“Giles, I—I’m really sorry we didn’t get the chance to have dinner together. I am. But I asked you not to do this. Hit on me.”
“Not hitting,” he says softly, looking up. “I just want a kiss.”
He is very still, all flippancy gone. So handsome, in his suit and Barbour, melted snow glistening on his sleeves and in his hair. And at the same time—shy. He is shy, and neither smooth nor masterful.
That, or he is playing me.
“Hit me again,” I say softly, mockingly. “Only this time, choose a better quotation.”
He hears my softness, but he also hears the mockery. The tension around his mouth relaxes, and he smiles.
“‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I’m having a tough time keeping my hands off you?’”
The sentence echoes in my memory and I have to laugh. “Much better.”
I step up to him, glad of the high heels that have been pinching me all afternoon, because they make me tall enough to wrap one arm around his shoulders while I kiss him. On the mouth, and just deliberately enough, I hope, to send a spark into his belly.
You play me, I play you.
“More,” he murmurs when I try to pull away.
“Giles, somebody might—”
He is not interested at all.
Very fuzzily I make a deal with myself: the second he begins to push me through the half open door of my room, I will push him away. Only he does not. He slips his hands underneath my coat and draws me firmly against himself, and although I could hazard a guess that it is not his phone that is hard below my navel, he is very still, as our lips and tongues slow down, find their pace. How much you can learn about someone by kissing him! I already had an idea that Giles Cleveland is a man who enjoys kissing, and enjoys it for the intimacy it allows. He is kissing me now to get to know me: my mouth, my tongue, my body and their responses to his. My courage. I want to do everything with him, I told Irene, and it is absolutely true.
“He said what? Noooo! And then what did she say back?”
“What did she say? What did she do!”
Loud, cheerful voices cut into my consciousness like a blade into skin. I jerk my head back and gasp for air, now listening hard. Voices approaching along the hallway. Voices about to turn the corner.
“Go!” I push him away frantically, push him into the direction of his room. “Go, go, quickly!”
“Anna…”
He could easily overpower me. I feel it in his body’s resistance, in the way he clasps my upper arms, glances along the hallway and into my room.
“No, Giles! Go, now!”
And I tear myself away from him, dive into my room and slam the door.
The moment I hear the latch on my bedroom door, my rejection impulse is overcome by remorse. What have I done? What the hell have I just done? But I cannot be seen French kissing Giles Cleveland in a conference hotel hallway! I might as well fingerpaint it onto my forehead!
I slammed a door in his face.
Shame, as keen-edged as the panic before, rushes through my body like hard liquor.
Why did he give up so easily? Is Giles Cleveland a quitter? He certainly didn’t stand by his woman, just now, and I am furious he didn’t! He might have propelled me into my room, out of sight, easily! Why didn’t he?
Maybe because I told him that I wouldn’t enjoy this evening if it was all about getting me into bed.
Maybe because he doesn’t want to have sex with a woman who has to be dominated and coerced into it, like a bashful virgin.
Damn!
Damn caution! Damn my career! Damn this constant, constant anxiety!
Do something.
Get drunk. Find a night club, drown in the noise. Dance your way through this need to stop thinking. I need to be part of something simple again.
My heart is beating hard and fast in my throat. I can’t. I shouldn’t.
I should take another shower. Flush the anger and the need out of my body.
It’s a good shower, this. A big showerhead, a full, yet soft spray of water, hot, as hot as I can bear it.
I can’t bear it.
I’ve never felt it so keenly, the two-edged sword of temptation. It cuts both ways. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. I never knew that. Supposing I had an affair with Giles Cleveland.