Melting Ms Frost

Chapter Five

FIVE

Sweet Jesus. He was in trouble.

Stepping out onto the pavement, Aidan paused to do up his jacket and suck in a fortifying breath, letting the brisk night air ease some of the heat of his ardour. Thank God that shift was finally over. And thank God he’d managed to get through it without doing something stupid – or downright illegal – like laying Annabel Frost out over one of the tables, sliding up her skirt and taking a taste of her through that diaphanous pale pink satin and lace right under the scandal­ised noses of the customers.

Just the thought had him fighting the urge to spin around, push back through the doors and turn the explicit fantasy into the ultimate X-rated reality. Forcing himself to move in the opposite direction, he started off down the street towards the Tube with long, purposeful strides, determined to put as much distance between himself and Cluny’s as quickly as possible.

Since the moment he’d cut away his lovely manager’s tights and uncovered those pretty panties and fiery curls, the knowl­edge of what was there under that figure-hugging skirt had been torturing him. The erotic vision of that delicate lace and feminine terrain so rudely framed by the shredded wreck of her tights had been all but seared onto his retinas, tormenting him every time he so much as blinked.

‘Hey, watch it!’ He was slammed back to his surroundings as he jolted hard against another body. It was a clear, cold Saturday night but despite the near-freezing temperature, Soho was in full party mode, the streets clogged with an overspill of weekend revellers amid a dazzle of coloured lights and a cacophony of sounds.

In the swirling mass it was impossible to tell who he’d run into. Raising his hands in a general gesture of apology, he started off again at a slower pace, trying to keep at least half his attention on where he was going.

He hadn’t spoken to Annabel again since he’d left her standing, shaking and enticingly submissive, in the cellar – hadn’t trusted himself to be able to keep his cool if he got too close. The woman was damned near irresistible. How he’d ever found the strength to walk away from the temptation of her and make it up those cellar stairs without tripping over his iron rod of a hard on, he didn’t know.

He’d come that close to breaking his own promise – to touching her. And that would’ve been a great shame. It was way too soon.

Brought to a stop at a busy intersection, he joined a clutch of people waiting to cross the road and puffed out a frus­trated breath, watching it cloud in the cold air. He had no one to blame for his agitated state but himself. Having felt he’d had no choice but to come on dangerously fast and strong or risk having his advances batted away like an annoying gnat, the stunt he’d pulled down in the cellar had been designed to throw Ms Frost off her guard, make her flustered and breathless. He never for a moment expected her to let things go so far. If she really was as averse to his advances as she liked to insist, that would have been the moment she’d have put a stop to things. But she hadn’t, and the encounter had ended up being so intense, her first act of surrender so captivating in its reluctance, that he’d wound up well and truly caught by his own game. He’d only just found the strength to stop before he took things too far, only just resisted the temptation to cut through that flimsy barrier of lace and pull it from between her trembling thighs.

He’d hardly been able to take his eyes off her since, as much out of a surge of possessiveness as voyeuristic fascina­tion to see how she’d cope with her secret state of déshabille while fulfilling her frontline public role. For her part, she’d been staunch in her refusal to so much as glance his way, spending a good portion of the evening tucked behind the reception desk, making only the occasional necessary foray to the boss’ table and tactically retreating every time Aidan approached to take care of anything drink-related. On the surface, she’d seemed to go about her business with her usual display of cool professionalism, but even in the artful gloom of the restaurant Aidan had been able to pick out the delightful blush shadowing her cheeks, the vaguest hint of self-consciousness any time anyone got a bit too close.