LITMIR.BIZ

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rather unpleasant crunching sound cut into the night, seemingly worse for the woman’s gasp of shock and the subsequent howl let out by the man now bent double, clutching his nose.

      The man scuttled over to the door to the balcony, casting a furious glance at Danyl and the woman whose name he still didn’t know, before re-entering the building, dropping curses like litter in his wake.

      Danyl looked back at the woman who had stepped away from the wall, a delicate shiver running across her skin. Her eyes, almost as dark as the night, stared up at him, any trace of fear vanished, and instead he was surprised to find anger.

      ‘Are you—?’

      ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ she demanded, husky Australian accents heavy on her words.

      ‘What?’

      ‘I had it under control,’ she muttered under her breath, pushing past Danyl. He tried to ignore the spark her touch brought, and focus on the reaction he hadn’t expected.

      ‘Like hell you did,’ he replied, spinning around to face her. ‘That guy was—’

      ‘Drunk and harmless. I could have handled him myself,’ she dismissed.

      ‘Of course you could have. Look at you. You can’t be taller than five feet and two inches!’

      ‘Size doesn’t matter,’ she responded indignantly.

      He narrowed his gaze, desperately fighting back the instinctive retort to the contrary. But it seemed she had read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d said them.

      ‘Really?’ she demanded, and the scorn in her voice was a little too much for Danyl to bear. Perhaps he should have just stayed out of it. Facing the event’s patrons would have been better than this.

      She huffed out an impressively delicate puff of air and disappeared through the door to the reception.

      * * *

      Mason shook out her hands, a slight trembling the only outward sign of what had happened on the balcony she would allow herself to show. What had Scott been thinking? He had taken her completely by surprise, never having shown any interest in her other than that of a friend. Until now. And contrary to what that stranger had thought, she did have it under control. If she could wrangle an unstable stock horse, she could handle Scott. She willed the adrenaline coursing through her veins from her fight—rather than flight—reaction to leave her body, more angry than scared that she had found herself in that situation. No. That Scott had put her in that situation. She hadn’t seen or heard anything about Scott that indicated he was...like that, and Mason could have handled it herself. But someone else might not. So, she’d be speaking to Harry about it in the morning.

      What she hadn’t been able to handle was her reaction to the man who had driven her out to the balcony in the first place. The man who had broken Scott’s nose. She had tried to avoid his gaze and the intense, searing heat she felt every time they locked eyes. As the shivers from just the memory of it wracked her body, she told herself it was from the cold, but knew she was made of sterner stuff than that. The thrill of just being near him was incredible, and she’d only ever felt such a thing galloping down the gentle slopes of her father’s horse farm back in New South Wales.

      As she stood in the small hallway that either led back to the reception, or to the bank of lifts that might take her away from the Langsford, the muffled sound of the party reached her ears and she knew she didn’t want to go back in there. She quickly retrieved her long, thick coat from the cloakroom, changed out of the painfully high heels into warmer and much more comfortable black boots and slipped into the lift before anyone could see her leave.

      As Mason descended nearly thirty flights, she calculated how long she’d have until the bus came back to pick them up. Two, maybe three hours. She looked at herself in the gold-tinted mirrored panels, and instead saw two hazel eyes in a chiselled marble image of male perfection staring at her as if he knew something about her she didn’t know.

      ‘I had it under control,’ she whispered angrily to the image of a man she feared she might never forget.

      The doors to the lift opened and she strode across the black and white chessboard foyer, her eyes cast down as she held a stern conversation with herself. She’d definitely had it under control, she assured herself as she pushed, too heavily, on the spinning circular doorway, the resulting force shoving her out onto the pavement beyond and straight into the back of...

       Oof.

      The air was knocked from her lungs the moment her chest met a deliciously muscled back, even if it was a bit painful. She reached out a hand to steady herself, only to find that her fingers had wrapped around a forearm, also disturbingly muscular.

      ‘I’m so—’

      Her apology was cut short as the stranger from the balcony turned, pushing her off balance, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t pulled back the arm she was still clinging to. Instead, she found herself chest to chest with her apparent rescuer.

      ‘We must stop—’

      ‘Don’t finish that cliché,’ she warned.

      ‘Are you always this angry?’ he asked, the half-laughing, half-genuine curiosity dancing in his eyes.

      ‘No, I’m just...’ She shook her head to loosen the thoughts that were churned up by the very sight of him. ‘Usually more coherent,’ she added ruefully, an answering smile pulling at her lips.

      She stepped back, away from the heat of him, the smell...something she wanted to take a little longer to discern. If she’d thought there was power in the man from across the room, being this close, being held by him, was overwhelming. Casting a glance upwards, she could see golden flecks in his impossibly dark eyes, flecks that sparkled with mischief. His lips, curved into an almost irresistible smile, were full and indiscreetly sensual, and Mason found herself responding in a way that was wholly unexpected and inappropriate.

      She turned away from the sheer magnetism of the man and looked up and down the street, surprised to find it so quiet. Everyone must either be at their own party, or in Times Square, she mused as breath streamed like smoke into the night air about them.

      This was silly. She had to get over him. Over herself, more like.

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, the words white on the air in front of them, neither, it seemed, willing to look at the other. ‘For...’ She used a hand to gesture up and behind her back towards the balcony.

      From the corner of her eye, she saw his powerful shoulder shrug, and felt rather than watched his lips curve into an ironic smile. ‘You had it under control.’ A heartbeat later, ‘You’re leaving?’ his accented voice asked. She couldn’t place it. Somewhere from the Arab states, clearly. But not one she’d encountered at her father’s horse farm before.

      She frowned at his question. ‘No,’ she said, once more looking up and down the strangely quiet street. She offered her own shrugged shoulder. ‘The bus coming to take us back to our accommodation isn’t arriving until one a.m.’

      ‘Our accommodation,’ he mused. ‘Our being you and...’

      ‘The other trainee jockeys,’ she said, deliberately ignoring his leading question.

      ‘One of whom would be...’

      ‘Scott. Yes. He is one of the other trainee jockeys.’

      ‘And you don’t want to go back to the party.’ It was a statement and a warning, all in one.

      Mason pursed her lips into a pout and shook her head, still looking out into the street before her, rather than see—or feel—his eyes on her.

      ‘I’m hungry,’ he announced in a way that seemed to involve her somehow. ‘With absolutely no ulterior motive, would you like to go and get some food?’

      She willed him silently not to hear the rumble of her stomach.

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