His touch felt like fire on her skin. The kiss from London sizzled through her head, beckoning her on to sure destruction. They were like hot and cold fronts converging in a storm it seemed impossible to outrun.
But he was her boss. She loved her job. She really must go.
He slid his thumb down to her lips, his gaze holding hers as he traced the trembling outline of her mouth. “Go, Francesca. You’re the only thing making me feel alive right now. If you don’t, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”
Run, her sensible side commanded, hurting man or not. But the other side of her, the one pulsing with an awareness of him so strong it made her mouth dry, wanted him to drown himself in her. Wanted to experience that type of passion. Because he made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt in her life. Being the center of his attention was hypnotizing.
The tremor in his hand as he stroked the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip made her heart turn over. She couldn’t go.
His dark gaze glittered. “Out. Now.”
“No.”
The word hung on the air between them, defiant and crystal clear. She watched the control fizzle in his eyes at the same time he reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth. He pressed his lips to her palm in an openmouthed kiss, as if tasting her very essence. Her pulse ran wild.
“You have five seconds to leave,” he murmured. “Or you don’t.”
She closed her eyes as he pressed another kiss to her palm. Counted out the seconds in her head. His soft curse split the night air.
“Francesca.”
She brought his hand to her mouth. Found his palm with her lips. He tasted hot, salty and hedonistically male. She wondered if he’d experienced the same stomach-churning intensity of it. The way he went completely still said he might have.
He let her play for a while, to know him. Then he curled his fingers around her wrist and brought her the two steps forward he needed to let her feel the heat his tall frame emanated.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. His fiery, conflicted gaze scoured her face. “I won’t take an innocent.”
“I’m not.” She didn’t need to tell him there had only ever been one, awkward and disappointing as the sex had been.
The warm night air heated up around them, like it was catching fire, too. He slid his fingers into her French twist and started pulling pins out. The buzz in her ears was so loud she couldn’t hear them hit the concrete, one by one. She should have been terrified with what little she had to bring to this insanity. Instead she trusted him on a level she didn’t understand.
He pulled out the final pin. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders. He lifted a hand and fingered a silky strand, a curious look on his face.
“What?”
“I can’t figure you out,” he murmured. “Honest, fearless, unsure of yourself at times yet so sure of so many things on a bigger life level.” He wrapped a chunk of her hair around his finger and let it slide through his hand. “It’s why Leonid asked you that question tonight. Because the essence of you is good. It emanates from you.”
Her lips pursed. “It’s the way I was brought up. I don’t know any different.”
“I do.” He bent his head and put his mouth to the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “You don’t seem real to me.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. But then it didn’t matter as she abandoned herself to the sensations his lips were evoking on her skin, the warm slide of his mouth across her heated flesh sending sparks to every inch of her body. He savored the hollow he’d found, pulled every reaction out of her with his lips and teeth. The arch of her neck, her soft sighs, guided him. More. He set his hand to her jaw, moved it to the other side and did the same masterful job to the matching sweet spot between her left shoulder and neck. It made her weak in the knees. She curled her fingers into his waist and anchored herself to him.
He slid his hand to her nape and took her mouth then. Hot, possessive and never-ending, it wasn’t like his kiss in the car. It promised carnal, exciting things to come and it made her rational brain shut down.
He pushed her jacket off her shoulders and threw it over the railing. Dispensed with the buttons on her blouse so expertly it made her wonder what the heck she was doing, thinking she could play in Harrison’s sandbox. By the time he’d undone the last button and bared her to his gaze, her cheeks were scarlet. The look of pure lust that crossed his face sent that thought flying off into the nether.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, absorbing her with his eyes. “I swear to God I thought you were an apparition the night I walked into the office and you were sitting in Tessa’s chair.”
She bit her lip. Remembered her complete mortification. How shameless she must have looked, her skirt riding up her thighs, her lace stockings on display...
“Oh, yes.” His gaze was on her face. “I had dreams about those. That and the handcuffs... They did me in.”
She covered her cheeks with her hands. He shook his head and pulled them away. “It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen...”
Her heart beat a wild rhythm in her chest. The decadent, openmouthed kiss he pressed against her lips almost felled her unsteady legs. The thought she could never sit in that chair again without blushing, that this would change everything, crossed her mind as his palms closed over the weight of her breasts and his thumbs slid across her hardened nipples. “Don’t,” he growled in her ear as she stiffened beneath him. “Not tonight. Feel.”
She obeyed his command, because even in her inexperience, she knew only Harrison could ever make her feel like this. It had been that way from the beginning.
The pleasure he was lavishing on her as he rolled her nipples between his fingers with both hands unearthed a low moan from her throat. Sharp, urgent need lanced through her, sending her fingers to his biceps to curl into taut, hard male muscle. He rewarded her by sinking his teeth into her shoulder in a gentle bite that promised more was coming. Much more.
Oh, lord. She was so, so out of her depth.
His knee nudged her legs apart. She anchored her palms against his chest as he ran his hands up the back of her thighs. She had left the lace stockings off for an entire week after the incident, she’d been so mortified. But habit was habit and she loved feeling feminine. His swift intake of breath when he found the lace edging reverberated through her head. “You’re killing me.”
He slid an arm under her knees and picked her up. She had a vague memory of him doing that that night on the plane, but she’d been half unconscious then. Now she was fully alert, fully aware of the power caged in his muscular frame. Her heart raced in her chest, slamming against its containing walls. He was insanely strong. She had handed herself over to him to do what he liked. It inspired a feeling of mild panic.
He nudged the French doors shut behind them and carried her through the dimly lit penthouse and down a dark hallway toward the bedrooms. His was the big master suite at the side of the apartment. Her heart reached up to tattoo itself against her eardrums as he set her down in the middle of the lushly carpeted floor and switched on a lamp. She distracted herself with the jaw-dropping view of Central Park while he stripped off his tie and tugged his shirt collar open with a sense of purpose that made her heart stutter. Digging her toes into the plush carpet, she avoided the urge to turn and run out the door of his very expensive penthouse.
The deliberate way he moved back toward her almost rattled her poise completely. It must have shown on her face because he stopped in front of her, captured her hand and lavished another of those erotic, tongue-infused kisses to her palm. “Trust me.”
Everything inside her melted. Her gaze fused with his dark, tormented one. “I do.”
He curled her fingers around the top button of his shirt. She latched on to the direction like a lifeline, slipping the buttons free with hands that shook slightly but managed the job in a far less efficient process than his had. When she had them undone, he yanke
d the shirt from his trousers and threw it to the floor. He had the most amazing chest she’d ever seen on a man. She rocked back on her heels to take him in. Hard, muscled, honed by the hours he put in at the gym every week, he was the most perfect example of masculinity she’d ever seen. It was almost intimidating to touch him, but she couldn’t help herself. Her hands moved by instinct, sliding up and over him, wanting to learn every inch with this liberty she’d been given.
Everything about him was impenetrable, indestructible, except tonight his vulnerability allowed her a way in. It was intoxicating.
She slid her palms over his nipples. He tensed under her touch but held himself still. Fascinated by how rock hard the hair-roughened peaks were underneath her fingertips, like tiny pebbles, she explored them with the pads of her thumbs.
He groaned. “More.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant until he covered her hand with his and slid it down over his trousers. The scalding contact with the hard, thick length of him made the blood roar in her head. Eyes closed, she traced him, learned him. He leaned into her caress, his growl sliding into a velvety moan of approval. It made her feel empowered, emboldened. She stroked him more firmly, pressed her palm against the impressive bulge of him and felt him grow harder beneath her touch.
His palms returned to her thighs, sliding up the back of them. This time he slipped his fingers beneath the lace and caressed the ultrasensitive skin there with fingers that burned her skin. “These stay on.”
Frankie forgot her task completely as the raspy timbre of his voice shot through her. He slid his palms higher until he reached her lacy panties. Her hands fell to her sides, her head dropping to his chest as he nudged her legs apart with his knee, moved his fingers beneath the lace and touched her so intimately her back arched in pleasure.
“Harrison.” His name slid from her lips on a groan of pure pleasure. He repeated the caress again, his fingers sliding against her slick skin. Leisurely at first, he stroked her like he might a cat, caressing her nerve endings. Then he deepened it, intensified it. She let him take her weight as her knees buckled. His voice was a husky demand in her ear asking if she liked it. Commanding her to tell him when she wanted more. She did because this was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, it felt that good.
His hands left her aching flesh. She wanted to scream greedily that it wasn’t enough, beg for more, because she’d never experienced the type of pleasure he was giving her. But he was disposing with his trousers, intent on another kind of pleasure entirely. He slid off his briefs and kicked them aside. Her mouth went dry, her palms sweaty. She could have expected he’d be big because of his size but his arousal, proud and daunting, kicked her heart into a whole other gear.
He was as aroused by her as she was by him.
He pushed her blouse off her shoulders, found the back button of her skirt and undid it. She swallowed hard to inject some saliva into her mouth as her zipper went the way of her button and he nudged the skirt off her hips. Self-consciousness would have overwhelmed her then, as she stood there only in her lacy underwear, if she hadn’t been utterly fascinated by the ruddy color staining his cheekbones. The tortured look was gone. Urgent, compulsive desire was plastered across his face. He was totally and utterly fixated on her, as if he couldn’t believe she was real.
Her gaze tracked him as he backed up and sat down on the bed. He pulled a foil package from the night table drawer and rolled a condom on his impressive erection. She watched him, finding his beautiful body such a turn-on it was impossible to look away. His gaze lifted to hers when he’d finished, his eyes telling her exactly where she was supposed to be. She moved to mere inches in front of him.
“In my fantasy you had me in handcuffs.” His hot gaze singed her from head to toe. “But you didn’t need them, you had me totally under your control.”
Her legs felt as though she’d done a seven-hour shift at Masserias. He reached up, slid his fingers in the sides of her panties and stripped them off. She almost lost her footing when he moved his hand between her thighs and cupped her aching center. Squeezed. It was a blatant act of ownership that made her stomach dip. Sent her fingers clutching the hard muscles of his shoulders for support.
“I’m not averse to a woman tying me up,” he continued, easing his grip on her to fill her with a long finger instead. “But then you wouldn’t get this. And I want you as hot and wild for me as you were in my fantasy.”
Frankie closed her eyes at the seductive heat in his voice. It raked over her nerve endings and sent warmth flooding to the very place he was caressing. She couldn’t help her response, couldn’t help moving her hips against his hand every time he filled her. It was incredible.
He added another of those amazing fingers, palming the soft flesh of her buttocks with his free hand to hold her where he wanted her. A low moan escaped her lips.
“That’s right,” he murmured, spreading the fingers he had inside of her to maximize her pleasure. To ready her. “That’s exactly how you were.”
He withdrew from her. Left her hot and aching again, but only to shift both his hands to the backs of her thighs and lift her on top of him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her thighs making contact with his hot, aroused body. Too many contact points fried her nerve endings. The unleashed power of him beneath her made her pulse speed up into an almost impossible awareness of his masculinity. But most intense of all were his eyes. Dark and full of want, she felt him all the way inside of her.
“You do something to me,” he rasped. “I can’t explain it.”
She couldn’t, either, but she felt it, too. She watched the desperation flicker back to life in his eyes as he fought it, fought the physical and mental connection they shared. The lack of control...it was a last-ditch effort to hold on to the darkness and she wouldn’t allow it. She brought her mouth down on his in a kiss so intimate, so soul-consuming, she was sure she would never forget it.
His hands bit into her bottom as he lifted her up and brought her down on the hard column of flesh that telegraphed his desire for her.
“Tell me,” he muttered against her lips, “if I’m hurting you...”
But he had brought her to the edge, to a greedy, grasping place where he was all she wanted. Inside of her. Exactly like his fantasy. Her body was malleable, soft as she accepted the tip of him. He was big; he stole her breath as he brought her down on him with firm hands. It was a tight, exquisite fit, one she almost couldn’t stand. But when he had filled her completely, she wanted more.
“Then what did I do? In your fantasy...?” she whispered.
He took the weight of her hips in his hands, his eyes locked on hers. “You rode me like an angel.”
Oh. She went down then, lost in the way he made her feel. She circled her hips around him. Took him deep inside, then retreated. His eyes caught fire. His hands helped her move. Then there was nothing between them except the sensation of being impaled on him. She took him again and again until her body was all soft heat, grasping him, needing him.
It was unmistakable, the sweet intensity that built inside of her then as his size, his girth touched a spot that promised heaven. She gripped his shoulders harder. He slid a hand between them and rubbed his thumb against her center. Back and forth in a path of fire that had her limbs clenching around him. “Give yourself to me,” he commanded roughly.
She closed her eyes. Let his thumb take her over the edge. Her back arched, white lights exploded in her head as an orgasm racked through her. Her gasp as it tore into the night was raw and pleasure-soaked. Animalistic.
It was hot and amazing and never-ending. When she finally came down. Harrison was watching her, a deadly heat in his eyes. Her lashes lowered. “Don’t,” he commanded, his thumb claiming the curve of her lip. “You were spectacular.”
She opened her eyes. Allowed him to part her mouth with his thumb, her breath coming hot and hard against his skin. She could taste herself on him. Taste what he’d done to her. It was too much. Ove
rload.
He rolled onto his back and took her with him. He was buried deep inside of her, pulsing and rock-hard. Unsatisified. His gaze morphed into the darkest, deepest granite as it ate her up. He wanted her to blow his mind. To obliterate his thoughts.
She leaned forward, pressed her palms to his chest and rotated her hips in a slow, grinding circle. His hands tightened around the flesh of her bottom. Faster, harder, he urged her down on him until his eyes were glazed and she knew he had lost it completely. But she drew it out, knew he wanted her to. He drove up into her with awe-inspiring stamina, again and again, his erection sending sparks of aftershocks through her. Slowly, amazingly, she felt her pleasure build again, hovering over the edge of another sweet surge of heaven. This was why he’d made it last. Because he could give her this.
He read the tautness of her body, his face blanking as he took her hard and fast, fully in control now. “Again.”
She gave herself into the deep, piercing release, lost to him as he came with a hoarse shout, his hips bucking against her. Aftershocks jerked his powerful body. They racked through her as she dropped her head to his chest and tasted the salt of his skin. Nothing had ever felt so right. So perfect.
And yet it was so wrong. The cool night air sent reality flickering across her sweat-dampened skin. He was her boss. At least her temporary boss. And she’d just had scorching, wild sex with him.
Harrison rolled her beneath him, his big body holding her captive. His gaze found hers. Narrowed. “Stop thinking.”
“I can’t think,” she muttered. “My brain is mush.”
“Good.” He left the bed, disposed of the condom and came back to her, hooking a finger under the front closure of her lacy black bra. “How did this stay on?”
Her cheeks flamed. Because they’d been in such a hurry?
He lowered himself back onto the bed beside her. Her cheeks heated as she absorbed his magnificence. It was a bit overwhelming. Dark amusement gleamed in his eyes as he captured one of her hands, pressed his thumb to her palm and worked the tension from it.
Tempted by Her Billionaire Boss (The Tenacious Tycoons) Page 11