Her eyes were fever-bright. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breathing was soft and uneven. Also, her breasts were full, with the nipples showing hard and aroused against the soft material of her blouse.
Every starchy inch of Elizabeth Brown was aware of him, and he found that knowledge delicious!
She bristled at the accusation. ‘I—’
‘You’re clenching your left hand again, Elizabeth,’ he warned softly.
She frowned at the observation, but instantly lessened the tightness of the grip she had on the steering wheel. ‘You—’
‘Admit it, Liza.’ He deliberately gave her that sexy smile as he used the name he knew she objected to so strongly. ‘When you look at me, you like what you see!’
Her jaw tightened disapprovingly, although the blush in her cheeks and the catching of her breath in her throat told a completely different story…‘I told you not to call me—’
‘I like calling you Liza.’ Rogan turned in his seat so that he could look at her fully. ‘With your eyes shining brightly, and that colour in your cheeks, you’re much more of a Liza than you are a stiff and unapproachable Elizabeth,’ he said appreciatively.
‘Stiff and—!’ She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’
He quirked dark brows. ‘Am I succeeding?’
‘Very much so!’
He grinned unrepentantly. ‘Enough to make sure that you definitely decide to high-tail it out of Sullivan House as soon as you can make the appropriate excuses?’
That blush in her cheeks deepened as she gasped softly. ‘How did you know…?’
‘That’s what you were thinking about doing a few minutes ago,’ Rogan finished dryly. ‘You’re pretty easy to read, Elizabeth.’ He gave an unconcerned shrug. Rogan hadn’t just learned to analyse computers over the last fifteen years; he had learned to read people too.
Although this woman was a little more complicated than most. No, make that a lot more complicated!
Why did a beautiful woman in her late twenties bury herself in academia? To such an extent that she even chose to occupy her vacation time buried in the wilds of Cornwall, cataloguing a private library? Did she ever let anyone past that spiky exterior? Rogan wondered. More to the point, had she ever let a man past that bristly exterior and into her body…?
Elizabeth wasn’t sure she liked Rogan finding her ‘easy to read’—especially considering some of the thoughts she had been having about him since first setting eyes on him the previous night!
Her mouth firmed. ‘I have no intention of “high-tailing it out of Sullivan House”, as you put it.’ Not any more, she didn’t. Not when he seemed to have so easily guessed that he would be the reason for her leaving! ‘Your father engaged me to catalogue his library, and if you still want me to continue, then I will fulfil that obligation.’
His mouth twisted. ‘Big on obligation, are you?’
Elizabeth stiffened at the taunt she heard in his tone. ‘I believe that once given a person’s word should be honoured, yes.’
Implying, Rogan would guess, that someone close to her—or someone she had allowed close to her?—had once let her down pretty badly.
He nodded. ‘Are you hoping to find even more valuable first editions?’
‘It’s possible, yes,’ she acknowledged cautiously.
Rogan chuckled softly. ‘You don’t have to be so cagey, Elizabeth, I’m not about to steal any of them and sell them off for a huge profit!’
‘It would hardly be stealing when the books appear to be yours now,’ she reasoned.
‘But you do think I’m going to sell them off for profit at the first opportunity, don’t you? Don’t bother to deny it, Elizabeth.’ His tone was grim now, as he saw the truth of his accusation in her face. ‘You’re obviously as big on making assumptions about people as you are on honouring your obligations!’ he accused, with obvious disgust.
Was she? Elizabeth wondered. Perhaps. Where this particular man was concerned, anyway. He seriously threatened her peace of mind…
‘I—What are you doing in here?’ Elizabeth came to a stop in the library doorway as she saw Rogan, sitting behind his father’s leather-topped mahogany desk, her laptop open in front of him.
He looked up to raise an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘As the new owner, don’t you think I have a perfect right to be in here?’
Well…of course he had a right to enter his father’s library. His library now. Elizabeth was just surprised, having come to the library with the intention of working again this afternoon, once she had been upstairs to freshen up after they’d returned from town, to find Rogan had beaten her to it.
She stood in front of the desk to arch her own auburn brows. ‘Find anything of interest on my laptop?’
Rogan sat back. ‘Your laptop?’ he murmured slowly. ‘I thought it was my father’s.’
Elizabeth smiled at having at last been able to disconcert a man who was so self-confident he made her want to scream. ‘I prefer to work with equipment I’m familiar with.’
There it was again, Rogan noted with a frown. Elizabeth Brown liked her life ordered and predictable, even down to the laptop she used for whatever work she happened to be doing.
Rogan grimaced. ‘I had some e-mails I wanted to send.’ Damn it, if he had known this was Elizabeth’s laptop he might have had a look through some of her other files. Just in the interest of gaining further insight into what made her tick, of course. It was something Rogan was always careful to do with the people that were around him on a day-to-day basis.
He already knew what Elizabeth did; it was the rest of the information on her that was still a little sketchy. Where she came from. Who her family was. Who her friends were.
For different reasons, most probably, Elizabeth kept her personal life as close to her chest as Rogan did his own…
‘Sorry about that.’ He shut the laptop down before standing up, his eyes narrowing at the instinctive way Elizabeth instantly took a step away from him.
What the hell?
Was this woman scared of him?
No, that wasn’t fear Rogan could see in her eyes, but something else. Something much more interesting…
Elizabeth took another step back as Rogan moved out from behind the desk, once again finding herself overwhelmed by the sheer animal magnetism of the man. He really was like that predator she had been reading about last night, his movements slow and stealthy, soundless on the carpeted floor. The muscles moved smoothly in his legs and beneath his tight-fitting T-shirt as he came ever closer, the very air about him seeming to part in deference to all that rippling power.
Her eyes were wide with apprehension. ‘I—What are you doing?’
He raised dark brows over those inky eyes. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ Even his voice sounded lower, husky, purposeful…
Elizabeth swallowed hard. ‘I came in here to work—’
‘Later.’
‘Later?’ she repeated, with a nervous sweep of her tongue across suddenly dry lips.
The blackness of Rogan’s gaze locked on to that nervous movement. ‘Later,’ he confirmed gruffly.
He was standing so close to her now that Elizabeth could feel the heat of his body enveloping her, and that heat and the subtle scent of him were acting like a drug on her already heightened senses.
The same senses that had been on alert from the moment she first set eyes on this man.
Sight. Smell. Touch…
Elizabeth gave a shake of her head in an effort to clear her mind of the foggy haze that seemed to be encompassing her. ‘I don’t know what game you’re playing, Rogan—’
‘I never play games, Liza,’ he assured her softly.
He had called her by that hateful name again, but for the moment Elizabeth was too concerned by the threat he represented to her, to her equilibrium, to bother correcting him. ‘You’re playing one right now. And it isn’t funny,’ she reproved.
Rogan didn’t find this situation funny, either. In fact, he deeply regretted having started this, and was no longer sure who was challenging whom.
Elizabeth’s eyes were such a deep and drowning blue. Those sooty lashes a dark sweep against the creaminess of her cheeks. Her mouth, those full and pouting lips that had just felt the moist touch of her tongue, was tempting him to do the same. She smelled so damned good too: a mixture of some elusive floral scent and a warm and sexy femininity…
Rogan gave a low groan in his throat as he felt his body respond to her, his thighs stirring, hardening, pulsing.
Aching!
‘Rogan…?’
Even the way she spoke his name, so huskily, so warily, was arousing. Too much so for Rogan to be able to resist tasting her. Just one taste, he promised himself. One taste of her lips, with the feel of those slender curves pressed against his much harder ones, the crush of the softness of her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his, and he would let her go.
Elizabeth barely had time to raise her hands, with the intention of warding Rogan off, before his arms moved about her. He pulled her in tightly against the hardness of his body and his head lowered so that his mouth could claim hers.
Fiercely. Hungrily. Crushing, parting her lips beneath his as he deepened the kiss. His tongue surged past her lips and into the heated cavern of her mouth.