Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  Something had held him up, had it? Like a sleepover with one of his avid fans? Zoey painted a polite smile on her face while inside she was seething. No doubt some other foolish young woman had capitulated to his practised charm. No way was Zoey going to fall for it a second time—even if it had been the most spectacular sex of her entire life. ‘No, thank you. Erm...please call me Zoey. Sorry, but I didn’t catch your name the last time.’

  ‘June,’ the older woman said with a smile. ‘Congratulations on the Frascatelli account. Finn told me you’ll be sharing the contract with him. Are you excited?’

  A part of Zoey was far more excited than she had any business being, but not just about the Frascatelli contract. The traitorous part of her that couldn’t think of her night of passion with Finn without a frisson going through her body. The wild and reckless part of her that still smouldered and simmered with longing. ‘I’m sure it will be an interesting experience,’ she said, keeping her expression under tight control.

  June’s eyes danced. ‘I’m sure you’ll get on together famously.’ She glanced behind Zoey’s shoulder to the front entrance and added, ‘Ah, here he is now.’

  Zoey turned to see Finn striding through the door looking remarkably refreshed and heart-stoppingly handsome as usual. He obviously hadn’t spent a sleepless night ruminating over what lay ahead. He had probably bedded some young nubile woman and had bed-wrecking sex while Zoey had spent the evening in a state of sexual frustration. One taste of him and she was addicted. How did it happen?

  And how on God’s sweet earth was she to control it?

  He was wearing a charcoal-grey suit with an open-necked white shirt and looked every inch the suave man about town who didn’t have a care in the world. Or did he? His revelation about his less than perfect childhood had totally stunned her. Never would she have envisaged him as the product of disadvantage. He had made such a success of his company, he had wealth beyond most people’s wildest dreams and he had no shortage of female attention—hers included.

  If only she could turn off this wretched attraction to him. If anything, it was getting worse, not better.

  ‘Morning,’ Finn said, encompassing both his receptionist and Zoey with a smile. ‘Come this way, Zoey.’ He glanced back at June and added, ‘Hold my calls, June. And can you reschedule tonight’s meeting with Peter Greenbaum? Zoey and I are having dinner instead.’

  Dinner? Zoey ground her teeth behind her impassive expression. The arrogance of the man. He hadn’t even asked her.

  ‘Will do,’ June said, reaching for the phone.

  Zoey waited until she was alone with Finn in his office before she took him to task. She gave him an arch look. ‘Dinner? Funny, but I don’t recall you asking me to dinner.’

  ‘I didn’t ask.’ He flicked her a glance on his way to his desk. ‘But I’m telling you now. Take a seat.’

  Zoey stayed exactly where she was. ‘I’m not going to be ordered about by you. I have other plans for this evening.’

  He shrugged off his jacket and hung it in a slimline cupboard against the wall. Then he came and stood behind his desk with his hands resting on the back of his ergonomic chair, a flinty look in his eyes. ‘Cancel them. We have work to do.’

  She folded her arms across her middle. ‘Work? Are you sure that’s what’s on the agenda?’

  His eyes drifted to her mouth and then back to her eyes, an indolent smile lifting up one side of his mouth. ‘Work is on my agenda but who knows what’s on yours?’

  Zoey wasn’t one to blush easily, but she could feel heat pouring into her cheeks. She lifted her chin and glued her gaze to his, determined not to be the first to look away. ‘Before we begin working together, I think we need to set some ground rules.’

  He rolled back his chair and sat down, leaned back and made a steeple with his fingers in front of his chest, his gaze unwavering on hers. ‘I told you last night, I’m the one who makes the rules. You get to follow them.’

  Zoey came over to stand in front of his desk and, leaning her hands on it, nailed him with a steely glare. ‘Let me get something straight—I will not be ordered around by you.’

  He slowly rocked his chair from side to side, his fingers still steepled in front of his chest. And, judging from his expression, he was seemingly unmoved by her curt statement. ‘If you can’t follow simple instructions then you won’t have a future working for me once we finish this project.’

  Zoey pushed herself away from his desk with an unladylike curse. ‘Why do I get the feeling you only bought Brackenfield Advertising to have me under your control?’

  He raised one dark eyebrow. ‘My, oh my, what a vivid imagination you have.’ He released his steepled fingers and leaned forward to rest his forearms on the desk. ‘I told you why I bought it. It was about to go under. I was doing your dad a favour. And you too, when it comes to that.’

  ‘I’m surprised you wanted to help him given he’s nothing but a rotten drunk like your parents.’

  The ensuing silence was so thick and palpable Zoey could feel it pressing on her from all four corners of the room. Nothing showed in Finn’s expression that her words had upset him in any way, yet she got the sense that behind the screen of his eyes it was a different story. Shame coursed through her at her uncharitable outburst. She knew nothing of his parents’ issues other than the small amount he had told her. And, given her own issues with her father, she understood all too well how heartbreaking it was to see a parent self-destruct, and feeling so useless to do anything to prevent it.

  ‘I—I’m sorry,’ Zoey said. ‘That was completely uncalled for.’

  Finn lifted his forearms off the desk and leaned back in his chair. ‘What I told you last night was in confidence. Understood?’

  She couldn’t hold his gaze and lowered it to stare at the paperweight on his desk. ‘Understood.’ She bit down into her lower lip, wanting to inflict physical pain on herself for being so unnecessarily cruel.

  Finn pushed back his chair and went over to the window overlooking a spectacular view of the Thames and Tower Bridge. He stood with his back to her for a moment or two, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, the tension in his back and shoulders clearly visible through the fine cotton of his shirt.

  He finally released a heavy-sounding breath and turned back to face her, his expression shadowed by the light coming in from the window now behind him. ‘I probably don’t need to tell you how hard it is to see your parents make a train wreck of their lives.’

  ‘No...you don’t.’

  He took his hands out of his pockets and sent one through the thickness of his hair, the line of his mouth grim. ‘My parents were hippies, flower children who suddenly found themselves the parents of a baby they hadn’t planned on having, or at least not at that stage of their lives. They were barely out of their teens and had nothing behind them. So, when it all got too much, they drank or smoked dope to cope.’

  He screwed up his mouth into a grimace. ‘One of my first memories was trying to wake them both so I could have something to eat and drink. I think I was only three. It took me a long while—ten years, actually—until I realised they were completely unreliable. I gave them a couple of chances to lift their game but of course, they couldn’t live without their addictions. So, I finally drew a line in the sand when I was thirteen and gave them a choice. It was no big surprise they chose the drink and drugs.’

  Zoey’s heart contracted at the neglect he had suffered, and another wave of shame coursed through her for being so mean. How awful for such a small child to witness his care-givers acting so irresponsibly. How frightening it must have been for him to not be sure if he was going to get fed each day. ‘I’m so sorry... I can’t imagine how tough that must have been for you. To not feel safe with your own parents. To not know if you’re even going to be fed and taken care of properly. How on earth did you survive it?’

  Finn
made a gruff sound in the back of his throat. ‘I was farmed out to distant relatives from time to time. I would go back to my parents when they dried out for a bit and then the cycle would start all over again. By the time I got to my teens, I knew I would have to rely on myself and no one else to make something of my life. I studied hard, got a couple of part-time jobs, won a scholarship to a good school and the rest, as they say, is history.’

  Zoey found herself standing in front of him without any clear memory of how she’d got there. But something in her compelled her to touch him, to reach out to him to show that she of all people understood some of what he had experienced. She placed her hand on his strong forearm, her fingers resting against hard male muscles, and a flicker of molten heat travelled in lightning-fast speed to her core.

  ‘Finn...’ Her voice got caught on something in her throat and she looked up into his dark brown eyes and tried again. ‘I’m so ashamed of how I spoke to you. I admire you for overcoming such impossible odds to be where you are today. It’s just amazing that you didn’t let such an awful start in life ruin your own potential.’

  His hand came down over hers and gave it a light squeeze, his eyes holding hers. ‘For years, I did what you do for your father. I filled the gaps for them, compensated for them, made excuses for them. I just wanted a normal family and was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to get it. But it was magical thinking. Some people aren’t capable of changing, no matter how many chances you give them, so why wait around hoping one day they will?’

  Zoey glanced at his hand covering hers and a faint shiver passed through her body. His touch on her body was a flame to bone-dry tinder. She could feel the nerves of her skin responding to him, the tingles, the quivers, the spreading warmth. She brought her gaze back to his to find him looking at her with dark intensity, his eyes moving between hers then dipping to her mouth.

  The air seemed suddenly charged with a new energy, a vibrating energy she could feel echoing in the lower region of her body. A pulse, a drumbeat, a blood-driven throb.

  She hitched in a breath and went to pull out of his light hold but he placed his other hand on the top of her shoulder, anchoring her gently in place. Anchoring her to him as surely as if she had been nailed to the floor. ‘Finn...’ Her voice came out in a barely audible whisper, her heart picking up its pace.

  Finn’s hand moved from her shoulder to cradle one side of her face, his thumb moving like a slow metronome arm across her cheek. Back and forth. Back and forth. A rhythmic, mesmerising beat. ‘I’m guessing this is not part of your list of rules?’ His voice was low and deep and husky, his eyes dark and glinting.

  Zoe moistened her lips, knowing full well it was a tell-tale signal of wanting to be kissed but doing it anyway. Her eyes drifted to his mouth and a wave of heat flooded her being. ‘That depends on what you’re going to do.’

  He tilted her face up so her eyes were in line with his. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’

  ‘Kiss me.’

  ‘Is that a request or a statement?’

  Zoey stepped up on tiptoe and planted her hands on his broad chest, her fingers clutching at his shirt. ‘It’s a command,’ she said, just within a hair’s breadth of his lips.

  Finn brought his mouth down on hers with a smothered groan, his other arm going around her back like an iron band. Her body erupted in a shower of tingles as she came into contact with his rock-hard frame, every cell throbbing with anticipation. His lips moved with increasing urgency against hers, his tongue driving through the seam of her lips with ruthless determination.

  Zoey welcomed him in with her own groan of delight, her tongue playing with his in a sexy tango that sent her blood thundering through the network of her veins. The scrape of his rough skin against the smoothness of hers sent a frisson through her body, the erotic flicker of his tongue sending a lightning bolt of lust straight to her core. Molten heat flooded her system. Desire—hot, thick, dark desire—raced through her female flesh and drove every thought out of her mind but the task of satisfying the burning ache of need.

  How had she thought one night of passion was ever going to be enough? It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. She needed him like she needed air. Needed to feel the explosive energy they created together, to make sure she hadn’t imagined it the first time. It didn’t mean she was having a fling with him, it didn’t mean she was like one of his gushing fans—it meant she was a woman with needs who wanted them satisfied by a man who desired her as much as she desired him.

  And what fervent desire it was, firing back and forth between their bodies like high-voltage electricity.

  Finn walked her backwards to his desk, bending her back over it, ruthlessly scattering pens and sticky-note pads out of the way. He stepped between her legs, his expression alive with intent, and she shuddered in anticipation. ‘If this is on your rules list then you’d better say so now before it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s not... Oh, God, it’s not...’ Zoey could barely get her voice to work, so caught up was she in the heart-stopping moment. She wrapped her thighs hard around his body, her inner core pulsating with wet, primal need.

  He leaned over her, one of his hands anchored to the desk, the other tugging her blouse out of her skirt to access her breast through her balcony bra. There was just enough of the upper curve of her breast outside the cup of lace for his mouth to explore. But soon it wasn’t enough for him and he tugged the bra out of the way so his lips and tongue could wreak further havoc on her senses.

  Zoey writhed with building pleasure on his desk, a part of her mind drifting above her body to look down on the spine-tingling tableau below. It was like an X-rated fantasy to have Finn feasting on her body in such an unbridled way. But in a way he was a fantasy. He wasn’t the type of man she could see a future with, even if she was interested in a future with a man. He was too much of a playboy, too much of a charmer, for her to want to be with him any length of time.

  But she wanted this. Wanted him with a burning, aching need that was beyond anything she had felt before. It pounded through her body, hammered in her blood, throbbed between her legs.

  ‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since the last time we were together,’ he said, kissing his way down her abdomen. ‘Tell me to stop if you don’t want me to go any further.’

  Stop? No way was she letting him stop. Not while her body was quivering with longing, aching with the need to find release. ‘Please don’t stop...’ Her voice was breathless, her spine arching off the desk as his hand drew up her skirt to bunch around her waist. ‘Please don’t stop or I’ll kill you.’

  A lazy smile backlit his gaze with a smouldering heat. ‘Then, in the interests of occupational health and safety, I’d better do as you command.’ He brought his mouth down to her mound, his fingers moving aside her knickers, his warm breath wafting against her sensitised flesh in a teasing breeze. ‘So beautiful...’ His voice was so low and deep, it sounded as if it came from beneath the floorboards.

  His lips moved against her feminine folds, soft little touches that sent her pulse rate soaring. Shivers coursed down her legs and arms, flickers of molten heat deep in her core. He caressed her with his tongue, the slow strokes a form of exquisite torture, ramping up the pressure in her tender tissues until it was impossible to hold back the tumultuous wave. It crashed through her body as if a hurricane were powering it, booming, crashing waves that sent every thought out of her brain short of losing consciousness.

  She bit back the urge to cry out, vaguely recalling Finn’s receptionist was only a few metres away on the other side of the office door. Zoey was reduced to the pulsing pleasure of her primal body, transported to a place where only bliss could reside. The aftershocks kept coming, gradually subsiding to a gentle rocking through her flesh like the lap of idle waves on the shore.

  Finn straightened her clothes into some sort of order, his expression one of glinting triu
mph. ‘That was certainly a great way to start the day.’ He held out his hand to help her up off the desk.

  Zoey took his hand, her cheeks feeling as if they could cook a round of toast. She slipped down off his desk but grasped the front of his shirt. ‘Not so fast, buddy. I haven’t finished with you yet.’

  Something dark and hot flared in the backs of his eyes. ‘Now you’ve got my attention.’

  Zoey pushed him back against the desk, stepping between his legs as he had done with her moments earlier. ‘Lie down,’ she commanded like a dominatrix, goaded on by the dark, sensual energy throbbing in her body—the same dark, sensual energy she could see reflected in his gaze.

  Finn stood with his buttocks pressed against the desk, his hands going to her upper arms. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  Zoey planted a firm hand on the middle of his chest. ‘I said, lie down.’

  He gave an indolent smile, his eyes holding hers in a spine-tingling lock. ‘Make me.’

  Zoey kept her gaze trained on his and reached for his zipper, sliding it down, down, down, watching the flicker of anticipation in his eyes, feeling the shudder that rippled through him against the press of her hand. ‘Here’s one of my rules. You don’t get to pleasure me unless I can return the favour. Got it?’

  Finn gave another whole-body shudder, his eyes dark and as lustrous as wet paint. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Good.’ Zoey pushed him down so his back and shoulders were on the desk, his strongly muscled thighs either side of hers. She freed him from his underwear and bent her head to take him in her mouth, teasing him at first with soft little flicks of her tongue against his engorged flesh. He groaned and muttered a curse, his body quaking as she subjected him to her wildest fantasy.

  She stroked her tongue down his turgid length, then circled the head of his erection, round and round and round, until he muttered another curse. Then she took him fully in her mouth, sucking on him deeply, not letting up until he finally capitulated in a powerful release that rattled every object still sitting on his desk. It thrilled her to the core of her being to have him prostrated before her with the same blood-pounding pleasure he had given her.