An Australian Surrender. Maisey Yates

that we very much would spend every waking, and non-waking, moment together.”

      His eyes, so hot on her, felt like an intimate caress. One that made her burn inside. She crossed her arms over her breasts to disguise her nipples, beaded tight against the filmy fabric with no bra to help hide the effect he was having on her.

      “In any case, going to work with you today might be … fun.”

      Ethan gritted his teeth and fought hard against the razor-sharp edge of arousal that was digging into him, cutting into his control. She was barely covered up by a silky, bright-blue confection that looked as though it was designed for the sole purpose of driving a man to an early grave. Or at least to the hospital to see a doctor about an erection lasting longer than four hours …

      She wasn’t just an easy tumble though. This wasn’t about sex, and it sure wasn’t about using her body. He didn’t need her body. He could have his pick of any woman he wanted. He wasn’t about to let her control him, not about to let himself believe the attraction to her was special in any way beyond what was normal. He’d let it make an idiot of him last night. He’d flirted with her. Nearly kissed her.

      He just hadn’t had sex in so long that his body was trying to convince him she was special. She wasn’t. She was just another blonde. Blondes he’d had. Lots of them.

      But her legs. So long and shapely, and her figure, petite and luscious, pert round breasts that called out to him. To touch. To taste. He had a feeling that even if he’d satisfied his libido last week—hell, last night—he’d feel the same way.

      Feel some sort of sick craving to possess her in every way. To make sure the deal went through? No, not even he would stoop that low. This wasn’t about her; not about hurting her anyway. It wasn’t even about hurting her mother, not on his part, anyway. It was about showing his father that going through life using people as rungs on the ladder of success and satisfaction didn’t work.

      About making sure Damien Grey wouldn’t get rewarded for it.

      “Maybe you should go get dressed.”

      Her cheeks turned pink, a deep rose that betrayed her embarrassment. That was a novelty, one he wasn’t sure how he felt about. A woman who blushed like that over something so simple, that wasn’t really his thing. And yet for some reason, it made his body harder, more tense, more aroused.

      This was a business deal, in a way, and he had to remember that. But he worked with women every day without experiencing this problem. Of course, the women he worked with didn’t come into the boardroom wearing silky lingerie.

      He ground his teeth together and tightened his hands into fists, channeling his tension into his screaming tendons. He had to get a grip. On his libido or his body, he didn’t really care, but the attraction to Noelle had to be managed.

      “Right.” She slunk off to the bathroom, and he let out a breath he hadn’t been conscious of holding.

      The office was safe at least. It would give him a chance to remember why he was doing this. Give his body a chance to calm down. Because he had a goal and he wasn’t about to let an errant attraction distract him from reaching it.

      More importantly, he wasn’t about to give in to temptation, to let his body have the control when he despised men who behaved like having testosterone meant they couldn’t be their own masters.

      He’d watched his father do it, time and again. Disregarding the feelings of his wife, his children, and for what? For the pursuit of his own selfish pleasure. Casting off every last piece of his honor, his commitments, to chase after a woman who, in the end, wouldn’t even stay with him.

      He looked at the closed bathroom door and tried not to imagine Noelle’s nightgown slithering over her curves and pooling onto the floor.

      He wasn’t his father. And while she wasn’t her mother, she was the one woman who was patently off limits.

      “You do have a nice office.” Noelle leaned back in his office chair, her long legs stretched out in front of her, black tights covering all that tempting, creamy skin, but doing nothing to disguise the shape.

      Turned out she was just as sexy when she was fully dressed. Which he’d known after last night, but when he’d invited her to the office he’d imagined she’d put on something more business-casual. He had discovered that ex-performers didn’t have much in the way of business-casual. What she did have was a brief, black dress, black tights and a pair of gold high heels that glowed from fifty paces away.

      And all that pale blond hair, hanging loose around her face like a halo … she was just impossible to put in a corner and ignore. And that was problematic on many, many levels.

      “Gets the job done anyway,” he said.

      “Is there something I can do?” She straightened, crossing her legs at the ankles. It did not help make her look any more demure.

      “You can get out of my chair.”

      She turned crimson and popped up. “Okay, done. Anything else?”

      “You want to work?”

      “Well, I’m here.” She shrugged. “It seems like I ought to do something. Won’t people think it’s funny I’m just hanging out?”

      “I don’t think anyone thinks it’s funny at all. I think they assume we’re in here not working.”

      “Oh. Really?”

      “Really. Did you see the paper this morning?”

      “No, I didn’t have the chance to grab it.”

      “We’re the new hot couple, you know.”

      “Can I see?”

      He rounded the desk and leaned over, typing in the web address for the newspaper they’d been featured in. “There you are.”

      She leaned in next to him, that sweet vanilla scent teasing his senses, making his body harden with tension and arousal.

      A small smile curved her lips. “They know my name.”

      “You sound surprised.”

      “No one’s missed me much over the past year. Which I actually consider kind of a blessing. I haven’t really been keen on sharing my downfall with the world.”

      “What? That your mother stole your money?”

      “That she abandoned me because she knew she’d gotten everything she could out of me. Because my sales—album sales, ticket sales—were dwindling to nothing.”

      “So what have you been doing then, this past year?”

      She shrugged again, her blue eyes fixed on a point somewhere behind him. “Nothing.”

      “Nothing?”

      She looked at him, pale eyes filled with anger now. “Maybe I haven’t done the best I could with my time. But I didn’t really know what to do. I only know how to do one thing.” She looked away. “My mother made sure I only knew one thing. I tried to … I tried to talk to my old booking agent. Tried to see about playing venues I used to play. I called my label and asked them if they wanted to release a greatest hits album. Turns out, they don’t think I have any.” She laughed, a hollow, bitter sound that made his chest ache. “So in that sense, I did something. But I just … I didn’t know what else to do when all of that was shot down.”

      “What about playing piano bars and things like that?”

      “Ironically, that’s the kind of thing I am a bit too famous for, and I don’t mean that in a snobbish way, I mean … I didn’t want that to show up in tabloids.”

      “That’s not really a great excuse, Noelle. You basically just sat there and let everything fall apart.”

      “No. No I did not. Everything was wrecked, utterly wrecked by my mother. She smashed everything to pieces—I didn’t