Breaking His Rules (Feeling the Heat #4)

by Alison Packard

  He tilted his head and frowned. “Like what?”

  “Like your choice of a career, and your compassion. I was huge when I first started working with you but you never once looked at me like I was some sort of freak,” she said, and pulled her sweater closer to her body as a light gust of cool air hit her.

  “You weren’t a freak. You just needed to believe you could change, and until you could do that for yourself you needed to know I believed in you.” He paused. “I still believe in you.”

  His quietly spoken words and the intensity in his eyes suddenly had the pounding of her heart eclipsing the sound of the waves. It was happening again—and this time the attraction between them felt even stronger than it had earlier.

  “It wasn’t easy,” she said with a smile, hoping to squelch the feelings neither of them should act on. “When you told me you didn’t have a diet you wanted me to follow I thought you were certifiably insane.”

  Jake’s rich laugh warmed the night. “I’ve heard that on more than one occasion during my career. Look, I know my no-diet approach isn’t what most of my clients want to hear. They want a quick fix. Oh, they’ll work their asses off physically, but they won’t do the mental work required to make a lasting change. It used to irritate me, but now I tailor my approach to each individual client. I don’t endorse any diets, but I won’t stop working with anyone if they want to follow one. I’d lose a lot of clients if I did.”

  “I’m so glad I found you. I couldn’t have accomplished what I have without you.”

  “You keep saying that, but it’s not true. I may have given you some insight and motivation, but you’re the one who’s done the work. You read the book I recommended about intuitive eating, you worked the exercises in each Chapter and you never gave up even after you had a set-back.”

  “You mean like the time I wanted to join that expensive weight-loss program?”

  A hint of a smile crossed his lips. “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you talked me out of it. It was a moment of lunacy when I thought I wasn’t losing weight fast enough.”

  “I’d say fifty pounds in less than nine months is fast enough.”

  Melissa glanced at the waves and then back at Jake. “If I told you I don’t want to lose any more weight, would you be upset with me?”

  “No. Not at all. Why would you think that?”

  “Because my original goal is still twenty pounds away, but I feel really good right now and I like how I look. Seeing Shauna today only reinforced the fact that I don’t want to become that thin. I want to enjoy my life instead of thinking about my weight every waking second of the day. It’s exhausting.”

  Despite the looming shadows that threatened to swallow the last rays of sunlight, Melissa saw the admiration in his eyes and she drank in the moment, and her accomplishment.

  “You’ve come a long way since the first day you walked into my gym.”

  “I almost didn’t come back after those jerks made fun of me.” She straightened her shoulders and remembered how hurt and intimidated she’d been that day. “But I was tired of people like them, and like Shauna, making me feel like less of a human being.”

  “That was your first step to finding your inner strength and it had nothing to do with me.”

  “We’ll still have to agree to disagree on that one. I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said, then shivered as another gust of wind blew in from the ocean.

  “You’re cold.” Jake quickly removed his sport jacket and placed it around her shoulders, then moved to stand in front of her while he adjusted it to cover her.

  “Nine months ago your jacket probably wouldn’t have fit around me. A lot’s changed, hasn’t it?”

  “One thing hasn’t changed.” Jake lifted his hand to brush back the wisps of windblown hair from around her face. “You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  Stunned into silence, Melissa could only stare at him. Surely he couldn’t have thought her attractive fifty pounds ago. Not with all the fat covering her body.

  “You must have that selective remembrance thing going on.” She finally spoke and managed a light laugh. “Maybe you need to see my before picture to jog your memory.”

  “I don’t need a picture.” His fingers trailed to her cheek. “Yes, you were overweight, but that’s not the first thing I noticed about you.”

  “It wasn’t?” she whispered, acutely aware of the feel of his fingers gently caressing her cheek. Her body prickled with goose bumps but it wasn’t because she was cold.

  “No. It was your eyes, and your smile. I’ve never seen eyes like yours before. One minute they’re brown, then the next they’re amber. I’ve tried to figure out what makes them change color like they do, but I can’t. And your smile. Do you know how much I look forward to seeing it? I can’t even tell you how many times you’ve made a bad day better by just smiling at me.”

  “It’s the braces,” she joked, because she wasn’t sure she could deal with the emotions he was stirring in her. “I wore them for two years in high school.”

  “It’s not the braces. It’s you.” He searched her face. “You have a way about you, a glow. It was there even before you lost weight. I was so drawn to you that I invented ways to spend time with you outside the confines of our training sessions. I told myself it was just about firming up our schedule, or discussing your progress, but it was more than that. I wanted to see you. No, I needed to see you even though I knew it couldn’t go any further.”

  “Because of your rule.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s understandable. Questionable behavior has caused many successful businesses to fold. Your ethics is one of the many things I admire about you.”

  “I haven’t been so ethical this weekend.” His gaze lowered and she could almost feel the heat in his eyes scorching her lips. “I want you, Melissa. I want you so much it’s killing me.”

  “I want you too,” she said softly, and tried to ignore the thrill that raced up her spine. He lowered his head and as the seconds ticked by with excruciating slowness, Melissa found herself completely immersed in his fresh clean scent, the husky sound of his voice and the memory of their hotter-than-hell kiss not more than twenty-four hours ago.

  Just as his lips touched hers, a dog barked excitedly as it bounded past them and raced down the beach, followed quickly by its owner. Melissa jerked back and put a hand to her chest to calm its sudden acceleration. “Oh my God. That scared me.”

  Jake stepped back and sighed. “I love dogs, but that one has rotten timing.”

  “Or maybe not.” She clutched the lapels of Jake’s jacket to her body and gave him a shaky smile. “We were about to forget the reasons we have for not getting involved with each other.”

  “You’re right.” He nodded, then let out a long, controlled breath. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  * * *

  Jake didn’t look at the digital clock on the nightstand. Why bother? All it would tell him was thirty minutes or more had elapsed since the last time he looked at it and he still wasn’t any closer to getting some shut-eye.

  The irony of the situation was actually somewhat amusing. Here he was. Lying in bed next to a woman who wanted him as much as he wanted her and all they were doing was sleeping. Correction, Melissa was sleeping. Or at least he thought she was. When he’d come out of the bathroom after taking a cold shower, she was already in bed with her back to him. Maybe she was as wide awake as he was, or maybe she found it easier to ignore potent attraction between them and had fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

  Of all the dumb-ass ideas he’d ever had in his life (and he’d had a few), thinking he could spend the weekend with Melissa in the same hotel room and not touch her was by far the dumbest.

  With a muffled curse, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, flung the sheet and blanket from his body and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Shifting on the bed, he could make out the shadowy outline of Meli
ssa’s curvy body and immediately felt the familiar ache in his groin. For Christ’s sake, by the way his body was reacting one would think he was some horny teenager whose dick got hard whenever the wind blew.

  Fresh air. Yes. That’s exactly what he needed. Some ocean air to clear his head and calm the heat in his body. He rose from the bed and moved silently around the foot of the bed until he reached the sliding glass door. After opening it, he stepped out onto the balcony and crossed to the railing in two steps.

  The chilly air washed over his bare chest, but it didn’t do much to cool him off. All he could think about was Melissa and how much he wanted her...how much he ached for her. Sharing the hotel room with her had been a cross between heaven and hell. The heaven—being so close to her, and the hell—not acting on his feelings.

  It was his father’s fault. Seriously. If Joe Sawyer hadn’t instilled in him that a man’s word was his bond, then he would have already broken his own damn rule without giving a second thought to the consequences.

  Closing his eyes, he imagined Melissa beckoning him into the room where she would then proceed to do a slow, sexy striptease until the luscious curves of her body were finally revealed to him. He would be hard, just like he was now. She would notice, and a seductive smile would curve her lips as she moved toward him. He would watch her as she approached, appreciating the bounce of her full breasts and the sway of her womanly hips. His heart would thunder in his chest and he would gasp when she wrapped her fingers around his cock and gently massage him. And it would feel so damn—

  “Jake?”

  Startled, Jake opened his eyes and then realized that somewhere in the middle of the fantasy he’d started to jack off. He stilled his hand and hoped to hell Melissa hadn’t noticed and thought he was a first-class pervert for sticking his hand down his sweatpants on the fucking balcony where anyone walking by could see him. Well, if they were out taking a 2:00 a.m. stroll around the golf course, they’d see him.

  “Go back inside,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Her voice was closer now. She’d stepped onto the balcony with him. Great. Just fucking great. If he pulled his hand out of his sweats now, she’d notice for sure. This was almost as bad as the time his mom almost walked in on him in the bathroom when he was thirteen. Never had he been more grateful for a lock on a bathroom door.

  “Melissa, please don’t come out here.” He didn’t turn around, didn’t look at her.

  “Why?” She halted behind him. Her soft fragrance filled his senses and it took everything he had not to continue what he’d just been interrupted doing. Or ask her to touch him like he’d been dreaming about for months. “Since we both can’t sleep, maybe we can talk until we get tired.”

  “I don’t want to talk.” He shifted and discreetly slipped his hand from his sweats. “Go back to bed.”

  “Are you mad about what happened on the beach?”

  “No.” He gripped the rail tightly with his hands.

  “You’re upset about something. What is it?”

  “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”

  “I asked. So I must want to know. Just tell me, Jake. We’ve always been honest with each other.”

  Letting out a long breath, he turned to look at her. “Fine. I’ll be honest. I couldn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about you lying next to me in that stupid bed. In fact, I think about you all the damn time.” Without another word, he brushed past her and strode into the bedroom.

  Halting at the end of the bed, he stared at the door and tried to collect himself. How he’d just spoken to her was so not cool. It wasn’t Melissa’s fault he couldn’t control his sexual urges. He took several deep breaths as he considered getting dressed and going down to the lobby. Putting some distance between him and Melissa seemed like the best for all involved.

  With a frustrated growl, he turned on the small table lamp on the dresser and yanked open the top drawer. He reached for his jeans, but froze when Melissa’s husky voice filled the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going out,” he said, not looking at her as she moved into the room and stood on the far side of the bed.

  “At two in the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Being around me is that difficult?”

  He turned from the dresser and faced her. “Being near you right now is fucking torture. Do you know what I was doing out there?” He pointed toward the balcony. “I was thinking about you and jacking off.” Melissa’s eyes widened. “I’m so hot for you that I resorted to masturbating on the damn balcony. That’s why I need to leave for a while. To cool off.”

  “A cold shower wouldn’t work?” she asked, and for a second he thought he glimpsed a flicker of amusement in her eyes.

  “It didn’t work earlier. I doubt it’ll work now,” he said dryly, then sucked in a breath at the sight of her taut nipples pressing against the fabric of her short clingy nightgown.

  “It didn’t work for me either.”

  He lifted his gaze. Their eyes locked and held. The air between them became taut with electricity. Jake held his breath as she moved forward and he didn’t let it out until she halted in front of him. Every single nerve ending in his body sizzled as he recognized the raw hunger in her eyes.

  “We’re playing with fire.” He barely recognized his rough voice.

  “I know.” She licked her lips; it took every bit of his willpower not to drag her against his body and kiss her with all the pent-up desire he’d been suppressing for months.

  “We may regret it in the morning,” he said, as she took a step closer. Her breasts grazed his chest and every feeling he had went straight to his dick.

  “Or we might not,” Melissa said softly, and lifted her mouth to his. The touch of her lips against his was his undoing. With a low groan, he kissed her. And the moment her mouth parted for him and she melted against him, he felt the invisible threads already binding him to her tighten.

  Chapter Nine

  Any vestiges of common sense Melissa had in reserve quickly evaporated as Jake’s demanding kiss ignited a bone-melting inferno deep in her core. This heat between them was why she couldn’t sleep—why when he’d left the bed and gone outside to the balcony, she followed him. God help her, but at this moment she wanted him more than she wanted to keep things platonic between them.

  Platonic? Yeah, right. Jake’s urgent kiss was so potent she opened her mouth, eager for the taste and the feel of his tongue stroking hers. Her mind clouded and her perception of time grew fuzzy as he slid his hands around her waist and pulled her against him, molding their bodies together so tightly all she could feel were the muscles of his thighs against hers and his rock-hard erection straining into her abdomen. A sweet ache blossomed deep in her belly as their kiss deepened. She’d never been kissed like this—so thoroughly and possessively. It was as if Jake was branding her with his lips and tongue.

  Seconds later, he pulled back. Dazed from his passionate kiss, Melissa could barely catch her breath. The unadulterated lust burning in Jake’s eyes had sucked the air right out of her lungs.

  “Turn around,” he said in a low voice, then slipped his hands from her waist and lifted them to her shoulders. Before she could fathom his intentions, he gently turned her around so her back was to him and she was facing the mirror attached to the dresser.

  Their reflection in the mirror fascinated her; she couldn’t look away. She’d never considered herself particularly sexy before, but now, with her lips moist and swollen from Jake’s devastating kiss, and her nipples straining against the confines of her nightgown she had to wonder if maybe she’d underestimated herself.

  There was still time to stop what their scorching kiss had started, but that kiss had whetted her appetite and she wanted more. Even if for only one night, she wanted to know if making love with Jake would be as hot as it was in her fantasies.

  Her pulse spiked as he hooked his fingers under the thin stra
ps of her nightgown and deliberately slid them from her shoulders. The echoes of her thundering heart seemed to fill the room as he inched the straps over her arms with maddening slowness until her breasts were revealed. She heard his swift intake of breath. As if in response to his bold stare, a delicious lick of heat speared through her.

  “You’re beautiful.” He gave her nightgown a final tug and it fell to the floor to pool around her ankles. Then he moved closer and the hard ridge of his erection pressed into the crevice of her ass as he slipped his arms around her and cupped her breasts. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to touch you like this?” he asked, as he gently kneaded her breasts and teased each nipple with casual brushes of his thumbs.

  “How long?” she whispered, and leaned back until she felt the warm, supple skin of his chest against her back. She tilted her head and closed her eyes as he pressed his lips to the side of her neck. Delicious anticipation whipped through her veins as he teased her nipples into tight, small points with his fingers and left a trail of kisses over her collarbone.

  “It seems like forever,” he murmured against her skin. “Open your eyes.” Despite the sensuous trance she’d been lulled into she managed to comply. “Look in the mirror.”

  Obeying his husky command, she focused on the mirror and her excitement ratcheted up several degrees. It was as if she were looking at an erotic photograph. Jake’s hands cupping her breasts and lazily brushing his thumbs over her nipples fanned the flames inside her. But what was even more arousing was the effect Jake had on her. The wanton look on her face and the passion glittering in her eyes was there because of him. She’d never felt like this. Until this moment, she hadn’t a clue how all-consuming sexual hunger could be.

  As their eyes met in the mirror, Jake lowered a hand from her breast and grazed his fingertips lightly over her stomach. Unable to resist, Melissa watched his fingers feather over her skin and move lower. Desire, hot and piercing, tore through her as he delved a finger into her moist, swollen folds.