“A
shower
.” He brought them to his feet suddenly, with that strength and agility he wielded so deceptively easily, his hands scooping under her butt to keep her thighs around his waist. “Of course you would want a shower. I bet you just love the hot water running over your body, don’t you?” He found the one door in her tiny apartment with no trouble, carrying her to the shower and reaching in to turn on the water. “After a long day? Before a long day? Both. Relaxing all your muscles.”
How did he know she needed her muscles relaxed? How could he
know
her? He never even paid any attention to her…and yet he knew when she was hungry, when she needed help, when her hands hurt, when all she wanted was to be the type of person who could break down and cry.
“Sweetheart, I promise you.” His mouth swept hot and urgent from her lips down over the lobe of her ear to bury in her throat, and she bowed her head back to him, helpless, helpless. She had never, in all her fantasies, been able to imagine exactly what that prickle of his jaw against her throat would actually feel like. It reduced her to nothing but sensation. It turned her into everything his. “By the time I’m done with you, you’re not going to feel a bone left in your body.” Pushing her T-shirt out of the way, he licked the jut of her collarbone, down to the hollow of her throat, where his tongue curled up like a cat to play.
She gave a starving little whimper. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t see. A tearing sound, and air flowed against her skin.
“I’ll buy you another,” he promised against her throat, following her collarbone to the other shoulder. Good God, he had just ripped her shirt in half.
Her brain tumbled in a tumult, between nonchalant, always-smiling surfer Patrick and –
this
, those torn panels being slid off her shoulders, his fast, clever hands at the catch of her bra.
Oh
, the release of her breasts after the long day, his hands following the line left by her bra on her skin from her spine around to cup her breasts. They disappeared completely under his palms.
“Sarah.” He pulled her up higher between the wall and him, lifting his head to study her breasts. “Sarah.” His gaze swept up to her face, his eyes so hot she flushed everywhere from them. “Sarabelle.” He thrust a hand under the shower, indifferent to how it soaked his sleeve, and adjusted the temperature. “Does that feel good on you,
bébé
?” He drew her arm off his body and held it under the water.
She shivered all over at the warm water on her skin.
“
Ah, oui
, you like the feel of that, don’t you?” he breathed hotly, his hands at her jeans, pushing them off her. “God, Sarah.” One callused hand rubbed over the narrow pink lace and cupped her, and she whimpered again and tried to climb up the wall. “I’ll
never
be able to work again.”
She wore bits of string and lace for panties because…it was the only sexy thing she could put on her body, around him. Because when she got dressed in the morning, she thought of him, she thought how much she hated him and how much she would hate for him to ever see some glimpse of a panty that was plain and boring. She thought of him, and she couldn’t stand for that secret garment not to be sexy.
His hand cupped her so surely. It felt like coming home. As if she could relax herself completely into his hold.
You can’t, Sarah, you can’t. You’ve fallen for that belief so many times before with him. You’ll regret this. You’ll really, really regret this.
But his hand rubbed with a kind of gentle authority against her sex through her panties, and she flowered to him with such a desperate hunger it was almost
comforting.
“Help me out just a little?” he murmured, catching one of her hands and bringing it to the buttons at his throat. “My hands are busy.”
She drew a quick breath. Somehow, that was suddenly enormous, the act of undoing his buttons. But he couldn’t possibly know how enormous it was to her
.
Could he? It would be like she was saying yes.
Asking
for him. Not just…overwhelmed.
He brushed her fingers back and forth over his top button, his other hand rubbing slow and lazy against her panties. His eyes glittered, and she had a sudden flashing conviction of incredible tension in him, a conviction that could not possibly be true. It was
Patrick
, after all.
Patrick, whom she always wanted to impress. All those times he had intervened to guide her, to make sure she got something exactly right. She knew how to undo a button. She knew how to do that much at least.
She slipped the button free.
A hard breath moved through his chest. But he wasn’t looking into her face. His lashes were lowered over his eyes, focused on his hand so thoroughly, reassuringly, maddeningly covering her sex.
She slipped the next button free.
“You
sweetheart
,” he breathed, and ripped his shirt and the T-shirt under it over his head in one gesture, dropping them on the floor.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
He was so
beautiful.
The broad shoulders and the lean waist, and all that relentlessly defined muscle from his shoulders until his jeans stopped the view, the definition of a man who worked too hard, who didn’t know how to stop moving. How many days had he winked at her as they finished up an insanely demanding lunch service that left Sarah dripping and exhausted – and then gone off to work out in the hotel gym?
He used all those beautiful muscles to pick her up and step with her under the shower, still wearing his jeans.
Oh. The hot water hitting the nape of her neck took all the tension out of it, and her head sank forward against his chest. Oh. That was…she had never felt anything so sweet in her life as that moment, the water running down her neck and back, while she was held against a warm, hard body.
“Sarah,” he whispered, one hand rising to rub the water over her nape. “Why don’t you let me show you a little trick, for just how easy this can be?”
Easy. That was hilariously cruel. This wasn’t easy for her. But of course she was easy for him. “You’ve always got a trick,” she said despairingly. Something to make it look
easy
, while she strove and strove and strove and failed.
“You’ll like this one,” he murmured. “It’s so, so easy, Sarah.” He angled her body until her shoulders were back against the wall of the shower but her pelvis was still held to his by one hard hand, the water spilling now over her breasts, her belly, sliding down to pool at their joined hips. “Close your eyes.”
The shower drove her lashes down, enforcing his command. His free hand blurred so lightly with the water that almost at first she didn’t realize he was following drops over her breasts, her nipples, down her belly. Almost she couldn’t tell…and yet she could. The graze of texture and warmth that was not water. The way his fingers left burning trails. The way she arched to it, while his hand slipped down into the tiny pool collecting between his jeans and her hips and found her wet panties.
“There you go,
chérie
,” he murmured, as his fingers played subtle and quiet against her panties, their wet cotton and lace texture oddly in keeping with that sand-roughened voice of his. “There you go. It’s as easy as this.”
She wasn’t a person who could relax like that, who could let go like that. And yet…something had shattered with that kiss of her foot. Maybe earlier than that, something had melted with that massage of her hands. She was so used to him being in authority over her. She was so used to him showing her the best way with a flash of casual gallantry. So used to letting her muscles relax so that he could guide her arm in the gesture she needed to make.
And the water – the warm water she always used to try to wind down. To console herself for a hard day.
And his hand. His hand rubbing the subtly raw feel of the wet cotton against her sex. Against the nub of her sex. Against something deeper in her that should be out of reach of touch, something that seemed to expand and expand until it was this great, golden bubble that had to burst because she could not bear it.
“You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?” Patrick said. “How many times I could make you come like this, just so I could watch you.”
Her lashes rose, and the water caught in them, stinging her eyes as she tried to stare at him through the drops. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look as if he was waiting to catch his next wave. His face was severe, stark, his concentration so intense it almost hurt, as if she might be wrenched away from him if he didn’t look at her hard enough. And as if that mattered.
“Close your eyes, Sarah.” His hand insisted, coaxing and thorough. She tried not to close them, even with the stinging of the shower, because she had never
seen
that expression on Patrick’s face before. But his thumb moved, and her lashes shivered downward as everything in her focused on that one spot, as the golden bubble grew and grew. “Trust me. You’ll want to have your eyes closed for this.”
“Patrick.” Her head arched back, and her hips lifted. Her voice was so breathy, so foreign. “You can’t–”
“That’s my least favorite word.” He walked his fingers up and down her sex, through the panties, as if he was taking them for a little stroll, only to have his thumb come back and circle three times, finding its spot again. Curling up. There to stay. “Especially in conjunction with you.”
She drew a shuddering breath as his thumb settled into the steadiest, sweetest rhythm, still gently, courteously veiled by the panties and that gossamer shield they provided against complete invasion.
“You know, Sarah,” Patrick mentioned softly, “I know how quiet you are. I know how you like to focus and not say a word. You can do that right now. You can be as quiet as you feel. You can…focus.”
“Patrick,” she whispered, her hips twisting against his hand. It felt so good. It felt much too good. The gold was unbearable. She could not stand it if this bubble did not burst.
Oh, but don’t let it burst – too soon…
“Yeess.” His thumb deepened the pressure the barest delicate fraction. “You can focus on that, if you want. My name.”
“Pa–” Her voice broke off as that gold bubble started to shimmer.
“Yes, I like it.” His hand rubbed the whole length of her sex while his thumb never stopped moving. “Go with that,
bébé
. Go with it.”
The bubble was coming apart.
“Go with it. Go…go…go, Sarah, go–”
She broke in a gentle, incredible cascade of pleasure, as if that bubble had been filled with golden liquid that washed all over her, while she rose and rose with it until she sobbed and tried to clutch at his chest, her nails pressing too hard. It was so
gentle
. It was so utterly complete. She wanted to stay in it forever, and already it was almost over.
“Beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Sarah.
Let go.
”
Her hands slid off him, falling limply, and then the orgasm that she had thought was already finished broke again, growing bigger still, the waves of it coming over and over as he held her in his hand, as he rocked her with the heel of his palm.
“Beautiful,” he said again, hoarsely, as the waves slowly subsided, leaving her boneless and lost. His use of the word
beautiful
seemed to imbue her with it, as if he alone made it true. She had never had an orgasm like that, drawn out until she was beyond anything but floating. She never expected to feel one again. Of course it would be Patrick who would flit into her life for one perfect moment and leave her bereft for him. Of course it would be.
“Beautiful,” Patrick said again, and his thumb followed the line of her panties across her hips and back. His hand slipped under her panties and came into contact with her bare, slick flesh for the first time. And it was all naked to him, all exposed, all open and begging. “Before the hot water runs out, Sarah…let’s do it again.”
Chapter 11
Of course that wimpy water heater of hers ran out just at the worst time, when his hand was slick with her and she was so dazed and melted and almost, almost again utterly his. All that contained focus of hers that shut him out…
his
.
He really hated it when his tools didn’t work. But it wouldn’t be the first time one screwed up on him and he had to save something beautiful before it got ruined. He bundled her out of the water before the growing cold could freeze her mood completely, swiping her whole meager stack of towels to spread on the bed and roll her in them.
His jeans clung soaked and unpleasant to his body, and she pushed at them.
Thank you.
Given that he was her boss, it was nice when she took some of the initiative herself. He had tried and tried and tried to get her to crack without revealing his hand, for months he had tried to make her be the one who went after him, but he had broken himself on that pure, serious focus of hers.
He dug his hand in his back pocket and slid the contents under her pillow as he dropped his jeans to the floor. He had felt so…
evil
when he grabbed those packets from the distributor in the bar. All his intentions laid bare with every coin he put into that machine. Not stopping with one, because…he didn’t intend to stop with one.
Yes, I am going to lie to my intern about where I live, seduce her while making sure she doesn’t know that’s what I’m doing, pretend to be someone she can trust until she lets me in, and then…oh, then, I’m going to do so many things.
And his brain would bog down in those things, they would take him over, save him from any thought of consequences, but even so, he knew, flickering behind all the things he wanted to do to her and make her do, that the next day…she would be back breaking herself on that need to follow her dream. And he would still be in charge of her. And every single time he came anywhere near her, she would remember him in her body, making her come.
He
wanted
that. Wanted, every second of her day, to be wormed inside that focus of hers, to be held in her so that she couldn’t shut him out. It had become his all-consuming passion.
But…what about her? What about what she wanted?