automatic, as if he’d tugged a thread directly linked to her throbbing clit. And then she sobered, pressing her lips together.
‘Damn. I can’t. I have a charity gala.’ If she’d plunged into a bathtub of ice, she couldn’t have doused her excitement more effectively. Really, Harley? So desperate for sex?
She expected his disapproval; after all, she’d fallen at the first test of this new...arrangement. But he said, ‘Where?’
‘The Hammerstein Ballroom.’ Could she sound any more deflated? What had begun as a much-anticipated event on her social calendar now turned into a torturous exercise in self-denial. Because a promise lurked beneath Jack’s stare, a promise of more of the explosive chemistry between them. Getting blown to smithereens at Jack’s hands...there were worse ways to go.
‘What will you be wearing?’ His eyes caressed her from head to toe, the gleam of approval obvious. ‘Something a little more provocative, perhaps?’
Her temperature soared again, only this time the heat prickled, instead of burned. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t know her sensitivity to being judged by her looks.
She’d been thirteen the first time Hal had described her to a colleague as ‘the pretty one’. And every time he quoted his self-satisfied moniker, she recalled that first time he’d said it, the sting still jabbing like a thousand pins.
She pressed closer, playing Jack at his own seductive game. Her lips brushed his ear and he sucked in a breath. She grinned, enjoying the tendrils of power that snaked south to join the constant fizz of her blood in his presence.
‘You don’t like the way I dress?’ A whisper with a sting in the tail.
He leaned back, his hands settling on her hips. ‘On the contrary.’
She smiled, sickly sweet.
‘Good, because I dress for myself. I’m not a clothes horse.’ She rarely wore the more provocative things she designed. She favoured professional clothing over sexy. It was her way of owning her worth as more than her appearance.
He latched onto her stare, his own smouldering as he studied her.
‘I’ve touched a nerve?’
She dipped her gaze as heat rushed up her neck.
‘Hal struggles with having a daughter without a Harvard degree. He likes to justify my...limitations by labelling me the face of Jacob Holdings.’
Poor Harley, her grades are appalling, but at least she can fall back on her prettiness.
His throat bobbed on a swallow, jaw bunching.
‘You’re a beautiful woman. There’s no hiding it, no matter what you wear.’
She shrugged. Her father had often tried over the years to tempt her into working for Jacob Holdings by suggesting she front their advertising campaigns.
‘No. But I’m more than my looks, as you are more than yours.’ When she’d told Hal she had her own dreams of a degree in fashion design, starting her own label, his dismissal had been predictable, but no less devastating.
Jack tilted his head, in acknowledgement, something that looked like respect lingering in his eyes. His expression turned from playful to serious.
‘From what I see—’ he glanced around the workroom ‘—your career, your vision is very worthwhile.’
She shrugged, stepping back from the precipice of vulnerability. She’d been determined to go it alone away from Hal and his constant comparisons with her Harvard-educated siblings. But doubting her worth, a lifelong habit, was hard to break.
He stepped closer, not touching her, but dipping his head until his breath tickled her neck and his spicy scent engulfed her.
‘But know that whatever you wear tonight, I’m going to be stripping you bare down to that perfect pussy of yours and eye-fucking you all night.’ He straightened, eyes hot. ‘I hope that ruins your expensive lingerie.’
Harley gaped. Her underwear took a punishment, as he’d predicted, damn him.
Jack placed a perfectly chaste, almost dismissive peck on her cheek and, with a wink, disappeared down the stairs, all swagger.
Round one to Jack.
As she recovered her mind concocted a revenge plan. With a small smile, she made her way back to the store and selected her size of the rose-pink thong he’d fingered earlier and a matching strapless bra from the rack.
‘Belinda, add these to my account. Can you finish the window without me?’
Her store manager nodded and wrapped the lingerie in tissue embossed with the Give logo.
If Jack wanted to play, she could play.
HARLEY STIFLED A yawn and forced her attention back to the man holding her captive. The older gentleman, a business associate of her father’s who claimed he remembered her in pigtails and braces, had monopolised her company for thirty minutes with a monologue on the merits of doing business with Jacob Holdings.
People mingled around them, but the old guy showed no sign of releasing her, his ass-kissing completely wasted on Harley, although Ash was here somewhere carrying the Jacob banner.
Harley’s eyes darted regularly around the glittering Hammerstein Ballroom, from the ornate, hand-painted ceilings to the tables decorated with thousands of fairy lights. The only thing keeping her at the Women for Women Gala, now that the important fundraising and awareness-raising part of the evening was over, was the promised appearance of Jack.
Would he come? Was he already here? Every few minutes, shivers danced over her bare shoulders, as if he watched her, unseen. She stifled a shudder, one that covered her in goose bumps. Wishful thinking.
His note, written in the confident penmanship she remembered from the love letters he’d mailed to her from France during the long months between their joint family holidays, played over and over in her mind.
I’ll think of you naked every second until I see you again. Know that I’ll bring my A-game tonight. Better and better.
J
Her legs wobbled, the thought of anything better than when he’d fucked her so thoroughly on her hall table leaving her weak-kneed. Her eyes scanned the ballroom once more for his tall frame decked out in the expensive and immaculate tailoring she’d grown used to.
She slid her eyes back to her tedious conversation partner, cursing that her natural good manners prevented her from simply walking away to scour the upper balconies for Jack.
And then he was there. Only ten feet away.
Her breath caught in her lungs, and her eyes watered at the sight of him. Something visceral shifted inside her as she took in the air of manly sophistication he carried.
He too was engaged in what she assumed was small talk with the Chairperson of Women for Women. When his stare found hers across the room, holding, sparking electricity across the space that separated them, her pulse surged to a frantic rhythm. The heat blooming in her belly threatening to incinerate her on the spot.
He’d gone all out, his black tuxedo ridiculously flattering and the gleam in his bright blue eyes, as he sent her a sly sexy smile, outshining the glittering ambient lighting.
Harley looked away, praying her face didn’t show off the excitement bubbling inside her. She’d never get rid of pops here if he misinterpreted her enthusiasm.
She escaped moments later, the fizz of anticipation thrumming through her blood. Jack had disappeared from the spot she’d last seen him. She deflated, the room losing a little of its sparkle as her gaze searched nearby. She craned her neck over the sea of heads in the crowded ballroom.
‘Harls,