passionate response. It was a kiss outside the realm of her experience, beyond the constraints her mind persisted in placing on her emotions.
But there were no constraints now, not with Cade. He’d somehow slipped past her usual defenses and circumvented her control.
Her arms were around his neck and she was clinging to him, her anchor in the wild unfamiliar sea of sensuality. She gasped a shuddering breath when he boldly covered her breast with his hand. It was too much too fast, Kylie knew it. She’d spent years fending off unwanted intimacies, usually more bored than angered by such attempts.
But she was neither bored nor angry now. And the too-soon intimacy that Cade was taking was not unwanted. Far from it. Kylie felt the heat of his palm cupping her, felt his long fingers begin a slow massage, and she loved it. A little whimper escaped from her throat and she quivered with sensual pleasure.
Through the soft silk of her blouse, through the lace of her bra, he rubbed her nipple with his thumb. The tight bud was achingly sensitive, and she pressed against his hand, encouraging him, needing more. An erotic barrage of hot little sparks burned in the most secret, feminine part of her.
He was hard and virile and continued to press boldly against her, evoking a syrupy warmth that flowed through her. She felt soft and weak and plant. When his hands cupped her buttocks to lift her higher and harder against him, Kylie clung tighter to him, moist and swollen with desire.
The intensity of her response shocked and excited her. She’d never experienced such fiery sensuality before, she had begun to believe she was one of those strictly analytical types whose passion could only be expressed in her work. A cool, methodical woman whose thrills came from the mental gymnastics required in preparing or presenting a case in a court-room, not from a man’s kisses and caresses.
Cade Austin was proving her very wrong. He wasn’t simply a man, he was the man, and he was shattering all those myths she’d held about herself. In his arms, she’d become a passionate woman. The wild and wanton thoughts tumbling through her mind were as new and as stimulating as the feelings surging through her. And it seemed that Cade could read them all...
He scooped her up in his arms. Another first for her. She couldn’t remember ever being carried, though presumably it was her mode of transport before she’d learned to walk.
She was totally unprepared for and completely defenseless against the tantalizing sensation of being lifted in a man’s arms and held against his chest as he strode across the office.
Kylie—the stable, dependable defender of the less fortunate—suddenly felt seductive and intensely feminine, like a character out of one of those romance novels she never had the time or inclination to read. Cade was so big, so strong. He handled her with ease, laying her down on the charcoal gray leather sofa and then coming down on top of her.
Her head was spinning, her eyelids felt extraordinarily heavy. It took too much energy and effort to keep them open so she allowed them to close, plunging her into a dark world of pure sensation.
He kissed her again, and she wrapped her arms around him, savoring the hard warm weight of him. The taste of him, the feel of him was exactly what she wanted, what she needed. She slipped her hands under the jacket of his suit to knead the muscular length of his back. The cloth barrier of his shirt frustrated her; she wanted to feel his bare skin beneath her fingers. She tugged at the material tucked into the waistband of his trousers, trying to get it out of her way.
Before she could succeed, Cade pushed aside her jacket and opened her blouse. Kylie felt his fingers deftly unfasten the front clasp of her bra. She knew she was exposed to him but instead of trying to cover herself, she arched upward, yielding greater access to him.
The touch of his hands on her bare breasts unleased piercing shards of desire deeply within her, too pleasurable to even consider ending. He fondled her, stroking and caressing, making her desperate for more.
“Cade, please!” She hardly recognized that desperate, husky cry as her own voice.
“I know, sweetie, I know.” His voice was thick and raspy. “Me, too.”
Kylie reached up to touch the hard, shaven skin of his cheek. She was charmed by his inarticulate mutter. She needed no translation, she knew exactly what he was saying. That he was as wonderfully out of control as she was. That he wanted her in the same fierce way that she wanted him.
Then his mouth was on the soft skin of her breast, kissing a sensuous path to its taut center that was tingling with arousal. She held her breath as his lips closed over her nipple to gently suckle her, then moaned as flames of desire licked through her. She hadn’t known that a man’s mouth on her breasts could affect her like this. The sensation was so intense, it was exquisite pleasure bordering on acute need.
His fingers slipped beneath the layers of her panty hose and white cotton panties to caress the soft, bare flesh of her belly. She felt him trace her navel, and she reflexively sucked in her stomach to provide him easier access. He dipped his thumb into the small hollow and kindled a wildfire that streaked directly to the pulsing heart of her femininity.
Kylie squirmed, trying to clench her legs together to ease the consuming ache there. Cade moved his thigh higher between hers, pressing against her. It helped but not enough. She wanted, she needed...
“Yes?” Cade murmured.
Through the dizzying fog of sensuality, Kylie realized that he was seeking her permission to continue. She wondered why he’d bothered; he didn’t have to ask. Stopping him was the farthest thing from her mind. She wanted him with an urgency that bordered on desperation.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She had no sooner spoken the word when Donna’s voice boomed into the office once again, irrevocably shattering their private sensual cocoon. “Cade, Noah is here for your lunch meeting with the mayor.”
Cade muttered an oath. Kylie’s eyes flew open.
He was kneeling on one knee above her, in the process of sliding her panties and panty hose over her hips. Kylie gasped as the reality of the situation struck her with the force of an anvil. She was on the verge of having sex with a man she hardly knew!
“Kylie, I know this interruption isn’t what either of us wanted to happen, but—”
“Get away from me!” she ordered, her voice little more than a raspy whisper.
She was horrified, Sex on the sofa in Cade Austin’s office? What had she been thinking?
The answer, of course, was that she hadn’t been thinking at all.
“I completely forgot that Noah and I are to have lunch with the mayor today. That’s Noah Wyckoff, our senior vice president of operations.” Cade caressed her midriff, seemingly mesmerized by the contrast of his tanned fingers against the snowy whiteness of her skin.
“I don’t care who he is or who you’re having lunch with.” Kylie slapped his hands away and tried to sit up, a difficult feat with him hovering over her. “Let me go right now!”
Instead, he stunned her by picking her up again and carrying her toward a door at the far end of his office. His movements were so sudden, so unexpected that Kylie had no time to rally a protest. He’d opened the door and put her on her feet before she could utter a sound.
Kylie glanced around her. She was standing in a well-appointed bathroom—the executive washroom?—and Cade had reclosed the door, leaving her alone to repair her hair, makeup and clothing.
“Kylie, you’ll need this.” Cade rapped lightly on the door, then handed her purse to her.
Kylie snatched it with shaking fingers and swiftly slammed the door shut. He was so cool, so self-possessed! How had he recovered his wits and his composure so quickly, while she was still a shivering, quivering, unable-to-think-straight mess?
She forced herself to face the painful truth. Obviously, Cade hadn’t been as sensually enthralled as she’d been. It was a devastating conclusion, both insulting