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Oh, hell. Who was he kidding? He wouldn’t be able to stop at a nip. He’d feast on her until he’d had his fill. Nothing short of having her naked beneath him would do. Just the thought had need taking him by the throat.
Yeah, like the throat was where need had him.
Emma made him want in ways he couldn’t control. How many times today had he thought about manufacturing an excuse,anyexcuse, to head back to Reynolds, Clark & Morgan just to get a glimpse of her?
He’d lost track around a gazillion.
As he stepped onto her porch, filaments from the setting sun reflected off a sun catcher. Dozens of multi-colored gems sent light dancing in a thousand directions. A twisting “ball” of silver wire encased a yellow gem shaped like a ribbon. The piece looked homemade, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Emma had created it, the yellow ribbon to remember the brother she’d lost in combat.
“Mr. Whitlow?”
The sound of his name jolted him back to reality, and he found Emma studying him from her doorway, her eyebrows drawn together.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look, I don’t know, kinda lost.”
He hadn’t been lost, but he was now. A black leather skirt hugged her hips, a split rising mid-way up her right thigh. Her top fell from her shoulders, and the long sleeves tumbled downward in flowing layers, each wider than the last, and flared at the wrists. A simple pair of silver hoops decorated her ears, but she wore no necklace, which he liked. Her collarbone was all the decoration she needed.
“You look...” He shook his head to clear it. “Wow.” The word didn’t do her justice, but she’d short-circuited his brain again. Wow would just have to do until his higher brain functions began, well, functioning.
She hugged her arms around her middle and looked at the ground. “It’s nothing spectacular.”
“Emma, if you looked any more spectacular, my head would implode.”
“Don’t say things you don’t mean.” She tightened her arms around her and closed her eyes. “It’s rude.”
“It would only be rudeifI didn’t mean it.” He stepped so close that he couldn’t tell what was the flower’s scent and what was hers. “And I mean it, Emma.”
“No you don’t.”
She transformed before his eyes, from the confident woman who’d walked into his office to a frightened little bird cowering in front of a hawk. She was an enigma he wanted to solve. Why didn’t she believe he found her attractive? It was such a—
No.
No.
Thatcouldn’t be it.
Could it?
Was it somehow possible this gorgeous woman, who’d knocked him flat on his ass, didn’t know she was beautiful?
Cradling her face between his palms, he held her so that she couldn’t turn away, even as her eyes remained frustratingly shut. “You are the most stunning woman I’ve ever met, Emma Morgan. The first time I saw you, I felt like I’d been sucker-punched.”
Her eyelids flew open, and disbelief and unshed tears made her eyes huge. “Stop it,” she said with a watery voice. “Just—”
“You knocked the breath out of me. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to get my hands on you, and I still do.”
“That can’t possibly be true.”
“Oh, but it is true,Bomboncita. I wanted you then, and I want you even more now.”
She drew the lower of her cotton-candy lips between her teeth, so sweet, so sexy, so vulnerable. He wanted those lips—wantedher—and he was a man accustomed to getting what he wanted.
Emma couldn’t breathe.
Noah had called her “bomboncita,” which translated to “little candy” or “sweetheart.” The endearment probably meant nothing to him, just something he said to women, but it hit her right in the heart.
As did his insistence that he wanted her.
