Really, whowouldn’thave trembled at the sight of a six-foot-five, two-hundred-forty-pound man with bright, flashing eyes and a positively ferocious expression charging toward them? She’d never seen Quentin so furious. So she did what any sane, self-respecting person in her shoes would have done: she turned and fled.
“Yeah, you’d better run,” came his growled taunt behind her.
Her options, of course, were woefully limited. The only escape route was the swinging door through which Quentin had just erupted. So she ducked inside the large kitchen pantry. She realized her mistake at the same time Quentin laughed darkly and muttered, “That’s even better.”
He followed her into the pantry and yanked the door closed behind them. As Lexi retreated from him, he stalked her step for step until he’d backed her up against the wall, successfully trapping her.
Fighting to ignore the erratic pounding of her heart, she stared up at him. “Wh-what’re you doing here, Quentin? I have class in twenty minutes.”
Planting his hands on either side of her head, he lowered his face to hers until she could see that his irises were, fittingly, as dark and ominous as storm clouds. The heat from his body scorched her, spiking her own temperature until she thought they’d both burst into flames. When her students came looking for her, all they’d find was a pile of smoldering ashes.
“How long are you going to keep fighting what’s between us?” Quentin spoke in a deceptively soft voice that belied the dangerous tension radiating from his body.
Lexi swallowed convulsively. “I’m not fight—”
“Wrong answer. Try again.”
Her temper flared. “How can you say I’m fighting? I slept with you—”
“That’s right. You did. And it was absolutely amazing. But the next day you got cold feet. So you cut and ran.”
“I did not! That woman kept texting—”
“Bullshit!” Quentin roared, slamming his fist on the wall beside her head and making her jump. “I’ve already told you nothing happened between us. And you know that’s the truth. But even if she hadn’t sent those pictures, you would’ve found a reason to bail that morning. Because deep down inside you’re afraid to believe that maybe,just maybe,this thing between us is real.”
“No.No.” Lexi shook her head, even as his words reached into the deepest corners of her soul and threatened to expose her darkest secrets and fears. “Don’t try to turn the tables on me. I have every reason to have doubts about you, Quentin, and you know it.”
“What I know,” he growled savagely, “is that I’m crazy about you. I want to be with you, damn it, and I’m gonna do everything in my power to make it happen.”
Lexi squeezed her eyes shut. She was trembling uncontrollably, a potent combination of anger, adrenaline, fear and arousal speeding through her veins. “This isn’t a good time, Quentin,” she said in a shaky voice. “I’m atwork.”
“Yeah? Well, you shoulda thought about that before you decided to stop taking my damn calls.”
A heartbeat later his mouth was grinding against hers. She inhaled sharply as a wave of pleasure crashed through her. Her hands slid up his chest and curved around his neck as if they had a mind of their own. She could feel the hard bulge of his erection pressed against her belly, an unholy temptation.
He lifted her off the floor, grabbing her legs and drawing them around his waist. Even as she mentally cursed her decision to wear a skirt to work that day, her body quivered at the brush of his fingers dragging the material up to her hips, pushing it out of the way. When he reached between her thighs and discovered that she wore a thong, he crooned in wicked satisfaction.
“Mmm.” He nudged aside the damp strip of silk. “You must have known I was coming for you today, Alexis.”
She shivered and groaned as he stroked the slick, swollen lips that sheathed her clitoris. “You’re trying to get me fired,” she whimpered.
“Andyou’retrying to get me disbarred and sent to prison.”
“Am not!” she choked out as he slid a long finger inside her.
“Are too. When Byron told me you were cooking for him tonight, I almost lost my damn mind. Are you trying to get that boy killed?” he demanded, his fierce, glittering gaze sweeping across her face as he eased a second finger into her. “Do you know what it did to me when I thought of you cooking for another man?”
“It’s just dinner,” Lexi countered weakly.
“Wrong,” he snarled. “It’s more than dinner. It’s about you sharing yourself with him the way you do with me. It’sneverjust about the food, and you damn well know it.”
She did. Heaven help her, she did. And maybe that was why she’d offered to cook for Byron. Some small, perverse part of her had wanted to spite Quentin. And now he’d come to mete out her punishment.
He kissed her roughly and possessively, his tongue sliding in and out of her mouth in time to his thrusting fingers. A wave of contractions rippled through her belly. Beneath her starched chef’s jacket, her breasts throbbed and her nipples had grown painfully hard. She was burning everywhere, helpless against the onslaught of her desire. A desire unlike anything she’d ever imagined or experienced before.
Removing his fingers from her body, Quentin reached down and unzipped his pants.
Lexi gasped, realizing, too late, that she’d let things go too far. “Quentin, no! Not here! My students—”
