‘We should have this deal stitched up in the next week. It’s been good doing business with you, Caule,’ Jake said.
‘Yes, yes, of course…marvellous to do business with you, Mr Marriott. Absolutely marvellous. Goodbye.’
‘What a prick,’ Jake muttered as he clipped the phone back on his belt.
Ashleigh stood stiff with rage, her eyes flashing with sparks of fury.
‘You arrogant jerk!’ She pushed at his chest with one hand. ‘How dare you take over my life? “I have other plans for her” indeed! Who the hell do you think you are?’
Jake captured her hand and held it against the wall of his chest.
‘I am your son’s father and as soon as I can arrange it I will be your husband.’
‘You can’t cancel my job just like that!’
‘I just did.’
‘Exactly what plans have you in store for me?’ she sniped. ‘Licking your boots every day?’
He gave her mouth a sizzling glance before raising his eyes back to her flashing ones.
‘No. I was thinking of you going a little higher than that.’
She was incensed by his blatant sexual invitation, her cheeks flaming as a flood of intimate memories charged through her brain.
‘I don’t want to marry you! I hate you!’
His hand tightened as she tried to remove herself from his hold.
‘You don’t hate me, Ashleigh,’ he said, tugging her even closer, the hard wall of his body shocking her into silence. ‘You want me. That’s why you’ve been constructing all those silly little barriers of no touching and no looking and so on because you are so seriously tempted to fall into bed with me.You know you are. It’s always been the same between us. From the very first day we met in London, the chemistry between us took over. Neither of us had any chance of holding it back.’
‘Your ego is morbidly obese!’ she threw at him. ‘I have no desire to fall into bed with you.’
‘Do you think if you say that enough times you will eventually convince yourself?’ he asked. ‘Don’t be a fool, Ashleigh. I can feel your desire for me right here and now; it’s like a pulse in your blood, the same pulse that is beating in mine.’ He pressed the flat of her palm over his heart. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
Ashleigh’s eyes widened as his drumming heartbeat kicked against her palm, her mouth going dry as his coalblack eyes glinted down at her with undisguised desire.
She could feel his strong thighs against hers, her soft stomach flattened by the flat hard plane of his, the heat and throb of his growing arousal reaching towards her tantalisingly, temptingly and irresistibly.
Her eyes flickered to his mouth and her breath tripped in her throat as his head came down. She felt the brush of his breath over her mouth just before he touched down, the gentle pressure of his mouth on hers so unlike the hectic passiondriven kisses of the past. For some reason it made it all the more difficult for her to move away. It felt so wonderful to have her lips tingle and buzz with sensation as his caressed hers in a series of barely there kisses.
She felt the intimate coiling of their mingled breaths inside her mouth as he deepened the kiss, the sexy rasp of his tongue sliding along hers, rendering her legs useless.
Her tongue retreated and then flickered tentatively against his, a hot spurt of arrant desire shooting upwards from between her thighs, making her stomach instantly hollow out. She felt the smooth silk of desire anointing her inside as his hardened erection burned into her belly with insistent pressure. Her body remembered how he filled her so completely, privately preparing itself for the intimate onslaught of his passiondriven body surging into her with relentless clawing need.
Her thoughts and memories were in the end betraying her. she had been so determined to push him away. She had wanted to clutch at whatever rag of pride she could to cover herself but it was hopeless. He was right; the chemistry they felt was far too strong to ignore. The air almost crackled with it every time they were in the same room, let alone in each other’s arms as they were now.
Jake scooped her up just as she thought her legs were going to fail, and carried her through to his childhood bedroom, coming down hard on the mattress with her, his weight on her a heavy but delicious burden.
He fed off her mouth like a man who had been starved for too long, his lips greedy, ravenous and relentless. Ashleigh kissed him back with the same grasping desperate hunger, her lips swelling beneath the pressure of his, her hands already tearing at his clothes. She tugged his T-shirt out of his jeans and he shrugged himself out of it and sent it hurling across the room, drawing in a ragged gasp as she went for the waistband of his jeans.