Mr. Personality (15 page)

In the dim light in the back of the cab, she searched his face and found him meeting her gaze with a hunger in his eyes that left her breathless. But more than the sexual desire vibrating in the confined space between them, was the fact that Max….

Nicole swallowed hard against the tightness in her throat, her heart picking up its rhythm.
She was driving Max insane?
She knew she could annoy him, piss him off even, but never had she thought she could effect him in any real way.

“You want to have sex with me,” she said, knowing the reality of that, at least.

Max’s laugh was short and hard. “Badly. I also suffer various urges to shut you up, shake you senseless, correct your grammar and disprove your foolish perceptions of me. None of which should matter in the least. In short, you’re driving me insane.”

Trembling inside, she registered that he’d said it now three different times. Mr. I’m-Always-In-Control was admitting he felt…out-of-control…with her?

Did he know what he was admitting? Not that he just wanted her or that he was annoyed with her—he’d said something more. Max, the self-sufficient, the contained, mechanical fiction-machine who let no one ever matter to him. Somehow, she’d gotten to him.

Conscious of the cab coming to a stop at the curb, Nicole tore her gaze from his face and glanced out the window. They sat outside his apartment building.

Looking back at him, she felt the hunger still simmering in his eyes.

“Hey, buddy,” the cab driver said when they neither one got out. “This is the address.”

His eyes still locked on hers, Max reached into his pocket, extracted a money clip and gave a bill to the driver. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks.” The cab driver never turned around.

“Come in whenever you want to tomorrow,” Max stated, his hand on the door knob.

Her heart bruising itself as it beat hard against her breast bone, she impulsively put out a hand and caught his arm. As if magnetically drawn, his gaze dropped to where her hand rested pale against the dark fabric of his suit coat.

Swinging back up to meet her eyes, his black gaze held both a question and an almost startled invitation, the fierceness of it left Nicole struggling to breathe.

Yes, he wanted her…and she knew with all the certainty she could possess that he needed her as well. More than any of the young thugs in her classes…Max needed her.

Sliding her hand down his arm to grasp his, her gaze never wavered from his face. She knew what she was doing. Crazy, maybe. Probably stupid, but it seemed the only thing her heart would let her do.

Max paused, seeming to give her every chance to change her mind. When she didn’t draw back,

he opened the cab door and pulled her out of the car after him.

Silent with the racket of the city around them—the cab pulling away from the curb, someone down the street cursing and banging a trash can—they walked into the foyer of his building, hand-in-hand.

“Good evening, Mr. Tucker,” the doorman said, nodding at Nicole. He turned back to the desk to answer a ringing phone.

Moving past him to the elevators without speaking, they paused. With her hand in his, Nicole fancied she could feel his heart pounding along with hers. Once in the elevator, he made no move to draw her into his arms, but only stood looking at her, his dark gaze both guarded and velvety soft.

Despite the quiet mewing of her brain, she ignored her fading reservations. Had she ever heard Max admit to being effected by anyone, ever? Not until now, this moment with her.

The elevator hushed gently to a stop on his floor, the doors opening. Stepping out, they walked, still in silence, down the hall to his door.

Max let go of her hand long enough to find his key and unlock the door which he then pushed open. He stood looking at her, his face taut and waiting. Another decision moment for her, he seemed to telegraph. And yet there was hunger in his face and in the tense set of his mouth.

He seemed to want her to be sure of what she was doing, but having her go would leave him frustrated and aching. Knowing this was easy for Nicole. She shared the same urgent call of the flesh, the same tenuous connection of minds.

Taking his hand, she lifted it and placed a kiss in his palm. She heard his ragged breathing, felt the tension in his body. Stepping inside the apartment, she drew him in with her. Together, they crossed the hall and climbed the stairs, no words breaking the fragile agreement between them. Their footsteps muffled on the carpeted treads, they passed his writing seat on the landing, turned and climbed to his bedroom suite.

At the top of the stairs, Nicole stopped, letting him lead the way into his room. A loft with uncurtained windows across two walls, the room was huge and filled with little more than shadows. Only the ever-present lights of the city pierced the gloom. In the middle of the nearly-empty room, surrounded by what appeared to be stacks and stacks of books, was his bed on a raised platform, one step up from the rest of the room. Massive and rumpled, pillows tumbling to one side, the cushioned dais seemed to draw her forward.

Following her now, Max still said nothing.

But she saw vulnerability on his face. Wanting in its most naked, open sense. Was he aware of how momentous this decision was for her? Not for every man did she lay herself bare, but at this moment with him she felt so alive, so powerful, she was surprised not to be physically vibrating with it.

Placing her hands on his broad shoulders, she drew him to her, mouths meshing. Excitement sizzling along her nerves, Nicole pressed herself to him, her mouth open wide to his. She felt his arousal, not just his erection imprinting her, but the tension in his muscles, his body vividly hard against her. The scent of him, fresh, clean and hungry, filled her lungs.

As if she were tutoring his unloved soul, she cupped his face in her hands, her lips open to his plundering. The street light from the windows fell across them in chunks, harsh in its yellow angles, but absent of any glare.

Angling her head to gain better access, she explored the limits of his kiss, his tongue velvet against hers, his breath quick and rough as he held her to him. Overwhelmed with tenderness, Nicole wooed him, open-mouthed, open-hearted. He smelled good and felt better, his broad shoulders and powerful arms enticing her to snuggle closer. She wanted him wrapped around her, wanted the sensation of falling trustingly into his grip. As if she could soothe the wounded beast with her own yielding heart, she seduced him.

In the very fierceness of his thundering pulse and his dark, dark eyes, she felt his vulnerability. This troubled, brilliant, beautiful man needed her.

And with his arms, he held her; with his mouth he answered her every need. As if the shushing in her veins called to him, he cradled her near to his body, his head bent to her, his arms encircling her.

Feeling as powerful as one of the mythical sirens who had called sailors to their deaths on the rocks, Nicole slipped her hands down and loosened his tie. She wasn’t calling him to his death, but rather to a fulfillment she knew would be magical. Her mouth meeting his still in a wanton eroticism, her body ripening in his hold, she began slipping the buttons of his shirt loose until his chest was bare to her touch.

Her touch on his naked chest drew forth a growl from Max’s throat and his body seemed to actually heat beneath the palm of her hand. The texture of his skin, so firm and supple, the soft roughness of the hair on his chest, beguiled her.

Kissing him, kissing him still, she wrestled his shirt open and yanked it back over his shoulders, breaking his embrace from around her as his arms fell back. The suit jacket he still wore eventually gave beneath her demands, falling to the floor as she pushed the shirt back and down his arms. Stripping him bare, her hands greedy for the satin of his flesh, she eventually became conscious of his submissive restriction, his hands still captured by his buttoned shirt cuffs, his tie abandoned loose around his neck.

With Max’s mouth yet on hers, both taking and giving the most heated pleasure, she reveled in the freedom of sliding her palms over his naked arms. His muscles bunched beneath rippling flesh, he radiated burning hot under her touch. Vividly taut, his chest rose and fell with each harsh breath. She felt the flexing of his body, the total focus of his touch. Her own body echoed the trembling readiness she felt in him.

Over velvety smooth muscled planes, her fingers shivered, the pads of her fingertips registering him like she imagined an addict felt discovering heroin. Huddling ever closer to him, her mouth not leaving his, she slipped her hands behind his strong back, finding the path of his spine and dipping low until she reached his taut buttocks, cupping him, her fingers splayed.

Max went rigid in her arms, breaking their kiss as his head reared back. He gasped for air, his chest moving hard against her. Still his hands were imprisoned in his shirt cuffs. He stood submissive beneath her touch and she, unrepentant, cuddled closer, her mouth moving now over his neck, his collarbone, as her fingers gripped and stroked his buttocks. Hard against her, she felt his erection and, recklessly, she arched into him.

Then, his submission apparently at an end, he was struggling to free himself, yanking impatiently at his shirt sleeve buttons. Moving to assist him, she pulled his arm between their bodies and worked, unseeing in the dim light, to loosen the cuff. The shirt falling free on one side, Nicole reached to unbutton his other cuff.

Bent over the task, she was startled to feel his hand at her cheek, brushing back the fall of her hair, his fingers gentle along her jaw, tracing the edge of her ear. Trailing lower, he found the pulse at her neck, his touch sure. When she’d freed his other hand from his shirt, she looked up into his face, her entire body craving him, her mind and soul entranced by the intentness in his gaze, the somber hunger in his eyes. Even in the dimly lit room, she could see the starkness in his gaze.

He stood in front of her, bare from the waist up, except for the loosened arrow of his tie, lying wantonly around his neck. Heart thumping in her chest, she reached out and took hold of his tie, slowly, slowly pulling him with her as she stepped backwards against the bed.

“Do you know,” he said in a conversational tone belied by his intent, brooding gaze. “Do you know your lips turn up at the corners even when you’re not smiling? As if some perpetual glow inside of you gives a smile to your every expression. Even when you’re bitching me out, there’s that mouth of yours, smiling at me.”

Nicole looked at him, aroused and uncertain, frightened of this between them and yet driven to take him inside her this night.

As she felt the raised bed behind her, he bent toward her again. “I like the taste of your smile, those lips, that mouth that keeps giving me such hell.”

Drugging, she thought muzzily, his kiss was filled with a chemical that left her hungry, whimpering for more of him. He seemed to find her smile, her mouth, her lips, just as addicting, because he kissed her again and again. Feeling the raw need in him, she gave him access, registering his hands in her hair, at the throbbing vein in her neck.

He lifted his mouth from hers, saying huskily, “You taste of vanilla and some sweet substance I’ve never known before.”

Looking up into his dark eyes, she drew a shaken breath. There were so many things he’d never known. Love, for instance. Who’d ever loved him out of his brooding silences or teased him into joining the rest of the world?

Coasting his forefinger over her bare arm, he said, “I think of nothing but the damndest clichés when I touch your skin. And they’re all wrong. Silk never felt as good as you.”

Standing before him, she saw herself reflected in his words, more beautiful than she’d ever felt. He was so complex, so convoluted and overwhelming. Undoubtedly, she should run out of this place before she was scorched by the fire inside him. Only she couldn’t. Somehow the sadness behind his cutting words had left her heart unguarded and she’d come to care for him far more than she should.

“Night after night,” he said, his voice low, “I’ve dreamt of you in this bed. I wake up in the early morning hours hard for you, aching.”

He needed her, and he wanted her, fiercely. Never in her life had she been so intensely desired. It was too much to resist, so she didn’t.

Scooting one heel strap down, and then the other, Nicole stepped out of her black sandals. She smiled up at him as she straightened, taking the hem of her knit dress in her hands. This moment was meant to be.

With one swift move, it was off over her head and she stood sandwiched between Max and his huge rumpled bed. She heard his swiftly in-drawn breath, felt his gaze roving avidly over her near-nakedness. Only a bra and panties stood between her and totally nudity.

Scooting up onto his big bed, she smiled at him. “Here I am, right where you wanted me.”

“Not quite,” he growled, reaching for her. His palms making contact with her thighs, he slid his hands up to her waist and pulled her toward the edge of the bed. For one weightless moment, lying flat on her back on the bed, she registered his strength.

And then he was touching her, his hands skillful and greedy, beautiful words pouring out of his mouth as he stood next to the bed.

“You have the longest legs,” he said drawing one up with a strong grip around her ankle. Standing next to the raised bed, he pressed his mouth at the inside of her foot. “Long and slender. I keep thinking of them wrapped around me while I drive into you. I’ve been hard for days.”

He was standing so close she could feel the brush of his bare chest against the back of her calf. His erection tantalizing against her bottom, he went on, “In my fantasies, I come into the room where you work and I see you sitting there in front of the computer, typing my words in. You sit leaning toward the keyboard sometimes and your hair falls forward off your beautiful neck. I’ve wanted to kiss you there.”