Recipe for Temptation

by Maureen Smith

  Exhaling a shaky breath, Reese dragged a hand through her hair. “You should take me home now.”

  “No. Not yet.” Michael was surprised—and slightly appalled—by the note of desperation he heard in his voice. What the hell was wrong with him? Since when did he beg a woman to stay after sex?

  Reese looked at him, those dark cat eyes roving across his face in silent appraisal.

  She seemed to be taking his measure, weighing an important decision in her mind.

  He stared back at her, waiting.

  After a prolonged moment she glanced away and shook her head at the ceiling. “I owe you an apology.”

  Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. He stared at her in surprise. “What do you have to apologize for?” he asked carefully.

  She tugged her plump lower lip through her teeth. “I haven’t been myself lately,”

  she confessed.

  “Who have you been?”

  “A woman who doesn’t know what she wants. A confused, indecisive woman.” She grimaced. “The kind of woman I’ve always disliked and strived not to be.”

  Intrigued by the self-deprecating words, Michael shifted onto his side to face her, propping his head in his hand. “Why don’t you know what you want?” he asked quietly.

  She sighed heavily. “It’s complicated.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “Believe me, I wish that were true.” She heaved another resigned breath. “Anyway, the reason I owe you an apology is that I’ve been giving you mixed signals since the night we met. I say one thing and do the complete opposite. Spending the night with you was the behemoth of all mixed signals.”

  “You don’t hear me complaining,” Michael drawled.

  “Of course not,” she muttered, throwing him a sardonic look. “You’ve been a willing accomplice.”

  He arched a brow. “Accomplice? Have we committed a crime here?”

  “I almost wish we had,” she groaned, covering her face with her hands.

  Michael pretended to take umbrage. “I think you’re the first woman who’s ever told me that committing a crime would be preferable to making love with me. There goes my ego.”

  A muffled laugh escaped her. “Oh, hush. You know what I meant.”

  He smiled lazily.

  Uncovering her face, she shot him a shy glance under her lashes. “Don’t get me wrong, Michael. Last night was amazing—”

  “That doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

  She blushed deeply, averting her gaze. “You’re right. Amazing doesn’t do justice to what we shared last night. It was…unforgettable. But that doesn’t change the fact that it was a mistake.”

  His breath hissed through his teeth. “Here we go again. The damn boyfriend.”

  “Yes!” she burst out, her dark eyes snapping angrily. “I have a boyfriend, a fact that you seem unwilling or incapable of respecting.”

  Michael flinched. Her words had struck a raw nerve, forcing him to acknowledge how easily he’d abandoned his long-held convictions. Maybe he and Grant Rutherford were more alike than he’d thought. Like his stepfather, Michael had pursued and seduced Reese, flagrantly disregarding the other man in her life. Although the obvious difference here was that Reese wasn’t married with children, his behavior was still deplorable by his own standards.

  Agitated, he scrubbed his hands over his face and muttered a vicious oath under his breath.

  Reese moved to slide out of the bed. “I really should—”

  Michael’s arm shot out, forestalling her retreat with a hand on her thigh. Beneath the covers, she quivered at his touch.

  “Wait,” he growled, sitting up quickly. “You don’t have to leave. Let’s talk about this, damn it. How serious is this thing between you and that dude?”

  Jerking her leg out of his grasp, she snapped, “I’m not going to discuss my boyfriend with you.”

  That was probably for the best, Michael mused grimly. The thought of her being with another man—giving herself to him with the same passion and abandon with which she’d surrendered to Michael—filled him with a possessive fury that was unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

  Yeah, he definitely didn’t need to know the specific details of her relationship with what’s-his-face. Still, he couldn’t resist demanding, “Are you guys on the outs or what? I mean, he sent you two dozen roses and asked you to come back to him.”

  “So you did read the card!” Reese pounced accusingly. “I knew it. You had no right!”

  Michael scowled. “It fell on the floor. It’s not as if I went digging through the box to find it.”

  “You could have handed it to me without reading it!”

  “I could have, but I didn’t. Anyway, that’s not the point. I asked you a question. Are you and Victor having a lovers’ quarrel? Are you breaking up with him?”

  “No!” she hissed furiously.

  Disappointment knifed through Michael. He held her flashing gaze a moment longer, then eased back against his pillows and folded his arms behind his head, a deceptively relaxed pose.

  Silence lapsed between them. This time he wouldn’t be the one to break it.

  And he wasn’t.

  “I’m not a cheater.”

  Michael turned his head on the pillow to look at Reese. She’d spoken so softly he wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “What did you say?”

  “I’m not a cheater.” A wry, humorless smile turned up one side of her mouth. “I know that sounds hard to believe under the present circumstances, but I generally pride myself on being faithful.”

  She sounded so forlorn that Michael felt a twinge of sympathy—and guilt. “We can’t always control who we’re attracted to, sweetheart,” he murmured.

  Her lips twisted cynically. “That’s such a typical male thing to say. How many poor women have you fed that line?”

  He bristled. “It’s not a line. It’s the damn truth.”

  “Riiight.” Still clutching the sheet to her body, she drew her knees up to her chest, as if she needed another barrier between them. Suddenly she looked very small and vulnerable in the enormous bed.

  A surge of protective tenderness rushed through Michael. “Did someone cheat on you, Reese?”

  She sighed heavily. “I don’t need to have experienced it to know that cheating is wrong.”

  Michael frowned. “You aren’t cheating.”

  “No? Then what do you call it?”

  “Exploring your options.”

  That wrung a grim laugh out of her. “Let’s not kid ourselves, Michael. As unforgettable as last night was, we both know it was nothing more than a one-night stand.”

  “You’re wrong,” he said mildly. “By its very definition, the term ‘one-night stand’

  could never apply to us.”

  “And why is that?” she challenged.

  He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a silky murmur. “Be cause I intend to have you again. And again. And again. ”

  Her breath hitched, and he watched in satisfaction as her dark gaze went to his mouth, then roamed over his bare chest before lowering to where his erection tented the covers at his waist. Heat flared in her eyes. Above the top edge of the sheet, her breasts heaved as she struggled to regulate her erratic breathing.

  “No, Michael,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Reese.”

  Their gazes held for another long, sexually charged moment before she glanced away, expelling a shaky breath. “This is ridiculous,” she mumbled. “You’re not listening to me. I just explained to you why this was a mistake, and why it can’t happen again.”

  “And I’m telling you that it can, and it will.”

  “What’s the point?” she burst out in exasperation. “You and I both know this isn’t leading anywhere! In less than two months I’ll be back in Houston, and you’ll be back to enjoying your status as one of the country’s most eligible bachelors. Why ruin lives over what essentially amounts to a summe
r fling?”

  “This ain’t no damn summer fling,” Michael snarled, incensed by her repeated attempts to trivialize what may have been the most spectacular night of his life.

  “Oh, come on, Michael,” she scoffed. “Why are you making such a big deal out of this? I mean, you’re Michael Wolf. You can have any woman you want, whenever you want, wherever you—”

  Something snapped inside him, and he exploded, “I don’t want any woman! I want you!”

  Reese stared at him, her eyes wide with stunned disbelief.

  He glared back at her, his jaw tightly clenched as he fought for self-control. His heart was hammering against his ribs, and his entire body was vibrating with the fierce, overpowering urge to pin her to the mattress and make love to her in a way that would leave no doubt in her mind that she belonged to him.

  “Oh my.” Reese bit her lip, shaking her head slowly at him. “You really are going to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?”

  Michael’s pulse thudded. An emotion suspiciously akin to hope sprang to life in his chest. And then he saw a trace of amusement glittering in her eyes.

  “What’s so damned funny?” he snapped.

  “You. Me. Us. ” She sighed, shaking her head again. “The truth is, Michael, I’ve been halfway in love with you for the past three years. My family, friends and colleagues tease me constantly about having a major crush on you. It’s so bad that they’ve even taken to calling you my fantasy boyfriend.”

  Michael wasn’t amused. “So what are you saying? Last night was about you living out some sort of fantasy?”

  Reese gave a low, indulgent laugh. “Oh, now, don’t give me that wounded look.

  You have no reason to be offended. What we shared last night far exceeded my fantasies, and I didn’t think that was even possible. But just because you rocked my world doesn’t mean I foolishly expect you to become my boyfriend.”

  “And why the hell not?” Michael growled. “What would be so damn crazy about that?”

  She gave him a gentle, almost pitying look. “Come on, Michael. You’re not real-

  boyfriend material. You’re fantasy-boyfriend material. You’re that smokin’ hot guy every girl fantasizes about. The guy who, though you know he’s totally unattainable, you’d jump at the chance to spend one wild night of sex with. And then years down the line—long after you’d settled into a comfortable life with the safe, sweet, reliable man you ended up marrying—you’d indulge in a moment of girlish whim and tell your daughters all about that one reckless night of passion you had with your fantasy lover.” She smiled demurely.

  “I’m lucky. Not every woman gets such an opportunity.”

  Michael glowered at her, seething with anger and something darker, something infinitely more dangerous. Something that made his heart ache with fierce, primal yearning.

  Reese’s smile wavered. “Uh, Michael—?”

  He lunged at her just as a cell phone suddenly rang, intruding like the blast of an explosion in the room.

  Reese scrambled to the other side of the bed, looking as relieved as a small doe that had narrowly escaped the clutches of a savage predator.

  Scowling, Michael watched as she reached down, grabbed her phone out of her purse—when the hell had she brought that upstairs?—and answered in a breathless rush,

  “Hello?” Pause. “Yes, this is Reese St. James.”

  The sheet had become dislodged in her mad scramble to reach the phone. Michael stared, his penis twitching at the sight of her full, luscious breasts crowned with dark nipples. He remembered the delicious weight of them in his hands, remembered the way they’d swelled beneath the hungry lash of his tongue, remembered the way they’d bounced and jiggled as he drove into her.

  He reached down to stroke his erection before he caught himself.

  Reese listened into the phone for a moment. “Sure. I’ll hold.” Her eyes lifted to Michael’s. “It’s—” She broke off at the arrested look on his face. Following the direction of his gaze, she gasped and snatched the sheet back over her breasts.

  Michael felt a sharp pang of regret—and annoyance. Who the hell was calling her this early in the morning? It’d better not be her damn boyfriend!

  “Who’s that?” he demanded.

  Her eyes narrowed at his jealous, possessive tone. She pressed the mute button on her phone and said coolly, “It’s Drew’s assistant. They want me to come down to the studio today for an orientation session, and she also wanted to remind me that you and I are supposed to be shooting our promo spot tomorrow for the apprentice series.”

  “I don’t need a damn reminder.” Leaning back against the headboard, Michael gestured impatiently at the phone. “Why are you on hold?”

  “She’s double-checking some details with the production crew.” Reese clutched the sheet tighter to her chest, pinning him with a hostile glare. “I’d like to get dressed.”

  “Knock yourself out,” he muttered, waving in the general vicinity of the adjoining master bathroom.

  “My clothes are downstairs,” she reminded him.

  “So go get them,” he retorted, defiantly rebelling against every gentlemanly instinct that had been instilled in him from the time he could walk.

  He could almost hear Reese gnashing her teeth. “I’m on the phone,” she said tersely. “And if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not wander around your penthouse butt naked. Especially with all these damn windows.”

  “We’re on the fortieth floor. No one can see you.”

  Her eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “I’m asking nicely.”

  “You don’t sound very nice to me.”

  “Pretty please!” she snapped.

  Heaving an impatient breath, Michael flung back the covers and swung out of the bed. To demonstrate to Reese that they were safe from the prying eyes of voyeurs, he stalked across the master suite and stood before the wall of windows, just as bold and nude as he pleased.

  “See,” he said, turning back toward the bed. “It’s all g—”

  The rest of the words died on his lips.

  Eyes filled with raw, naked hunger stared back at him.

  His body reacted with a sharp jolt of lust that sizzled through his veins and rushed straight to his groin. His erection, which had taunted him all morning, now hardened into full-fledged arousal.

  Reese was utterly riveted.

  Driven by some perverse impulse, Michael reached down and trailed his fingers lightly along the jutting length of his shaft. Inwardly he smiled at the soft gasp that came from across the room. Without looking at Reese, he wrapped his fingers around his erection and gave himself a long, stroking caress. Up and down, slowly and provocatively. He let his eyes drift closed, as if he were so caught up in pleasuring himself that he’d completely forgotten he had an audience. A captive audience, judging by the sound of Reese’s ragged breathing.

  Not that he was entirely immune to the eroticism of being watched by her. As he pumped himself, he imagined that it was her hands sliding along his shaft, as she’d done last night. Stroking, caressing, driving him insane with lust. He became so aroused by the explicit images that a pearly bead of pre-come seeped from the tip of his penis, adding to the realism of his little “performance.”

  When he finally stole a peek at Reese, her eyes were heavy lidded and glazed with desire, her lips parted on a soundless moan. He felt a surge of wicked triumph that was tempered only by his own mounting arousal.

  Giving her a lazy smile, he left the windows and began sauntering from the room.

  “Yes, I’m still here,” he heard her croak into the phone.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he saw her reach beneath the covers to touch herself. As she closed her eyes and released a shuddering breath, he grinned with satisfaction.

  Maybe being a fantasy boyfriend wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  Chapter 14

  “Honey, I’m home!” Raina Mayne announced in a singsong voice that brought a grin to Reese’s face
on the other end of the phone.

  “Hey, you,” she greeted her sister, sinking into her favorite armchair in the living room. “How was Italy?”

  “Absolutely wonderful,” Raina said dreamily.

  Reese’s grin widened. “I want to hear all about it.”

  “Well, the conference was productive, of course. I came away with a wealth of information about the latest advances in spa therapy, which I can’t wait to incorporate at Touch of Heaven.”