O’Brien didn’t look fooled. His acute dark eyes slid over her in sardonic appreciation. She grew uncomfortably conscious of her breasts and legs, accentuated by her posture, and hoped the red passport didn’t blaze through her shirt.
‘What can I help you with, Sophy?’
She smiled, but her sexual sensors, to say nothing of the others, were all madly oscillating on panic alert. Somehow, though, the danger she was in gave her a reckless sort of courage. She hadn’t spent lonely years of her life watching old black-and-white movie reels into the small hours for nothing. She knew how Lana Turner would have played this scene.
‘Ah, so you’ve found out my name,’ she said throatily, crossing her legs.
His glinting gaze flicked to them. ‘I described you to the Security guy. He had no trouble recognising you.’
Something in his voice told her the conversation he’d had with the man had been a loaded one. She could just imagine the sort of things they’d said about her. If his passport hadn’t been burning a hole in her midriff, she might have been incensed. As it was, her major concern for the moment, apart from escaping unscathed, was how she was to return it to its pocket. It was one thing to be suspected of snooping, another to leave behind glaring evidence.
What if he accused her of stealing? He could have her up before the courts. Her boss would be forced to sack her. Perhaps, though, if she owned up and produced the passport at once…
She examined Connor’s face for signs of softening, but his eyebrows were heavy and forbidding, his mouth and jaw stern.
Lana would have known what to do. If ever there was a man who needed beguiling, here was the man. Her skirt had ridden up a little on her thigh, and she discreetly tugged it down.
Connor O’Brien didn’t miss the movement. He prowled closer and stood looking down at her with his harsh, uncompromising gaze. ‘Breaking and entering is a criminal offence.’ She noticed his glance flick to her mouth. ‘What were you hoping to steal?’
Her heart made a scared lurch at the ‘s’ word. Somehow, owning up lost its attractiveness as an option.
‘Steal? That’s ridiculous.’ She fluttered her lashes in denial. ‘It was hardly breaking and entering… You left your door wide-open, and I came in to talk to you. Simple as that.’
He looked unconvinced. ‘I should hand you over to that Security guy and make his day.’
‘Oh, why? For coming in for a chat?’
‘A chat.’ His lip curled in disbelief. ‘About what?’
She wished he wouldn’t use that sceptical tone. It was rich, this distrust he had of her, when he was the one who stole people’s confidential DNA reports.
‘The weather,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘What else?’
She slid off the desk so she could bring more height to the exchange, but standing before Connor only seemed to illustrate how slight and insubstantial five feet seven of guilty woman was in comparison with six feet three of hard, cynical man. Still, after the way he’d behaved, his outraged morality act was too much to swallow.
‘I felt a bit sorry about not being so friendly this morning.’ She stretched languidly, then sashayed towards the door, casting him a long Lana-esque glance over her shoulder. ‘But I see now that my first instincts about you were correct.’
She had just grasped the door knob when she felt a big powerful bulk stride up behind her. A lean hand closed firmly over hers.
‘No, you don’t, sweetheart. Not yet.’
She could feel his hot breath on her neck. As his raw masculine proximity washed over her, accelerating her pulse into a mad racing turmoil, it homed in on her that, while she might have been playing Lana Turner, he was no two-dimensional Hollywood hero on the silver screen. He was a big, dangerous, flesh-and-blood man, and he wasn’t confined to a script.
Heat emanated from his body. She turned to face him, her back against the door, barely able to keep her rapid breathing under control, panting like a marathon runner. Her blood throbbed with a tense excitement. Still, as sexy as he looked with his black brows bristling, his intelligent dark eyes scouring her face, she reminded herself that he was the man who’d stolen her letter. It was imperative that she keep her wits about her.
She made an attempt to ignore the major chemical reaction effervescing inside her, and stiffened her spine.
He stepped back a little to study her, frowning, his dark eyes burning with a curious intensity. ‘Empty your pockets.’
In spite of her bravado, she felt her cheeks flame with the insult. ‘I don’t have any.’
A dark gleam lit his eyes. ‘Ah. Well, then, I’ll have no choice but to search you.’
Her stomach lurched. The silkiness of his deep voice couldn’t disguise the determination in the set of his chiselled jaw.
It was a seminal moment. If she allowed him to make the attempt, she was lost. His stern, masculine mouth, not so far away from hers, relaxed its unforgiving lines, as though Connor was enjoying his mastery of the situation. His mastery of her.
Suspense coiled her insides.
On a rush of adrenaline, she leaned back against the door, her breasts rising and falling, and breathed huskily, ‘But…would you feel honourable about violating my person? A woman who’s never been kissed?’
His eyes flickered over her face and throat. She could sense his hesitation, his struggle against temptation. It gave her such an exhilarating feeling to see that she could tempt him from his intent. And he would succumb, she realised with a thrilled, almost incredulous certainty, her heart thundering.
Beneath his black lashes his pupils flared like a hungry wolf’s.
He curled his lean fingers under her jaw. ‘That can be fixed,’ he said. Then he brought his lips down on hers with deliberate, sensual purpose.
At that first firm touch, a fiery tingling sensation shot through her veins like an electric charge, and sent an immediate swell of warmth to her breasts.
A shudder roiled through Connor’s tall frame, as with a gruff little sexy sound he increased the sizzling pressure and sent her blood temperature soaring.
She tried to remember he was her adversary, and made a half-hearted attempt to cool her response, but he drew her in closer. Then, like the cunning devil he was, he softened the kiss to clever, gentle persuasion, until the fire on her lips ignited her bloodstream and aroused all her secret, intimate places with erotic yearning.
Though he was a big, powerful man, he held her tenderly, his lean, tanned hands on her waist. His touch was so seductive that, instead of her putting up a sound resistance, her own hands went sliding across his ribs. Even through his shirt, the heat of his hard, vibrant body under her palms was so thrilling, she couldn’t restrain herself from writhing with pleasure.
Just when she was ready to swoon at all the intoxicating sensations of hot, strong, tender man, he tempted her lips apart with his tongue.
The taste of him exploded in her senses like a sunburst. Faint tangs of coffee and toothpaste were overridden with another flavour, some arousing primitive essence that was surely unique to him. His devilish tongue slid through, teasing and stroking erotic tissues inside her mouth she hadn’t been aware existed. The sheer pleasure of his artful, gliding tongue lit her with a fever that infected every little corner of her being.
Her insides went into involuntary meltdown. Boneless, she had to clutch at him for support.
And he was so satisfying to the touch. He was all hard muscle, bone and sinew, as strong and unyielding as steel. Through his shirt, the solid reality of him under her clinging hands felt right, and her breasts strained against her bra for—something.
As her brain