More than a Fling?

In any other woman that stretch would have had him walking out through the door, because it was such an obvious move, but he could see from Ally’s painfully scrunched face that she wasn’t even remotely concerned whether he was watching or not. He could see pain flicker across her face as her shoulders rose and then slumped, the way her eyes contracted when she rolled her head on her shoulders.

Then she glanced across to the bar, saw that he was watching and immediately straightened her spine, giving him a long, cool look. So, Ms Priss didn’t like anyone seeing her less than cool and controlled.

‘Problem?’ he asked when she slid back into her seat.

‘A muscle in my shoulder is on fire,’ Ally replied, wincing. ‘I swung my suitcase off the luggage conveyor and felt the twinge. Crazy, since I’m always picking up luggage.’

I can massage it for you. Ross opened his mouth to say the words and closed it again. And after I rub you into a gooey mess I’d like to sleep with you.

Ross sighed. She’d never accept—not in a hundred years. Smart, uptight women didn’t do that. Especially after five minutes of conversation.

She was uptight and she didn’t look like an idiot. In fact she had the most intelligent glint in those amazing eyes. And smart, uptight girls rarely said yes to casual sex.

He thought that was tragic.

Ross decided that it would be a very good idea to get his mind out of the bedroom and back onto the purpose of this evening.

‘So, tell me what you and Luc are thinking about with Win! and Bellechier.’

Ally looked at her new glass of wine and sighed. ‘It’s getting late... Have you eaten? My treat.’ She flashed a smile. ‘You might be more receptive to my suggestions on a full stomach.’

‘Nice try.’ But maybe dinner wasn’t such a bad idea. Ross shrugged his agreement. ‘Do you want to eat here or on the terrace?’

‘I love the view of Table Mountain from the terrace, and I could do with some fresh air,’ Ally replied, immediately slipping off her stool. ‘That sounds great.’

Ross dropped his car key into the back pocket of his jeans behind his wallet and picked up both their drinks as Ally walked ahead of him. Nice view, he thought. Curvy ass and long shapely legs.

He could easily imagine his hands holding that sexy butt as her legs encircled his hips...

Down boy, he told himself. Do try not to totally embarrass yourself.

* * *

‘So what do you think?’ Ally asked, leaning across her plate as she waited for his response to her succinct top line explanation of why she thought their products could be branded together.

‘No,’ Ross replied, and grinned at the spark of annoyance that jumped across her face. ‘Come on, Jones. I’ve rejected branding opportunities from massive soft drink brands—why would I accept your offer?’

Ally thought for a minute, wondering how to express the thoughts that were tumbling around, half formed and half baked. ‘Because those other companies wanted to brand Win! But I think I want you, not the game.’

Ross frowned. ‘God, that sounds even worse.’

Ally pushed her plate of uneaten steak and salad away and leaned her arms on the table. ‘We wouldn’t brand Win!. We’d use you.’

‘Still not getting it—and getting more scared by the moment,’ Ross muttered.

‘Initially I thought, like Luc, that Win! and the new Bellechier line would be a good fit. It’s a sporting and lifestyle game and our new collection is a lot more relaxed. Good synergy.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Ross was looking at her as if she was about to drop a concrete block on his head. ‘Are we going to be done with this conversation soon?’

‘We were on the wrong track looking at Win!. We should be looking at you. The man behind the game...’

Ross groaned theatrically and released a graphic swear word. ‘Sorry, but that is such a load of BS.’

Ally shook her head. ‘It’s really not. Win! is super-hot, and anyone who is tech-savvy—which is everybody between the age of thirteen and thirty-five—would be interested in the man behind the phenomena. Who did this? How did he do it? Add to the fact that you are...well, young, successful and a good-looking guy—’

‘You think so?’

Ally draped her arm over the back of her chair and held his eyes. ‘Are you fishing for compliments now? You know that you are hot, Bennett. We both know that you are hot.’

He lifted one eyebrow. ‘Really?’

‘Don’t get excited; that’s a professional observation.’ Ally knew that her voice held ice but she couldn’t be certain that her eyes weren’t slowly undressing him. ‘I also love the idea of Crazy Collaborations—a technology think-tank—but I think that we’d have to stick to you as creator of Win! for the campaign.’

‘We’re not sticking to anything because the answer is still no.’

Dammit, she wasn’t anywhere near changing his mind. ‘What would it take?’

‘To get me to do the campaign?’ Ross leaned back in his chair. His mouth held a hint of a smile and his eyes narrowed in thought.

‘Mmm. Come on—hit me. What would it take? What’s the number? The demand? Where’s the line in the sand?’

‘You sure you want to know?’

Ally nodded, resigned. He was going to throw a ridiculous number out there, or ask for something stupid, impractical, unobtainable or all three. She’d been here before—matching demands with deliverability and, more importantly, deciding whether they were worth what they were asking.

Some were. Some weren’t.

Ally rolled her head and looked at him from under her lashes. Oh, well, in for a penny...or for many pounds. ‘Hit me.’

‘I will consider doing the campaign—seriously consider it—if you sleep with me.’

Ross almost looked around, in the vague hope that someone else had suddenly joined the conversation, because he could not believe that those words had come from his own mouth. What a flippin’ idiot.

He looked at Ally, who looked as shocked as he was feeling. Guppy look, Ross thought as his words registered and her eyes widened. He expected her to make a fish noise at any minute. He raked his hand through his hair. The words had slipped out. He’d been thinking them, but he normally managed to keep his thoughts behind his teeth. They were at best wildly inappropriate, and at worst sexual harassment of the worst kind.

It was pushing her into a corner, asking her to go beyond the call of duty. Of course she would say no—probably at the same time that she threw that glass of red wine in his face.

And he would so deserve it. What was he thinking? Oh, wait... Maybe he wasn’t thinking...maybe he was allowing his little head to do the talking.

Ally just stared at him with her surprised fish face and he shifted in his chair. He wished she would say something and give him a hint of the amount of crap he’d just jumped into.

He lifted his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Sorry. That was...’

‘Rude? Inappropriate? Offensive?’ Ally tapped her finger against the white tablecloth.

‘All of the above?’

‘Damn right.’

She shrugged a slim shoulder and smiled. Smiled?

‘Okay, let’s go.’

Whoa! Stop the bus! She was prepared to do this? Had he heard her correctly? No, he couldn’t have.

‘Seriously?’

Those eyes bored into him. ‘Wasn’t it a serious offer?’

‘Yes. No... Dammit, I didn’t expect you to say yes!’

Ally cocked her head. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I didn’t think that you were the type.’ And, more worrying, he really didn’t want her to be the type. Over the years he’d met far too many women who’d use any weapon they could, including their sexuality, to get one step higher up the corporate ladder. Grasping, greedy, power-hungry women who thought it was acceptable to sleep, lie and manipulate their way to the top.

The realist in him knew that he was a target for those predatory types. He had money, influence and, according to that stupid poll recently, power. What that meant exactly he had no damn idea, but he couldn’t help feeling disappointed that Luc’s sister used the same tactics.

Disappointed, yeah...but he was attracted enough, wanted her too much, not to take what she was offering.

And he did want to have sex with her. He wanted to see whether her eyes deepened or lightened in passion, whether she huffed or moaned her pleasure, whether her skin was as fragrant as he thought, whether those long legs could wind around his hips just as he’d imagined they could.

Ross took a sip of whisky and nearly choked when Ally stood up and draped a black leather bag over her slim shoulder. ‘So, shall we go upstairs?’

‘Fine.’

Ross nearly bit his tongue trying to get the word out. Your room, my room, the lobby floor, Ross thought in a daze. He couldn’t believe that his stupid flip comment was going to lead to him getting it on with this gorgeous woman.

Utterly bemused, sure that he was operating in an alternative reality, he stumbled to his feet.

This was proof that God did, indeed, look after the intensely stupid.

* * *

How could she be both incredibly turned on and scorchingly angry? Ally wondered as she stepped into the lift ahead of Ross. She didn’t have any objection to sleeping with Ross—her monologue in the Ladies’ earlier was proof of that—but she despised the link between sex and her career.

How dared he make sex with her a condition of doing business? That behaviour was no longer acceptable in any circumstances! Sex was sex and work was work and the first one should never be used as a tool for negotiation. This was the twenty-first century and men didn’t get away with that kind of testosterone-fuelled crap any more. And it hurt like a man-o-war sting that he thought that she was stupid enough, desperate enough, insecure enough about her job that she would even consider sleeping with him to get what she wanted from him.

She might be one or all of those things—but she’d never use her body as she would her laptop or her mobile.

As for the turned-on part—jeez, Louise. She was in a small, slow lift with a super-fine guy who twisted her panties with just one look out of those lazy gold-green eyes. Despite the fact that he was a Neanderthal, she wanted him in the worst way possible. But there was no way she could have him...ever.

But she could teach him a lesson in sexual harassment. Oh, yeah, she was going to harass the hell out of him...

Ally watched the doors close and was grateful they were the only occupants of the lift. She knew it would take about a minute to get to her floor, so she’d better get busy.

Before she could talk herself out of it she whirled around, grabbed Ross’s shirt and slammed her mouth on his. His mouth opened in surprise and she took the opportunity to slide her tongue inside. Her body sighed at the heat and spice of his mouth. She opened her hands and spread her fingers across his wide chest, her palms loving the feel of hard muscles and the slow thump-thump of his heartbeat.

It took him only seconds to react, and then his hands were in her hair, and he was in charge of their kiss, and he was angling her face to tongue her deeper. One hand dropped to yank her hips against his. The hard, hard length of his erection pushed against her stomach, and she had to restrain herself from reaching down and cupping him, sliding her thumb up and across its full tip.

If she did that she’d never stop this, and she had to...

Ten seconds more, she thought as the doors slid open and the bell dinged. Ally wound her arms around his neck and tangled her tongue with his in a low, sexy swirl that had him moaning into her mouth. She withdrew and plunged again, and was only dimly aware that Ross had shoved out his hand and was holding the doors open, keeping the lift on that floor.

‘I want you,’ he growled in between hot, wet kisses.

‘I know.’

It was now or never, Ally thought, desperate for more...so much more. If she let him get out of this lift then she’d let him into her room and she’d be flat on her back and naked before her head had stopped spinning.

She wanted to see him, explore him, taste him, touch him. But not like this. Because while she didn’t need to love a guy to have sex with him she did have to like him, and there should be at the very minimum mutual respect between them.

Ally wrenched her mouth away, ducked out from under his arm and hit the close doors button before he could even react. She stepped out of the lift as the doors started to close.

‘What the hell, Alyssa?’ he demanded, hot eyes blazing, his hands easily pushing the lift doors open again.

‘Yeah, so not sorry. Did you really think that I was that easy or that desperate? That I would just fall into bed with you so that I could get you to sign on the dotted line?’ She gave him a frosty smile and gestured to his tented pants. ‘Enjoy trying to hide that as you walk through the lobby... Oh, hello! Do you want me to hold the lift for you?’

Ally stepped aside to let two elderly ladies into the lift and grinned when Ross turned his back to them.

Except that now she had an eyeful of that super-fine taut ass she’d had her hands on a minute before.

Ally placed her hand on her forehead and stumbled towards her room.

This was the problem with playing with fire: you ended up getting a little scorched.

THREE

Ally touched the side of her Bellechier sports watch as she jogged up to the steps that led to the hotel’s seaside entrance and placed her hands on her knees, hauling in wet air. Humid, she thought, and hot already at seven in the morning. She glanced at her watch: six miles in fifty minutes. Not her best time, but acceptable—especially since she’d tossed and turned all night and when she’d finally slept had had incredibly restless dreams.

All featuring last night’s sexy jerk.

Behind her sunglasses Ally scowled at the waves smacking the beach across the road and promenade. She might have left him in an awkward position last night—good, he so deserved it!—but she hadn’t emerged from their dizzying encounter unscathed. She’d felt tense, fidgety...horny, dammit.

Apart from her inability or unwillingness to connect...and her crazy work schedule...and the fact that she hadn’t dated or felt attracted to any man in a long time...apart from all that she was still a reasonably normal woman in her late twenties and she did get normal urges.

Up to now she’d always been perfectly content with a bit of self-love and was easily able to sort herself out. She’d tried that last night and, like most of the few lovers she’d had, she hadn’t delivered. She had just ended up feeling more frustrated and hornier than before, which sucked. Maybe it was time to cave in and buy that dildo she’d seen online. Except that now she wasn’t sure that it would help. She wanted masculine fingers between her legs, a hard body above hers, the hot, thick thrust of an erection pushing into her.

She still wanted Ross and that pushed up her irritation levels. Even a long run hadn’t banished her frustration; maybe a cold shower would do the trick.

Ally stood up, placed her hands on her hips and walked to the low wall that separated the beach from the promenade. Placing one foot on the low wall, she did some warm-down stretches as she watched the ships on the horizon and thought about the day ahead.

She was booked on a flight back to Geneva that night so she had the day open to do as she pleased. She could buckle down in front of her computer—as long as she had her computer she could work anywhere—and get a solid eight hours in either in her room, one of the lounges or on one of the many verandas in the hotel. That was what she should do.

Bellechier had a second store opening in Hong Kong and another in Miami, and there were countless items on her to-do list to ensure that these new additions exuded the same class and charisma as their other stores. As Brand and Image Director, it was her job to make sure that the look and feel of the new stores was everything their customers expected them to be.

Then she had magazine adverts to approve, paperwork regarding their sponsorship of a yacht race to plough through and a new face to find for the new line.

Ally wiped the perspiration from her brow before resting her forehead on her knee. She wished she was the type of person who could just pull on a bikini, grab her e-reader and towel and hit the beach—who could spend the day in the sunshine doing nothing. But that just wasn’t Ally. No: she’d sit down and within a half-hour she’d be feeling guilty because she wasn’t being productive, feeling tense because she’d be making mental lists of what she could be doing.

The truth was that she was happiest working; at work she didn’t have to think about anything else except the next task she had to do. Work was her entertainment. She felt safe there. It was her demanding lover. Ally looked at the beach again and sighed.

Intellectually she knew that she should want to take time off, that she was entitled to relax, to have some fun, but she couldn’t translate the thought into acceptance. Working was her way of repaying her debt to Sabine and Justin; it was her way of saying thank you. She couldn’t be the soul-sharing, emotionally expressive daughter they wanted—dear God, she would be if she could—so hard work was all she could give them.

She’d do anything they asked unless it involved her heart—not that she was sure she had one any more. She knew what her life could have been like, and the thought of it still made her shiver. If Sabine and Justin hadn’t pulled her out of that sterile hotel room the Thai authorities and later the British Embassy had shoved her into after they’d removed her dad’s body from the beach in Phuket, God knew what would have happened to her. She had no other relatives—none that she knew of anyway—and no one else would have run to her rescue.

She owed them for giving her a home and an education, but she couldn’t risk loving them too much—just in case they got whipped away as well. She didn’t think she could survive that.

She had to work this morning, but it would be an absolute sin not to spend some time on the beach. So...what if she printed out those reports she needed to go through on her portable printer and took them to the beach with her? She would still be working...and getting a tan. And since she needed to concentrate while reading them she wouldn’t have time to think of Ross Bennett—the A-grade sexy dipstick.

But she’d only be productive if she didn’t think of his clever mouth, his big hand on her breast, that hard thigh pressing into her crotch. Ally sighed as her skin prickled and her crotch throbbed. Casting a last look at the ocean, she turned to walk back into the hotel. Here we go again.

A cold shower was her last resort; if that didn’t work then she was definitely ordering that sex toy.

* * *

Like most of his gender, Ross hated apologising. It made him feel stupid and weak and...stupid.

But stupid he had been, and although Ally had punished him for it—being in a lift with two nosy old ladies with a full erection had not been fun—he knew that he still owed her an apology. He’d tried most of last night and all of this morning to find a reason why he didn’t, shouldn’t, couldn’t—and still hadn’t found one.

He’d opened his big mouth and by doing so he’d screwed up, and he was enough of a man to admit it. For most of the morning he’d tried hard to ignore his conscience but at noon, when he realised that he’d achieved sweet FA, he’d given in and left his office to head over to Ally’s hotel.

He needed to apologise—not only because his conscience dictated it but also because his father had never been able to do so... Saying sorry is for wusses, pansies and pathetics. That was one of Jonas Bennett’s favourite sayings. But Ross had always vowed to be as little like his dad as possible.

Propositioning Ally in the way he had was the kind of thing his father would do: when Jonas wanted something he used any means he could to get it. Winning, getting his way, coming out on top was all that mattered to him, and last night Ross had proved that in certain ways he was still his father’s son.

He loved and hated that fact. Loved that he had his father’s drive, passion and work ethic. Hated the fact that he also had his deeply competitive streak. And his stubbornness.

His mother was either a fool or a saint for staying married to him for nearly thirty-five years. How did she do it? Love, she’d once told him, wasn’t an emotion but an action. When you’d been married as long as they had, she’d added, sometimes you had to choose to love and to fight for love.

That sounded too much like hard work, and Ross had yet to find a woman who interested him enough to consider the possibility of a lifetime with her. Ally Jones definitely wasn’t a candidate. Besides, even if he was looking for ‘the one’, he wouldn’t choose a tense, pushy, uptight corporate drone. He’d left that world behind years ago—and all the stress that went with it; why would he ever get involved with a woman deeply entrenched in it?

No, he liked to keep his personal relationships simple and above all honest. So if he hooked up with someone he always made it clear that he wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. One thing was for sure: when he did find Wonder Woman—he was still too busy to commit the time needed to find her—he’d never let his partner feel she had to compete with his work for his attention, as he’d had to do as a child.

Right—enough introspection. Let’s get this damned apology done and dusted so I can get some work done today.

He believed Miss Jones was on the beach, the concierge told him, so Ross walked out through the doors leading to the promenade, flipping his sunglasses onto his face to hide his eyes from the blistering glare of the midday sun.

Standing at the wall, he scanned the beach, which was reasonably busy for a Thursday in September. Female faces were hidden under floppy hats, caps and sunglasses, so how was he going to find her?

By going up to every single woman on the beach and acting like a pervert, that was how. Perfect. Just what he needed.

Ross stepped onto the beach, ignoring the hot sand that crept into his flip-flops as he made his way to the most populated part of the beach. He looked out to the sea and watched as a woman walked out of the waves and pushed her wet hair back from her face.

He instantly recognised that body, its essential bits covered by fluorescent aqua triangles; he had felt it tremble under his touch last night. A waist he could span with both his hands, curvy hips, legs that went on for ever. Ross swallowed, realised that saliva had disappeared from his mouth and stood still as she strolled up to a beach blanket and dropped onto it, tipping her elfin face up to the sun.

A fist grabbed his heart and squeezed. She was utterly, maddeningly, crotch-jumpingly beautiful and he still wanted her. Probably would do anything to have her.

Just for a night...a couple of nights; just to get lost in that face, that body, the comprehensive femininity of her. And, because he’d been an utter ass, he probably never would.

That sucked.

Ross ran a hand through his hair, gestured to a beach vendor and bought two bottles of water from the elderly man. Cracking the seal on one, he took a long sip and headed to the beach blanket where Ally lay back on her elbows, smiling at two toddlers who were arguing over a spade.

He sat down next to her, handed her a bottle of water and jumped right in. ‘Sorry.’

Ally took the bottle, raised her eyebrows at him and curled her lip. ‘You think a cold bottle of water and a half-assed apology is going to work?’

‘No.’ Ross twisted his lips in frustration. ‘But I thought I would give it a go.’

Ross removed the bottle from her grasp, cracked the lid for her and handed it back. ‘I opened my mouth and spoke without thinking—not something I often do. I wanted to take the words back as soon as I said them.’

Ally cocked her head.

Bloody Nora, the woman had a stare that had all the power of an industrial laser. And why did that turn him on?