LITMIR.BIZ

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yes. ‘I’d hate to choose wrong. Imagine if the aroma didn’t complement your manly essence?’

      ‘Sienna, it’s soap.’

      ‘How little you know,’ she said and reached for his arm, pushing his jacket sleeve up to his elbow before taking his wrist and turning it to expose the inside of his forearm. ‘Think of the fish.’

      The saleswoman slapped a damp cloth on his skin and deftly wet him from elbow to wrist. ‘The soap will slide,’ she said.

      The soap did slide. And somewhere between elbow and wrist Sienna lost the upper hand and Lex found it.

      ‘Now you rub with your hands,’ the saleswoman told her. ‘I take the soap.’

      Lex’s mouth curved lazily and his eyes gleamed. ‘I like a firm touch,’ he murmured.

      He got one and winced, doubtless from pleasure.

      ‘She’s so obliging,’ he told the saleswoman. ‘Really. Ouch!’

      ‘A woman without spirit is like a sky with no clouds,’ said the woman.

      ‘Perfect?’ said Lex.

      ‘No. Such a sky will never quench your thirst.’

      ‘Isn’t that what bottled water’s for?’ said Lex, and winced some more as Sienna’s thumb accidentally encountered another soft spot. ‘Easy, sweetheart. You’re bruising the goods.’

      ‘Sorry.’ Sienna trailed her fingernails lightly down his arm, leaving a row of wavy snakelike tracks in the lather. Lex shuddered ever so slightly and his eyes flashed a heated warning.

      ‘Keep it up, Sienna, and you will be.’

      Oh, dear. There it was again—exhilaration, illumination, and a powerful curiosity about what Lex might bring to a sexual relationship—all of it coalescing into a tight ball of sensation deep in the pit of her stomach. Sienna moved to the sink, washed the soap from her hands and stood back to let Lex wash his arm, acutely aware that lathering him in cinnamon soap hadn’t been one of her better ideas.

      She wasn’t six any more; Lex wasn’t her indulgent older playmate.

      She wasn’t a skinny, smart-mouthed fifteen-year-old any more either; Lex wasn’t her confidante and protector.

      Lex dried his hands and arms with a paper towel and turned towards her, every movement a subtle challenge, and Sienna realised with blinding clarity that those days were over.

      He put his forearm to his nose, took a whiff, shrugged, and held his arm up towards her, those knowing grey eyes daring her to play out the scene to completion. Maybe she ought to add ‘too easily led’ to her side of the equation, she thought wryly, because she knew instinctively that breathing him in was going to cost her control she could ill afford to lose. But she closed her eyes and breathed deeply anyway.

      The aroma of cinnamon came first, then citrus, then Lex. The ache in her stomach pulled tighter.

      ‘How does it combine with my manly essence?’ he murmured, his voice a low, husky rumble that sounded like sin and burned like the devil.

      ‘Quite well,’ she whimpered, her eyes still tightly closed.

      ‘I was aiming a little higher than quite well.’ Had he moved closer? Was it his body that was on fire or was it hers? Because something here was burning, nothing surer. Something brushed her ear and she shivered hard. His hair, she thought at first. No, maybe his cheek. His lips… ‘Maybe we should try a different soap on the other arm,’ he whispered.

      Sienna stumbled back a step and opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t. There it was again: The Look. And Lex didn’t look tired or edgy or in any way bored. He looked focussed and sexy as hell and the reckless hunger in his eyes called to needs she’d never known she had. ‘No need to try another one on,’ she said, adding a weak smile for good measure. ‘This one combines very well.’

      ‘I appreciate the adverbial upgrade,’ he countered with a lazy grin. ‘But the fact remains that the basic assessment is mediocre. Are you sure you don’t want to make me try on another one?’

      ‘It lifts your manly essence into the realms of the sublime,’ she practically yelled. ‘I am trembling with lust.’

      ‘I think she likes it,’ Lex told the lady. ‘I’ll take a month’s worth.’

      Sienna fled Lex’s company after that and Lex let her. The scent of cinnamon and orange soap and Lex the marauder stayed in her mind and on her hands until there was nothing for it but to shower it off, wash it straight down the drain, and replace it with plain old airport hotel soap and shampoo, never mind the gorgeous goodies from the soap shop burning a hole in her handbag. Even then her mind strayed as she lathered up and scrubbed hard. She imagined a man’s hands on her, but not just any man’s hands. These were knowing hands, demanding hands.

      Lex’s hands.

      ‘Why me?’ she whimpered. Why Lex? ‘Why now?’

      Oh, there’d been that time on her eighteenth birthday when Lex had commandeered her for a slow dance at the end of the evening and she’d been a mass of nerves for fear he was planning to kiss her, but that had been years ago. Besides, he hadn’t. Not on the lips. He’d kissed her temple instead, told her to watch out for Bobby Carmichael’s wandering hands, and left with the beautiful blonde events manager that Adriana had hired to oversee the evening.

      The beautiful blonde hadn’t lasted a week.

      Neither had Bobby Carmichael.

      Then there’d been that time when Lex had turned up at her flat one morning and the very sweet Aidan Russell had chosen that particular moment to wander out of her bedroom. Lex hadn’t liked coming face to face with Sienna’s love life, never mind that his own had spanned three continents by then, the ice in his eyes could have frozen the Thames. After about two minutes of stilted conversation, including introductions, Aidan had become visibly nervous.

      Aidan hadn’t lasted long either.

      How many years ago was that? Two? Three? There’d been no one for Sienna since then. Sighing, Sienna added ‘long overdue’ to her list of reasons for her sudden uncomfortable awareness of Lex’s manly attractions and tilted her face beneath the spray. Moments later visions of Lex in the shower with her—with his hands on her—began to assail her. She turned the cold tap on full and concentrated on getting clean rather than aroused, but occasionally an image stuck and when it did it ripped into her with cyclone force. Her body bowed and her skin ached for a lover’s touch.

      A lover’s touch, she told herself fiercely. Not Lex’s touch.

      Any lover would do. There was such a thing as taking the edge off.

      And then her relationship with Lex would be the same as it always had been. Sacrosanct.

      Sienna emerged from the shower feeling suitably clean but in no way relaxed. The thought of Lex showering with his soap and Sienna having to sit next to him on the plane for another eight hours, breathing him in, wasn’t a reassuring one to a woman whose body ached for fulfilment and whose mind had remained back in London. If he turned that lazy charm on her again, heaven forbid if he touched her, she was likely to implode. Lex would probably find it amusing. Sienna didn’t find the notion amusing at all.

      Think, Sienna, think. She’d known this man for most of her life. She knew his strengths and all his flaws. She knew full well that he was only amusing himself with her on account of a distinct lack of anything else amusing at hand. The obvious solution, therefore, was to find something else for him to focus on.

      She hit the shops again and bought him a book. An adventure story with ticking bombs and many villains. That’d doubtless keep him occupied for, oh…five minutes. She bought him a book of mastermind sudoku puzzles. That’d hold him for longer. What else? A major crisis of confidence on Wall Street would be good. She skimmed the newspapers for

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