Public Relations (17 page)

He was there. Directly behind her.

Peter closed the minute distance between them. She sobered, looking at the bed. Guessing his intent, she faced him slowly. Could she do this again? With this man? Let him in when the only guarantee she had was a broken heart?

His words to his paid lover echoed in her head as her eyes searched his.

Don’t make the mistake of falling for me… At the end—and it will end—I won’t be in love with you. And I will let you go.

Expression grim, he seemed to struggle against himself. Passion lit his eyes. His nostrils flared as he apparently tried, and failed, to bank the flames.

“I want you,” he said finally and cupped her nape.

Fingers threaded in her hair, he reeled her in, and she let him. As if she could’ve done anything else when her body needed all her spare energy to remain upright. Knees locked, breath coming in shallow gasps, she faced down her first kiss with Peter Wells with almost all the bravery of Jeanne d’Arc at the stake.

“Don’t hurt me,” she murmured just as his lips, firm and moist, brushed across hers.

He lifted his head, a deep frown drawing his brows together. His gaze searched hers before his attention dipped to her mouth.

“Don’t let me hurt you,” he said and moved in for the kill.

PETER TILTED GEORGIA’S head just so and took charge of the kiss. Tender and deliberate, he darted his tongue along her seam before nipping at the plump softness of her lower lip. She moaned and melted into the embrace. All soft. All woman. He ran his free hand down her back to steady her against him, conscious all the while of the bed looming directly behind her.

Careful
, his inner gentleman said.
She’s not used to this.

All the better to seduce her with
, his Big Bad Wolf replied.

A flash of Gigi in her red dress, her lush ass visible under the drape of her fur, assaulted his inner vision, momentarily unbalancing his equilibrium. When he would have lifted his head, however, Georgia twined her slender arms around his neck and pulled him down, deepening the kiss.

Berry-sweet brightness burst across his taste buds as he tamed her seeking tongue, pushing it back into her mouth with his own. He plundered her without mercy, showing her who had control here and who would maintain the upper hand. Nobody seduced him.
Nobody.

A water bottle thudded to the floor and rolled. Delicate fingers burrowed in his hair. Georgia stood on tiptoe and pressed her breasts against his naked chest. He tightened his grip and captured her answering gasp as his trophy. Dipping his fingers to the crest of her ass, he trailed them with deceptive laziness along the peach-soft flesh below her waistband.

Georgia’s trembling turned to shaking. He caressed lower, exploring the nerve-rich crevice between. She mewled into his mouth and arched. So responsive it made him ache to throw her on the bed and get her off. Just to see how long it would take. Was it him she responded to, or was she more experienced than she’d let on last night?

He lifted his head to study her, and she whimpered. A pleading, desperate sound that blasted a hole in his control. Liquid heat surged up his shaft, a warning. When was the last time he’d been wound so tight? A decade, at least. Possibly longer.

All damned night, he’d fought with his instincts.

Don’t seduce her again
, the gentleman said.
You’ll only hurt her worse tomorrow.

She wants it
, Big Bad reasoned.

For the moment, the wolf won out. He’d decided as he waited for her in the boathouse that he’d use this weekend to get her out of his system. Just because she tempted him more than most women didn’t mean she’d stick.

Removing his supporting hands, he gave Georgia a little push to her breastbone. She didn’t fall so much as collapse onto the mattress. Breasts practically begging for his touch, she braced on her elbows and regarded him with wide-eyed wariness. The wolf growled his approval.

One deft tug had her jeans unfastened. The next bared her down to her lacy thong. A darker patch of pink polka-dot material showcased what he’d done to her with a simple kiss. His grin was slow and feral as he dipped low and shoved Georgia’s thighs wide. She arched. He ran his nose along the musky plumpness at her apex. Tonguing her from bottom to top, he discovered the kernel of her clit through her panties, clamped on with his lips, and sucked hard. He drew her in and rolled the cotton-covered sweetness against his tongue.

Nails scraped his scalp, his shoulders, his neck. By the time he was finished, she’d be wrecked. A complete mess of tangled hair and languid limbs. He’d wring every drop of pleasure from her, leaving nothing behind but the husk of the woman she’d once been.

“Don’t hurt me,”
she’d said. As if he was capable of anything else.

He paused, panting, and looked up the landscape of creamy skin to kiss-swollen lips and fluttering lids. With the scent of sex and Georgia’s rain-soft skin surrounding him, he made the mistake of thinking with his brain. If they did this, she’d just be another lay. Did he want that for her? For himself? Shock sprayed like buckshot, peppering his arousal and dimming it as effectively as a white dress and the “Wedding March.” He pushed off the mattress.

“I’ll take the couch.” He choked on the words and spun away.

Unable to look at Georgia, not wanting to absorb the bewildered hurt he imagined etched on her brow, he snatched the mohair afghan off the back of the sofa and a pillow from the recliner. Flinging both to the leather sofa, he switched off the lights in the living area and tried not to hear her slowing gasps.

She cleared her throat. Sat up. He rolled over, presenting her with his back. Listened as she padded around looking for things in the medicine cabinet. He knew she’d found the extra toothbrush he’d laid out for her when he heard the rhythmic brushing, then the sound of her rinsing.

A dull ache throbbed in his temples and his cock, its pulsing beat a reminder he had a heart. “Why Georgia” indeed. He grimaced at his brother’s choice of song and pulled the afghan tighter around his shoulders.

Eventually Georgia turned off the light in the sleeping area. He listened as she punched the pillows. Rolled and punched again. Laid down in a huff, trying to get comfortable. Peter moved to his back, folding an arm under his head. The white strip of skylight above made him wish for summer and the stars.

What the hell had just happened? One moment he had a willing bed partner—someone to slake his carnal thirst—and the next he’d banished himself to a too-small sofa. He sat to face the room, his skin making a sticking sound against the leather. Peering through the dark, he barely made out Georgia’s slight form under the mountain of white quilt. Only a darker patch where her hair fanned across the pillow gave any indication she occupied the bed.

A bed big enough for two…

Telling Wolf Man to shut up, he lay down again. His head banged the sofa arm with enough force to make his teeth clack together. He winced and rubbed at the tender spot.

When was the last time he’d kissed a woman? He thought back through six or seven now nameless, faceless women and came up empty. What had made him kiss Georgia? He pondered the question until his head ached. She’d been so good with his father. When she’d clasped both his hands in hers and looked warmly into his eyes, something had broken free in Peter. He had understood then, her friendship with Gigi Montrose notwithstanding, that Georgia was a good person. Someone he could trust.

His family had accepted her with so little question, though they had to wonder how he’d gotten so close to her in such a short period after the gossip column’s revelations. Yet something about her sweetness and open, artless manner made them believe. She was just Georgia being Georgia, and they adored her for it.

Dinner had made him ache for something he hadn’t wanted in a long, long time. His family. Usually he made sure he arrived late enough and left early enough that they never ate together. Given the animosity between him and Niall, and his strained relationship with his father, it seemed easier all the way around. Besides, what did he have in common with his brothers and parents? What had he ever had in common with them since his father’s accident?

Peter swallowed hard, fragmenting the ache building in his chest. Giving up on sleep altogether, he sat and rummaged in the dark for his laptop bag. With the screen’s soft glow lighting the room, he propped his back against the arm and put his feet on the cushions as he opened his e-mail. More than twelve hundred yellow envelope icons lined up like infantry in his in-box. He shot each of them with his mouse pointer, one by one, until only five remained and the soft glow of dawn permeated the snow-caked skylights.

Georgia shifted and sighed, burrowing deeper under the covers. Peter lifted his gaze to her, a plan forming. What if they just had fun today? He’d show her his old haunts, get to know her better before he seduced her. Just because he had a conscience didn’t mean he didn’t have a cock too. Being friendly before the fucking didn’t have to mean a lifelong commitment. Did it? And who said at the end of the day the friendly intimacy wouldn’t take the edge off his arousal? If familiarity bred contempt, then he ought to be good and sick of her and she of him by the time they returned to New York.

He thought of Hank’s Coffee Cup, a little shack overlooking the Sound, and rose from the sofa. As if pulled in by her personal gravity, Peter approached Georgia and stared down at her sleeping face. Auburn hair a wild tangle against the white pillowcase, she lay on her back, pink fingertips clutching the covers. Soft snores rose from her lightly parted lips. He bit the inside of his cheeks to keep from laughing. Without conscious thought, he bent to brush a kiss against her mouth.

Georgia snorted and sat up so quickly she almost brained him. Laughter shot from Peter’s stomach, a full-blown guffaw. He gasped against the giddy mirth as Georgia pushed her hair from her eyes and glared up at him accusingly.

“You were snoring,” he said when he could spare enough oxygen to speak.

“Was not.” The clipped roundness of her speech took him aback.

“You sound like…” He shook his head. Obviously the two women spent a lot of time together, both in the States and abroad, if the family photo in Gigi’s apartment was to be believed.

Georgia shot out of bed, wearing her shirt and jeans from last night. She hadn’t worn the nightgown, but he decided not to remark on it. He could hardly blame her for not wanting to make herself more vulnerable around him.

“We’re going out for breakfast,” he said, peeling off his pajama bottoms as he crossed to his overnight bag.

A sharp inhale from Georgia made his lips quirk upward once more, but he didn’t turn around. Let her ogle. It wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen, or grabbed, before.

“I’d tell you to put some clothes on,” he continued as he stepped into his underwear and adjusted his package, “but you never got undressed.” He pulled his clean jeans from the bag. “You probably want to brush your hair though.”

“I know all about personal hygiene, Peter.” Arms folded protectively, Georgia eyed him with sleep-tinged rancor as he buttoned his pants. “Unlike you, I’ve been washing my own backside my entire adult life.”

Oh, so it was that way, was it?

Knowing it would only bait her, he gave her a faux arch look. “Don’t make me wait. I’m hungry.”

The grin spread across his face once more when she flounced away, her hair whirling around her shoulders with the motion. He kept smiling as she yanked the bathroom door closed. He’d give her fifteen minutes. If she wasn’t out by then, he was going in after her.

Turned out he didn’t need to wait that long. They were zipping down the road within twelve. He downshifted as they went into a sharp curve and shot out onto the Y of the road into town.

“I didn’t think women could get ready as quickly as you,” he teased. “Did you decide to go European today?”

Georgia rolled her eyes and shifted her shoulders away so she stared out the passenger window. “Ever hear of waxing, lover boy?”

Thoughts of other places she might’ve waxed besides her legs jerked him back to the moment last night when he’d nuzzled the heat of her sex. Come to think of it, there hadn’t been a hair in sight or any telltale prickling against his lips. Either then or when he’d fucked her. He gripped the wheel harder and winced at the awkward angle of his awakening cock against the seam of his jeans.

He lifted his hips from the seat and adjusted, attempting to gain some room. “There’s a seat heater, if you’re cold.”

Georgia didn’t look at him.

“My parents seemed to like you,” he tried.

She made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat.

“Thanks for, you know, being here. Convincing them…” He rubbed the back of his neck with his palm. “It’s been awhile, and you made it easier. So. Yeah. Just…thanks.”

“Why didn’t you have sex with me last night?” Her voice was laced with sleep’s throaty warmth.

“Well, that was direct.” And it was, though he couldn’t fault her for it. Part of him had been wondering the same thing all night long. He shrugged. “Call it an attack of conscience.”

She dropped her hands to her thighs and faced him more fully. Though his skin crawled with the reflexive need to look at her, he kept his eyes on the road and had to trust his peripheral vision to tell him what he needed to know.

“You didn’t sleep with me because you didn’t think I could handle you?”

He scowled. When had he said any such thing? Though, come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely certain she could’ve. Handled him, that was. “You’re the one who asked me not to hurt you.”

She faced away from him and recrossed her arms. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

Didn’t mean it what way? Physically? Or mentally? At the time he’d thought she meant mentally, because it wasn’t like he’d come on hard and fast. He’d even kissed her, for chrissakes. So…
had
she meant mentally? He glanced at her, wishing he could see her expression better. “Then what way did you mean it?”

“I can take anything you can dish out, Peter Wells.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “And I don’t have to wear six inch heels and sequins to prove it.”