"Good morning," she echoed. "Did you sleep well?"
He shook his head. She thought of last night's strange, inexplicable phone call, and how badly it had upset him. Of course he hadn't slept, poor baby, but it was probably better to avoid the subject entirely. He was sure to be twitchy and defensive about it.
She sat up, pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts. "Was someone just here? I thought I heard voices."
He held up his hand. It was full of condoms. "Turns out there's a vending machine in the men's bathroom in the lobby. I was too crazed to think of it last night. The desk clerk brought them up for me."
He was so casual about it, like it was a given that they were going to make love again, again and again. Heated images from the night before raced through her mind, and liquid heat rushed and throbbed between her legs. She blushed and shrank back against the headboard.
His face hardened. He dropped the condoms onto the bedside table. "Don't give me that scared rabbit look. You don't have to be afraid of me. I would never force you."
Oh, good Lord, he was so proud and high-strung, and now she'd hurt his tender feelings. She grabbed his hand as he turned away and tugged at it. "Connor, don't. I'm just shy, and tired, and kind of overwhelmed. It would be too much, to make love again. That's all."
A slow, cautious smile curved his mouth. "That's cool with me," he said. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. "They'll keep."
She stared at him, dazzled at how gorgeous he was. She finally managed to drag her eyes away, and focused on the heap of condoms. "Good heavens," she said blankly. "How many did you ask for?"
"I figured twelve would hold us until we have a chance to get to a drugstore," he said. "Based on how things went last night."
Her eyes widened. "Twelve? Connor, I have to walk past that guy when we check out of here! Twelve? "
"Sorry." He blinked innocently. "Don't worry, Erin. We don't have to use them all this morning. I was just being, you know—prepared."
She drew her knees up to her chest and hid her face against them. "This is a big deal for me," she said. "I don't know how to be cool and casual about it. I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to act."
He sank down on his knees next to the bed. "Don't act," he urged. "Just be. No masks, right? Didn't we establish that last night? I go for that, Erin. It turns me on. And this is a big deal for me, too. Believe me. Now give me a good-morning kiss."
His warm, teasing smile was magnetic. She swayed toward him, and their lips met. Soft and tentative, for the first nanosecond, anyway.
A blast of sexual energy roared through them. She found herself writhing beneath him, the sheet torn away from her naked body, both her hands buried in his thick hair. His mouth moved over hers in a savage, sensual kiss calculated to lead them straight into another bout of wild sex. He could manipulate her so effortlessly.
It took a huge effort of will to turn her face away. "That's enough," she pleaded. "I have to get ready. I have to concentrate. Don't do this to me, Connor. Please."
He rocked back on his heels. "So concentrate. Be my guest."
"You're distracting me," she snapped. She scrambled out of the other side of the bed. Her nightdress was the quickest way to cover herself. She tugged it out of her suitcase with desperate haste.
"Gee, sorry." His eyes roamed over her body.
She yanked it over her head and let it drift into place. "I have to take a shower, and iron my suit. And I have to do something about your clothes, too. They're in a terrible state."
He looked suspicious. "What's wrong with my clothes?"
She pulled out her travel iron and plugged it in. "The clothes you wore yesterday are all right for the meeting, if I iron them, but you won't be going to the restaurant anyway, so it doesn't matter if—"
"Hold on." His eyes narrowed. "Back up a step. What's this about me not going to the restaurant?"
She heaved her suitcase up onto the bed and braced herself for a struggle. No way could she contemplate having a business lunch with her most valued client while Connor hovered over her, being intense and difficult. "I looked up the restaurant on the Internet before I came," she said. "It has a formal dress code. I don't see a garment bag lying around here, so I assume you didn't bring a jacket and tie."
"You're not going anywhere that I don't go, Erin." His tone was cold and flinty-hard. "I thought we had an understanding."
"Don't be silly." She laid a fresh towel against the desk for an ironing board. "I arranged this lunch with Mueller before you entered the picture. Nothing can happen to me in a crowded four-star restaurant And you promised that you wouldn't disrupt—"
"Wait a minute. Hello. Earth to Erin. Let's just set aside the fact that I'm currently your bodyguard. Let's ignore that phone call we got last night. Let's assume that trifling detail wasn't even an issue. After what has just happened between us, you are still planning to have lunch with your goddamn millionaire while I wait out in the lobby like an asshole?"
She gaped at him, appalled. "Connor, be reasonable. I've never even met the man. There's no reason to be jealous. This is about my work. It isn't about you, or Mueller, or—"
"Like hell it isn't. You played your cards wrong, sweetheart After a night in bed with me, you can forget the romantic, private gourmet lunch with another man. Just… fucking… forget it."
The possessive fury that emanated from him was like a blast of wind in her face. He advanced on her. She backed up. The wall bumped into her back. "Stop, Connor," she said. "You're making me nervous."
"Good. Be nervous. That'll make two of us, and I wouldn't mind some company."
"Connor, I—"
"I'm not letting you out of my sight. If you so much as have to pee, I am following you into the ladies' room. That is how serious I am about this. You reading me? Are we finally communicating?"
He pinned her to the wall, crushing her breasts against his chest. She lifted her chin. "You're acting like a caveman," she informed him.
"I'm not acting," he said. "No masks, remember?"
"That's not fair!" she snapped. "I will not be bullied! Just because we spent the night together does not give you the right to—"
"I'm not bullying you, Erin. I'm just telling you how it is."
He cut off her reply with a hard, marauding kiss. She struggled, but he just swallowed her muffled protests and moved his strong hands over her body. Oh, please. How ridiculous. Trying to stake his claim by brute physical force, the rude, arrogant…
And all at once, her anger betrayed her, lending all its furious heat to the hunger that flared inside her. She shuddered in his arms.
He wrenched the wide, scooped neckline of her nightdress down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, and trapped her arms behind her in a tight swathe of white cotton and lace. He spun her around, pinned against his chest A brief moment of fruitless struggle, legs pumping in empty space, and he sank down onto the bed with her on his lap, facing the mirror. He yanked the nightgown up over her waist.
Their eyes locked in the mirror. She went very still in his arms. She should be spitting mad. She should tell him straight out that this display of macho, he-man garbage did not impress her in the least. But the words weren't coming. She was speechless, her thighs clamped tight around an embarrassing secret. She was turned on.
No, worse than that. She was extremely turned on. She vibrated in his arms. Her face was red, her breath shallow and labored, her eyes dilated. She couldn't hide it from him. He knew it. She saw it in the triumphant glow in his eyes, the proprietary way he nuzzled her neck. So confident of his power over her.
Dear God, this was awful. She'd been kidnapped by a repressed part of her subconscious, her body taken over by a wanton nympho with no dignity who was sexually aroused by bad behavior.
She shut her eyes to block him out. "Why are you doing this to me?" she demanded. "Why are you torturing me like this?"
"There's torture and there's torture." He shoved the hair away from her neck
, and ran his lips over an exquisitely sensitive spot. She jerked and quivered. "And you're torturing me, too, Erin. The virgin bride nightgown is a calculated cocktease, did you know that? I take one look at the thing and in my mind I'm ripping it down the front and throwing you onto a Victorian four-poster." He stroked the tops of her clenched thighs. She thrashed uselessly in the unrelenting circle of his arms. "Open up," he urged. "Let me in."
She bit her lip. "Oh, God. Please, Connor."
"I never know exactly what you're begging me for," he murmured. He kissed his way up her neck, tugged her earlobe between his teeth, and suckled it. "I'm always off balance with you. Always guessing."
"Hah!" She shook with breathless, almost hysterical laughter. "You, off balance? Give me a break. I'm the one who can't move. I'm the one who's being yelled at and pushed around and manhandled!"
His grin flashed. "Open up for me," he pleaded. "Then look in the mirror and watch what I do to you. I promise, it'll be good."
She glared at him in the mirror. "Why are you even asking?" she snapped. "Wouldn't it be more Neanderthal to just make me do it? Shove my legs open, Connor. Go ahead. Doesn't that fit your script better? You'll do whatever you damn well please with me anyway."
His warm, callused hand stroked over her hip with exquisite tenderness. "Nah. It's more satisfying to coax you into opening those beautiful thighs of your own accord." His Voice was low and silky. "The conquest is deeper that way. It's a bigger rush. Way bigger."
She wiggled madly. "Conquest, my butt. This is nothing but a stupid power trip, and I'm not falling for it."
He kissed her neck again, the seductive bastard. "All I want is to make you melt," he crooned. "Go with it, Erin. If giving in to me makes you hot, that's great. I don't think any less of you for it."
"It's bad for your big fat ego!" she flared.
He shook with laughter. "We'll worry about my big fat ego another time. Like, after I make you come. Then you can tell me what a controlling bastard I am. All you want."
She flung her head back against his shoulder. She shook with confusion. "This is not OK with me," she said. "I am not a submissive person."
"Of course you're not," he soothed. "And thank God for it. You're a beautiful, regal intergalactic princess, and you drive me fucking nuts. Now open up, baby. Let me pay tribute to your surpassing beauty."
In your dreams, buddy, she thought. Meanwhile the wanton nympho who had taken over her body obeyed him, spreading her thighs wide. The glistening, flushed folds of her labia pouted out of her thatch of pubic hair, splayed wide for him to see, and touch, and toy with.
She stared into the mirror, astonished. For so long, her sexual life had been limited to solitary experimentation in the safety of her own narrow bed, tinged with shame and loneliness and wistful longing. It was there that she had spun all her romantic dreams of Connor—and tried not to think about Bradley. Whenever Bradley came into her mind, any tension or heat she'd managed to generate drained away, leaving her more depressed and lonely than before.
The woman she saw in the mirror was another person entirely.
Her pose was aggressively sexual. Pornographic, even. Arms pinned back, face flushed, breasts jutting out. Connor's muscular arm was clamped around her belly. His other hand fondled her, spreading her nether lips gently, murmuring with pleasure at how slick and wet she was. He spread the moisture everywhere while his thumb circled her clitoris, pushing and coaxing her into moaning, shivering madness.
Her real-life Connor was so much harder and rougher and more problematic than her fantasies. Aggressive and demanding, and yet so tender, so ruthlessly skillful. And his appetite for her was voracious. She had never imagined anything like it. She still couldn't.
He slid his longest two fingers deep inside her, hooking them under her pubic bone, and pressed against that sweet hot spot inside her sheath as he pressed his palm down against her mound. He squeezed and circled, his strong hand sliding in her swollen, quivering flesh. She clenched around him, writhing against his pumping hand. The power grew and swelled within her until it became a heavenly torture. She screamed when the tension finally broke.
It throbbed violently through her, charging her with shimmering warmth. When she opened her eyes, she was still sprawled on his lap. He held her limp body securely in place while he petted and stroked her lazily between her legs. Like he was petting a kitten.
She turned her face up to him. He gave her a long, clinging kiss and smiled into her eyes. So smug and satisfied with himself.
She clambered off him, extricating her arms from the nightdress and shimmying out of it. Her desire to cover herself was completely gone. She looked the nightdress over. "You ripped it," she observed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Can you fix it?"
"I think so. It's on the seam. No biggie." She flung the garment in the general direction of her suitcase and looked down at him. She'd left big wet marks on his jeans, and she was not the least bit embarrassed about it. Her inner thighs and bottom were slick and wet. She was thrumming with readiness, and the thick length of his erection was clearly visible against his jeans. She reached for his hand, the one that had pleasured her, and pulled it up to her face. His fingers were still glistening with her juice. She suckled them. Tasted herself.
His eyes widened. "Whoa. Jesus, Erin. I thought you said you were tired. You said you didn't want to."
The feverish heat was burned into her face. "I'm OK."
"OK's not good enough. Do you want me to fuck you?" he demanded. "Don't dance around it. Don't play games with me."
She laughed in his face. "Oh, you're a fine one to talk about games."
"Just say it," he snarled. "I want to hear the words."
She seized a condom from the bedstand and ripped it open with her teeth. "Take off your pants, Connor. Is that clear enough?"
He nodded, and stood up, unbuckling his belt. "You got it."
He stepped out of his pants and stood in front of her, his cock bobbing in front of him. He should be feeling guilty as hell. He had maneuvered her into this. She had to be sore, because he was. But he couldn't resist. She had that wild, sex goddess glow of arousal in her eyes that brought him right to his knees.
She plucked the condom from the foil package, and attempted to smooth it on him. He reached down and covered her fumbling hands.
"That's backwards, sweetheart," he said gently. "Turn it around."
She made a huffy noise and leaned her hot forehead against his chest. She was so cute when she tried to act nonchalant. Her efforts to roll the latex over his cock were driving him nuts.
Ah, mission finally accomplished. She stepped back, gripping him with an authoritative hand. "Just one thing," she said. "Don't drive me to the edge and leave me all alone there. Don't do that to me again."
She punctuated her statement with a tight squeeze of her hand, milking him from root to head. He struggled to remember what she'd said. "What the hell are you talking about, Erin?"
She stabbed at his chest with her finger. "Don't play dumb. You know exactly what I'm talking about. If you make me lose control, you've got to come with me. All the way. I can't take any more of your dominating, calculated power trips. At least not today."
He tossed her onto the bed, landed promptly on top of her soft, hot, squirming body. "It's not that simple," he growled. "You can afford to lose control. I can't."
She shoved at his chest. "Why not?"
"Because I'm bigger and stronger, that's why. I don't know what you're complaining about. You trick me into losing control almost every time we do it. It freaks me out. I'm supposed to protect you."
She heaved furiously beneath him. "I'm not made out of glass!"
"Thank God." He shoved her into position: flat on her back, legs folded up high, open and drenched and ready for him. "Are you sore?"
"I'm all right," she snapped.
"I didn't ask if you were all right." He enunciated each word with exaggerated clarity. "I asked if you were sor
e."
"Yes, I am, but I don't care! So don't stop, or I'll have to kill you!"
He couldn't help but grin. "I'll be gentle," he said. He guided his cock to her and slid it over her labia. "Tell me if I hurt you."
"What if I don't want gentle?" she demanded. "Stop being so goddamned anxious! You're driving me nuts!"
That made him laugh out loud. "Oh, God, I love it when you're a heartless, insatiable bitch."
He thrust inside her, hard as he dared. She was wet and hot for him, but she was delicate and small, and he was a big man. She could snap at him all she wanted, but he wasn't going to risk hurting her.
This tart-sweet furious sex kitten persona of hers made him burn with lust. He kept veering back and forth between the screaming berserker who wanted to fuck her brains out, and a shaking tenderness that made him want to cry.
God forbid. That would be all he needed.
He pulled out, gasping as her sheath clutched and hugged him, and thrust even deeper, seeking a gentle, surging rhythm. It was so good. He could do this all day, all night. For the rest of his life.
Erin smiled her fey, mysterious smile and brushing her tingling hot magic fingers over the surface of his throat, his chest, his shoulders. "Let go, Connor," she pleaded. "I love it when you go wild."
She could make him do anything when she looked at him like that. Her eyes glowed like the sun shone behind them and lit them up like stained glass: glowing amber, honey-streaked sunset warmth. Her plump breasts were crushed against his chest, her quivering thighs were clenched around him. She gasped with pleasure with each heavy, gliding stroke. She was working up to another explosion. He could feel it build, and he knew just how to give her what she was whimpering for. He knew it in his bones, in his blood.
It came to him, out of nowhere. He pulled back, held himself motionless above her. "I'm not leaving you alone with Mueller," he said.
She started to protest, but he trapped her face between his two hands and kissed her deeply. "That's the deal. I give you what you want, you stop fighting me. Nod if we understand each other."
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