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She stood her ground, legs shaking now. For a man who claimed to feel little emotion it was written in every taut muscle of his body. In the rigid column of his back, his neck. In the barely leashed confusion that surrounded him. It reached out and wrapped itself around her, pulling her toward him.
“Sometimes,” she said quietly, laying a hand on his arm, “the things we want the most, the things we think are going to make us feel better, don’t. Can’t because they were never the solution in the first place.”
He spun to face her, dislodging her hand. Antagonism poured off him in waves. “Nailing Anton Markovic to the ground is going to make me feel better, Francesca. Much better. Make no mistake about it.”
Her heart thudded against her rib cage. “Then why? Why are you like this?”
“Because I have too much going on in my head.” He practically yelled the words at her. “This is not another case of you saving the day, Francesca. It’s far more complex than one of your little sermons can fix.”
Her stomach lurched. “I didn’t suggest that.”
His mouth curled. “Go.”
“I won’t leave you like this.”
The deliberate way he looked at her made her pulse buzz in her ears. “You would be very wise to do so,” he suggested in a low, deep voice that made her insides liquefy. He lifted a finger and dragged it across her cheek, watching as she shivered in reaction. “Otherwise I will do what I was aching to do in the car and drown myself in this. And I think we’ve both agreed it’s an unacceptable result.”
His touch felt like fire on her skin. The kiss from London sizzled through her head, beckoning her on to sure destruction. They were like hot and cold fronts converging in a storm it seemed impossible to outrun.
But he was her boss. She loved her job. She really must go.
He slid his thumb down to her lips, his gaze holding hers as he traced the trembling outline of her mouth. “Go, Francesca. You’re the only thing making me feel alive right now. If you don’t, I can’t be responsible for what happens next.”
Run, her sensible side commanded, hurting man or not. But the other side of her, the one pulsing with an awareness of him so strong it made her mouth dry, wanted him to drown himself in her. Wanted to experience that type of passion. Because he made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt in her life. Being the center of his attention was hypnotizing.
The tremor in his hand as he stroked the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip made her heart turn over. She couldn’t go.
His dark gaze glittered. “Out. Now.”
“No.”
The word hung on the air between them, defiant and crystal clear. She watched the control fizzle in his eyes at the same time he reached for her hand and brought it to his mouth. He pressed his lips to her palm in an openmouthed kiss, as if tasting her very essence. Her pulse ran wild.
“You have five seconds to leave,” he murmured. “Or you don’t.”
She closed her eyes as he pressed another kiss to her palm. Counted out the seconds in her head. His soft curse split the night air.
“Francesca.”
She brought his hand to her mouth. Found his palm with her lips. He tasted hot, salty and hedonistically male. She wondered if he’d experienced the same stomach-churning intensity of it. The way he went completely still said he might have.
He let her play for a while, to know him. Then he curled his fingers around her wrist and brought her the two steps forward he needed to let her feel the heat his tall frame emanated.
“You’re sure?”
She nodded. His fiery, conflicted gaze scoured her face. “I won’t take an innocent.”
“I’m not.” She didn’t need to tell him there had only ever been one, awkward and disappointing as the sex had been.
The warm night air heated up around them, like it was catching fire, too. He slid his fingers into her French twist and started pulling pins out. The buzz in her ears was so loud she couldn’t hear them hit the concrete, one by one. She should have been terrified with what little she had to bring to this insanity. Instead she trusted him on a level she didn’t understand.
He pulled out the final pin. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders. He lifted a hand and fingered a silky strand, a curious look on his face.
“What?”
“I can’t figure you out,” he murmured. “Honest, fearless, unsure of yourself at times yet so sure of so many things on a bigger life level.” He wrapped a chunk of her hair around his finger and let it slide through his hand. “It’s why Leonid asked you that question tonight. Because the essence of you is good. It emanates from you.”
Her lips pursed. “It’s the way I was brought up. I don’t know any different.”
“I do.” He bent his head and put his mouth to the hollow between her neck and shoulder. “You don’t seem real to me.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. But then it didn’t matter as she abandoned herself to the sensations his lips were evoking on her skin, the warm slide of his mouth across her heated flesh sending sparks to every inch of her body. He savored the hollow he’d found, pulled every reaction out of her with his lips and teeth. The arch of her neck, her soft sighs, guided him. More. He set his hand to her jaw, moved it to the other side and did the same masterful job to the matching sweet spot between her left shoulder and neck. It made her weak in the knees. She curled her fingers into his waist and anchored herself to him.
He slid his hand to her nape and took her mouth then. Hot, possessive and never-ending, it wasn’t like his kiss in the car. It promised carnal, exciting things to come and it made her rational brain shut down.
He pushed her jacket off her shoulders and threw it over the railing. Dispensed with the buttons on her blouse so expertly it made her wonder what the heck she was doing, thinking she could play in Harrison’s sandbox. By the time he’d undone the last button and bared her to his gaze, her cheeks were scarlet. The look of pure lust that crossed his face sent that thought flying off into the nether.
“You are so beautiful,” he murmured, absorbing her with his eyes. “I swear to God I thought you were an apparition the night I walked into the office and you were sitting in Tessa’s chair.”
She bit her lip. Remembered her complete mortification. How shameless she must have looked, her skirt riding up her thighs, her lace stockings on display...
“Oh, yes.” His gaze was on her face. “I had dreams about those. That and the handcuffs... They did me in.”
She covered her cheeks with her hands. He shook his head and pulled them away. “It was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen...”
Her heart beat a wild rhythm in her chest. The decadent, openmouthed kiss he pressed against her lips almost felled her unsteady legs. The thought she could never sit in that chair again without blushing, that this would change everything, crossed her mind as his palms closed over the weight of her breasts and his thumbs slid across her hardened nipples. “Don’t,” he growled in her ear as she stiffened beneath him. “Not tonight. Feel.”
She obeyed his command, because even in her inexperience, she knew only Harrison could ever make her feel like this. It had been that way from the beginning.
The pleasure he was lavishing on her as he rolled her nipples between his fingers with both hands unearthed a low moan from her throat. Sharp, urgent need lanced through her, sending her fingers to his biceps to curl into taut, hard male muscle. He rewarded her by sinking his teeth into her shoulder in a gentle bite that promised more was coming. Much more.
Oh, lord. She was so, so out of her depth.
His knee nudged her legs apart. She anchored her palms against his chest as he ran his hands up the back of her thighs. She had left the lace stockings off for an entire week after the incident, she’d been so mortified. But habit was habit and she loved feeling feminine. His swift intake of breath when he found the lace edging reverberated through her head. “You’re killing me.”
He slid an arm under her knees and picked her up. She had a vague memory of him doing that that night on the plane, but she’d been half unconscious then. Now she was fully alert, fully aware of the power caged in his muscular frame. Her heart raced in her chest, slamming against its containing walls. He was insanely strong. She had handed herself over to him to do what he liked. It inspired a feeling of mild panic.
He nudged the French doors shut behind them and carried her through the dimly lit penthouse and down a dark hallway toward the bedrooms. His was the big master suite at the side of the apartment. Her heart reached up to tattoo itself against her eardrums as he set her down in the middle of the lushly carpeted floor and switched on a lamp. She distracted herself with the jaw-dropping view of Central Park while he stripped off his tie and tugged his shirt collar open with a sense of purpose that made her heart stutter. Digging her toes into the plush carpet, she avoided the urge to turn and run out the door of his very expensive penthouse.
The deliberate way he moved back toward her almost rattled her poise completely. It must have shown on her face because he stopped in front of her, captured her hand and lavished another of those erotic, tongue-infused kisses to her palm. “Trust me.”
