Her breath was short and shallow from her recent run and his nearness, but she tried to speak with strong conviction when she said, “Mr. Scott, we’ve already played this scene once today, and I’m growing tired of it. I told you then and I’ll tell you now—”
“Be quiet.”
He delayed no further, but claimed her mouth with his. What little restraint he had placed on himself in his office had diminished throughout the day until now it was nonexistent. No longer tentative, no longer hesitant, no longer patient, he countenanced no resistance.
His lips opened over hers and it became impossible for her to remain passive. Every cell in her body surged to life. Her skin tingled with a strange, new excitement as his hands settled on her arms and crept upward in a sensuous ascent. He caressed her shoulders before moving his hands again to form a cradle for her face.
Keeping her head immobile with the merest pressure of his palms, his mouth coaxed hers to participate. “Don’t hold anything back, Hailey,” he said against her lips.
Knowing she was out of her league, but wanting desperately to learn the game, she parted her lips and accepted the heat of his mouth.
His tongue became a torch that inflamed her. It dipped into her mouth, darting at will until she closed her lips around it, turning the tables and making him the prisoner.
His groan echoed the deep, rumbling thunder that bounced off the h
illsides. He pulled his mouth free of hers only to explore the soft skin under her ear. Her hair spilled over his hands when his deft fingers released it from the combs that held it up.
“Hailey, Hailey,” he whispered urgently. “You still see yourself as that bespeckled, awkward, skinny teenager in braces, don’t you? Can’t you see what a desirable woman you are?”
“Tyler…Mr. Scott…”
“Tyler.”
“Tyler, please … I don’t want you to do this.”
“Yes you do.”
Yes, she did. His mouth nibbled kisses along her collarbone. She felt her will dissolving as surely as her muscles seemed to be, and she put her arms around his neck for support. She gave in to a whim that had plagued her since she first saw him, and she touched the dark hair that curled against his collar and the wings of silver at his temples.
She never quite remembered when he lowered the thin strap of her dress, but she never forgot the moment his fingers began stroking the fevered skin of her chest. “I knew you’d feel like this. Warm satin. If fantasies were real, I would have already loved you a hundred times, Hailey. Loved you in every way a man can love a woman, and invented new ways.”
The love words he whispered were outrageous when she applied them to herself. Nevertheless, they were transporting. What if they were only what every woman wanted to hear? What if he had learned them from long and frequent use? What if they would be forgotten and meaningless by tomorrow? For now they were a little bit crazy and very, very thrilling to hear. Were these words for her? For Hailey Ashton, known only to men as a pleasant companion, a competent co-worker, but never as a lover?
His lips deserted the hollow of her shoulder to come back to her mouth. Their mouths and noses nuzzled in sweet restraint until simultaneously they ceased to play and kissed each other hungrily.
His hands drew hers from around his neck and lowered them to his waist. Without modesty, she wrapped her arms around him, wanting to feel the muscles she knew now only as rippling curves under his shirt. Her fingers marveled at the hard compactness of his body. The rain that had moistened his face had released the scent of his cologne, and the fragrance, combined with his own essence, intoxicated her.
“Hailey?”
“Hm?”
He lifted one of her hands again. Turning his head, he pressed his lips into her soft palm. “Tyler,” she gasped softly when she felt the wet heat of his tongue against the tender flesh.
“Hailey, let’s touch each other.” She wasn’t thinking quickly enough to grasp his meaning before he slipped her hand between the buttons of his shirt and pressed it against his warm, hair-matted skin. The feel of him against her fingertips momentarily robbed her of consciousness. She didn’t realize he had unbuttoned the first button on her already low bodice, and was skimming his fingers across the fullness of her breasts, until it was too late to resist.
The protest she had formed in her mind changed character before it left her throat and became nothing more than sighing acquiescence by the time it escaped her lips. His hands responded. The straps already lying on her arms were lowered another degree and the fabric so tenuously protecting her fell away under his questing fingers.
She was enclosed in the warm security of his hands. She filled them generously, but not heavily. He appreciated the firm ripeness before allowing his thumbs to test the delicate tips for their response. He wasn’t disappointed. They pouted beneath his inquisitive touch.
“Oh, no.” Hailey, swamped by a mounting desire she had never known could exist outside the world of fantasy, slumped against him and buried her face between his shoulder and chest.
“Hailey, sweet, look at me.”
“No.” She rolled her head against him in denial, because if she looked at him, she’d be lost. And with that one gesture, she knew she was admitting defeat. He could—he had—seduced her.
“Look at me. Please.”
She raised her eyes, filled with tears of an emotion she couldn’t name, and looked at him.