of champagne and a romance novel read in a tub full of bubbles. The electric lights were doused, giving way to the swaying flames of every candle in her apartment. After donning her favorite white silk lounging gown and negligee, she feasted on her last box of Godiva chocolates to the soothing sounds of a New Age CD recording of falling water and gentle winds.
She still felt lousy.
She jumped at a sudden pounding on the door. Since her building was secure, unauthorized people could not enter unless cleared and admitted by the doorman. Perhaps her father had gotten her message and come over instead of calling as she’d asked. Jessica hurried over and opened the door.
The sight of Doug McGuire lifted her depression. Why fight fate? With a resigned smile, she threw caution to the wind.
“What kept you?” she asked.
Chapter 4
His gaze wandered over her silk-clad body. Approval—and something else—lit his eyes. Jessica went hot all over.
He stepped inside, crowding her. The slam of the door as he kicked it shut behind them barely registered, because her mind went from thought to sensation when his hand snaked around her waist, yanked her against him, and his lips took hers.
The scrape of his teeth along her lip matched the scrape of his belt along her belly, his clothes coarse against skin softened and scented from the bath, sensitive from his recent touch. His hands were hard—rough at her waist—and the calluses on his palms snagged the silk, pulling so the material slid against her hips. She shivered, despite the heat in the room.
Their tongues teased, met, mated. She yanked on his jacket, wanting to touch skin and not clothes. Why did he have on a jacket in the middle of summer anyway?
As she slid her hands down his arms, her wrist scraped his service revolver. He swallowed her gasp with another openmouthed kiss, and she forgot the gun as her body exploded with sensation. Pulling her clinging fingers from his arms, he placed them at her sides with a little shake that cautioned “don’t touch.” Her fingertips slid on silk—his mouth along the satin of her lips.
They no longer touched anywhere but lip to lip, tongue to tongue, and that only made her wild for more.
Then he pulled away. Moaning, she leaned toward him. “Hush, baby,” he muttered, his voice harsh and heavy against the flute and water medley that filled the room. “Hold on.”
She opened heavy eyes to find him reaching up to place the gun and badge on top of her bookcase. He hadn’t removed his hands to make her crazy, but only to take off his holster.
A man with a very big gun shouldn’t excite a thoroughly modern woman like herself. But she was. When he turned to her again, she pressed him back against the door and kissed him as her fingers made short work of tie and shirt—his the flowing negligee.
Candlelight flickered across his chest turning the dark whirls of hair to gold. A sigh shuddered through them both when she began to trace the defined muscles of his chest, her fingers splaying across his skin and tangling in the hair, familiarizing herself with his body in a way she’d only dreamed of before.
He pulled his mouth from hers and buried his face in her loose hair. Drawing a deep breath, he rubbed his cheek along the length. “You smell like flowers,” he whispered.
“Uh-huh,” she agreed. Her lips walked a path over his shadowed jaw and neck, then traced his collarbone with her tongue. “You taste like a man.”
He shuddered. “That’s it.” He picked her up suddenly and so high that she had no choice but to wrap her arms around his neck. He went still and closed his eyes, sucking in a breath between his teeth when her thighs slid along his belly and her legs hugged his waist. The muscles of his stomach hardened against the delicate, rarely touched flesh of her inner thighs.
Her gaze was drawn to his face. Eyes closed, jaw clenched, he looked softer somehow than she’d ever seen him. Must be the candlelight, she thought. Without meaning to she loosed one hand from behind his neck and cupped the sharp plane of his cheek.
She expected him to jerk away, or at least open those smoldering eyes. Instead he sighed, his face relaxed, and he rubbed his cheek against her palm, as he’d rubbed his face in her hair. Her heart did a funny little jig and she swallowed, hard.
Opening his eyes, he pulled her tighter against his hardened, muscled torso and moved forward. Under an exquisite shiver of anticipation she threw her head back, and his lips closed over the peak of one breast, taking silk and nipple within his fevered mouth. Shifting restlessly against him, she gasped when the hair on his stomach rasped across her throbbing center.
Then she was falling and although the sensation should have been frightening, instead it was the most exciting thing she’d ever experienced. He might be stronger than her, and bigger than her, and more dangerous than he looked, but he would never hurt her—and no one else would, either, while he was around.
Her back hit the couch, and he towered over her, staring down with dark and secretive eyes. Her breasts throbbed as his gaze wandered over them, then continued along her body. What must she look like with her hair tumbled all about her shoulders, laying there in the candlelight with her nightgown bunched at the small of her back, the skirt rucked to her waist, and the bodice wet and clinging against the nipple that his mouth had taken. She did the only thing her instincts allowed—she reached out for him.
His eyes met hers and slowly his fingers went to his belt. For a moment she considered helping him, hurrying him. But the way his gaze seared into hers, she knew he wanted her to watch. So she lowered her seeking hands and bunched them into fists to make them behave.
The belt gaped open, followed by the button at the top of his trousers. Mesmerized, she watched the shadows that danced upon the two fingers that grasped the zipper. Strained by the bulge beneath, the teeth resisted the movement, and slowed the zipper’s descent as he pulled it down until his erection was freed.
Her fingers clenched again wanting to reach inside those pants and press an itching palm to the heat and fullness. He would be smooth and hard and perfect. Fingernails dug into her palms.
Looping his thumbs in the waistband he drew his pants down, leaving his boxers in place.
Annoyance rumbled deep in her throat and his lips turned up. Kicking off his shoes and pants, he straightened and she started to rise, determined to rid him of those damned blue shorts, which kept her from seeing what she wanted to see—and touching what she wanted to touch.
“Uh-uh,” he warned. “Lay back, Jess.”
And because she knew that the longer she waited, the better this would be, she did, even though her body screamed to touch him, taste him, take him now.
He knelt at her side and his hand skimmed her thigh. A finger traced the surface, teasing, promising, then his thumb rubbed her center, and she arched into the sensation. The movement made her breasts strain against the revealing bodice of her nightgown, and all he needed to do was hook a free finger between them and tug. They sprang free, the slide of the silk along the sensitive peaks making her body hum onto a higher plane so that when his mouth touched them, flesh to flesh, for the first time she nearly climaxed right then.
She was on the edge—had been since that kiss in the weight room yesterday—and his control was beginning to annoy her. Reaching between them, she cupped him in her palm, sliding her finger up his length as he’d slid his thumb along hers. When he cursed and jerked away, she smiled. Not so in control after all.
He caught her smile and raised a brow, then with deliberate movements, put his hand on her nightgown where it pooled beneath her breasts. His fingers curled against her stomach and the shriek of rending cloth split the air as he tore it down the front.
“One hundred twenty dollars and ninety-nine cents,” she muttered.
“And worth every penny.” The flames of the candles seemed dim when compared to the heat that lit his eyes as his gaze wandered over her body.
She