was.
She’d been so very, very wrong...
She liked men, liked how they made her feel, but nothing prepared her for the intensity she and Cole shared. As soon as his fingers connected with hers, she’d felt as if she was being tugged towards a portal and, had he kissed her, he would’ve propelled her into another universe where nothing existed but them.
Despite their non-kiss, she still felt shaky, off-balance and, hours later, her heart was still bouncing off the walls of her ribcage. A million butterflies had taken up residence in her stomach and she felt as though she could sleep for a week or run an ultra-marathon.