Strangers in the Sauna Read online

  Beautiful, in fact, didn’t begin to cover it.

  It wasn’t simply that face of his, dark brows over eyes of gold and all that thick, dark hair. It wasn’t only the strong jaw with the day’s scruff that somehow made him look dangerous and delicious instead of slovenly. It wasn’t that mouth, so sensual and inviting. It was the stunning feast of his torso right there before her, a masterpiece of the male form, with all the ridges and hard planes that Jenny had truly believed could not and did not exist in men who were not male models or gym rats in their spare time.

  He was the second man she’d seen wrapped in nothing but a towel in the past thirty minutes and it had to be said: Daniel did not fare well by comparison. Daniel’s body was nice enough for a graduate student, more reedy than fit despite—or because of—the amount of chips and pints he put away. Jenny supposed she now knew how he got in the better part of his cardio.

  But this man looked like he belonged in one of those superhero movies Jenny pretended to disparage, but liked to binge watch in secret. Lean and hard and rippling and wow.

  ‘Is there a particular reason you’re creeping around the Chatsfield sauna, nicking men’s clothes?’ he asked, and he sounded amused. And not quite British.

  And so male and sexy it might have made her knees weak, had she not sworn off all men right about the time the fact that she was walking through a luxury hotel with her butt cheeks on full and embarrassing and possibly illegal display had really hit home.

  ‘His name is Daniel,’ she replied. ‘Though for all I know, that’s also a lie. He could be a Reginald and I’d never have the slightest idea.’

  A faint curve to those devastating lips. ‘I take it you broke up. With this Reginald.’

  ‘Yes. With prejudice.’ She sighed. ‘There was a blonde.’

  ‘Ah.’ He nodded sagely. ‘There’s always a blonde.’

  ‘I was blonde for two years when I was an undergraduate,’ she told him for absolutely no reason she could think of. ‘I can’t say I had more fun, or assisted anyone in any cheating escapades, but you’ll notice I’m not blonde anymore.’

  ‘I did notice.’

  ‘And here’s what I don’t understand.’ She frowned at him again, more ferociously, as if his absurd good looks were a personal insult. She felt as if they were. As if it was something he was doing as he lounged there in the open door of the sauna, perfect beyond measure and making her mouth dry, too. ‘Why can’t you just tell someone you don’t want to be monogamous? Why is that so hard? The problem is the lying and the cheating. Why not be upfront about it and spare everyone the heartache? To say nothing of sparing someone the utter humiliation of turning up at your door in their underwear when you’re not alone?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said after a moment, those gold-hued eyes on hers hard and sweet at once, making her feel as if she was melting, somehow, where she stood. ‘I do.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jenny felt outside herself, then. Captured, like something wild and fluttery beneath smooth, capable glass.

  And then he smiled.

  It was like a roller-coaster with no end. It was that hot, that dizzying, that utterly mad, that stomach-dropping. Did her jaw drop too? Did she scream out loud? Jenny had no idea.

  ‘But that is the kind of discussion that requires a drink,’ he said gently, that smile of his deepening, lightening his gaze and making him look far more dangerous than before. Because now it felt specific, that danger of his. He wasn’t simply a dangerous creature, like some wild animal stalking about in the wild. He was a predator and he had clearly identified Jenny as his prey. ‘As civilised, fully-dressed people do from time to time. It’s a charming custom.’

  Jenny remembered herself then. And the fact she was wearing his shirt. And worse, why. She waited for a deep crash of emotion to surge through her at Daniel’s betrayal. She waited to feel lonely and abandoned and humiliated and all the rest of the things it was reasonable to feel in her situation.

  But she didn’t.

  ‘I don’t know how civilised I can get,’ she said after a moment or two, when she realised the tidal wave of broken heartedness still wasn’t coming. ‘It’s this shirt or an arrest for indecent exposure.’

  He had a crease in his cheek that would probably be called a dimple were he less overwhelmingly male, and it fascinated her. It took a long beat of her overexcited heart, then another, to realise he was watching her stare at him.

  It was a mark of how crazy this night was that Jenny didn’t even care.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, and he was so sensual it hurt her, in all sorts of dangerous places. ‘This is the Chatsfield. Our wish is their command.’

  Chapter Five

  Brax’s wish, soon a quiet command into the courtesy phone, was for a tight black sheath of a dress that was promptly delivered from some boutique or another and poured over that stunning body of hers, confirming that he had indeed seen what he’d thought he had through the clouds of steam.

  He wasn’t hallucinating. She was his perfect fantasy made real and enticing flesh. Curves this side of lush and that sexy saunter he thought might haunt him forever. He realised he was more excited about where this evening was going than he had been about anything not involving his work in years. And then opted to ignore that worrying realisation.

  ‘I look like a hooker,’ she said when she emerged from the changing room and stood before him, her hands at her sides in a way that told him a thousand things about her without her having to say a word.

  That she was uncomfortable with the dress, with the way he indulged himself in a long, hot look. That she might have looked wanton in her dark pink lingerie and his shirt, but that wasn’t her usual state. That she wanted to end this thing, whatever it was, before it turned into something she couldn’t control. Her hands closed tight, then opened again, and they told him her secrets.

  And yet she didn’t want any of that as much as she wanted to stay. He could see that much in the heat that transformed her dark eyes. In the answering surge of fire inside him.

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She frowned. ‘Actually, don’t answer that.’

  He grinned. ‘Hookers don’t frown so much, or issue accusations,’ he told her, very matter-of-factly. He took her arm, aware that the shirt he’d pulled back on held a different scent now. Vanilla and cream. Her. It went straight to his head. ‘They also flirt as if it is their job, because—prepare yourself—it is.’

  ‘I’m an excellent flirt, if that’s a complaint,’ she said with a touch of asperity and a darker frown, delighting him. ‘A noted, accomplished flirt, even.’

  ‘So far, we have established the following,’ Brax said as he led her out of the spa and into the lift a few steps down the hall. ‘You have terrible taste in men. You’re a bloody awful thief. And if this is your idea of flirtation, I can tell you that not only are you bad at it, your assertion that it’s some kind of strength of yours calls into question anything else you might have to say tonight. On any topic.’

  He could see the heat in her gaze and the darker shade of something very like confusion, and he thought the simmering emotion he could sense in her might sweep her away then. Brax wasn’t usually one for tears or emotional displays of any kind, though he thought in her case, he might make an exception. She was that fascinating to him, for some reason.

  But without any warning, she laughed.

  It was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard. It wound through him, husky and enticing, and made him wish he could fast forward straight to where he’d like this night to end, with her wrapped around him. It was like a sledgehammer and a seduction at once.

  Control yourself, he ordered himself tautly. And chose not to consider how long it had been since that had been any kind of concern.

  ‘I’d like to argue,’ she said, when her laughter faded but the residue of it remained, soaking through those dark eyes and making him feel hollowed out with hunger. ‘But I can’t deny that’s a fair assess
ment, all things considered.’

  The lift raced them towards the hotel bar, but Brax couldn’t look away from the woman beside him. She dropped his arm, moving back to lean that fine bottom of hers against the far wall and fold her arms beneath her breasts in a way that begged him to look at the neckline of that torturous dress. She regarded him solemnly.

  Who would have thought he’d like solemn this much?

  ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ he said before he forgot where they were and the cameras that were no doubt recording every breath they took. ‘I am Brax Tsoukatos.’

  That smile of hers was a marvel. ‘I’m Jenny Harding.’

  ‘From America.’

  ‘Yes.’ She inclined her head. ‘Not from Britain.’

  ‘I’m from Greece, obviously.’ He raised his brows when she rolled her eyes and repeated the word obviously in a tone that could only be called mocking. ‘Tsoukatos is not a particularly common British surname, I think you’ll find.’

  ‘We live in an expatriate, immigrant sort of a world, especially in London,’ she pointed out. Then shrugged. ‘Assuming, of course, that you live here.’

  ‘I spend part of the year here and part in Athens,’ he said. He didn’t know why he felt the urge to qualify that, then, but he did. ‘But really, I spend most of it traveling anyway.’

  He almost asked her where she was from in the States, which was the sort of door he normally never dreamed of opening. Especially not three seconds after mentioning his heavy travel schedule which could conceivably make him available in any corner of the globe. Brax was never available. What was the matter with him tonight?

  The lift arrived at the designated floor and chimed as the doors slid open. Brax beckoned for Jenny to precede him, enjoying the view she presented in that onyx lick of a dress, and then they were seated in the lush, velvet closeness of the hotel bar, tucked away in a corner booth where no-one needed to pay them the slightest attention and he could focus all of his on her.

  It wasn’t a hardship. She seemed to get prettier by the moment.

  She ordered a glass of wine and smiled too brightly at the waiter who delivered it, then stared too hard at the table. Brax lounged beside her, still far too aware of that scent of hers, from his own shirt as well as from her so close beside him.

  ‘Nervous?’ he asked mildly, toying with his martini. ‘I don’t bite.’ Though he thought that if ever there was a good time to start, it would be with her. He hungered to taste her, any way he could. ‘Usually.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I’m nervous,’ she said after a moment. ‘It’s occurred to me that I lost a boyfriend tonight, that’s all.’

  ‘But gained a dress and a new friend.’

  She lifted her gaze to his and her lips twitched, but her dark gaze was something like sad, and he hated it. ‘Everyone needs friends. No man is an island, etcetera. Is that what you mean? Somehow, you don’t strike me as a poet.’

  ‘Ah, but that depends on what you consider a poem,’ he said, and had the distinct pleasure of watching her shiver slightly.

  ‘I don’t think I want to consider that at all,’ she said, and he suspected they both knew she lied.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ Brax said then. He checked his watch. ‘You have three minutes to talk about the tedious Reginald, then we move on to more interesting topics. Go.’ She stared at him, so he employed the Tsoukatos voice again, all steel and command, that his father and older brother Theo used to such excellent effect when they chose. ‘Now, Jenny. Or not at all.’

  Chapter Six

  Jenny stared at him, this beautiful man with one of those extraordinary watches that gleamed of wealth and suggested he could at any moment plunge the depths of the ocean or fling himself off airplanes at will like something out of a James Bond movie. He lounged there in the seat beside her like every fantasy she’d ever had made real, surrounded on all sides by the splendour of the hotel that dripped with exclusivity and the finest of everything, and maybe he was simply a part of all that. The finest of men in the finest of hotels offering her the finest of reasons to purge her feelings about Daniel.

  And then move on, that mildly impatient expression suggested.

  Her throat was dry. ‘That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard.’

  Brax’s brows lifted, making her point for her. ‘The night is young. And your three minutes are turning into two.’

  If she was back home, she would have had her friends to cry with, drink with, sulk with over this kind of betrayal. But she was in London on her grand scholarly adventure abroad, she’d spent most of her free time with Daniel in the months she’d been here, and she liked the fact that unlike Daniel, Brax clearly had no problem whatsoever taking charge.

  It was impossible not to imagine what other ways he liked to take the lead—or how he might use that mouthwatering body of his while he did it. What kind of poetry a man like him might write all over her, and with what implements.

  She got so hot then she was faintly surprised she didn’t spontaneously combust.

  ‘We’re both staying in university housing this year, working on masters degrees,’ she said in a clipped tone, as if she was relaying a set of directions to a very unpleasant destination. ‘I thought we were planning a future. He claims that we are, but that he requires sex.’

  ‘You’re opposed to sex? That breaks my heart.’

  She shook her head at him. ‘You didn’t mention that my three allotted minutes were interactive.’

  ‘Deal with it. The question stands.’

  ‘Daniel’s objection—and I may be misquoting him here, as I had something of a blonde-induced rage blackout—’

  Brax’s mouth quirked. ‘Perfectly understandable.’

  ‘—is that sex with me requires treating me like a person with whom he’s expected to interact in and out of the bed, while really he prefers to shag various women indiscriminately without having to concern himself with such petty things.’

  She took a sip of her wine then—or a gulp, really, if she was honest—and smiled, aware as she did it that it was far too brittle.

  ‘He sounds like quite a catch, our Reginald.’

  Jenny laughed, when she’d have thought that was something she wouldn’t be likely to do for days. Weeks, maybe. Then she gave a helpless shrug. ‘He has a Scottish accent.’

  ‘I have a Greek one, I’m told.’

  ‘Greek and British, to my ear,’ she agreed, and found it impossible not to return the small smile he aimed at her. Impossible not to join him in the flames of this thing that leaped and crackled all around them. ‘We don’t have many of those where I’m from.’

  ‘You must.’ He spun his tumbler around in a slow circle on the table, but he never shifted his gaze from hers. ‘There are both Greeks and Brits in the States. Expatriates and immigrants, as you said before.’

  Jenny had spent her college years in Chicago doing her level best to become as urban as possible as a repudiation of all things South Dakota, prairie land or rural in any way. She’d vowed at eighteen she would never be like the girls in her high school class whose ambitions had never exceeded the county limits, and whose prospects had shrunk to match. That had involved never discussing the place she came from with anyone for any reason, because she might love her family—she did love her family—but to her mind, South Dakota was quicksand. Give it the chance and it would suck her in and never let her go again, and Jenny’s dreams had always been too big for that. Too bright to risk sinking down into the shrinking expectations she’d left behind.

  So she had no idea why she opened her mouth and told him, ‘Not in Gartersville, South Dakota. Some folks have Scandinavian roots but most of us are of solid German stock going back generations. And we have the Great Plains or, really, the Great Plains have us with tornados besides. That’s about it.’

  She was vaguely horrified, as if she’d confessed to some kind of felony or disease. But this man, who was clearly at home here in the fanciest hotel
she’d ever been in, who exuded the kind of wealth and international flavour she couldn’t even have imagined back when she’d been growing up, smiled at her as if he found her far more interesting than the equally rich and sophisticated people who filled the bar all around them.

  ‘I’m very exotic, then,’ Brax said. ‘It’s obvious what you should do.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Jenny could think of many things she’d like to do. But she wasn’t the sort of girl who did any of them with a total stranger.

  Was she?

  ‘Of course.’ He shrugged when she only gazed back at him. ‘You must experience the exotic in all possible ways. It will be a feast for the senses.’

  ‘Which senses, exactly?’

  His smiled widened, and he reached over then and took her hand in his.

  It was like a crack of thunder then a shot of lightning, a bolt straight through her, making her heart kick before it settled like heat between her legs. Electricity danced through their joined hands, lighting her up and making her feel like they were both on fire.

  Brax’s smile turned something like molten, and she did, too.

  ‘All of them,’ he said quietly.

  He picked up her hand and brought it to his mouth, and she supposed what he did then was kiss her hand, like some relic from a bygone era.

  Except it felt like sunshine, a bright and glorious glare.

  And it seared straight through her, making her ache. Making her need. Making her forget everything but what it might take to feel that sensual, magical mouth on every last inch of her.

  ‘In case it isn’t clear,’ he said then, amusement and heat and something else besides, something she recognised deep in her bones and in the wild heat low in her belly, ‘this is flirting.’

  And she didn’t think about the fact he was a stranger. She yearned, and she decided that the yearning was the only thing that mattered.

  ‘If it helps,’ she said softly, unable to look away from him, ‘I’m going to say yes.’

  Chapter Seven