Shattered (32 page)

Heart thumping, she tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. Neither one of them said anything as they walked into the lobby; past the male clerk at the front desk, who eyed them without any real interest; and caught an elevator. Then, when the elevator door shut and their only audience was the surveillance camera mounted high up in a corner, she turned into his arms as naturally as if she'd been doing it for years and lifted her mouth to his.

His mouth closed over hers, fire shot through her body--and the elevator stopped on her floor.

He let her go, and she led the way out of the elevator. But not before she noticed that he was breathing as unevenly as she was. Inside, she was shivery with anticipation. Her knees felt weak. Her stomach was in a knot.

I should play hard to get.

But the sad truth was that where he was concerned, she was easy. And he knew it. Had known it for years.

"So, how did you leave it with Nola?" she asked with an assumption of ease as they started down the hall. They weren't touching any longer. Instead they walked side by side.

"I don't think she 's expecting me to call anytime soon." His voice was dry.

Lisa glanced at him. His breathing was under control now. Typical Scott, he looked large and tough, very composed, very much the man in charge. Unless you knew him really well, you wouldn't notice that his eyes were darker than normal, his jaw harder, his cheekbones a little flushed. But she knew him very well indeed.

I bet the sex would be phenomenal.
She could almost hear Nola's words in her head.

At the images this conjured up, her body tightened deep inside.

It required a real effort to keep her voice light. "She told me she was releasing you into the wild, so if I wanted you, feel free."

"Did she?"

"She'll be glad to know I took her up on it."

"Going to tell her all about this, are you?"

"I don't kiss and tell."

"That sounds like it should be my line."

"Hey, I can be a gentleman, too."

That made him smile, a quick smile that curved his mouth and brought an amused gleam to his eyes. She was suddenly acutely conscious of how very sexy he was, and felt a new rush of heat.

The long hall with its double row of doors was deserted. Their shoes were soundless on the thick green carpet. The wallpaper was a tasteful, figured pale green, and the lighting was just bright enough to keep guests from stumbling over discarded room-service trays or bumping into console tables holding huge vases full of artificial flowers, both of which they passed. There was a slight, faint scent of potpourri. The air-conditioning hummed, but beyond that and their voices, there was no other sound. If anyone else was awake anywhere on the entire floor, it was impossible to tell. It felt as if they were totally alone.

"So, how'd you leave it with Loverboy?" There was absolutely no intonation to his voice, which, with Scott, meant a great deal.

"I left it."

"Meaning?"

"I don't think he likes me very much right now."

They reached her room. Lisa looked at the white-painted door with the discreet number on it and felt her mouth go dry.

Nola, I think I'm about to find out about the sex.

The thought came with a thrill that shot clear down to her toes.

"What, did you two have a fight?"

"Not really." Extracting her key card from her purse, aware of him looming behind her with every nerve ending she possessed, she put the card in the slot, watched the tiny green light come on, turned the knob, and opened the door. Then, heart hammering, she looked at him over her shoulder. "Want to come in?"

His eyes were dark and unreadable.

"Sure," he said.

24

"So,
if you two didn't have a fight, what happened?"

He was inside her room, in the narrow part just beyond the door, with the closet on one side and the bathroom on the other. He stood waiting for her as she flicked the switch that turned on the bedside lamp in the main part of the room and closed the door behind them.

"What do you think happened? You." Her tone was acerbic. Having shot the dead bolt, she turned to face him. The area where they stood was shadowy but not really dark. He stood foursquare in front of her, tall and broad-shouldered enough to block her view. Beyond him, she could just see the feet of the two double beds with their brown-and-gold coverlets that reached all the way down to the beige carpet. Because she hadn't yet slept in the room, the beds had not been touched. At the thought that at least one of them soon would be, her heartbeat quickened.

A smile just curved his mouth. "Good."

She walked into his arms at exactly the same time as he reached for her. Electricity shot through her, hot and wild as a bolt of lightning as their bodies came together like two parts of the same whole. The solid strength of him against her made her go all light-headed. Her arms went around his neck. She lifted her head, and Scott bent his. Their lips met. That first kiss was almost gentle, almost tentative, a soft brushing of mouths, a brief meeting of tongues. But even that fleeting contact made her feel that she had just contracted a system-wide fever. Her breasts swelled against his chest, and her body caught fire.

Oh my God, I'm kissing Scott,
she thought, and her eyes popped open just to verify that it was true. His eyes were open, too. He quit kissing her to look at her, his mouth hovering scant millimeters away. She could feel the uneven warmth of his breath against her lips. For the space of a couple of heartbeats they simply stared into each other's eyes. She saw the hot flare of passion in the depths of his, the dilation of his pupils, the sudden heaviness of his lids. Then he kissed her again, a sexy kiss burning with more than a decade's worth of pent-up longing, and she closed her eyes and pressed herself against him and kissed him back for all she was worth.

By the time he broke it off, her head was spinning. Her knees felt weak. Her body burned and throbbed.

"Lisa."

He was holding her so tightly against him that she was left in no doubt at all about the strength of his desire. Dizzy with need, she clung to him and tilted her head back and opened her eyes to meet his gaze.

"Hmm?"

"If you want me to leave, now would be a good time to tell me."

She looked at him, at the hard, handsome face, at the sensuous curve of his mouth, at the sky-blue eyes that smoldered now with wanting her, and shook her head.

"You know I don't want you to leave." Her voice was unsteady, but she didn't care. "When have I ever wanted you to leave?"

His eyes blazed at her. She felt his chest expand against her breasts as he took a deep breath. Then his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and demanding, and he was kissing her with a fierce passion that sent fire shooting clear down to her toes. When one hand came up to brush the long fall of her hair back from her face, then cup her jaw, then stroke down over the soft smoothness of her throat, she thought her bones would melt. He pulled his mouth away from hers to nuzzle her ear, her jaw, her neck, and she let her head fall back against his shoulder to grant him better access. The touch of his lips, the rasp of his chin that was bristly now with five-o'clock shadow, the wet heat of his mouth on her skin, was so deliciously disorienting that she closed her eyes and clung to him as if to the only stable thing in the room.

His hand found her breast and flattened over it. Through the thin layers of her dress and bra, Lisa felt the size of his palm, the length of his fingers, the latent strength in his grip, with a shiver of delight. Her nipple instantly turned pebble-hard, jutting into his palm. His hand moved then, molding her, caressing her, and she arched her back to deepen the contact and murmured her pleasure against the warm, salt-tinged column of his neck. When his hand slid away from her breast, she nipped his earlobe in protest, then was rewarded when he made a sound halfway between a growl and a groan and kissed her mouth again with a naked hunger that made her go up in flames.

She never even realized he was lowering the long zipper that fastened her dress until the snug-fitting silk loosened around her breasts and she felt the cool breath of the air-conditioning on her back. A warm hand slid down the long vee of skin he had bared, tracing the curve of her spine. Lisa trembled, but not from the cold.

His hold on her tightened, and then he was turning with her, pressing her up against the wall, one hand hard on her breast as he kissed her so hotly that her blood sizzled and her heart pounded as if she 'd been running for miles. The wall was cool against the overheated skin bared by her open zipper. She could feel the heat radiating from him as he leaned into her, the tension in his long muscles, the size and weight of him, all along her body. The solid hardness that was the proof of his passion was unmistakable, and feeling it swelling against her made her knees threaten to sag. She was suddenly grateful for the support of the wall at her back.

"I want you so damn much." His voice was low and rough, nothing like his usual cool tones. She opened her eyes to find that his hair was ruffled and his jaw was set and hard and his eyes gleamed at her.

"Scott." She loved saying his name in this context, she realized. When she was a teenager, he had been the embodiment of every sexual fantasy she had ever had. Now that she was an adult, she still counted him as the sexiest man around. She had wanted him so much, for so long, that just the thought that it was finally going to happen, that she was finally going to sleep with him, was enough to make her go all hot and liquid inside. As her hands slid down from around his neck to find the knot of his tie he pressed quick, deep kisses to her mouth. The heavy silk felt cool and supple in her hands, but she was so distracted by his kisses that she barely remembered what she was doing. Senses reeling, she nevertheless eventually managed to pull the knot free so that the tie hung loose around his neck.

"You taste like sugar," he murmured against her lips.

"Lip gloss," she told him, determined to try to sound lucid no matter how drugged with passion she was feeling.

He ran his tongue over the soft fullness of her lower lip, then bit it very gently.

Forget lucid. She burned for him. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she pressed her lips to his.

Then he was kissing her again, really kissing her with a thoroughness that made her woozy. His hand slid inside her loosened neckline, caressing her breast through the barely there barrier of her bra. His hand felt big and warm against her bare skin; his fingers glided over the slick surface of her bra. He cupped her breast, then rubbed his thumb over her nipple through the thin layer of nylon and lace, and the resulting sensation was so mind-blowing that it swept away her half-formed intention of unbuttoning his shirt next, swept away her plan to go aggressor on him, swept away everything except the way he was making her feel. He handled her like someone who knew his way around women, knew what turned them on, and she was reminded that he wasn't the boy she had known almost all her life any longer but a man. An experienced man who'd made love to a woman before, undoubtedly many times, undoubtedly to many different women.

She stiffened a little, because she didn't like the thought.

"What?" He must have felt her resistance, because he lifted his mouth from hers. Her eyes flickered open to find that a high flush rode his cheekbones and his eyes were heavy-lidded and blazing at her.

"You're good at this."

He looked at her closely. "Why do I get the feeling that that isn't a compliment?"

She was being ridiculous and she knew it. Jealous, she'd called him. Well, it turned out she was jealous, too. To compensate, she closed her eyes and kissed him again, pressing her lips to his, licking into his mouth, touching his tongue with hers, enticing him as she had wanted to do forever. He made an inarticulate sound under his breath and wrapped his arms around her, clamping her against him, kissing her with a fierceness that drove everything else out of her mind.

She was still lost in the blazing sexual attraction that raged between them when he reached up to catch her arms and pull them down from around his neck, breaking off the kiss. As she grudgingly resurfaced and opened her eyes with the intention of protesting, he forestalled her by saying, "I've wanted to take your clothes off for years."

His voice was thick.

"Have you?" Her reply was no more than a soft breath of sound as he put his hands on her shoulders under the loosened straps.

"Since way before you were legal, believe me." He slid his hands sensuously down her arms, their warm sweep raising goose bumps as he pushed the straps of her dress down with them until they fell past her fingertips, leaving her arms free. With nothing to support it, the dress dropped with a slither of silk to puddle around her feet.

Lisa sucked in air as she was left standing in the strapless black bra and matching tiny panties that were all she wore under the dress. Her eyes flew to his, but he didn't meet them. Instead his eyes were all over her, scorching her, sliding from the round, high swell of her breasts in the lacy demi-cups, over her narrow waist and flat abdomen and slender hips, to the black lace and satiny nylon triangle that barely concealed her sex, to her long, tanned legs. It was only as she saw him taking them in that she remembered she was still wearing Nola's lipstick-red high heels.

Just watching him look at her brought its own fiery thrill.

He must have felt her gaze, because he met it then. Naked lust gleamed in his eyes. "Sexy," he said, in a voice that didn't sound like Scott's at all.

Lisa realized that she was just standing there in practically nothing at all, her lips parted, her heart pounding, feeling ridiculously shy and at the same time so turned on she could scarcely breathe.

"Your turn." Mustering her resources, she reached for him, hands stroking over his chest, sliding beneath his jacket, feeling the warmth of his skin and the firmness of his muscles through his shirt. She pushed his jacket from his shoulders and he shrugged out of it so that it fell to join her dress on the floor.