Sleepless in Manhattan (From Manhattan with Love 1)

Excitement exploded in a starburst, shocking her with its intensity. It was like suddenly discovering a whole new part of herself. A part of her more alive than any other.

The jacket slithered from her fingers to the floor.

She rose on her toes to bring herself closer to him and in doing so felt the effect she was having on him, felt the hard thickness of him through the fabric of her dress.

Shoots of delicious pleasure spread through her, the anticipation and promise of still more to come almost unbearably exciting. She held herself still, waiting on the edge of something, and then his hands were there, on the thin, flimsy fabric of her dress, finding access points, sliding the roughness of his thumb over the straining peak of her nipple until her vision blurred. Logic told her there had to be a ceiling to the excitement, but if there was she had yet to reach it.

He urged her back until she was sandwiched between the hard, unyielding glass of the elevator and the hard, unyielding power of his body. He murmured something against her ear, a deliciously explicit suggestion of what he wanted to do to her and exactly how he intended to do it, and she closed her hand over his shoulder, digging her fingers into the pumped-up swell of male muscle. She might have taken a moment to savor the feel of those muscles, but then he was kissing her again and she’d wanted him to kiss her for so long she wasn’t going to waste a single second of it. Then she felt him jerk her dress up to her waist and felt the warm slide of his palm on her bare thigh.

So close, so close...

His tongue was in her mouth, his kiss hot, searching and so insanely skilled she felt sorry for all the women in the world who had never been kissed by Jake. She felt that kiss shimmer through her body, connecting to someplace deep inside her. And she kissed him back, consumed by desire, her fingers locked in the silky spikes of his hair, dragging his head to hers, terrified in case he changed his mind, in case he stopped. She’d dreamed about this so many times and it had been frustrating because she’d never been able to totally imagine what it would be like. There was an elusive quality to Jake, a hardness, a hint of sexual experience that she knew would make being with him different from her few other encounters. And it was different. She inhaled him and he inhaled her, his mouth devouring hers as if she were the last thing he was ever going to taste before his life ended. The kiss was tinged with hints of desperation, colored by their personal history, made intimate by their knowledge of each other. It was the most intense, shockingly personal connection of her life. She’d imagined his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, so many times, but not even the most erotic of her daydreams had ever come close to the reality.

She never wanted it to end.

And it showed no signs of ending. He kissed her as if he couldn’t stop himself. His palm held her breast, and then slid down and curved over her thigh and he lifted her leg until she had no choice but to wrap it around his back. Her shoe fell to the floor with a soft clatter. Still he kissed her, but now his hand slid lower, between her parted thighs, to the access he himself had created. She felt the brush of his hand against her bare thigh, the touch of his fingers against sensitive, quivering flesh.

Her body was already close to exploding.

Somewhere in the distance there was a metallic, grinding noise and then the sound of voices came from somewhere above her head. Jake pulled away from her with a rough sound and straightened her clothes in a single movement.

The fact that he could move at all proved he was more together than she was.

Paige stood, disorientated, trying to regain her balance, and then heard the voices again, closer this time.

“Are you all right?”

No she wasn’t all right.

Except—

She frowned as she realized what she was feeling was no longer panic.

“Yeah, we’re good.” Jake’s voice was as raw as his kisses had been seconds earlier. His gaze was fixed on hers and his hand, that same hand that had almost driven her wild, smoothed her hair gently. “How’s it looking up there? Any chance of getting us out of here?”

“Working on it right now.”

A moment ago Paige had been desperate to escape, but now she would happily have died right here in this small confined space, provided Jake was with her. Her lips tingled, her skin ached and throbbed. Everything felt unfinished, as if he’d taken her apart, unraveled her, but forgotten to put her back together. She felt like one of Frankie’s half-built models.

Jake bent to retrieve her shoe and his jacket and she stared at his profile, at those perfect angular lines and masculine bone structure, wondering what he was thinking, searching for signs that she wasn’t the only one feeling this way.

Whatever happened next, there was no more pretending that he didn’t feel anything for her.

There was a clatter and a scrap of metal against metal, and then two maintenance men were peering down at them.

“You guys were quick.” Jake slid his jacket back on and looked up at them. Calm. In control. “Did you bring a ladder?” His voice sounded steady. Normal. Nothing like the voice that had, only moments earlier, woven her insides into a mesh of insane desire as he’d made her aware of his intentions.

Somehow she slid her foot back into her shoe and Jake urged her toward the ladder. “Can you climb?” There was a rough edge to his tone and she felt the warmth of his hand on her back.

“Yes.” She climbed, conscious that he was beneath her, probably with a perfect view up her skirt where his hand had been only minutes earlier.

What happened after that blurred. She remembered laughing with the maintenance men, making some quip, assuring a few waiting guests that she was fine, and then somehow plucking up the courage to follow Jake into a different elevator, this time with a crowd of people, and travel down to the foyer.

Jake made polite conversation with someone eager for his opinion on a new piece of computer software.

He didn’t look at her.

She didn’t look at him.