Chapter 6
S
he should absolutely get up.
Right this minute.
But she didn't want to move. Simon's breath warmed her throat while the feel of his muscular body wrapped around her gave a sense of warmth and belonging she'd longed for all of her life. It was that sense that had her trying to peel out of Simon's arms. It was way too dangerous.
She wasn't any good at the man-woman thing and if she let herself fall for Simon, she was going to end up hurt.
Badly.
When it came to relationships, she always lost.
Remember the job.
She was here for the sake of her career, not to put her damaged heart at risk again.
Unfortunately, even in sleep, Simon was strong. Too strong for her to get away from.
She tried shaking his shoulder to wake him. “Simon. Wake up. You've got to let go.”
His face nuzzled more firmly into her neck and his hand shifted until it was cupping her right breast.
Her brain short-circuited while her body started pulsing with unfamiliar desire.
“Simon!”
His hand squeezed and her nipple went rock-hard. She gasped. He squeezed again and darned if it wasn't with just the right amount of pressure.
Okay. She wasn't going to try to wake him up again. At the rate they were going, he'd be inside of her before she ever got him out of his comatose state. And she'd be loving it.
Which made her wicked and pathetic. For surely only a wicked woman would consider taking advantage of a man's actions while he was sleeping and only a pathetic one would need to.
Maybe if she lay there until he went into a really deep sleep, his muscles would relax enough for her to extricate herself from his arms.
The hand on her breast was heavy and she was tempted to pretend for a little bit. To pretend he meant it to be there. To pretend a gorgeous, sexy man like Simon found her desirable. It should be too much of a stretch for even her imagination. It wasn't. Not with his arms around her and his hard, masculine body pressed all along her side.
Fantasizing was risky.
She might start believing her own delusions.
She had to get her mind off the way it felt to be in Simon's unconscious arms.
She stared up at the ceiling. Not a lot of inspiration there. Simon had a ceiling fan. She wondered if he liked to lay naked on his bed and let the gentle air brush over him like she did. She preferred the fan to running the air conditioner, except on the hottest days.
As things started happening in her body, things like swelling and moistening, she realized that wondering about Simon's naked sleeping habits was a bad idea.
She let her gaze roam around the room, at least as much as she was able to without turning more than her head. The stark simplicity of Oriental design was in here too, but so was Simon's love of hi-tech. The bed and matching bedroom suite had been designed in molded metal with a flat finish. It didn't look like office furniture gone bad, but rather sleek and almost soothingly simple.
The headboard and footboard on the bed were slatted with horizontal bars. She'd never seen a bed like it.
An image of her lying on the bed, naked but for a silk nothing of a nightgown, with her hands tied to the headboard, popped into her mind. Simon leaned above her, his hands teasing her body while he whispered shocking things in her ear.
She groaned. Simon's leg insinuated itself between hers, his thigh pressing against the apex of her thighs and the image in her head exploded in favor of tormenting reality.
She had to get out of this bed. She made her body go completely motionless and concentrated on breathing as quietly as possible. Anything not to jar Simon into further movement.
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She snuggled into the delicious warmth of her bed, fighting consciousness and trying to cling to the sweetness of her dream. It had been so real, she could still smell the masculine scent of her lover, still feel the strength of his arms around her, the erotic pleasure of his legs twined with hers in the aftermath of loving.
She shifted one leg and fancied she could feel denim rub against the smooth sheerness of her stockings.
Stockings?
She wasn't wearing stockings in her dream. She was nakedâOh, my gosh! Her eyes flew open to a patch of dark blue.
It was a shirt and the shirt covered a male chest.
Simon.
Her head snapped back.
He was still asleep.
That was the only good news she could discern as she came fully alert with a mental bump of huge magnitude. Her legs were indeed twisted together with his, right up to their thighs. This was possible because her skirt was twisted up to her hips, exposing the tops of her stay-ups.
Somehow several buttons had come undone on her once crisp white blouse and Simon's hand was inside, resting against her silk-clad breast. Her hand was underneath his untucked T-shirt, pressing against his well-defined abs.
If he woke up right now, she would have a heart attack and die of humiliation.
With all the caution of a thief leaving the scene of a crime, she gently withdrew her hand from under his shirt. His body shuddered in sleep as her fingertips brushed along his skin and she was terrified he'd waken. He didn't.
He was sleeping too deeply.
Thank you, God
.
She'd been right that his muscles would relax in sleep. Moving slow centimeter by centimeter, she withdrew from his embrace until her body was no longer touching his at any point. Heaving a sigh of relief, she rolled onto her back and only registered her nearness to the edge of the bed a second before landing on the floor with a solid thump.
“Not a real graceful way to get out of bed, if you don't mind my saying so, Ms. Zachary.”
Jacob? Jacob was here? How much had he seen?
She scooted to her feet in a flurry of movement, yanking her crumpled skirt down over her exposed legs.
“Thought you were going to use the guest room.”
She could feel heat scorching into her cheeks. “I am. This was a mistake. He . . . I . . .” How did she explain the events that had led up to her sleeping in Simon's arms?
“I don't pry into the boss's private affairs.”
“For goodness sake, we are not having an affair. I was trying to help him to bed. He fell asleep with me under him. I mean. He fell. We fell. I couldn't get away. I guess I fell asleep waiting for him to relax.”
A lot of falling had gone on.
“Whatever you say, Ms. Zachary. I came to see if you wanted dinner.”
“Um, that would be great.” She surreptitiously did up several buttons on her blouse, keeping her body angled away from Jacob's too knowing gaze. “I'll just go change my clothes.”
She was a wrinkled mess and maybe a return to her usual put-together appearance would harbinger a return to sanity as well.
One could only hope.
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Eric Brant called after dinner. As soon as Amanda heard his voice, her stomach cramped with worry over his reaction to her coming to stay with his cousin.
“He let you move in? Just like that?” Eric sounded stunned.
“It was Jacob's idea,” she defended herself.
“But Simon hardly ever has company and now he's letting a complete stranger live in his house. I have to tell you, Amanda, this is the strangest business deal I've ever been involved in.”
“Simon doesn't do things like normal people,” she said, throwing his own words from before back at Eric.
“But he doesn't do stuff like this either.”
“It was the only way I could think of to catch him often enough to convince him of the merits of the merger.”
Eric's laughter jangled against her already stretched nerves. “Well, I've got to hand it you, Amanda. You've got real dedication to getting the job done. I only wish my junior executives were half as ambitious and creative.”
She warmed under the praise. “Thank you.” She only hoped her boss, Daniel, agreed with Eric.
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Amanda popped the green stem out of the strawberry and tossed it in the waste bin to her left on the deck. She dropped the berry in the ceramic bowl and picked up another one. She'd eaten breakfast an hour ago, but the juicy berries were still tempting. The only thing that stopped her popping one in her mouth was the certainty that Jacob would walk out on the deck at that exact moment and catch her.
She wouldn't put it past him to be watching her from the kitchen just so he could do that very thing.
She hadn't seen Simon since practically running from his room the previous afternoon. She didn't even know if he'd woken up from his restorative sleep yet and she didn't have the nerve to ask Jacob. Not after what he had witnessed in Simon's bedroom.
“That doesn't look like the normal occupation for a dedicated career woman.”
She looked up at the sound of Simon's deep voice and smiled, albeit a bit nervously. She didn't know how much he would remember from her sojourn in his bed. Not that it hadn't been pretty tame as sojourns go, but since she hadn't been in any man's bed in over two years and hadn't done anything worth mentioning in a bed in more than three, she was still uncomfortable about facing Simon.
“Hi. Get enough sleep?”
“I did.”
He certainly looked it. His eyes were clear and he'd taken the time to shave. He was shirtless again, this time wearing a pair of cutoff denim shorts. Her gaze slid to his muscular legs with their light covering of black hair and stayed there for way longer than was politic. She forced herself to meet his eyes again.
They glinted with something she couldn't interpret and a funny half-smile had formed on his lips. “I need some exercise. I came out to see if you wanted to work out with me again.”
“You mean play your sparring dummy?”
“I thought we could go through a couple of TKD routines.”
It actually sounded like a great idea. Her body was craving a workout and she hadn't quite nerved herself to ask Jacob if he thought Simon would mind if she used the pool.
“I'm almost done with these and then I'd love to.”
“How did Jacob talk you into doing that?”
“It wasn't hard. I wanted an excuse to sit outside and he gave me one.”
“Is he making jam?”
“That's what he said. I've never seen anyone make homemade jam before. He told me I could watch later.”
“Your mom didn't do any canning?”
“Are you kidding? My mother's idea of domesticity is having the local maid's service number memorized.”
He laughed. “My mom wasn't much better. She was too involved with her painting to want to do much around the house, but she still managed to make it feel like a home.”
Then she'd been a world ahead of Amanda's mother who had always managed to make her daughter feel like an intruder in the perfectly decorated and maintained California mansion she'd grown up in.
“What was she like?” she asked him.
“Warm. Alive. Fun. She smiled a lot. She could make me and Dad laugh until our sides ached.”
“It must have hurt so much to lose her.”
“It did. Everything changed.”
“Your dad probably took it really hard.”
“He found comfort in his work.”
“What about you?”
Shrugging those incredible shoulders, he frowned. “I followed my dad's example, I guess.”
“You were only ten years old, you said.” She couldn't fathom a child getting lost in his work.
“And close to graduating high school. Between my experiments and my studies, I got by.”
And learned how to shut out the rest of the world in the process.
She finished hulling the last berry and wiped her hands on the wet tea towel Jacob had left with her. “I'll just go throw on something I can do kicks in.”
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Simon slipped out of his shorts and pulled on a pair of
dobok
pants. The loose-fitting bottoms designed for martial arts would be better at concealing his reaction to Amanda when they worked out. He was still reeling from the vivid dreams he'd had of her while sleeping off his three-day-long work binge. They'd been so damned real, he could have sworn her scent clung to his pillow when he woke up.