by Bella Andre
Before she could blink or breathe or say anything more, his hands were in her hair and he was kissing her. Devouring her. Utterly.
It was so much more than her dreams. So much better even than her memories of Saturday night. She simply melted against him. She wanted to touch him, but her hands were trapped between them. There was something so elemental about a man holding you still for his kiss, just his mouth taking you as though he could never get enough.
Finally, he pulled back, his eyes closed, a deep satisfying breath filling his lungs. “There. That’s better.” Then he gave her one of his gorgeous grins. “I couldn’t start the day any other way.”
“You’re crazy.” Her mind dazed, she could barely muster more than a whisper.
His desire was addictive. If she wasn’t careful, she could want it, start to need it, until she couldn’t live without it. He played havoc with the meaning of casual.
“Crazy for you,” he said. “Is Jeremy at school?”
Guessing there was only one reason he would ask that, she knew she should force herself to stick to her need-a-week-off plan. But with his hands on her and her mouth still tingling from his kiss, it was frankly impossible to corral her own desire. She had no willpower whatsoever.
Willpower. She almost laughed at the realization that Will definitely had all the power right then.
As soon as she nodded, he reached down to the belt of her robe. “I want to make you come. I want to hear you come. I want to feel you come. I want to watch you come.”
Just as he hadn’t asked permission to walk inside, or to kiss her, or to undress her, he didn’t ask permission to pick her up, hoisting her high on his body. Harper wrapped her legs around him. His mouth unerringly found her breast, and the pleasure was so intensely connected to all her other intimate places that she couldn’t help leaning back in his arms and locking her ankles. She gripped him hard in the circle of her legs to intensify the sensations zipping through her body.
“You’re irresistible when you’re all heated up.” His voice was a low purr vibrating right into her. “Hell, you’re always irresistible.” He carried her through to the living room, set her down on the couch, then pushed the coffee table back with his foot.
Her robe fell open around her, and Will looked incredibly pleased about it. “I’ve always been known for my timing, but it’s never been better than right now, coming here and finding you all naked and pretty for me.”
She loved the way he said hot, sexy things all the time. “I just got out of the shower.”
He removed his jacket and tossed it on the other end of the couch. “Then my timing wasn’t so impeccable after all, was it? A few minutes earlier, and I could have stepped under the water with you.”
The idea of him taking her with his pristine shirt and tie on was exciting. So exciting that it was almost impossible to remind herself—and him—that there needed to be boundaries to what they were doing. Whatever the heck it was.
“You shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
He came down on one knee between her legs. “Give me a good reason why not.”
The problem was that when he touched her, Harper couldn’t think of any reasons at all. Nothing more than a simple, “Because.”
“That’s not a reason,” he said with a smile. One full of anticipation. As much as she was feeling herself. “It’s just a word.”
He moved his fingers over her, and Harper felt her temperature rising, a flush of heat coloring her skin. “Someone might see.”
Will glanced to the window, then back to her with a quirk of his mouth that said it all. Because of course her mother’s lace curtains would hide them from prying eyes.
“Try harder,” he said. But he was the one trying harder, finding just the right rhythm with his hands, his wonderfully talented fingers, to make her toes curl.
“Because it’s morning. And it’s not the weekend. And I have to get to work. I’ve got appointments. So do you.” There. All good reasons. But his touch was magic.
“Then you’d better come quickly.”
Only, she didn’t want to come quickly. She wanted to savor his touch. She tugged him down by his tie and was surprised to find a challenge on her own lips. “Make me.”
He laughed, a heady masculine sound filled with desire and delight, just before his lips met hers. It wasn’t like the fast, wild kisses on Saturday night. This was slow and delicious. He licked her lips, nibbled on the lower one. He kissed her lightly, turning one way, then angling the other. She laced her fingers through his thick hair and held him closer, opened her mouth for him. All the while, he did amazing things with his hands. She gasped as his tongue took hers, a particularly sweet shaft of pleasure rolling through her. She deepened the kiss, raising her head off the cushions. He was all minty toothpaste and hot male.
Then she couldn’t concentrate anymore. There was just his hand and the sweet, hot build of tension as he kissed and caressed her. She squeezed her eyes shut and her hips rolled to his movements.
“That’s it, baby. Come for me. Fast and hot, just the way we both love it.”
She panted, soft moans rising in her throat, knowing she was going to do just what he wanted as a hot spike of pleasure shot down to her center and exploded. She cried out—maybe it was his name, she couldn’t be sure. Her body bowed, and she clutched his shoulders, then wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him tight as the waves of pleasure swept through her.
And after, she was clinging and knew she ought to let go, but as she floated down from that blissful place, she felt so good in his arms. So complete.
There was no way she could bear to let him go.
“Definitely the perfect way to start the day,” he said into her hair.
Despite the hint of arrogance in his tone, she couldn’t deny that she’d never had a more perfect wakeup call.
He gave her one more kiss, then drew back. “I hate to leave you, but you’re right that both of us have meetings to go to.”
Her eyes snapped open. “But you haven’t—”
He cut her off with another kiss, then pulled back slowly. “The next time I take you for a ride in my fast car, I will. And so will you. Again and again and again.”
Grabbing his suit jacket off the couch, he shrugged into it. After straightening his tie, he held out his hand. Harper took it and let him pull her to her feet. Will tugged the robe over her breasts, his large hands gliding possessively across her flesh before he tied the belt.
He was always fully clothed while she was exposed. It was yet another way he used his power. Yet another thing she liked despite herself—though she still desperately wanted him to be naked, too.
He led her to the door, opened it, then demanded in a low voice, “One more kiss before I go.”
She wanted so badly to kiss him again. She wanted him as crazy and out of control as she was. Wanted him to want her so badly that he couldn’t walk away. Her body was still humming with the things he’d done to her on the couch. He wasn’t like any man she’d ever known. She’d talked herself into having burning-hot sex with a sizzling-hot guy. And she’d gotten way more than she’d asked for. Maybe she’d even gotten more than she could handle. Because now she didn’t think she could wait until the weekend.
He’d stepped on her accelerator and she was ready to race. Only, she’d promised herself that she’d stay in control, that she’d let herself have fun, but wouldn’t make the mistake of reading too much into any of this. Suddenly, however, she wasn’t feeling casual at all. She was starting to want a whole lot more. Whereas he seemed perfectly happy to drop by, make her come, then head out for his meetings. Check, check, check—all part of a billionaire’s day. As if he were used to doing things like this all the time, making women crazy for him, getting them to fall in a hot, senseless rush, while he kept everything seamlessly compartmentalized.
After all, who had the still perfectly pressed suit and tie?
And who had the sex-hair and bare
ly closed robe?
Somehow, some way, she needed to grab the control she’d just lost. Which meant that instead of kissing him again the way he’d just commanded, there was only one way to reassert the control she’d given him from the moment he’d stepped inside without an invitation.
Harper smiled, held onto the doorknob, and said, “Have a great day, Will,” then closed the door with a soft, but final, click.
She barely breathed as she waited for the sound of his footsteps that would let her know he was heading back down her front path toward his car. None sounded for several long moments—moments where she knew he must be trying to decide whether to let her win this round or not.
Finally, he walked away, and her held breath left her in a hard whoosh as she heard him start up his engine and drive away. She tried to return to her day as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, tried telling herself that she was just as much in control of her life, and her emotions, as ever.
But all the while, she couldn’t help but wonder if the feel of his kisses still lingering on her skin revealed the true story: that where Will was concerned, she wasn’t in control of anything at all.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“No, Miss Newman,” Harper’s client said to her over the phone the following afternoon, “there’s no way I can get there earlier. My son is sick, so I couldn’t take him to day care. But my husband will be home by five, and it will only take me fifteen minutes to get to your office.”
Harper breathed deeply, then calmly replied, “That’s fine. These things happen, and I hope your son feels better soon.” Hadn’t she run into the same problem when Jeremy wasn’t well? Illness was the bane of the working parent’s existence.
But the meeting delay left her in a real bind. She was supposed to pick up Jeremy from his after-school job at the grocery store at five. Finding someone to take over the task with two hours’ notice late on a Thursday afternoon would be difficult. There was no way she could make it to the store, then back to the office that quickly in rush-hour traffic. And she couldn’t postpone the meeting, either. Not when she had a position open that Carol’s resume indicated she’d be perfect for, and the first-round interviews shut down tomorrow.
She called Trish, who didn’t answer, probably because she was in class. After leaving a message, Harper mentally tapped her fingers waiting for a return call, but when it didn’t come after twenty minutes, she knew she had to find an alternative.
For some crazy reason, the first person she thought of was Will.
Actually, it wasn’t all that crazy, given that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since Wednesday morning. To be honest...she hadn’t actually been able to stop thinking about him since the day he’d raced into their lives a month ago.
He’d told her to call if she needed anything. Had he meant it?
She picked up the receiver on her land line, holding it to her chest a moment, the dial tone vibrating against her as she thought about Will’s promise on Wednesday morning—that he was saving up his fully unleashed passion for her and the next fast ride they took together. She didn’t care that some might say it lacked the romance of moonlight and rose petals on a big, soft bed. Sex in a car, the almost clandestine nature of it, actually excited her more. As had the quickie in her living room, which had taken her to a level of heat she’d never experienced before.
Even after kicking him out to prove the point that he didn’t hold all the power, she’d still ended up working in a dreamy daze all day. He’d made their quickie on her couch all about her. What kind of man put his own pleasure second? Could it possibly be the kind of man who would help her out of a tight bind that had nothing whatsoever to do with sex?
She punched in his cell number, and he answered on the second ring. “Harper, I was just thinking about you.”
All he had to do was say her name in that sexy drawl and she melted like an ice cube in the summertime. It suddenly occurred to her that he might have picked up the call assuming she had something sexy to say to him. But since he knew how important her brother was to her, she hoped he wouldn’t be too surprised when she said, “I have a huge favor to ask. I’m supposed to pick Jeremy up by five at the grocery store where he works, but I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss.”
“I’ll get him.”
Just that quickly, her heart swelled in her chest, the same way it had last Saturday when he’d been so kind to Jeremy while working on the Maserati. His sweetness had prompted her instant decision to take a risk by spending a few hot nights with him. It meant a great deal to her that Will didn’t ask questions, didn’t make excuses. He simply offered to help.
At the same time, however, she knew running a billion-dollar corporation couldn’t be at all easy. And he’d already given her and Jeremy so much of his limited free time. “I thought you might have a driver? Or that maybe Mrs. Taylor could do it? I’m sure you’re probably still up in the city and I know how busy you are.”
“I’m happy to do it, Harper.”
She’d called him to ask for help, and now that he was giving it so freely—and she needed it so badly—she stopped trying to talk him out of it. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.” He had no idea how much. Not since her parents died had she been able to pick up the phone and call someone who would bail her out so quickly and easily. Not until Will.
He was too good, a dream come true. She didn’t have anything to offer in return. Except for sex. It shouldn’t make her smile to think of paying off her debts in his bed, but lately, everything about Will made her smile. “If you can drop him off at the house, I should be home by six-thirty. He’ll be fine until then.”
“No, I’ll stay until you get home. I know you don’t like him to be alone. Don’t worry about a thing tonight. I’ve got it covered.”
And maybe, she found herself hoping, even though she’d already had far more than a sensible quota of him for the week, he was also staying so that he could spend time with her, too. “Thank you,” she said again. “You’re sweet.”
He gave a burst of incredulous laughter. “No one has ever called me sweet in my entire life.”
“But you are.”
“Believe me,” he said in a voice that was suddenly serious, “I’m not sweet. But I promise I’ll always do whatever I can for you and Jeremy.”
Will made a lot of promises. And though Harper was still wary of letting Jeremy—or herself—get hurt, Will hadn’t broken a single one yet.
* * *
The grocery store was only a ten-minute walk from Harper’s house. Will figured Jeremy could probably have handled it just fine, but he knew Harper would have worried the whole time. It wasn’t Will’s business to say anything about how she handled her brother. Besides, hearing her voice over the phone had been the best thing that had happened to him all day, and even if he’d just blown off several meetings, he wanted to see her more than he wanted to sit in on a conference call. Not to mention the fact that he’d been able to hear her desperation when she’d asked him for the favor...along with a note in her voice that told him she’d expected him to say no.
Will loved surprising Harper. In fact, his plan was to keep surprising her over and over again, in the best possible ways.
Seeing Harper once a week wasn’t nearly enough. And he wasn’t just thinking about the hot sex they’d had in his garage after their date. He missed her laughter, her innate spark. He grinned every time he thought about the way she’d kicked him out of her house Wednesday morning, loving the way she could be so soft and pliable one moment, then strong and determined the next.
Both Harper and Jeremy added something to his life, something he couldn’t define, but that he now realized had been missing for quite a while. It had been in that strange weariness he’d felt in the months before meeting them, a sense that all the wealth and all the changes he’d made in his life were no longer enough.
The traffic was bad, but fortunately Will arrived at the grocery store before Jeremy’s shift was over. The pl
ace was a madhouse, with working moms rushing in and out, men with nothing but frozen dinners in their carts, and teenagers holding six-packs of soda. Though all the checkstands were open, the lines still snaked down the aisles.
He spotted Harper’s brother three checkstands away, loading a vast expanse of groceries into reusable shopping bags. The mother had a child in the cart and two more were milling around Jeremy’s legs. His tongue between his lips in concentration, Jeremy was trying to stack food carefully in the bags, but the kids kept screaming and jumping, bumping into him and knocking him off his rhythm. The mother shook her head, glaring at Jeremy with her mouth pursed.
Will headed down to them, his immediate thought being to intercede, or even help pack the groceries. Until he thought about the humiliation factor. Will didn’t want Jeremy to think he couldn’t handle the job. Here he’d just been thinking that Harper didn’t always give Jeremy enough credit, like being able to walk home by himself, but rushing to her brother’s rescue now would be exactly the same thing.
By that point, the checker, a stout woman with frizzy red hair, was furiously loading goods into plastic bags as well, tossing them at Jeremy and pointing to the cart. “Come on, come on,” she practically yelled at him.
There was too much confusion, too many people waiting. And the customer was doing absolutely nothing to control her kids. A cantaloupe rolled down, and Jeremy stuffed it into the last bag.
“Do you need help out to your car, ma’am?” he asked politely.
“No, I do not.” The woman snapped her fingers, and the two kids ran like furies out the door while the one in the cart screeched at an earsplitting volume.
Not wanting to blow Jeremy’s concentration, Will was about to back off and let him finish his shift. Until he heard the checker say, “You put that cantaloupe on top of her eggs. Can’t you do anything right?”
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t mean to mess up.”
“I don’t know why they hire people like you. You’re so slow. You and your pea-sized brain. Idiot.”