Читать книгу To Desire a Wilde - Kimberly Terry Kaye - Страница 13

“Was there a reason you didn’t tell me you were in charge of the investigation against me and my brothers?”

Ellie jumped at hearing the deep voice and spun around to see Shilah Wilde lounging in her office doorway casually, his arms folded across his broad chest.

She clutched the file folder she held in her hand tighter, before turning back around and calmly placing it inside the drawer and closing it shut.

The sound of his voice sent a fizzle of awareness through her, unreasonable as it was sudden. Ellie drew in a deep breath to compose herself before she faced him.

“I wouldn’t call it that, Shilah,” she said calmly, despite the way her heart was beating out of control.

“Then what would you call it, Ellie?”

She grew uncomfortable beneath his stare. He simply stood in the doorway, his gaze raking over her as she stood next to her desk. She sighed, blowing out a breath.

“Come in, please,” she invited. After hesitating briefly, he pushed his large frame away from the doorway and moved to walk inside. “Close the door behind you, please.”

She glanced toward her computer, where she’d been in the middle of shooting off an email to her supervisor at Jasper and Brant, the firm that was subcontracted with the USDA, giving him an update of her status.

She subtly pressed a button on her console, sending her computer to sleep.

“I know I should have told you the reasons I was at the ranch when we were together a few days ago. I’m sorry that I didn’t.” The words were inadequate, Ellie knew, and offered no real explanation.

But she had no explanation herself. All she knew was that when she’d seen him again her reasons for being at the ranch had flown from her mind.

Ellie had chosen not to examine her reasons too closely. Her encounter with Shilah, although brief, had elicited old feelings, feelings she’d had as a child, about the ranch, her accident … and Shilah.

“I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I—I—” She stopped, sighing. “I’m sorry, Shilah.”

She saw his face lose some of its stiffness, and the tension in the room eased.

“I guess it just hit me out of the blue when I was told. I wasn’t expecting it. To be honest with you, it’s not your fault, not really. I got so caught up in just talking to you, was so excited to see you that I didn’t think to ask you myself.”

The minute he finished speaking, she saw his face slightly flush, as though he hadn’t meant to say what he had. She felt an answering blush on her own face.

“Anyway, I understand,” he continued. “The ranch has been going through a lot … this investigation came out of nowhere for us. Had Nate not been tipped off …” When he paused this time, Ellie knew that whatever he’d been about to disclose was something she didn’t need to know about.

She raised a hand. “Hey, why don’t we put this out there now. I can’t discuss what’s going on, and neither can I know about any inner workings of the ranch.”

Shilah was shaking his head before she could finish. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m sure we have other … more interesting things we can talk about.”

He glanced around her office. He walked over to the wall near her desk, his gaze running over the display of her degrees and various recognition plaques, as well as a scattering of articles Ellie had written for a national vet magazine that adorned the walls.

“Dad calls that,” she said, pointing to the assortment of framed certificates, “my love-me wall,” she said with a small laugh.

She rose from her chair and walked toward him. “When I arrived he showed me my office and he already had it all set up. He and Mom have made duplicates of my every achievement,” she said with a small shake of her head.

When she saw him smile as he reached out and fingered a framed piece of her childhood artwork, she groaned, “Even the ones dating back to kindergarten. Sometimes they go a little overboard.”

He turned to face her, the familiar half smile tugging the corners of his sensual mouth up.

“They’re proud of you. They have every right to be, Ellie. You’re an amazing woman,” he said, and Ellie flushed at the compliment.

The look in his eyes made her eyes widen. She stuck out her tongue to moisten lips gone dry. The way his eyes centered on her tongue made her flush deepen, her heartbeat banging so loudly against her chest she knew he had to hear it.

He took a step closer to her, and without conscious thought, Ellie took steps toward him, until they stood less than a foot apart. He reached a hand out to move away a strand of hair that had escaped her tight chignon, placing it behind her ear.

“You always have been,” he finished, his voice low, the look in his eyes intense. As he held her gaze, Ellie searched his features, going over his strong nose, down to his sensual lips and back into his eyes. In their depths there was such a look of admiration … and something more, that Ellie turned away.

He placed a finger beneath her chin, forcing her to look up at him.

“I’ve missed you, Ellie Crandall,” he said, his voice deep and quiet. “More than I realized.”

When his head began to lower, Ellie felt her eyes begin to flutter closed.

When she felt his mouth, hard yet gentle, against the corner of her mouth, Ellie felt the tension ease from her body as the unexpected softness of his caress sent a subdued cry from her mouth.

Gently he placed a small series of kisses along the lower rim of her mouth, undemanding, soft and inquisitive.

Ellie’s hands rested on his chest, clenched, her eyes fully closed in reaction to the innocence of his kiss. Butterfly kisses turned to nibbling caresses along her lips, until with a soft moan of surrender, she eagerly rose on tiptoe to press her body closer to his.

Her action caused him to tug her closer to him, crushing her breasts against his hard chest and slanting his mouth over hers as their bodies pressed tightly together.

She inhaled a swift breath. There was nothing innocent about the feel of his shaft, hard, thick and unyielding as it pressed against her belly.

He dragged the full bottom rim of her lip into his mouth, and suckled it. Drawing lazy patterns with his tongue back and forth in the space between her lips and teeth, he wrought a deep moan from her as she arched her body fully into his chest. Slowly her hands unclenched and moved up, wrapping around his neck and drawing him closer.

His tongue moved to lave her lip and she eagerly opened her mouth wide, willingly giving him the access he was silently demanding.

When she felt his big hand, warm against her back as he lifted her sweater, running a path from up the line of her spine to the back closure of her bra, the hard ridge of his erection pressing even hotter against her stomach, warning bells rang. But Ellie chose to ignore them, too caught up in the unexpected pleasure of his mouth.

She felt him break away, and she groaned, lifting heavy eyes to look up at him.

He placed his palms against the sides of her face, staring down at her, his breathing labored. She felt a soft tremor in the big hands that framed her face.

“God, Ellie … you taste so good. Your mouth is like honey,” he told her with a catch in his voice. He bent back down to recapture her mouth, wrapping his hands around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer to his big, hard body.

Tugging her sweater away from her body, again she felt his hand against her skin, but this time he trailed a path toward her breasts. Keeping one hand on the back of her head, his lips firmly on hers, with the other hand he cupped one of her breasts. She moaned into his mouth when she felt him pinch her nipple, lightly, through the thin cotton of her bra.

Arching fully into him, her body on fire from his talented mouth, tongue and hands, Ellie tunneled her fingers through his hair, pulling him closer.

“Dr. Eleanor Crandall, you’re wanted at the front!”

The sound of her father’s voice, just outside her door, brought Ellie’s eyes wide-open.

Dear God in heaven, what had gotten into her, she thought, panicked as she shoved Shilah away. She practically ran to the other side of the room, frantically righting her clothing.

“I—” Her father walked inside and stopped. In one glance he took in the scene, and Ellie felt her entire face flush as she placed a nervous smile on her face, glancing over at Shilah.

In the short time between her father’s voice interrupting them and his opening the door, Shilah had swiftly straightened his clothes, yet Ellie saw the evidence of what they’d been doing on his mouth. Traces of her favorite princess-pink lipstick stained his lips.