until her breasts brushed against the fine-textured cloth of his suit. Beneath the fabric of her gown her nipples tingled and tightened almost painfully.
Her reaction to his nearness, to him, didn’t go unnoticed. His eyes gleamed like black fire, his pupils dilating, almost consuming the rich dark brown of his irises.
For an infinitesimal moment Holly allowed herself to dream, to believe he might want her. To believe he might return her love. In that moment, she was certain, her heart laid itself bare to his scrutiny, her own eyes the shimmering window to her feelings.
But then the smouldering anger flamed back into life. Love, ha! He didn’t love her. He pitied her. Otherwise why would she be here, pressed up against the hard wall of his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing as it matched her own. She couldn’t allow herself to be so vulnerable. Vulnerability was an indulgence she simply couldn’t afford. She pulled free of his hold, her body mourning the loss of his heat even as she did so.
“I must go. Thank you for the plant.” She wrenched the poinsettia back off his desk and swivelled on her heels to leave, silently castigating herself for a being a fool to want more than she had a right to.
Three weeks away from work, away from Connor Knight, would be a godsend right now. She wanted distance and she wanted it now. Yet a tiny chink in her rapidly assumed armour whispered, Liar. You want him.
“Holly—?” He caught her by her elbow and swung her around to face him.
Refusing to make eye contact, she stared blindly past his shoulder at the sparkling vista of the Auckland city lights, dazzling like a pirate’s treasure against the skyline and inky black harbour beyond. He could keep his wretched pity and he could keep his blasted plant along with it.
He brushed another errant tear from her cheek with the back of his hand, his touch igniting the banked embers of desire she was working so hard to contain.
Contain it be damned.
She’d probably regret this in the morning. Heck, probably, nothing. Regrets were for the weak. If life had taught her anything it was how to be strong. To grab what you wanted and hold on tight. And right now, more than anything, she wanted Connor Knight.
The poinsettia dropped, unheeded, to the soft carpeted floor. The crinkle of cellophane as it rolled to one side, spilling a little dark soil on the pristine grey wool surface, barely registering against the roaring sound in her ears.
Holly reached up and laced her fingers at the back of Connor’s neck and drew his head down to hers. She parted her lips, drawing in the taste of him before she pressed her mouth to his.
A jolt of shock shuddered through him. Shock and desire. Hot, hungry and hard. It had been years since he’d felt like this. Since he’d allowed himself to feel like this. Tonight Holly had struck at something deep within him. Something he’d held encased in ice, since desire and trust had been eviscerated from him by his ex-wife. Something that was now beginning to thaw.
Connor angled his head to taste her more deeply. While she’d led, he now took control. It was what he did best, and his body had been dormant for far too long. His tongue probed the moist recess of her willing mouth, stroking, tasting and wanting more. He slid his hands around to the small of her back, tilting her hips forward, drawing her closer towards his heat, his very need. A groan wrenched from deep in his throat at the contact—the warmth of her body igniting a fever in him, making him want with a savage hunger that ached through his entire frame.
He stroked one hand along the length of her exposed back, drawing her closer until he could feel the softness of her breasts pressing against his chest. And it wasn’t enough. Right now, he felt like it would never be enough.
His hand travelled further, upwards to the nape of her neck, where tiny strands of fine dark hair had fanned out and escaped the confines of her formal hairdo. Tiny strands that had enticed and goaded him all evening to feel their softness—a hint of the woman beneath the touch-me-not armour.
Her skin tightened and reacted to his touch, much as his had earlier this evening when she’d helped him transform into Santa Claus. But he felt anything but jolly and benevolent right now. He was like a dormant geyser, coerced into boiling, surging life. A geyser about to erupt.
His lips left her mouth. He had to taste her skin, to feel its texture against his lips, his tongue. He relished her sudden gasp as his tongue traced along the base of her hairline and he welcomed her weight as she sagged bodily against him.
Yet still, it wasn’t enough, he wanted more of her. To touch. To see. To explore.
“Stay right where you are,” he instructed, his voice nothing more than a husky growl.
Connor moved swiftly behind her and skimmed both hands under her dress to coax the fabric over her shoulders until with a ‘shoosh’ of lining it dropped forward. In the reflection of his privacy-tinted floor-length office window he watched, mesmerised as the falling fabric exposed the delicious line of her collarbone. The dim lighting of the office lent ethereal mystery and shadows to the creamy caramel of her skin.
“Lift your arms,” he instructed, and slid the fabric down further as she did so.
A groan of approval, husky and raw, escaped him as he exposed the full roundness of her breasts, her dark rose-tinted nipples tight and distended.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
Holly felt a moment’s panic as his warm breath sent flickers of dancing flame across the nape of her neck. She watched their reflection as his strong hands cupped her breasts, taking their weight, testing them. Then panic was overwhelmed by sensation as his thumbs stroked the aching peaks. Tension swamped her body, and her legs began to tremble as sensation arrowed to the core of her body, tighter and tighter until moist heat gathered then pooled in her panties.
She shivered and sucked in a breath as Connor nipped gently at the tender skin below her ear. The tiny pleasure-pain the pressure of his teeth left against her skin was foreign, yet deeply addictive at the same time.
She uttered a tightly strangled sob when his hands left her breasts. She wanted more with a desperation she’d never known. Not even when she’d been a child, wanting and needing a family to call her own. A family to belong to. She might not belong to Connor Knight forever, but she could belong to him for now—this moment—couldn’t she? For this one exquisite moment?
She sighed as his hands trailed gently down her back to where her dress had arrested at her waist. The movement of his wrist was slight, but sufficient to send her gown cascading in a pool of crimson to her feet, exposing her matching lace bikini briefs and the length of her bare legs.
In the window she watched, mesmerised, as his hands slid over the gentle curve of her hips and the tension at the apex of her thighs ratcheted up another notch.
“Do you like what you see?” His voice was a tantalizing whisper in the shell of her ear.
Holly trembled as his hands slid around to the front of her body. One hand stroked upwards to caress her breast, and the other down where it slid inside the sheer lace of her panties and dragged them away to expose the dark coils of hair that led to her private core.
“Y-esss,” the word hissed past her lips as he parted the folds of her flesh and gently stroked the centre of tension that wound her body hard against his like a bow. Unaccustomed sensation cascaded through her, building in undulating waves, but riding on the crest of those waves surfed a flicker of fear. She was losing control, surrendering absolutely to him.
“So do I.”
His words were almost her undoing, yet she clenched her body tight—holding on, holding back, trying to regain some measure of restraint.
Connor slid one finger inside the liquid heat that threatened to send him over the edge. He struggled to meet the challenge of maintaining an intellectual distance from the vision in the glass and the waves of heat and passion that emanated from the woman shaking in his arms—against his insistent body.
Their reflection