Australian Affairs: Claimed: Dr Chandler's Sleeping Beauty / Countering His Claim / Australia's Maverick Millionaire

His hand on her hip moved upwards in a slow-moving caress that stopped just below her right breast. She felt her nerves tighten in awareness. The tingling and twitching of her flesh was almost unbearable. She pressed herself against him in a silent signal of female want, a desperate plea for him to satisfy the deepest yearnings of her body.

Kitty kissed him back with brazen hunger. Her lips nibbled and nipped at his. Her tongue swirled and circled and swept against his in a sensual combat that made her spine turn to liquid. He fought back with another deep groan of approval and pulled her even closer to the rampant need of his body.

She fisted a hand in his shirt and he plunged deeper into her mouth, his strongly muscled thighs moving against hers to nudge her back against the wall. The body-to-body contact fuelled her desire to an unmanageable level. She pushed herself up on tiptoe so she could feel more of his hard heat against her feminine need. Her insides melted and pulsed with longing. Desire was like a runaway train. It was flashing past every station, siding or level crossing of caution and common sense she had erected in her brain.

Jake lifted his mouth off hers and looked down at her, his expression darkly satirical. ‘Well, I guess that clears up that little detail,’ he said.

Kitty blinked herself out of her sensual daze and stepped out of his hold. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, feeling gauche and flustered. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ she said.

His mouth kicked up in a wry smile. ‘You’re not the shy, uptight type after all, are you?’

Kitty pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you you’re a very good kisser.’

‘You pack a pretty awesome punch yourself, Dr Cargill,’ he said.

She tried to act casual about it, affecting a pose of indifference that belied the turmoil she felt inside. ‘Do you still want coffee?’

He reached out and passed one of his bent knuckles over the curve of her cheek in a light caress, his eyes so dark she couldn’t tell where his pupils began and ended. ‘You don’t really think I came in here for coffee, do you?’ he asked.

Kitty swept the tip of her tongue over her kiss-swollen lips, her heart skipping all over the place. ‘I guess not…’

He held her gaze captive for a long heart-stopping moment. ‘I want you.’

The blunt statement shocked and yet thrilled her. Charles had waited years before asking her to sleep with him. ‘But for how long?’ she asked.

‘That’s not a question anyone can answer specifically,’ he said. ‘Relationships run their course. Some last days, others weeks, others years.’

She toyed with a button on his shirt rather than meet his gaze. ‘Yours don’t last years, though, do they?’ she said.

It seemed a long time before he answered. ‘I’m not promising anything long-term, Kitty. You’re only here until the end of April. It wouldn’t be fair to pretend this could turn into an affair of a lifetime.’

Kitty raised her eyes to his. ‘Because you don’t want to fall in love.’

‘You don’t have to be in love with someone to have great sex,’ he said. ‘Aren’t your parents proof of that?’

Her shoulders went down on a little sigh as she moved away. ‘I’m not like my parents,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bear to live the way they do. I don’t want to play musical beds with faceless strangers. I want security. I want love. I want marriage and babies and happy ever after.’

He gave a cynical crack of laughter. ‘You want a fairytale that doesn’t exist in the real world. Fifty percent of marriages end up in divorce. The other fifty live snappily ever after.’

She threw him an exasperated look. ‘There’s no point arguing with you. I can see you’ve collated enough evidence to support your cynical take on things. But there are plenty of relationships that last the distance. I see them all the time in A&E. Old couples who’ve spent a whole lifetime loving each other. I want that. I want to be with someone for my whole life—not a month here or there or a measly week or two.’

‘Then I’m not your man,’ he said, his expression stony, his voice even harder. ‘I’m happy to have a bit of fun, but don’t expect anything else from me.’

Kitty held that steely blue gaze. ‘I feel sorry for men like you, Jake. You have plenty of fun now, but what about later? What about when you’re old and sick and no one wants you any more?’

A muscle flexed in his jaw. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

‘You’ll end up lonely and alone,’ she said. ‘You’ll have no shared memories of the phases of life you’ve journeyed through. No children to share your genes. No grandchild—’

‘Look,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘I get what you’re saying. Do you think I haven’t thought through all of that? Of course I have. I just can’t make promises I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep.’

Kitty nailed him with a flinty look. ‘You don’t want to make promises.’

He held her gaze for a second or two before he blew out a breath on a long exhale. He tipped up her chin using two fingers, while his thumb moved back and forth over the cushion of her bottom lip. ‘It wouldn’t work, you know,’ he said. ‘You. Me. Us. You’re too innocent for someone as hard-boiled as me. I’d end up walking all over you.’

‘I know how to take care of myself.’

‘Do you, Kitty?’ he asked looking at her intently. ‘Do you really?’

Her heart tripped as his gaze centred on her mouth. Heat pooled in her belly and her legs felt that betraying tremble again. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I’m a big girl now.’

He brushed an imaginary hair away from her face. ‘Even big girls can get their hearts broken.’

‘So can big boys.’

He gave her a twisted smile as he reached for the door. ‘Not this big boy.’

‘You’re not truly alive if you don’t allow yourself to be open to happiness and to hurt,’ she said. ‘It’s what makes life so rich and rewarding—the highs and the lows and all the bits in between.’

‘Goodnight, Dr Cargill,’ he said. ‘Sweet dreams.’

Kitty blew out a breath when the door clicked shut behind him. ‘Watch it, my girl,’ she said in an undertone. ‘Just watch it, OK?’

* * *

‘Where’s Kitty?’ Gwen asked, looking past Jake’s shoulders when he arrived at the new staff welcome drinks on Friday night. ‘I thought she might be coming with you.’

Jake took one of the light beers off a tray that was being handed around by one of the interns. ‘Then you thought wrong,’ he said.

Gwen angled her head at him. ‘What’s going on with you two?’

‘Nothing.’ He took a sip of froth off the top of his beer.

‘You had dinner with her,’ Gwen said. ‘Brad told me when I had lunch with my daughter at the grill yesterday.’

He shrugged. ‘So?’

‘Don’t break her heart, Jake.’

‘I have no intention of doing any such thing.’

‘She’s not your type.’

Jake frowned as he put his beer on the chest-high drinks stand beside him. ‘That’s surely up to her to decide, isn’t it?’

Gwen lifted her brows. ‘I’m just saying.’

‘Then don’t,’ he said, shooting her a look.