* * *
The rest of the day, she alternated between staring at Elliot across their floor and trying to concentrate.
He’d loved the first edition copy of Moby Dick that published on his birthday one hundred and sixty-two years before. She’d also found the perfect set of cufflinks and a briefcase to replace the one he hated using.
For several minutes, he thanked her with kisses.
Back in her office, she thought about the additional preparations she’d made at home before leaving for the office that morning.
After practically sterilizing the house, she’d changed all of her linens, placed fresh cut flowers around her bedroom, and lined up dozens of battery-operated candles.
No matter what the future held, she had to experience what it was like to make love to Elliot at least once.
She was willing to risk whatever happened afterward.
Aubrey didn’t fool herself into believing she would be different from the countless women who’d come before her but she knew Elliot would consider his conquests more carefully in his future.
For that, she would be glad.
At five o’clock, she was ready to leave for the first time in years. He glanced up in surprise as she tapped on the frame of his door.
“Ready?”
He grinned. “You’re never ready at five.”
“It’s your birthday. I’m going straight home and you can pick me up whenever.”
Walking around his desk, he slid his palm along her cheek. “You’re so beautiful.”
“I’m glad you think so.” On tiptoe, she kissed his cheek and smiled. “I’ll see you in a little while.”
He pulled her back and kissed the sense right out of her head. Only when she was breathless did he smile against her lips. “Now you can go. I’ll be at your place in an hour.”
She turned to go and he said her name. Glancing over her shoulder, she waited.
“Nothing. I’ll see you soon.”
Racing out to her house, she quickly took care of Trix and opened the door to her corral.
In record time, she dressed in the outfit Tiffany had helped her pick out, did her hair and makeup, and then stepped into her heels. The weather was finally cooling off so she grabbed a sweater.
She didn’t want Elliot in her house until they got back later so she was waiting on the porch when he pulled into the driveway.
He got out and stared at her for a long moment. “We aren’t going.”
She laughed and shook her head. “Your family is waiting.”
Meeting her at the passenger door, he traced his finger along the thin strap of the mini dress she never would have chosen for herself.
“You look good enough to eat.” His eyes flicked up to meet hers and she could have drowned in the green. “I plan to feast on you, Aubrey.”
For the first time in her life, she understood the phrase weak in the knees and placed a hand on his car for support.
“Tonight, I plan to learn your naked body as well as my own and teach you about mine.” Stroking his hand over the outside of her breast, he commanded, “Get in the car before I throw you over my shoulder like a pirate. My family be damned.”
Swallowing hard, she got in. It was the longest drive of her life since all she wanted to do was touch him and she didn’t trust herself to stop.
By the time they made it to the restaurant, she was shaking.
He handed her from the interior and growled. “I’ll get you, my pretty. Oh yes…”
Taking a deep breath, she told him, “Yes. You will.”
Eyes wide, he started to turn back to the car and she forced him to follow her inside.
She truly enjoyed the McAllister family. Octavia and Philip were warm and witty, Gage hung on every word from Tiffany’s mouth, and Noah found himself busted when his date’s hand ended up in his lap.
They talked and laughed for hours. Elliot received gifts and toasts about old age that he took in stride.
Finally, they were driving toward home and he gripped her hand like a lifeline as he broke the speed limit to her house.
Every cell in her body was on fire. Only Elliot could make it better. Nothing would stop her from experiencing everything he had to offer.
The future didn’t matter.
Chapter Fifteen
Skidding to a stop in Aubrey’s front yard, Elliot stomped around to her door and practically dragged her to her porch. When her hand shook too much to use the key, he grabbed it and unlocked it himself.
Stepping inside, he slammed the door behind them and kissed her until she went limp in his arms.
He raised both his hands to cup her face, holding her still as he put every ounce of skill he’d ever learned into the kiss. His hand slid around and drew her against him.
Elliot heard and felt her moan against his mouth at the same time her arms hugged him.
Backing her against the door, he pressed his hips flush against the center of her. There was no way she could miss how hard he was, how desperate he was for her.
How desperate he always was for her.
Her fingers flexed over his back and he growled low in his throat. Her muscles tightened, her hips arched to meet him, and he was lost.
She was responsive, enthusiastic, and involved. A fucking dream come true.
Aubrey retained a certain innocence despite the debauchery he’d shown her over the last month.
It was easy to see that no one had taken the time to show her what was possible. She was still fresh and clean.
A novel experience for someone as jaded as him.
His mouth slid along her jaw and down her neck, tasting her as he drew back to meet her eyes. For the first time, he needed to talk to a woman, to gauge her feelings for him before he took her body.
“I was twenty-six the first summer you interned for us in college.” He trailed a fingertip from her temple to her jaw. “Noah was head over heels in love by the end of your first week. He said you were the smartest woman he’d ever met. Something I’d never heard him say about a woman before, especially a young woman just out of high school.”
“Considering his girlfriends to that point, he was probably impressed that I could read,” she quipped breathlessly.
He laughed. “Our mother ordered us to leave you alone. She said you weren’t the kind of woman any of us were ready for and that you were too good for us. She laid down the law and explained we needed to grow up.”
He dropped another slow kiss on her mouth. “I was thirty-one when you joined us full time, Aubrey. Gage and Noah told me you threw a woman out of your shared office when she bitched about our raging hormones.”
Struggling to make sense of his words, she managed, “She was also a slob. I couldn’t stand her.”
“My father told us he wasn’t losing someone of your caliber so we could add another notch to our bedposts. Our parents said they’d disown any of us who approached you with less than pure intentions.”
Her eyes tried to focus as her hands coasted over his body under his suit jacket. The physical response she had to him was humbling.
“When you took the liaison position, our parents said they could sleep for the first time in years because you’d opened an umbrella of protection over our family and stood guard when their sons were too stupid to do it themselves.”
“Mm, none of you have ever been stupid. You were distracted and you love life.”
His finger traced a line over the silken skin of her cheek. “We all genuinely liked you and lusted after you quietly. Noah told my mother you always turned him down and he couldn’t understand it.”
Elliot’s hands settled on her narrow shoulders, his thumbs stroking over her collarbone. She panted through lips swollen from his kisses.
“For the last year or two, every woman I’ve dated has been similar to you in size and coloring.” He gave her a half smile. “In temperament and intelligence, there is no one similar to you, Aubrey. You’ve seen me in some of my most revealing and embarrassing momen
ts, watched me make so many mistakes over the years. You still defend me. You allow me to touch you. Why, Aubrey?”
She shook her head. “Your choices made you the man you are. I…I like the man you are very much.” Her voice was husky and it made him harder.
He kissed her again, his thumbs lower now, brushing the upper swell of her breasts that showed above the slinky dress that stole his sanity.
“You like the man I am.” She nodded. “You could have gone anywhere, to any school. A hundred different companies would have paid you more and offered you more. Why McAllister’s? Why here, Aubrey?”
“This is my home. I could be close to…everything I cared about, everything I knew.”
He could see that she was trying to keep distance between them to protect herself. She would give him her body but she didn’t yet trust him with her heart.
“I know you love the company. Do you love my parents, Aubrey?” Elliot’s mouth traced her jaw to the soft skin beneath her ear. The scent of her was almost too much for his control to bear.
Aubrey’s voice was strained. “There are no two people I respect more.”
“What about my brothers, Aubrey? What do you think of Noah?” He left tiny sucking kisses along her neck.
A soft moan escaped as she whispered, “Noah is much more than he considers himself, I think. As the youngest, he has a lot to live up to. He has an excellent head for business. Within another couple of years, he’ll have expanded his division beyond what he thought possible.”
“What are your thoughts about Gage?” He kissed over her face, working his way to the other side of her neck.
Her breath was warm and fast against his cheek. “Gage has always understood the responsibility he carries as the oldest for his family, especially his brothers. It makes him confident but he was lonely. Tiffany is so good for him.”
She trembled in his arms.
“You care about the company, my brothers, my parents?” She nodded. “How do you feel about me, Aubrey?”
His mouth on her neck, his hands splayed over her ribcage, his thumbs stroking the undersides of her breasts all combined to make her warm and fluid. Elliot could feel her subconsciously opening to him.
“You’re kind, intelligent, grounded but playful, good looking, and loyal to your family and their interests. You have so many wonderful qualities I admire. You know your place in the world.”
One of her hands drifted over his chest and shoulder, into his hair where she alternately stroked and tugged the strands at the base of his neck.
He was strangling with need for her. He needed everything she had to give him.
His mouth paused where the skin of her throat sloped to her shoulder. “Thank you. You don’t give compliments lightly. I value your opinion of me.”
He licked her skin, his thumbs continuing their work on the undersides of her breasts. Aubrey’s fingers in his hair made him insane.
“Do you desire me?”
“I ache for you, Elliot.” She pressed her cheek to his hair.
He smiled and asked the only question he truly needed her to answer. “Do you love me, Aubrey?”
* * *
Everything inside her stilled as the sensual haze he’d wrapped around her cleared. She recalled her conversation with Octavia and inhaled carefully.
He pulled back to look at her and she blushed but didn’t look away from the heat in his eyes. He gave her a moment to think. “Tell me why you settled for an excellent school when you could have had the best? Why did you stay here?”
“You’re here. I couldn’t leave.”
“Do you love me, Aubrey?”
“I’ve loved you forever, Elliot. I don’t remember what it was like not to love you.”
* * *
Crushing his mouth to hers, he drank her down and she moaned, giving back as good as she got.
A woman’s surrender had never tasted so sweet.
A possessiveness he’d never experienced roared through his bloodstream and swamped everything rational with raw male need. He kissed her until she was whimpering and grinding against him, her fingers fisted in his hair.
It could have been a minute or five when he broke the kiss. “For everything I’ve ever done that hurt you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I can’t imagine what you thought when you saw me in the woods that day.” His forehead rested against hers, his eyes closed in shame.
Laying her palm flat against his cheek, she confessed, “I wished it was me.”
His head came up fast and his cock turned to iron, his balls drawing close to his body with an aching need he couldn’t ever remember feeling. He looked into her gentle brown eyes and saw the truth on her face.
“I protect the McAllister name because I respect your family, care about the company’s interests, and want to see the great things all of you will accomplish.” She sighed and the sound held the weight of the world. “It was always harder with you because I was emotionally attached.”
His kiss was careful, protective. His heart ached in his chest. “Why me, Aubrey? Of the three of us, why not Noah? He pursued you constantly.”
She laughed and gave a delicate shrug. “I have no idea. All I know is that one McAllister male is not the same as another. When I was sixteen, I saw you on the access road, walking your horse, deep in thought. I’ve seen you like that a lot and those moments of introspection stayed with me.”
The truth shocked him. “Twelve years, Aubrey? You were so young.”
“I think I was full grown when I realized I had to take care of my dad as much as he took care of me.”
She met his eyes and said firmly, “I never considered a romantic future between us. I still don’t.” He wasn’t sure how to respond and she tilted her head. “Even now, after these months with you, I expect nothing, Elliot.”
He cupped her face and whispered roughly, “You should expect things from me.”
* * *
There was only one thing she could no longer deny herself.
“I want to know what it’s like to be with you. I want to be the focus of your sexual attention. Show me everything.”
Elliot’s eyes bored into hers, a silent question. At her nod, he swept her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist.
He carried her to her bedroom and kicked open the door.
Before she left for dinner, she turned on all the battery candles. The result was an intimate and romantic space.
A room clearly created for seduction.
He stared into her eyes with a smile. “You planned this.”
She watched him take in her green comforter and accents, the simple lines of everything in her personal space. A desk in the corner held a picture of her father and a department picture that included him. The silver frame with the picture of her parents sat on her bedside table.
Lowering her to her feet but not letting her go, he murmured, “Beautiful with a simple complexity, just like the woman who lives here. You love green. It suits you.”
“Your eyes are green.” It explained her long-standing emotional attachment to a man who had never seen her.
He pulled her close and reached to remove the pins holding her hair. As it dropped around her, his hands went into it, stroking over her scalp, and trailing the tendrils through his fingers.
Shrugging off his jacket, he tossed it over her desk chair. When he turned back, Aubrey loosened his tie. The gesture was so intimate, domestic, that her heart stumbled.
She tugged his shirt from his slacks and worked the buttons apart, pushing it from his shoulders, and running her hands over the lines of his bare chest.
The hair was sparse and though she’d felt it during their make out sessions over the past weeks, it was lovely to see it clearly at last. Scratching her nails over his taut male nipple, he inhaled sharply.
Tugging her lower lip between her teeth, she let the back of her fingers drift down his stomach. The muscles tightened and she massaged the firm lines.
&
nbsp; By morning, she wanted to know everything about his body that had always made her wonder when she laid in the dark at night alone.
Continuing on to his waistband, she unbuckled the belt and slid it from the loops, deftly opening the slacks and pushing them, and his boxer briefs, over his hips with her thumbs. He toed off his shoes and reached down to remove his socks. She put her foot on his clothes until he stepped out.
When he was naked, she smiled. “As beautiful as you are in clothes, you are even better naked, Elliot.” Giving him a wink, she added, “Cameras have not done you justice.”
She went up on her tiptoes for a kiss and felt him lose the tenuous hold on his patience.
It made her smile when he roughly unzipped her dress and slipped it from her shoulders to pool around her feet. She hadn’t worn a bra and stood in front of him in her panties and stockings.
He sucked air through his teeth and the reaction made her blush brightly. One hand held her neck and the other trailed over the outer curve of her breast. He seemed enthralled as the nipple furled tight.
“I’m staring. I know I’m staring but…I swear to god I can’t help myself.” His green eyes practically glowed from his face as he lifted his gaze. “Aubrey, damn.”
He smiled hungrily and lowered to his knees in front of her. Planting a kiss on her belly made her moan quietly. He traced the tops of her stockings and gently removed her heels.
“Classic even to the underthings. You’re an original.” Unhooking the garters, he took his time rolling the silk down the length of her legs. “Your skin is so warm and soft. Slipping the garter belt off, he nuzzled his face against her panties. “I want you so bad I can’t think straight.”
Elliot removed her panties and spent a long time simply smoothing his palms over her thighs. Finally, he raised his face and met her eyes. She had no idea what to do.
“I can’t believe this,” he groaned as he stroked his knuckles over her bare mound. “It was unexpected. So sexy and inviting.” He stroked from the backs of her calves up to cup her ass. “You’re firm, fit, and yet, so very feminine.”
Leaning forward, he planted an open-mouthed kiss just above her clit and she almost dropped.
Somebody: A Country Romance Page 9