by Lucia Jordan
Drawing in a deep sigh, she said firmly, “Look… I appreciate your concern and everything…but whatever you’re asking, I can’t. I just can’t. I’m sorry.”
She sped away before he could stop her, into the crowd. Away from the danger that was Max Nolan…and yet knowing that every step she took from him caused her to ache with regret.
Chapter Three
The next week her boss, the editor of their online magazine, summoned her in. Something about running a very important interview with the billionaire Australian cowboy who never ever gave interviews but was willing to do one with them.
“Wait – what?” Eva asked in shock. She was only beginning to actually pay attention. Her heart was tripping as Nelly, her editor, stared at her over the rims of her stylish half-moon glasses.
“Eva, I’m talking about Max Nolan. He’s agreed to let us interview him. And guess what, he wants you to do the piece.”
“Me?” Eva coughed, wondering why she was even surprised. This looked just like something he would do – wouldn’t it?
“Yes, you. He asked for you in person. Seems like he liked the one you did weeks ago on that young hopeful who’s interested in becoming mayor – or something. Look, whatever. We’ve got our first big break and you will not blow it, do you understand?”
“But…if someone else could just…”
“What part of “he asked for you by name” don’t you understand?” her waspish editor said over those intimidating glasses. “When you came on here as an intern, you gave the impression you wanted to do great journalism. Well, this is your big chance. Our big chance. I’m not really sure why the Max Nolan would pick us, but I’m over the moon about it. What a scoop, Eva. Our online standing will hit the roof.”
“Yeah. Sure,” Eva said, heart sinking to her peep-toe shoes. Just what was Max up to now? Did she even need to wonder?
He had some kind of manor home he stayed when he was in the country from Australia. Nelly gave her the details plus the number of his PA, who Eva had to call to make sure about the time and date of the interview.
“Mr. Nolan has scheduled to meet with you tomorrow. He’s not doing pictures, so you wouldn’t need to bring a camera or a cameraman. We’ll have to use some from the ones we have on file. But you still need to ring his PA to make sure exactly,” Nelly told her authoritatively.
Eva left her boss’s office with a heart that alternatively felt like lead and then pumped like she was running the half-marathon. In her own cubicle down the corridor, she reached for the phone and drew a deep breath before calling the required number.
“Ah, Miss Fowler,” a strange, middle-aged female voice said on the other end, “Yes, the interview is still set for tomorrow. However Mr. Nolan has only been able to fix the time around evening. He was hoping you would join him for dinner at his home. I’m sure the interview can easily be handled over a nice tasty meal?” Her voice was courteous, even friendly.
Eva thought of Nelly’s splenetic face, and sighed inwardly. How could Eva say no? “It certainly can. Please tell Mr. Nolan I’ll make it.”
*
Eva arrived at his beautiful, stately home, reining in her inner annoyance at his tactics. Looked like the one week since the party had only made him more intent to have his way.
She walked up the stone steps to the impressive front door, and knocked. To her surprise, he opened.
“Eva. Welcome,” he said simply, and she warned herself to not be disarmed by his easy, pleased charm. “I’m glad you could make it,” he added as she walked in, handing him her coat.
“At the threat of losing my job, I had no choice,” she said wryly, standing in the palatial hallway and trying not to stare at him in his immaculate white dress shirt and dark, well-fitting pants. She’d said no to this guy?
Common sense prevailed over hormones, and she walked primly next to him as he led her through his home.
“We will be dining alone,” he said, “Everything’s prepared and just requires serving, which I will do myself.” He smiled at the somewhat stony look on her face. “I just wanted us to have some together time, Eva. And this was the best way I could come up with at short notice. Forgive me?”
She huffed slightly. “Just so you know, I’m here for the interview. Nothing more. We dine, we talk, then I leave.”
“If that’s the way you really want it to go,” he said, still with the tilted smile on his face. She let out an angry little sigh, and then told herself that all she had to do was try to get through the next two hours, that was all.
They settled in to dine. He was the perfect host, setting out the courses. The food was delicious, and they were also able to conduct the interview while they ate. She had her tape recorder on, and focused on the questions she’d worked out with her boss, stuff their kind of readers would want to find out about the Australian whose holdings spanned from his home country down to theirs. He was the perfect success story, taking up the struggling family business and turning it into a gold mine before age thirty. He was a role model too for the substantial financial aid he provided both in the third world countries as well as closer to home.
“Aren’t you going to ask me something more personal?” he queried with a quirked brow as he refilled her glass with some marvelous wine. She was beginning to think she’d had enough already, and vowed to make this her last glass. Wouldn’t do to let him get her tipsy since they were in his home – alone.
“You mean, about your private life?” she murmured. “Sorry Max but I don’t think the readers we cater to really want to hear about the latest bimbo you kicked out of your bed.”
“Ouch,” he said, grinning. “So what about you, what do you want to know about me? I’m thinking the way you scurried off that night a week ago was because you felt you didn’t really know me, couldn’t trust me.”
His gaze smoldered, suddenly turning the atmosphere to something crackling, electrifying. Uh oh, Eva thought, gulping down the wine and then setting down the glass with somewhat shaky fingers. Time to run, she thought, switching off the recorder and jamming it in her bag.
“I think I’ve got all the material I need for the piece,” she said hurriedly, reaching for her bag. “And the dinner was lovely, but…”
His hand slipped over hers on the table, imprisoning her in its heat and strength. Her eyes flew up to meet his. “So skittish,” he rumbled, eyes hooded as they ran over her face, then rested on her lips. “What is it about me that frightens you so? Is it because you know how I can make you feel? The things I can make you do?”
“Yes – things like making a fool of myself,” she said with finality, then sighed. “You planned this elaborate scheme all for nothing, Max. No matter the question, the answer is still no.”
“Is it?” he asked softly, taking her by the wrist, flipping it over. She looked down to where his thumb stroked over her upraised pulse. His touch…was warm to the point of scalding. Her gaze flashed up to hold his as he lifted her hand to his lips, which he pressed to just below the pad of her thumb.
“Still saying no?” was his thickly voiced query, as those firm, scorching lips of his trailed wickedly smoky kisses up her arm, inch by inch.
“No. I mean yes, I’m still not..,” she said in confusion, wishing she could snatch her arm away. Max…he had the tenderest, most erotically charged lips, packed with enough sex-punch to make a girl’s head reel. And the rake knew it.
“I don’t even know what it is about you,” he murmured, his mouth still doing butterfly-wing kisses over her tingling skin. “But anytime you’re near me, I’m in a different mode. I’m hot, I’m cold, I don’t know if I’m coming or going…”
His lips parted, laved her flesh with the heat of his tongue, before he sucked on her skin with keen lustfulness. A moan soundless spilled from Eva’s lips as a tremendous heat coursed through to her nerve endings.
“Max…”
“Feel here,” he broke into her warning voice, taking her hand to place against the left side
of his chest. She heard it, no felt it through her palm, through his shirt. The thundering beat beneath his muscled flesh. “That’s what you do to me. Every time. I just have to look at you and I want you. I’ve had many women – countless women, I won’t lie. But you, Eva, you have the power to keep me asking for more.”
“No I don’t,” she let out before she could stop herself. Her tone was desperate, breathless. “Max, I’m nothing like that. You may look at me and think that I’m…something I’m not. I can’t give you want you want. I wouldn’t know how.” She sighed deeply. “I don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Max’s eyes narrowed with realization. “What makes you so sure I will be?”
“Because I just know. I mean I’ve tried. And I wasn’t very good at it.” She bit fiercely on her bottom lip. Okay, there. Now he knew.
The flare of fury on his face made her breath catch. “Is that what he told you?”
“Let’s leave Leon out of this…”
“Yes, let’s,” Max growled, rising fluidly to his feet and tugging her up with him to thud against his chest. “Let’s wipe him off the slate and start this at the beginning. You. Woman. Me. Man. We will share our deepest, hottest passion. And it will be perfect.”
Eva wanted to protest – warn him that it was no use. But the next second, he was seizing her lips in a kiss.
Chapter Four
His lips merged with hers and Eva waited, waited to feel nothing. To go cold beneath the searing touch of mouth and tongue against hers.
But it didn’t happen. What happened was enough to have her clinging to his shirt front in dazed delight. His heat and sweetness poured into her, brought her to life in seconds. He was demanding, purposeful in the way he claimed her lips for his own.
Gasping open-mouthed beneath the fierceness of his kiss, she let him slide his tongue moistly into her waiting cavern. She held on to him for support as her knees all but buckled beneath her. He gripped her waist, kept her tight in his possessive embrace. His breath rasped against her lips, teasing her nostrils with the faint aroma of the alcohol they’d drunk. Her head spun at the unfamiliarity of the sensations to which she was now bowing to. She felt lost.
Slowly, reluctantly, he drew back from her lips, even as her body involuntarily leaned into him. His forehead rested against hers as they both seemed to try to catch their breaths.
“You were saying?” he asked with a soft, throaty chuckle as he looked into her glassed-over eyes.
Whew, she thought, sure she was somehow dreaming. What was that? Was a kiss supposed to do that? Make her tingle deep in her belly; bring the strangest heat swirling between her thighs? Was it even possible?
“That’s the way it should be,” he told her, his hands wrapping around her throat gently. “The way it will be, between us.”
“Oh Max,” she let out on a soft cry of confusion. She felt dazzled, overwhelmed. She wanted to, but…
“There’s only one way to prove it to you,” he said, calmly taking her hand as he began to lead her from the room. “And that’s to show you.”
*
Eva would have liked to have more of a say in this, but protestation seemed futile. Max was a man on a mission.
He tugged her after him, leading her up the wide staircase, right along the corridor before she had the presence of mind to dig in her heels.
“Max! Wait, I…”
In response, he turned quickly, making her exhale sharply as he shoved her against the wall. His body immediately imprisoned her in place, and she couldn’t help but notice how virile he seemed. Powerful, forceful, manly. She stared up at him wide-eyed as he linked both her wrists in one fist and drew them high above her head.
The tips of her breasts felt like they were thrumming, pressed up to his chest as they were. Every hard, strong inch of him drove into her, making her aware of the jutting thickness of his arousal. She gasped out loud.
“We don’t have to make it to the bed you know. It could be right here, right now,” he gruffed, his free hand tipping her chin so he could ghost kisses around her parted lips. Slowly, his fingers travelled down her throat to cup one thrust-out breast. He squeezed hard, his fingers dipping into the fabric coating her flesh. Somehow, his thumb found her nipple beneath the layers, and he strummed it to life, causing it to grow hard and ready.
He tweaked the stiff nub between his thumb and forefinger, and Eva couldn’t hold back the whimper of surprised pleasure. She’d felt that, she’d really felt that. Somewhere deep in her core, she felt a stream begin to bubble and fill up to overflowing.
“You don’t want me stop, Eva,” he told her firmly, his voice so thick it was unrecognizable. She could even hear the harsh hissing of his breath as he strove for control. “Your body certainly doesn’t want me to stop. It wants me to touch you here…and here.” He caressed her breasts with a would-be lover’s ardor. He molded the giving curves and drew in a breath as she spilled willingly in his palm.
When he released her, it was to edge lower, down to lift away the hem of her dress. Eva strained against him, her hands twitching beneath his strong grip above her head. But she couldn’t get away, couldn’t stop him from dipping his fingers in between her legs, seeking past the line of her panties to her quivering slit beneath.
Holy cow, she thought in a daze, feeling her pussy mound swell and throb beneath his fingers. First, he traced his fingertips along her puffy lips, making her buck involuntarily into his hand. Then he dipped in with two fingers, sliding in demandingly and then retreating. In, then out. And in again.
Eva’s head was spinning and it was like all this was happening to a separate person’s body. Because she couldn’t believe those quivers, those bolts of pleasure, were happening to her. That those somewhat erotically obscene slosh, slosh sounds were coming from her body.
“What’s…is that me?” she asked on a gasp, as his fingers sunk into her walls again and again, ripping out her ecstasy to the surface.
“All you,” Max growled, his fingers speeding faster till the sounds became unmistakable, undeniable. Eva threw her head back against the wall and groaned and groaned. She’d never, ever felt so moist in her life before. Certainly not from a few kisses and a twist of her nipple. What was this man doing to her?
She didn’t know, but one thing was for sure: this was how it should be. This was what a lover’s touch should bring one to; right up to the edge of desire.
And Eva could no longer deny that she desired this – desired Max. In every way.
She stared deeply into his eyes, now so dark they were almost black as they blazed right before her. Shuddering, she leaned into him, drinking in the sensation of his wonderful touch, pleasuring her in ways she’d never dreamed.
“I want you,” she said softly but clearly, gazing up into his eyes. “Take me, Max. Take me now.”
*
He’d groaned deep in his throat when she’d said those words, and then he’d swung her into his arms.
Nudging the bedroom door open with his broad shoulder, he carried her to the silk-laid bed which lay wide and inviting.
There, on the sheets, he kissed her. And she kissed him back like she’d never kissed anyone before.
“I knew it. I knew it from your eyes that first time…that you would have such passion. Baby, it’s oozing from your pores,” Max told her huskily as he tore out of his shirt. “And tonight, you’re all mine.”
Her head was swimming too much to help her form words, and so she only held out her arms to him, drew him down to her. He drew down the neckline of her dress, tugged away the lacy cup of her bra, and seized her breast in his mouth. Whole flesh along with the nipple; he was all but swallowing her in one go. He suckled and licked, pulled and bit. She was virtually weeping with pleasure by the time he switched to the other breast.
That night, he showed her many things. The way a woman could bring a man almost to breaking point with her mouth on his nipples, and then on his cock. She wrapped her lips around him and he rumb
led deep in his throat in encouragement, grasping her head in his hands and guiding her back and forth on his shaft.
Then he showed her how it was to give in totally to the magic of a man’s tongue tasting all of a woman’s secrets, so that she could open like a flower to him. Max spread her legs wide and dove into her sap-filled slit with that hot tongue. It danced upon the hooded flesh of her pussy and then it slithered inside, drawing from the well of her desire.
Eva thrashed beneath him, arching her back and crying out time and again. Oh God oh God, I think I’m about to faint, she thought, as a powerful wave suddenly swept over her. She clutched tightly to the sheets beneath her and half-coiled off the bed, staring down at Max in wonder.
Max looked up from where his lips and fingers were busy wreaking havoc within her quivering walls. “That’s it, baby. It’s coming. Let it happen; let me see you let go for me. Now.”
Not tearing her eyes from his burning gaze, Eva erupted, her whole frame thrashing over and over till she thought the tremors would never end. He watched her with delighted lust, and then soothed her with kisses which he trailed up from her quivering thighs to her belly and then past her breasts to her lips.
“That was so beautiful, Eva,” he said, pressing hard, possessive kisses to her gasping mouth. “I love that you came for me. He never made you do that, did he? Leon.”
Eva pushed the clouds hazing over her mind to shake her head firmly at his gruff question. “Never. Ever. Oh, Max, that was…oh,” she sighed, arching against him.
Her hands were hungry, eager to touch his heated body. She skimmed her fingers across his broad chest, his rippling shoulders, and then his back. Involuntarily, her lower body bucked up into him seeking something more.
“I think I’m ready,” she breathed, looking up at him with eyes molten with feminine enchantment. “I can’t wait, Max. Please fuck me.”