After Hours

“What’s wrong?” Rhys demanded, proving she hadn’t guarded her expression quite as well as she’d hoped. “Has something upset you?”

She cleared her face for a smile. “No, of course not. Just a stack of bills. No one ever enjoys receiving them.” Placing the bills on the small desk at one side of the room, she tossed the letter from her father into the wastebasket at its side, unopened. She wasn’t interested in anything he had to say. She noticed that Rhys looked at the wastebasket for a moment, but she was relieved when he didn’t comment. “Did you want to play another game?” he asked instead.

She tilted her head and looked at him. Sitting on the floor, his shirt haphazardly buttoned only halfway up his chest, his slacks stretched across his spread thighs, his gorgeous hair reflecting the overhead light, he looked too good to be real. It was hard to believe she could go up to this man and run her hands all over that body, if she so desired. A rather smug smile tilting her lips, she decided abruptly that she did so desire.

The smile blossoming into a full-fledged grin, she launched herself at him, taking him by surprise and causing him to tumble backward onto the worn rag rug. “I just thought of another game I’d rather play,” she informed him, shackling his wrists in her small hands at either side of his head.

His eyes lighting with startled pleasure, he smiled. “Be my guest,” he invited her.

“Oh, but you have to cooperate or it won’t be any fun,” she informed him.

“You’ll have to teach me the rules,” he challenged, lying very still beneath her.

Straddling him, his wrists still shackled within her hands, she lowered her head to nibble at the firm line of his jaw. “I can handle that.”

His eyes narrowed to sexy, dark slits. “I think you can handle just about anything, Boston.”

Some of her humor dimming, she wondered if she could possibly begin to handle Rhys. He seemed to have more confidence in her than she did. Shoving her doubts to the back of her mind, she concentrated on the man lying so temptingly beneath her. “I thought of a name for this new game,” she murmured before running the tip of her tongue around the nicely molded shell of his ear.

“What’s that?” His voice had gotten decidedly hoarse, she noted in satisfaction, wondering how long he’d be content to lie still and allow her to take control of the lovemaking. There was a heady sense of power in having the upper hand for once with the masterful Rhys Wakefield.

“I think I’ll call it ‘Drive the Man Insane.’” She squirmed sinuously against him, her breasts rubbing slowly against his chest.

“You’ve been doing that from the moment you walked into my office,” he grated, his hips shifting restlessly against the carpet.

She dragged her lips across his cheek to his mouth. There she nibbled, teased, kissed until his lips strained upward, silently inviting her to deepen the embraces. The very tip of her tongue traced his lips. He had a wonderful mouth, she thought, already losing herself in the heated oblivion of desire. Rhys’s hands quivered in hers. She sensed his rising impatience even as she became aware that he had grown very hard beneath her.

Being wanted so obviously by Rhys made her even more bold. Motioning for him to lie still, she sat up and began to unbutton his shirt, her eyes locked with his. She ran her hands lingeringly down his sleek chest, pausing to draw decreasing circles around his erect nipples, tracing his rib cage as it expanded and contracted with his increasingly ragged breathing. Leaning over again, she planted moist, openmouthed kisses down the center of his chest, scooting lower until her lips were pressed to the smooth skin of his stomach. And then she unfastened his jeans.

Taking a deep breath, she slipped a hand inside the opening and stroked him, loving the hot, solid, throbbing feel of him. He groaned softly, hips arching in an unconscious rhythm. “You’re killing me, Boston,” he managed roughly.

“I’ve only just begun, Rhys,” she whispered in sultry promise. And then she lowered her mouth to him.

Rhys stiffened as if electrified. He moaned his pleasure with the direction her “game” had taken. And he lasted only moments before abandoning his acquiescent role. Muttering her name, he rolled her to her back, looming over her as his mouth covered hers. His hands were already busy, stripping her out of her sweater and jeans.

Arching into his hands, Angie gave herself up to his lead. She’d enjoyed being in charge while it had lasted, she decided with one of her last coherent thoughts. She’d have to try it again sometime. Sometime very soon.

8

“SO ARE YOU GOING to marry the woman or what?”

Rhys held the receiver a few inches away and

stared at it, startled by the blunt question that had immediately followed his answering the phone. He brought it carefully back to his ear. “Graham?”

“Well, of course it’s Graham. Who the hell did you think it was? Answer my question.”

“I—uh—what woman?” Rhys asked inanely.

Graham’s snort of response was noisy and quite expressive. “What woman, he asks,” he grumbled. “I find a beautiful blonde in his office, nearly get my head taken off at the shoulders for daring to ask her to dinner and he wants to know what woman. The man’s elevator stops somewhere short of the penthouse.”

Rhys looked heavenward, the wry expression going unappreciated since he happened to be alone at the moment. “Graham, did you ruin the peace of my Sunday afternoon at home because you wanted to talk to me or to mutter insults about me?”

“I called to ask you a question—one you still haven’t answered, I might point out. Are you going to marry her? And if you ask who, I’m going to do something violent.”

“That won’t be necessary. I know who you’re talking about,” Rhys said with a sigh of resignation. “Angelique.”

“So…?”