Ship of Dreams (Dreams Come True Series Book 2) (22 page)

Sliding her hands inside his jacket, she pressed them against that lean, hard chest, splayed them across his ribs, down his belly, taking pleasure in the muscles quivering beneath her touch.

Cupping her face, he withdrew, his eyes searching hers. She didn’t need a soul-reader, she needed a very hot and bothered Nathan. Maybe this would help.

“I’m wearing my La Perla. You remember, the red satin.”

He closed his eyes. “Sweet Jesus. The thong that barely covers your—”

“The very one,” she whispered huskily.

“Driver, could you step on it?”

Nathan didn’t even get
a glance at the apartment before Laura shoved him against the front door and began removing his bow tie. What the hell, he thought. He wasn’t in the mood for slow and easy, anyway. But he wasn’t in the mood to let her take the lead either.

Hands around her ribs he quickly shifted so that her back pressed against the door instead. Her blue eyes simmered with frustration at the sudden power shift. He wrapped his hands in that long lustrous mane of hers, tilting her head back, giving him easy access to her throat, where he nipped and licked his way to her tender earlobe. Her breathy moans and pants filled the dark apartment, the only light coming from the city skyline outside her windows.

He spun her around again, so she faced the door, and unzipped her dress in one fluid movement. Peeling back the Jezebel-red fabric, he pressed open-mouthed kisses down her spine, reveling in the silky feel of her skin beneath his tongue, the exotic fragrance she wore filling his senses.

God how he’d missed this. All the anger, frustration, and jealousy over her relationship with Jack dissipated.

Reaching around, he cupped her full breasts, their weight delicious as they filled his hands. She moaned his name, setting him ablaze, the conflagration coursing through his veins like a molten river.

He slipped the dress from her shoulders, let it fall to the floor, and released a deep, throaty groan at the sight before him. Laura, naked except for a red satin thong and those sex-me-up stilettos she had a penchant for.
Thank you, Jesus.

“Sugar, you look good enough to eat.”

“Then what’s stopping you?
”

Laura had waited long enough. She wanted Nathan and she wanted him now. She turned to face him and heard his sharp intake of breath, as his eyes roamed her body with the intensity of a laser, sending sparks shooting up her spine. Reaching out, she took hold of his waistband and tugged him toward her. Yanking his shirt out of his pants, she shoved her hands up it to his pecs, where she began a slow descent, scraping her nails across his skin. He hissed out a breath.

When she met resistance at his waistband, she made quick work of his fly and found the thing her body craved more than air at the moment. He was hard for her. So hard. As she cupped him, he released a low, throaty groan and grasped the back of her neck to pull her lips up to his and tangle his tongue with hers.

She walked him backward to the sofa, where she pushed him down. He landed with a soft
oomph.
Not bothering with the rest of his clothes, she straddled him, settling his erection between her legs and lowered herself over him.

“Look at me, Laura,” he ground out. “Look at me.”

She complied as she rode him, slowly at first, only picking up the pace when he gripped her hips and took control. She watched as his eyes glazed over, his expression intense, sensual, enthralled. Powerful in the knowledge that she did that to him, she rode him over the edge, shattering into a million pieces, as her name exploded from his lips.

What she’d intended to be a
purely physical joining, a momentary distraction, had turned out to be so much more. And it scared the hell out of her.
Dammit.

Her heart beat a staccato against his. His panting breath warm against her neck where he nuzzled her, pressing kisses against her skin. She shivered at the intimacy of the contact.

“God! I’ve missed that,” Nathan muttered against her neck.

“You have?” Laura drew back in surprise. She wasn’t the only one, then.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t.” He scooped her hair away from her face.

She snorted, then buried her face in his neck, nuzzling him. Hiding, really, so he couldn’t see what must be tattooed across her face:
I missed you.
“Since I all but attacked you, what do you think?”

He ran his hand down her hair, the gesture sweet and soothing. “Clearly this isn’t over between us.”

“What do you mean?”

He shifted so she lay next to him on the couch, spooning against him. He continued to stroke her hair, “I mean we aren’t done with each other yet,” he whispered in her ear.

“The night’s still young.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Something fluttered in her chest. Heartburn, maybe? “Are you saying you want us to see one another? After what happened on the ship?”

He drew in a breath. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“But we’re in a head-to-head battle for the same account. You called me a liar, you accused me of orchestrating the entire thing.”

He placed his hand over her mouth, cutting her off. “I know. I was angry. Once I had a clear head I knew how ridiculous the whole thing was.” He moved his hand from her mouth. “Having said that, don’t think I plan to back off my pursuit of Imperial.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, and I would hope you wouldn’t expect me to either.”

He sighed. “No. I wouldn’t expect that.”

Silence filled the room.

“I didn’t know who you were,” Laura said into the darkness. “I thought Greg was from Hawk Media.”

It was his turn to draw back in surprise. “Greg, the travel critic?”

“Is that what he was?”

Nathan laughed. “Yes, he writes for
The New York Times
. He cornered me one afternoon, I think you were in the spa, and asked me about my experience on the ship. Nice guy. Tough critic.”

“If you were so angry with me, why did you take out the purse snatcher?”

He squeezed her. “That took a year off my life. When I saw the guy with a knife, I tried to get to you, but I wasn’t fast enough.”

She shuddered against him.

He grazed his fingers along her ribs to the slightly raised scar. “And when I realized he’d cut you, well, I wanted to hunt him down and pound his face into mincemeat.”

“But you hated me.”

“No. I didn’t hate you. I was angry at you, but the fact is I would have done that for anyone.”

“Oh.” Laura was hard-pressed to explain the disappointment that settled in her chest at his response.

“Let alone you . . . someone I cared about.”

Laura twisted to face him. “You cared about me?”

He nodded. “Still do, obviously.”

She was silent for a few beats as she gazed into his eyes. “So what do we do now?”

“That all depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you want to see me again.”

“Yes. I do. But we have to set new rules.”

He huffed out a laugh. “I think it was the old rules that got us into trouble in the first place. If we’d shared more about our personal lives, we’d have found out sooner and in a more honest straightforward way that we were both going after the Imperial account. And maybe handled it as adults instead of like two kids fighting over the same toy.”

“Maybe. But Nathan, we’re working for competing agencies, we’re sleeping together, we have to be careful.”

“Okay. What are the rules?”

“Rule Number One: No discussing Imperial.”

“Goes without saying. Next.”

“Rule Number Two: We have to keep this”—she pointed between them—“our secret.”

He thought about the promise he’d made to Hawk. Guilt settled in his chest. “Agree. Rule Number Three: No Jack.”

“But, we’re just friends.”

“No Jack,” he repeated.

“Fine. Rule Number Four: When the pitch is over and the winning agency is announced, no hard feelings, and we’ll reassess our, um, relationship then.”

“And may the best man—”

“Or woman,” Laura interjected.

“Or woman, win.”

“Deal.” Laura stuck out her hand.

Nathan took her hand in his. “Deal.”

“That was frighteningly easy,” Laura pointed out.

“Yeah. Now we can have more make-up sex.”

They’d managed to make it to her bedroom for the next roun
d, and she’d managed to get him out of his clothes. As she lay against him, her legs entangled with his, his even breathing signaling sleep, she wondered at her desire to not only reignite their fling, but to have a fling with a man who would be competing against her for an account that could lead to the next step in her Life Plan.

Then she thought about how good it felt to curl up beside him, feel his warmth, touch his skin, smell his spicy, masculine scent. She sighed in contentment.

Contentment. A new word for her. A feeling so alien to her that she almost didn’t recognize it. But now that she had it, she could understand its appeal.

She’d always been striving for the next thing, always moving forward. Never really taking the time to enjoy the present, what she’d achieved thus far. Once she’d accomplished a goal, she looked ahead to the next one. And the one after that. Restless. Yeah, that was a familiar word.

Maybe it was time to savor the moment.

Nathan shifted, wrapping an arm around her in his sleep. Her limbs heavy, languorous, she drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Nathan walked around the apartment, thinking h
ow it suited Laura. Elegant, understated, and most of all, expensive. That pretty much summed it up. And the view! Spectacular!

But he was more interested in the personal side of Laura Armstrong. Wandering over to an ebony bookcase along the back wall of the living room, he picked up a photo of Laura with two other women. One with long golden brown hair smiling into the camera, a glass of champagne lifted as if in a toast, the other, a brunette, he thought. It was difficult to tell with her hair pulled back from her face. Brown glasses, which matched the rest of her brown wardrobe, framed intelligent eyes that stared into the camera with a look of disdain. 

He moved down the bookcase to another photo of Laura with the same two women. At least he thought it was the same two. The brunette in this photo was attractive, not quite beautiful, but with an interesting face and sparkling brown eyes. Her lips turned up softly at the corners. If it was the same woman, it was quite a transformation. Amazing what a smile, however slight, could do. The one with the golden brown hair wore a wedding gown and a dreamy expression. 

Returning the photo to the shelf, he picked up another one with Laura dressed in the Red-Carpet-worthy silver evening gown he’d come across on his Google search, a nice-looking guy standing next to her, his arm around her waist. Nathan felt an irrational stab of jealousy. A previous lover?

Next to that he saw the same guy wearing a morning coat pressing a kiss to the bride’s cheek. Ah, so he must be the lucky groom. Relieved, the sting of jealousy fled. 

Noticeably absent from the photos scattered around the living room were her family. He knew what her father looked like, and her younger brother, and that her mother was still living and married to her father, but none of the photos resembled these people.

Remembering her grandmother’s actions, his heart ached for her. 

He may not have had the best family. An anonymous father. An absentee mother. But he had photos of her, along with photos of his sister and his grandmother. They may have been a nontraditional family, but they’d been tight-knit just the same. 

How could her family not see what an amazing woman she was? Cherish that? Encourage that? He shook his head at their perplexing behavior.

Laura found him standing in front of her dining room window gazing o
ut at Central Park below. She could just eat him up. His hair rumpled, his tux shirt wrinkled where she’d shoved it up to get her hands on his torso. When he turned to her, the day’s growth of beard made her want to take his face in her hands and rub her cheek against it.

“Morning,” he said in a lazy drawl, as a slow grin spread across his face.

“Morning.” For some reason she felt awkward, like this was her first sleepover. She wrapped her skimpy robe around her. “I have coffee, but I’m not sure what I can offer you for breakfast.”

His lips lifted into a smile. “It’s okay. I’ve got to get going anyway. I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye.”

Yeah. With only two weeks until the pitch, she had work to do, too.

He approached her and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I know the next two weeks will be busy for both of us, so no pressure. Just let me know when you want to get together again.”

She nodded. “Sorry about the walk of shame,” she said with a smile.

“No shame in it for me. I spent the night with a beautiful, sexy woman. Where’s the shame in that?” Stepping into her, he pressed his lips to hers.

She leaned against him, her fingers curled in his already-wrinkled tux shirt. When he retreated, she followed him, wanting more.

Chuckling, he pressed another kiss to her mouth.

“I’ll see you later, sugar.”

Picking his jacket up from the sofa, he draped it over his arm, flashed her another grin, and left.

Chapter 19

The next week and a half passed in a blur of long days and steamy nights. When she and Nathan weren’t together, they were sexting one another or carrying on naughty phone conversations. The clandestine nature of their relationship raised the stakes and the excitement.

They avoided work-related conversations, but it became increasingly difficult for her. Something that surprised her. But if there was anyone who could understand her crazy, stressful, fun world, it was Nathan, and she longed to share the stories with him.

Instead, they’d begun to share a little about each other. One night, Nathan brought up her contentious relationship with her father. A topic she preferred not to discuss.

“Come on, sugar, help me understand what I saw on the golf course that day. You know what they say, getting it off your chest will make you feel better.”