Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request) (56 page)

How could a careless touch be so intensely sensual? All at once her blood wasn’t blood, and it wasn’t merely pulsing. It was wine, and the scorching, high-voltage desire in his eyes sent it seething madly through every vein in her body. More than ever their brief, wild slide into passion before dinner simmered between them like a tangible force. Was this the consolation Tom Russell sought?

She tried to weigh up the issues, the potential consequences, but his magnetic presence only a few centimetres away sparked fire along her nerves and made her limbs feel heavy and languorous.

A tiny voice tried to warn her it could be spurious, this sudden gentleness and accessibility, nothing to do with her at all. Even macho men had their softer moments. Wouldn’t he be as desirous of any other woman who happened to be here with him this night?

But there was no other woman.
She
was here, and, transfixed with a longing to be close to him, she couldn’t have run away from him now to save her life. And who else did he have? she argued with herself.

‘Have you—do you have much to do with your stepsisters?’

Amusement crept into his eyes. ‘As little as possible. They’re far too keen to hustle me to the altar. They’ve tried to set me up with every little diamond-miner in Sydney.’

‘That’s a pity. I know if Gran died … Well, when it does eventually happen, a long, long time in the future, touch wood … I hope I won’t be alone to deal with it.’

‘She means a lot to you.’

It was a statement more than a question. She nodded, and his eyes held such warmth and understanding she was seized by a deep, instinctive certainty. Caught up as he was with his grief, he still had heart enough to spare for her concerns. Whatever crazy fate had decreed she should be with him this night, it felt right.

The fiery glow in his eyes intensified, and he said softly, ‘We’re neither of us alone tonight, are we?’

Everything in her slowed and held its breath, poised on a pivot of desire. When Tom Russell put his hand out and gently tilted up her face, she surrendered to his firm, warm lips with willing fervour. This time he kissed her with such a slow and exquisite tenderness her bones melted into liquid fire.

He drew away from her, his breathing a little ragged. His
deep voice thickened. ‘If you were my girlfriend now I’d carry you into that bedroom.’

‘Well, then,’ she breathed over her tumultuous heartbeat, ‘let’s pretend I’m your girlfriend.’

He put one arm around her, the other under her knees and hoisted her up, laughing as he swayed precariously backwards and forwards, threatening to spill her. She giggled, then cried out with alarm as he nearly overbalanced. Then he changed his grip, and she clasped her arms around his strong neck while he carried her into his bedroom as easily as if she were a leaf.

For a suspenseful moment he stood by the bed, holding her as if preparing to toss her into the middle. He was smiling down at her, devilment in his eyes, then they darkened and his smile faded. He set her down on the rug.

He surveyed her and the air prickled with suspense, as if something between them had reached a critical point. She had a sense of fathomless depths in Tom Russell, of the jagged darkness beneath his lean, sexy surface.

Adrenaline lurched in her belly. Hadn’t some part of her known from the very first—the first glance, the first words—that everything this day would lead to this moment? Although how much of his desire was attraction, and how much of it was pain?

He stood before her, straight and tall and silent, sophisticated and sexual, his hot eyes focused on
her,
and she felt an inner surge of sheer exhilaration. She was a woman and she wanted him. There was only now. This one night.

Gently, he lifted the hair from her neck and weighed it in his hand. Immediately her spine became a river of shivers. She could hear his quickened breathing as his smooth fingers sought her zip and found it. She stood very still, her breath coming faster as he slipped the zip down, his gaze intent on her face. As the cool air touched her skin she quivered uncontrollably.

He bent his dark head and her blood leaped in intoxicated
response as her nostrils filled with his clean masculine scent. He kissed the curve of her neck and shoulder, and where his lips touched her skin burned. With a quick movement he slid the dress from her shoulders and it fell to the floor.

His lustful gaze on her near-nakedness fuelled a warm erotic rush to her nipples, and kindled the fire between her legs. He’d hardly touched her, yet her body remembered how aroused she’d been earlier and ignited again, her flesh pricking with desire. Her skin craved the caresses of those smooth, lean hands, his artful, sensuous mouth.

To speed things along she reached for his shirt, but he caught her hands and held them still.

‘Not yet,’ he growled, his deep voice reaching into her with its dark authority, stirring her longings to be with him, to draw closer to him.

He unfastened her lacy bra with hands that were only just steady. Panting, she helped him, her own eager hands trembling. His eyes flared at the sight of her bare breasts, the nipples taut and ripe, and though her longing for him to touch them,
taste
them, roared, he knelt down. Caressingly, as if she were of priceless porcelain, he eased down her high-cut pants to rest just below her hips, and exposed her blonde triangle of curls.

There was a sudden electric stillness in him. The potency of those earlier moments, the raw, pulsing passion, reignited. He cast her a knowing glance, almost as though he guessed her hunger to feel his lips there again, his clever seeking tongue.

‘Patience,’ he commanded, sitting back on his heels, a wicked laugh in his hot eyes, though there was a flush across his cheekbones.

Then, in deliberate provocation, he traced one mocking finger from her knee up the inside of her thigh, to where the skin was softer than silk. Rivulets of sensation thrilled beneath her sensitised skin, tormenting her inflamed flesh. She trembled in yearning for his smooth fingers to travel further, to extend that tingling delight and ease the insatiable, all-consuming
hunger, but with a swift movement he whipped her pants all the way down to her ankles, then stood up.

The flagrantly sexual heat of his darkened gaze seared her to her core. She’d never felt so blazingly naked, or so wired to be appreciated.

‘So, Goldilocks,’ he said, appraising her flush, her stiffened nipples, with a challenging quirk of one brow. ‘Do you want to run away from me now?’ Despite his mockery there was a tear in his breathing that thrilled her to her feminine marrow.

She could play that game. She stepped out of her flimsy undies and kicked her dress aside. ‘Only if you promise to chase me.’ Her voice was smoky with desire.
‘If
you think you can catch me.’

‘I can catch you,’ he growled at once, stepping forward and easily trapping her in his embrace.

But she slipped from his grasp and danced away from him, and, with her arms outstretched, pirouetted in her high heels, her hair flying out around her, taunting him, revelling in her nudity like a brazen siren. As he watched her, laughing, the flame that flared in his eyes revved her excitement to a wild pitch. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so turned on, so joyous and wanton and abandoned. She wanted him to do everything to her, to ravish her to the limit and take her to paradise with his hard, athletic body.

She brought her fandango to a standstill, posing with her back to him. ‘What do you think?’ she taunted huskily, throwing him a glance over her shoulder.

Tom felt his laughter seize along with his lungs. Driven by the need to obliterate the intensifying black pain that threatened to engulf him, he fixed his every conscious nerve on her pale beauty.

The hot blood pounded a path to his groin as he took in the heavy hair brushing her white, shapely back, the alluring ridge of her spine. Slowly, he drank in the heart-stirring curves of neck and shoulder, the delicacy of her supple waist. His
underclothes constricted him. He feasted his eyes on the gorgeous curves of her bottom, as smooth and exquisitely shaped as a peach.

Impossibly he hardened further, throbbing to penetrate that slim blonde beauty and bury himself in her sweet, vibrant flesh.

Gently he took her shoulders and turned her to face him.

‘Luscious,’ he said, his voice gravelled with lust.

Cate gasped in a breath. He wasn’t playing now. His eyes were aflame. He pulled her against him and she felt the hard ridge of his erection against her belly. He slipped his hand under her chin to lift her face, and his mouth came down on hers in a searing kiss, as possessive and uncompromising as a conqueror’s. As he pushed her towards the bed his marauding tongue thrust in to stroke hers in a graphic simulation of possession, driving her body to a raging awareness of an empty hollow desperate to be filled.

With her thirst still burning to be slaked, the sexy kiss broke as abruptly as it had started, the backs of her knees connecting with the bed, and she plumped down on its edge.

She surveyed him with wanton eyes while he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it. Her mouth dried at the hard beauty of his bronzed chest, his powerful arms, the scattering of curled black hair that narrowed over the flat plane of his abdomen to disappear so alluringly below his navel.

Her mouth watered to taste him. In the grip of fever she reached up to caress his lean ribs, and, moaning, felt the scorching heat of the bronzed satin skin riding his taut muscles.

She panted for him.

A quiver rippled through him as she sought his belt buckle, but he captured her hands and put them firmly from him, frustrating her immediate need to enjoy him to the full, refusing to allow her any control.

It was maddening. It was torture. It was cruel deprivation.

But with a flash of that divine creativity he seemed to inspire in her, she rolled herself into the middle of the bed,
and stretched out like a sensuous cat, casting him a long, tantalising glance as she ran her tongue-tip over her upper lip.

It worked. To her immense pleasure something like a flash-fire bolted through his body. His hot eyes riveted to her languid pose, he dragged off his shoes and socks, unbuckled his belt and stripped off his trousers and underpants.

For the first time she viewed him in the naked flesh. Her heart slowed to a heavy pounding beat, awed by his proud erect penis, its thick, virile length impressive. With appreciation she took in the sinewy grace of his long limbs, so muscular and satisfyingly hairy. The raw, masculine beauty of Tom Russell’s lean frame grabbed at her heart and stirred the hot, throbbing ache between her legs, melting the coil of tension in her womb into a molten pool of yearning.

If he could be hers …

The lamp’s glow warmed the smooth, supple undulations of her body to a pale golden shimmer, and Tom felt all the knifepoints of anguish that had gathered in him since he’d read his father’s letter soothe. With a mental effort he thrust aside awareness of his wounds to concentrate on her beauty. Sweet forgetfulness beckoned like a mirage.

He stretched out beside her, urgent to drown himself in smiling blue-green eyes shadowed by passion. She turned on her side to receive him, and his hungry gaze devoured slender limbs and curves as smooth and graceful as an alabaster figurine.

He inhaled the fresh, clean scent of her skin. His rock-hard shaft throbbed for the sheath of her honeyed flesh, but he disciplined himself to wait, take her higher, and her release would be all the sweeter.

Despite his heavy heart, his pulse pumped a strong erotic beat as he pushed her onto her stomach. He traced the curve of her spine, relishing her skin’s tingling fire under his fingers, the pleasure of pleasing her somehow an assuagement to his pain.

He grazed the hollow at the base of her spine with his lips, then, with sure, knowing hands, caressed the smooth contours
of her buttocks. It was a challenge to stop, they were so achingly, meltingly desirable, and he struggled with his bittersweet need to take her there and then as he registered the little flinch that signalled her leap of response.

Lust and a need for immediate release threatened to overwhelm him as he gazed down at her. Her glorious hair was fanned out around her on the pillow like a glossy halo, but with her lips so tantalisingly parted, the allure of her languorous green eyes wrenched him as no angel ever could.

Resisting the temptation to rush her, he thanked the fates he’d been blessed with iron control.

‘I believe I owe you,’ he murmured, watching her eyes swirl with awareness, tracing her edible mouth with his thumb. He was scorchingly minded of those other lips, the dark crimson portals plump and glistening for him. ‘I always pay my debts.’

She traced his collar-bone with a subtle hand, and beneath her sleepy lashes her eyes gleamed assent. She stretched out her slim arms, offering herself in such total surrender he thrilled to the promise of oblivion in her white body.

He started with little kisses, first her mouth, the delicate line of her jaw, then her throat and the valley between her breasts. Heartbreakingly beautiful, her breasts were full and firm, the nipples as red and ripe as strawberries. He tasted them, giving each a sly little teasing nip with his teeth. The electrified response that rippled through her slim form energised his own wild blood.

The words broke from him. ‘I’ve never met a woman who affected me like you.’

Her wry, incredulous smile twisted something in his chest. Didn’t she believe him? At once he needed to convince her. In some mysterious, primeval way, his inner sadness fused with an urgent need to embrace all that was bright and true and life-affirming. In the grip of some frenzied force, he was seized with a passion to make love to Cate Summerfield in earnest.

A warning voice piped up to remind him of the dangers of
getting involved but he blocked it out. With a fierce intensity he explored every curve and hollow of her smooth, pliant body, her every small writhe and sigh like anaesthesia to the aching hole in his chest. He used all the skills at his command to heighten her desire, deliberately inciting a trail of fire all the way across the gentle mound of her stomach and down to her silky tangle of curls.