Seconds later, he dropped her onto the bed. She landed with a bounce, then quickly scrambled to the other side, losing her other shoe in the process. She was incensed. "For your information, Garrett McGrath, I do not like being carried."
"Yeah, I noticed that."
"And I also don't like being bounced on the bed like a … a rubber ball."
"I thought you'd want to check out the quality of the mattress." Garrett pulled his T-shirt over his head. "It sure beats that lumpy piece of junk at the Seagull last night, hmm?" He tossed his shirt over the nearby settee.
Shelby stood on the other side of the bed, trembling with nerves and temper and pent-up desire. Her hazel eyes were fastened compulsively on him, taking in every detail of his strong, corded arms and muscular chest. Her gaze traced the mat of dark, wiry hair to the indentation of his navel where it arrowed lower, beneath the waistband of his swim trunks. She swallowed, hard.
Garrett was smoothing his hand over the surface of the bed. "There isn't a single spring in this mattress to stick out and jab you. I counted at least seven at the Seagull."
"I know what you're trying to do, Garrett," Shelby said sternly, backing away toward the window.
"I should expect so," Garrett agreed. He held out his hand to her.
She shook her head and put her hands behind her back. "You're trying to distract me by talking about the mattress and the Seagull Motel and—"
"I'm trying to recoup lost ground," Garrett admitted frankly, his blue eyes gleaming. "I realize that I blundered big time by picking you up and carrying you in here."
"Yes, you did. I hated it. I was positive you would drop me and I'd hit my head on the ground. I kept wondering how a cat manages to land on its feet after a fall and how I could do it, too."
"Whew! I really did blow it." Garrett laughed and walked around the bed toward her. "I was hoping to set a romantic mood and all you were thinking about were cats and aerodynamics and injuries."
He had her cornered between the bed and the wall and the window. There was no way for her to avoid him unless she jumped onto the bed and bolted across it. Shelby considered doing just that as he approached her.
"Come here, baby," he said quietly, holding open his arms to her.
Shelby's eyes darted from him to the expanse of the king-size bed to the bedroom door that, though just across the room, seemed inaccessible and miles away. "I … can't do this, Garrett."
"Yes, you can." He was directly in front of her now and she stood stock-still as he untied the strings of her sundress at the nape of her neck. "You want me and you have to know how much I want you."
She shivered as he lowered the bodice of her dress. Before she had time to inhale, he'd unhooked her strapless white bra and bared her breasts. She stood before him, trembling with an edgy mixture of excitement and embarrassment, her breasts exposed to him.
"You're so beautiful," he murmured as he stared down at the milky white fullness of her pink-tipped breasts.
Even as she reeled in a sensual daze, Shelby couldn't let that pass. Laney was the beautiful one, not her. She shook her head, feeling compelled to set the record straight. "I'm not beautiful, I—"
"Yes, you are." His voice was soft and deep and hypnotically soothing. "You're beautiful and smart and funny and sexy as hell. You're also forthright and tough and those are two requirements when dealing with me."
"You don't cotton to sensitive, shrinking violets?" She hardly recognized the low, throaty voice as her own.
"Nope. Or devious little schemers," he added, thinking of Laney's appearance with the Halford Goddesses. "You're neither, thank God. You're perfect for me."
"You're deluded," she said, her face flushing. "I'm not perfect, Garrett."
"I didn't say you were. I said you were perfect for me and that's something else entirely. I wanted you from the first moment I laid eyes on you and the time we've spent together has only intensified that desire." His hands cupped her breasts with surprising gentleness. "You do know that, don't you, Shelby? That I want you very, very much."
She closed her eyes, leaning into him. She couldn't help herself. His big, warm hands felt so good on her breasts. There was a sharp sensual ache throbbing in her belly and a provocative heat raged between her legs, emboldening her.
"How much is that?" she whispered. "How much is very, very much?"
"More than anything I've ever wanted in my life," he said hoarsely. His deft fingers kneaded the rounded softness, then stroked her nipples, watching the buds tighten and darken under his caresses.
Shelby drew in a quick breath as sharp spirals of desire uncoiled deep within her. She felt lost in a thick, sweet fog that was blanketing her mind, as potent and intoxicating as last night's bottle of Circe's Spiced Rum. But today there was no alcohol involved, only emotion and sensation, heightened to degrees she'd never imagined.
Garrett's hands slid to her waist and pushed her dress over her hips where it fell to the floor and pooled around her ankles. She was left wearing only her white panties, a cotton bikini-style cut high on the leg and low around the hips. Such a small scrap of material didn't afford much protection from the intensity and urgency glittering in his blue eyes.
A shudder of desire shook her, but it was mixed with a nervous pang of apprehension.
He noticed and swiftly pulled her into his arms. "Don't be afraid of me, Shelby."
Her cheeks brushed the wiry-soft hair on his chest; she felt the hard warmth of his arms enfolding her. His palms smoothed over the length of her bare back, molding her closer, settling her firmly against him. Between her legs, she felt the thick, virile strength of him pressing insistently. The thin cloth of her panties and slick material of his swimsuit were the only barriers to the most intimate contact of all. The notion was both scary and exciting.
"I … don't know how good I'm going to be at this," Shelby murmured.
"Relax, sweetheart." He eased her gently down onto the bed and lay beside her, taking her hand in his. "There aren't going to be any performance reviews." He lifted her hand to his mouth, caressing it with his lips. "It isn't a matter of being good or bad at anything."
"I've always tried to be good at whatever I do." She turned her head and gazed at him, her hazel eyes earnest. "I have to admit that I don't have a lot of experience in this area, Garrett."
Garrett's lips quirked. "Try to keep in mind that this isn't a business interview, Shelby. A résumé or a list of references is not required."
"That's good, because I couldn't supply one."
She wondered if he'd heard her because he made no reply. He was touching her breasts, filling his palms with the high rounded softness, tracing the size and shape of her tautly beaded nipples with his fingertips. His hands moved leisurely yet thoroughly, drifting downward over the sleek slope of her stomach. When he slipped his fingers beneath the waistband of her panties, she sucked in her breath.
"Garrett, what I'm trying to say is that…" Her voice quivered as his hands tangled in the dark curls of her womanhood. Instinctively she pressed her thighs together.
"I know, baby. I know." With calm and firm assurance, he slipped his hand between her legs, applying an exquisite pressure that made her moan with pleasure. "I'm the first." His eyes gleamed with primal satisfaction as he gazed at her. He didn't know that it would mean so much to him, being Shelby's first lover. A streak of possessiveness he never knew he had surged through him. He vowed then and there that he would be her only lover, as well.
Shelby was mortified by her admission. She was nothing but a cliché, she railed to herself. She was the archetypal, nervous, overaged, old-fashioned fool! Why hadn't she just kept her mouth shut? He'd have found out the truth soon enough. What must he think of her? Probably that she was an archetypal, nervous, overaged, old-fashioned fool, that's what.
Her confidence plummeted, along with her ardor. The tantalizing, teasing intimacy of his fingers was too much. She grabbed his hand and lifted it away from her. He allowed her to do so
, but held on to her hand, twining his fingers with hers.
"Go ahead and laugh," Shelby rasped, looking away. His stare was too penetrating and she had nowhere to hide. She felt vulnerable and uncertain and scorned herself for it. "I know I'm a misfit out of time and place. I always have been."
"What you are and always will be, is mine," Garrett countered.
It was definitely time to stop talking. She needed actions, not words to dispel her anxiety. He studied her profile as she lay, rigid and tense, beside him. Shelby Halford, a bona fide spitfire, was still a virgin. Who would've thought it? Yet the knowledge didn't come as a complete shock. She was so defensive and uptight, determined never to cede control, command or composure. Surrender would not come easily or naturally to her.
But her swift, hot arousal in response to his kisses and caresses proved to him that she was no ice maiden, that the passion in her was as fierce as her temper. She needed to feel secure enough to set it free. She needed a man who was both sexually aggressive and very reassuring. And he was that man.
"I'm going to make love to you, Shelby."
A shiver of desire raced through her as Garrett leaned over her. She gazed into his eyes, which were dark with passion and desire. Her pulses were pounding. He was going to make love to her and she wanted him to, so much. She hadn't realized just how much until this moment.
Her eyelids dropped shut at the touch of his mouth and she was instantly transported into a private world of pure sensation. His lips feathered hers, the tip of his tongue toyed with her mouth, seeking entrance. She instantly obliged him, and his tongue entered her mouth, probing and rubbing seductively against hers.
Shelby clung to him as they kissed and kissed, each kiss becoming deeper and hotter and more intimate, each melding into another in passionate fusion. Heated waves of sexual excitement washed over her and a slow, languorous warmth suffused her entire body. She wanted to be closer to him, much closer.
She wrapped herself around him, moving her body sinuously against his. When his hands cupped the taut, swollen fullness of her breasts, she whimpered his name. Her nipples were so sensitized they were almost painfully hard, but it was an exciting kind of pleasure-pain, a dizzying sensual dichotomy.
"You want me," Garrett murmured in husky satisfaction. "As much as I want you. Tell me, Shelby. I want to hear the words."
And she wanted to give them to him. "I want you, Garrett," she whispered dreamily. She felt as if she really were dreaming, the most erotic, romantic dream of her life. But it was real, he was real. And these primitive elemental feelings he evoked in her were not the ephemeral stuff of dreams nor simply the heat of sexual attraction.
She was in love with him. The flash of insight was shattering, jolting her out of her sensual daze. She stared at him for a stunned second. Being in love was twice as unnerving as the prospect of making love. If only he loved her, too…
"It's all right, sweetheart." Garrett's voice, sexy and low and reassuring, was at her ears. His lips moved slowly, sensuously, along the slender curve of her neck. "I know this is new to you but we're here together and you have nothing to fear."
Nothing to fear. His words reverberated in her head. How about being in love with a man who didn't love her? That was certainly a prospect designed to scare any discerning woman. And she couldn't delude herself into thinking that Garrett loved her. She knew he didn't. He talked about wanting her and she had no doubts that he did, but that was sex, something quite apart from love.
But then his mouth was on her breast, his tongue tracing concentric circles around her nipple until it stood out, tight and hard. A hungry little cry escaped from deep in her throat. The way he was making her feel rendered coherent thought impossible. And the appeal of coherent thought paled in comparison to the enthralling pleasure spinning through her. She'd always thought too much; thinking was both her offense and defense. But she didn't want to offend Garrett or to defend herself against him. Not now. All she wanted to do right now was to savor every lush sensation, to not think at all but simply feel.
Garrett's hand slipped lower and pulled off her panties in one deft sweep. She felt his fingers flex in the downy apex of her thighs, seeking and finding, and she gasped at his bold foray. Liquid fire burned through her veins. Her head tossed from side to side as he gently, lightly, probed her soft cleft, caressing her sensitive flesh with a sensual expertise that made her moan.
She was moist and swollen and her body quivered, drawing tight as a bowstring, as she surged upward against his hand. He was touching her, stroking her, his clever fingers inside her, driving her wild and making her part her legs wider in aching need.
He continued the sensual torment as she arched into him, clinging to him in urgent abandon. "Garrett, please!" she cried, not quite sure what she was pleading for. She shuddered as pleasure streaked through her, sharp and fast, radiating from her hot, damp center to every nerve and muscle in her body.
Crushed against him, she could feel the powerful strength of his arousal and she was filled with heady feminine pride. It was incredibly empowering to know that she could rouse this urgent need in him, that she could stoke the fire of desire within him.
She tugged at his swim trunks, her hands trembling, her eyes glittering with a passion that matched his own. It felt so right to give herself to him. He was the man she loved and she'd waited a lifetime for him. A hot flood of anticipation flowed through her. She wanted to see him, to feel him…
Garrett helped her divest himself of his swimsuit and when her hands closed over him in eager anticipation, he groaned with pleasure. She fondled him, exploring his hard body, both fascinated and stirred by his virile male form.
"I want to be inside you," he growled, and the sexy rasp of his voice was as arousing as his caresses. His face tightened as he gazed down at her nude body, stretched invitingly before him. "We'll take it slow and easy—the first time." He flashed a smile of sensual promise that took her breath away.
"Yes," she whispered, reaching for him. "Yes, Garrett." He'd called it right when he had possessively claimed her as his own earlier. She was his, and she wanted to prove it with an aching, desperate urgency.
She surrendered completely to his unnerving, inexorable and totally thrilling penetration of her soft, slim body. For a few moments he lay still inside her as her body accommodated itself to his indomitable presence. He stroked her hair and kissed her, murmuring exciting words of praise and encouragement.
Slowly her taut muscles relaxed and he began to move within her. Shelby reveled in the fullness of him deep inside her. It seemed perfectly natural for her to wrap her legs tightly around him, and the rhythmic motion of her hips came naturally, too. His thrusts were slow and careful at first, and then became harder, faster, as she matched him stroke for stroke in rapturous abandon.
Shelby gasped and cried out, writhing beneath him as a shimmering tension built and intensified. They moved together in frenzied passion, she arching wildly, he driving into her with an increasing power. His hands slid under her to grasp her bottom, lifting her higher and sending sudden, sharp bolts of pleasure exploding through her.
The sensual explosion rocked her, deep and strong, and her spasms of release drew Garrett into the mindless, swirling vortex of passion and pleasure that melted all boundaries between them, merging them and making them one.
* * *
"Shelby." Garrett's voice sounded softly in her ear.
She realized that she must have fallen asleep because the last thing she remembered was the heavy warm weight of him sprawled on top of her, their bodies still intimately joined, but now he lay beside her and she was curled spoon-fashion against him.
She smiled up at him as his mouth settled lazily over hers. Shelby responded at once, kissing him fiercely, possessively.
"I'm glad you dropped by to see me this afternoon." Lifting his mouth an inch or two above hers, Garrett's lips curved into a slow smile, his blue eyes lazy with sensual satisfaction. "After the way you fl
ounced off earlier, I didn't think you would. I thought you'd fight your attraction for me every step of the way." His arms tightened around her. "But I was prepared to do whatever it took to keep you from winning that fight."
"Let's get one thing straight—I don't flounce," Shelby informed him huskily, stroking the strong, hard line of his jaw with gently caressive hands. "I might stalk regally away, but I've never flounced off in my life."
"Uh-huh." He clasped his hand around her nape, securing her mouth for a lingering, deeply tender kiss.
Later, much later, they lay together, sated and replete in the warm afterglow of passion. And for the first time in a long while, Shelby recalled the initial reason why she'd come looking for Garrett. She toyed with the idea of letting him continue to believe that her arrival was a spontaneous decision, fueled by the potent chemistry between them. To drag in the prosaic world of business certainly deromanticized their encounter.
But she was too honest to lie, even by omission. "Garrett, I have sort of a confession to make," she began tentatively. "Remember when you said that you hadn't expected me to come here to see you today, that you thought I'd fight my attraction to you? Well, you were right."
"I was, hmm?" Garrett did not sound unduly concerned.
"I fully intended to stay away from you. In fact, I'd vowed to keep away from you," she said earnestly. "I wouldn't have come over here if my father hadn't insisted that I bring you a folder—" She sat up abruptly. "Good heavens, the folder! I didn't give it to you, did I? No, of course I didn't. But I can't remember what I did with it."
"Who cares?" Garrett tried to pull her back down to him.
"Garrett, this is important. My father told me to stay with you until you'd read the contents of that folder. We have to find it." She jumped out of bed, then realized that she was naked. She met his wry, interested gaze and blushed.
Garrett took pity on her and climbed out of bed to hand her the official Halford House white terry bathrobe. While she wrapped herself in it, he pulled on his swim trunks and headed out of the bedroom to the front door.
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