His mind, his eyes, every orifice, every fiber, was filled with the scent and the feel of her. He didn't even realize he was moving, until they bumped into a wall. God, he was melting, dangerously aroused and piteously desperate for her body. His hand slid from her cheek, fluttered to her collar-
bone and drifted down over her breast, cupping it in his palm to feel the succulent weight of it. His mouth, hungry for the taste of her, followed his hand, dipping to her neckline, touching the swell of her breast. Robin's hands splayed against the wall behind her, and she rose on her tiptoes, lifting her breast to him, whimpering softly when his lips closed around her nipple through the sheer fabric of her blouse. Aware that he was devouring her like a madman, without care to her expensive clothing or anything but the need to feel her, touch her, be in her, he could not keep his hands from roaming her body, could not stop his mouth from suckling her.
“Where?” she whispered hoarsely. “Where is your bed?”
With a groan, Jake swept her up, carried her through the darkened door beside them, and deposited her at the foot of his bed. She smiled in that wicked way of hers, reached up to wrap him in an embrace as she kissed his mouth, his eyes, his cheek.
And then she pushed him down on the bed. Hard. Then crawled over him, straddling him, holding herself victorious above him. “You are making me crazy,” she said hoarsely, as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse. With the speed of a snail, she pulled the flimsy blouse open, revealing a dark red, lacy bra that barely covered her breasts. She tossed the blouse aside, reached for his hand, and pressed it against her breast.
Something primal and deep kicked Jake hard in the balls; blood was surging through him like a raging river, ripping through his veins. He had never desired anyone or anything so completely in his life. The need to fill her was so overpowering that he couldn't stop now even if he tried. With a surge of strength, he toppled her over, moved her onto her back in one movement, then covered her with his body, pinning her hands above her head.
Robin laughed.
“You never learn, do you?” he asked, kissing her.
“No. You'll have to show me what you want.”
He would show her, all right; he pressed his mouth against hers, thrust his tongue inside, sending them both into
the dark of his oblivion. Somehow, he managed to free her breasts of the bra she wore. The touch of his fingers across her taut nipple undid him; he gripped her wrists tighter above her head. Her chest was heaving; she looked up at him, that wicked glint in her eye, and he laughed, deep in his throat, while his eyes feasted on her body, his mind awed by how the very shape of her formed his desire. “Be still,” he murmured.
“Touch me,” she whimpered breathlessly.
Turned on like a bolt of lightning, Jake growled appreciatively. Still holding her hands above her head, he unbuttoned her pants, slowly unzipped them, and slipped his hand inside. She wasn't wearing any panties. Ah hell, he had died and gone to heaven. He slipped a finger into the space between her pants and her crotch, just barely brushing the wild curl there, and Robin squirmed. He then slipped his finger between the wet folds of her sex.
“Oh God,” she moaned, tossing her head back, bearing her long neck to him. Jake let go of her hands, kissed her bare belly, and moved lower, catching her pants in his teeth and, with help from his hands, pulling them from her hips, his mouth brushing the spring of curls, inhaling her feral scent.
She was writhing now, kicking off her pants and opening her legs wider, giving him access. When his tongue slipped between her damp lips, her hips bucked and she made a guttural sound of pleasure that sent the blood pounding through Jake, engorging his heart and his penis. But he held on, and with painstaking consideration, he began to explore her with his tongue, laving every crevice, flicking airily across the core of her desire, then deep into the recesses of her body.
Robin's response was explosive; she was moving against him, gasping for breath, the little cries of pleasure coming quicker and quicker in anticipation of release. He stroked her, sucked her, nibbled as if she were a delicacy until she almost came, then backed away, tried another delectable portion of her, and would have been happy to continue for hours, he thought, until Robin came with such force and
unapologetic pleasure that he almost came with her.
She raked her fingers through his thick hair before jerking him up and smothering him with a profoundly deep kiss. Jake groaned, felt himself very close to losing it. She was panting now, tugging at his belt, frantically pulling the tail of his shirt from his trousers. Jake stroked her breasts with his hands as she worked, content to shape the hardened nubs between his fingers and his mouth while she clawed his shirt from him.
“Jake,” she whispered anxiously when she at last got his shirt from his back. “Your pants,” she hissed. And in a gymnastic move worthy of Olympic consideration, unzipped them and shoved them down his hips, leaving only a pair of boxer briefs between her and the Biggest Erection Ever. Robin attacked the boxers and was hardly gentle about it, and gasped with pleasure as he sprang free. “Oh,” she exclaimed in a rare moment of calm, admiring his body, “you're beautiful.”
Jake lowered himself to her. “Not as beautiful as you,” he said sincerely.
With a sort of guttural groan, Robin buried her face in his neck; her hands swept down his belly, swirled around his throbbing erection, and cupped his testicles.
The moan he heard was his; he realized that he was straining to maintain control, that he was dangerously, deliriously close to spilling himself all over her. He brushed against her damp heat, a slow, back-and-forth movement that was so tantalizing he was actually torturing himself while her hands and mouth sought every other inch of him. When he couldn't stand his own teasing another moment, he slipped into her.
Shit, she was so hot, so wet, so tight. Her body opened for him, wrapped firmly around him, and hell, she was beginning to move in all the right ways, stroking him, squeezing him, and threatening to send him to the moon. “You're gonna make me lose it, baby,” he groaned.
Robin's dark brows dipped into a vee. “I can't wait.”
Neither could Jake. He lowered his head to kiss her, devouring her lips and tongue, and before he lost the last little
bit of reason he had left, he began to move, withdrawing, sliding in again, picking up the rhythm with each new stroke. His hips circled, stroking her a little differently each time. They were both panting now; he was struggling to hold back, struggling to reach for the biggest and brightest orgasm of his life.
Then Robin began to move, circling to meet each thrust, tightening around him each time he withdrew. Jake clenched his teeth—between the swell of her breast rubbing against his chest, the pout of her lips, and the way her body coiled around him and drew him in, he had no direction or thought in mind but to reach home, to reach the very core of her.
His body thrust deeper, faster, and harder into her, angling her legs in a way that he could reach her, pressing his body against her, slipping in and out so fast and hard that Robin had given up trying to keep pace with him. She had buried her face in his shoulder, moaning her pleasure, her fingernails sinking into his back. And when he thought he could not take another moment of it, he felt her body contract tightly around him, felt her shudder violently, felt the bite on his shoulder as she tried to muffle the cry of her orgasm.
He lost it.
Completely, totally, his life spilling in quick, burning spurts at the end of savage thrusts, until he was numb with exhaustion and contentment.
He slowly lowered himself to her, kissing the arch of her neck and burying his face in her hair as she tried to regain her breath. When he was convinced his breathing would return to normal and he would not expire, he rolled to his side, gathering her in his arms.
Neither of them spoke.
Jake watched her; she lay with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted, her hair a mass of riotous curl, her breasts lifting with each saturated breath. Robin Lear made love like a woman who had been shipwrecked for a thousand years.
And he had never been so completely, so wholly satisfied.
In the dark, she reached for his hand, clung to it tightly as she tried to regain her breath. And when she had caught it enough to talk, she opened her eyes, smiled up at him, and said, “Let's go again!”
That might have been the best sex she ever had, but nonetheless, Robin tiptoed out after Jake had fallen asleep, then worried that she had really screwed things up. She hoped he wouldn't think it was one of those wham-bam-t hank -you-Sam deals, because it certainly wasn't that. It was more a generalized fear of what she had gotten herself into, because just thinking about what had happened between them made her all warm and mushy inside and sent a delicious little shiver up her spine.
This would not do—she wasn't about to embark on some protracted fling with her contractor. Surely he understood they were pals. Sort of. Okay, so they'd hung out a little bit, so what? They were in close quarters—it was natural. But surely he knew, like she knew, that everything would return to normal when the job was done.
But when Jake arrived at work, he was carrying a bouquet of lilac and bridal veil flowers. “I've got a couple of bushes growing around my house,” he said, sort of apologetically.
Uh-oh. The man had gotten up, discovered she had left,
and still had gone outside with a knife to cut her fresh flowers. In the rain. Damn. Yep, they were just about the most beautiful flowers she had ever seen. And Jake… well, Jake just made her sigh. Which was why this whole thing had all the markings of a complete disaster.
In fact, Robin was so preoccupied with those thoughts as she arranged the flowers in an old cut-glass vase that she was oblivious to the crews stomping about, or Zaney singing the new song he had penned (it was sooo bad), or the rain, or the phone, or the herd of pink flamingos, which, for some inexplicable reason, had been moved to her kitchen in her absence.
She put the arrangement smack-dab in the center of her dining room table, then repositioned her computer so she could surreptitiously see Jake through the flowers as he moved in and out of the entry. Then she proceeded to watch him instead of working on the figures she had picked up from Minot like she had promised Evan she would do.
And that is precisely what she was doing when Lucy arrived an hour later, sporting two cups of coffee and a thick file. “Where'd the flowers come from?” she asked as she dumped the file onto the dining table.
“An admirer,” Robin said coyly.
“Ah, come on!” Lucy whined. “Who from?”
Robin shook her head, t hank ful for once that the doorbell rang.
“Come on, who, who?” Lucy begged as Robin moved to answer the door.
“Forget it. I'm not saying,” Robin said as she picked her way through the scaffolding. She winked at Jake as she went by, opened the door, but could not see the delivery guy behind the huge spray of yellow baby roses in a crystal vase. “Robin Lear?”
“For me?” she asked with delight. Jesus, she was going to have to write Time magazine and insist he be named Man of the Year.
“Two bouquets?” Lucy said from the dining room. Taking the huge bouquet, Robin t hank ed the deliveryman, shut the door, and stepped around the scaffolding to where Jake
was standing. “I should be sending you flowers,” she whispered low as she carefully stepped by him.
But Jake's smile was not nearly as cheerful. In fact, it looked more like a frown. And Robin suddenly had the rotten feeling that perhaps Jake had not sent her another bouquet of flowers, which left only one valid possibility as to who did send them. Damn it all to hell! Robin marched into the dining room, put down the flowers, and reached for the card. You did a great job yesterday. Keep up the good work! Evan.
Butthead!
“Who are they from?” Lucy asked.
“No one,” Robin said, barely able to contain her exasperation. She picked up the flowers and strode to the kitchen, opened up the trash, and tossed the flowers inside.
“God, what are you doing?” Lucy cried, watching her.
That would teach him, the asshole. Robin turned, marched back into the dining room and glared at Lucy. “Men can be so stupid sometimes!”
Her buoyant, day-after-great-sex mood effectively doused, she hunkered down over her computer and began to review the figures they had gotten from Peerless Packing Supply. Robin did not look at Jake—she couldn't look at Jake. Embarrassed, humiliated, and altogether put out with Evan's high-handed ways, she blocked all men out and delved into the numbers before her. Meanwhile, Lucy went through some paperwork, snorting at Zaney's many verbalized observations about life.
And frankly, no one could have been more amazed than Robin when, in forcing herself to be productive, she began to see a pattern emerging in the numbers. She was so sure about what she saw that she placed a call to LTI's financial manager, who, based on what she told him, helped confirm her suspicions. Peerless Packing Supply was losing money. No wonder Lou Harvey was so anxious to sell.
Feeling pretty good about her analysis—or rather, her ability to do the analysis, something she had secretly feared given her status in the company as Senior Window Dresser,
her better mood was restored by the time Mia showed up.
“Okay, I'm outta here,” Lucy said when she heard Mia's Yoo-hoo from the kitchen. Robin could hardly blame her— Mia treated Lucy like she was inconsequential, but then again, Mia treated everyone as if they were inconsequential, even Robin. Lucy believed Mia thought she was somehow better than a Mexican secretary, but Robin knew that Mia disliked Lucy because she was exotic and very attractive. If there was one thing Mia could not abide, it was competition.
She did not, and never had, considered Robin competition. And to this day, Robin didn't quite know how to take that.
Mia was wearing a pristine white linen dress with black Manolo Blahnik sandals that were totally inappropriate for the rainy spring weather. Oblivious to the workmen, and moreover, their ogling of her, she came in, flopped down in a dining chair as Lucy gathered her things, and propped her chin on her fist. “I hate men,” she announced.