Читать книгу Bedded By The Boss - Jennifer Lewis, Yvonne Lindsay - Страница 13
ОглавлениеShe pulled him closer, settling her mouth over his as she surrendered to forces far stronger than good sense. Crackling bursts of electrical energy shot through her as their tongues touched.
She showered his face with kisses. His closed eyelids flickered under her lips as she dusted his skin with their caress. Her lips tingled as she relished the roughness of his cheeks.
Elan’s hands were not idle while she tasted the salt of his skin and grazed the hard line of his jaw with her teeth. He tugged down the zipper on her skirt, sucked in a sharp breath as she gently bit his earlobe.
Her breasts quivered under her blouse as he pushed her gently away from him and undid the buttons of her jacket. He eased it off over her shoulders then tackled the buttons of her blouse with the same careful concentration.
The pause gave Sara time to think about what she was doing. Or what she wasn’t doing. Shouldn’t she be clutching her blouse, leaping to her feet and running for the sanctuary of the car? What good could come of sleeping with my boss?
But at that moment she could no longer see Elan as the boss. The long, powerful fingers carefully tugging at her tiny pearl buttons were those of a man—just a man—who wanted to hold her as much as she wanted to be held by him, and who wasn’t afraid to say it.
The moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds, and anticipation shone in his dark eyes, reflecting her own.
His breathing hitched as he parted her silk shirt to reveal her breasts. Her cream lace bra lifted and offered them like fruits ripe for plucking.
She watched as he slowly raised his hands to touch them. The soft curves of flesh thrilled as his fingertips neared them. Her nipples tickled under the scratchy lace, begging to be touched. As if her tortured flesh communicated directly with him, Elan softly tugged at the lace edging the cups until her breasts spilled into his hands.
Sara released a sigh as those broad hands settled over her breasts, kneading them gently as he claimed her mouth with a kiss.
Heat flooded her limbs and she pressed herself against him, rubbed her hips against his hard belly, enjoyed the strength of his arousal through his clothes.
She wanted him inside her.
The ache of loneliness that followed her everywhere had transformed into a raging inferno of longing to connect with this man. Knowing that he, too, felt alone, needing someone—needing her—she knew they would fit together like two parts of a broken whole.
She fumbled with his belt, struggling to free the stiff leather from its loops, as his muted groans filled her ear. His tongue teased her earlobe and sent shivers of sensation sizzling up and down her neck as she tugged at the zipper on his pants and pushed them down over his hips. She pulled at the buttons on his shirt in her urgency to bare his chest. His skin shone dark bronze in the flickering firelight, but unlike hard metal it felt hot and responsive to her touch.
She trailed her fingers over the ridges of muscle as she pushed his shirt back over his shoulders and he shrugged it off.
“I must get protection,” he whispered.
Her eyes widened. The idea of protection had not even crossed her mind.
She gasped as he pulled back. It literally hurt to part from him even for a few seconds. He stepped out of his remaining clothes before he headed back to the car. Naked.
His body was magnificent. The full moon bathed the land in pale silver light. Elan looked like a god walking the earth as he strolled barefoot, dusted with moonbeams, over the rough desert soil.
He opened the passenger door and reached into the glove compartment, then slammed the door and strolled back to her. His easy, rolling gait belied his massive build. Every part of him was big. Big hands, strong arms, thickly muscled torso and powerful legs that carried him back to her in a few long strides.
His arousal was undiminished and hers only intensified by the agonizing separation from his blood-heating presence. She welcomed him back into her arms, gripped him too hard, not wanting to be parted from him again.
She lay back on the blanket and pulled him over her almost roughly. She craved his strength, his steadiness, the raw masculinity of him. Sandwiched between the hard ground of the desert and Elan’s hard body, she writhed at the blissful torture. And she wanted to feel his hardness inside her.
He rolled back to rip open the packet and sheath himself. With careful fingers he touched and probed her moist folds and parted them. He eased himself into position over her, teased her painfully aroused flesh with the tip of his penis. Then he entered her.
He sank in, but so slowly she thought she’d go out of her mind with the agonizing pleasure of it. He lowered his body into hers and their skin met as they came together, inside and out, circling each other with arms and legs, mouths meeting and breath mingling in the moment of glorious unity.
Elan sighed softly in her ear as his body settled into hers. A perfect fit.
She could feel him quickening inside her. The sensation made her gasp and laugh and her eyes sprang open and met his steady gaze. His eyes sparkled with joy and a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. His lips parted as if to speak or shout or moan, but he lowered his head and buried his face in her neck, clutching her with his hands.
“I’ve never felt such desire for a woman,” he breathed hot in her ear. She gasped as again she felt him move inside her. “I’ve never wanted…never needed…” His words were lost in a grunt of pleasure as he moved and shifted, deepening and strengthening the bond between them.
They worked together, hips lifting, bellies rolling over each other, legs and arms hugging and gripping as they moved together toward the ecstasy they craved.
They writhed on the blanket, the solid earth supporting them as she gave herself over to an intensity of sensation, a sheer, wringing pleasure she could never have imagined.
Elan’s lovemaking was exquisite. Tender and loving, harsh and demanding, he rode her and fought her, caressed and comforted her, kissed and licked and teased and tormented her. Every inch of her skin, every cell in her body, sang with the clear, mad beauty of love.
Love?
Yes. Surely only love could upend the universe and shake it until stars rained down on them. And that love filled her now until she brimmed with explosive wonder, sheer joy that threatened to burst and shatter her into a thousand pieces.
His hot breath tickled her ear. “Sara, I… I…” She never knew what he struggled to say because at that moment he exploded inside her, shuddering and quaking with the force of his release as her own climax seized her and swept her into a vortex of agonizing bliss.
Elan’s hand rested gently on her cheek as they lay side by side. They were both spent, exhausted, and Sara’s body hummed with calm joy in the aftermath of their lovemaking.
He shifted closer, until his belly pressed against hers. He stroked her hair softly and placed a gentle kiss on her cheek. When his stomach tensed, she expected him to say something, but he didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to but couldn’t find the words. She certainly had no words for what had happened between them.
She could tell he didn’t want to let her go. He didn’t want to break the delicate bond that held them together. Maybe he, too, felt whole, warm, safe, blissfully free of rational thoughts and tiresome practicalities. Out there on top of a bluff, with nothing between them and the pale moon, they were the only people on earth.
But the fire had gone completely out and her skin tingled at the thought of all the wild creatures moving around them. Coyotes, bobcats, lizards…rattlesnakes. A rustling in the sand close by made her flinch. They might be the only humans, but they most definitely were not alone.
“We’d better go before something comes and bites us,” she said reluctantly.
He nibbled her ear playfully. “You’re in great danger of being bitten by me. Anything else that tries to taste your loveliness will have me to answer to.”
She wriggled against him. It was easy to imagine Elan taking on any earthly creature. He radiated strength and self-confidence that surely even the most determined scorpion would shrink from.
“But you’re right, my beauty. We must go.”
They exchanged a last gentle kiss before tearing themselves away from each other to gather up their scattered clothes.
As they climbed back into the car, Sara knew they were leaving the magical world they’d inhabited. The click of the seat belt seemed symbolic of the return to a world of rules and regulations.
Elan’s shirt hung unbuttoned over his pants, and she longed to reach over and touch his chest as he drove. But she knew better. The time for carefree touches and playful intimacy was over. Her gut tightened as a surge of apprehension replaced the carefree ease she’d enjoyed only minutes ago.
A dark mood had settled over him. He looked straight ahead as he drove, his face stony in profile. She tried to think of something to say, a casual conversational gambit to break the tension thickening the air, but no words seemed appropriate to the strangeness of the situation.
What could she say? Thanks, that was fun! Gosh, the desert’s lovely at night, isn’t it? We’d better get some sleep, we’ve got an early meeting tomorrow!
Gulp.
She froze in her seat as the reality of the situation crept over her like icy fingers.
She’d slept with her boss.
No, not true. She hadn’t slept with him. She’d clawed his back, howled in ecstasy, pushed her hips against his and ridden him, clung to him and moaned his name in the throes of her orgasm.
Oh, dear.
Perhaps if they were now sitting there chatting about what movie they’d go see on Saturday night it would seem, well, not normal, but okay. But the way he gripped the wheel, his jaw clenched, eyes narrowed, lips pressed together, she could see that tonight was not the first night of an ordinary dating relationship.
As if this kind of night ever could be. What man would want a girl who “put out” on the first date? And it wasn’t even a date. He’d offered her dinner and she’d thrown herself at him.
She was no virgin. She’d had a boyfriend in high school and another in college. But she’d never in her life slept with a man she wasn’t “going steady” with. “If you don’t respect yourself…” She could hear her oldest sister Nathalie’s cheerful voice in her ear. The lecture had been given in a playful tone since no one expected Sara to need it anyway.
Then she’d met Elan. He undid her in a way that was truly frightening. That stripped away the thin layer of civility to reveal her primitive core.
Neon lights flickered on the main drag as they drove back into town. Dawn hovered behind the hills and the purple sky threatened to explode into blazing sunlight at any moment.
“Take a left here.”
His big hands slid over the wheel as he turned into her apartment complex.
“Would you like to come up for coffee?” She almost choked on the words but it felt only polite to offer. She would love for him to come up. To talk and break the chill silence that had settled over them like dew on the desert.
“I think we should both get some sleep,” he said softly. He pulled the car to a stop outside the front door. For the first time since they’d climbed into the sedan, he turned to look at her.
The faraway look in his dark eyes touched a raw place in her, summoned her. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to close the distance echoing between them even in the cramped space of the car.
She ached to be held in his arms.
He opened his mouth—to speak, or to kiss her?—but he didn’t move. And then his mouth closed, full lips settling together, as if they’d already said everything there was to say.
She wanted so badly to kiss him goodbye. To press her lips against his skin one last time, to feel the heat of his blood warm her mouth. But the rigid set of his shoulders and the high angle of his chin warned her off. No kisses were offered by either party.
“Good night, Sara.”
“Good night, Elan.” Her voice trembled a little and she thought she saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. But perhaps it was just a reflection of her own confusion and embarrassment as she fumbled for her briefcase on the floor. She scrambled out of the car, clutching her crumpled clothes around her.
The big sedan didn’t move until she’d gone inside, so she never actually heard him drive away. But she suffered his leaving as a limb being torn from her body. If she’d felt alone before, now she felt desolate, destitute. Like Eve banished from Paradise because she couldn’t keep her hands off the tempting and dangerous fruit within.
Sara operated on automatic pilot as she parked her bicycle and walked into the office building the next morning. She knew Elan wouldn’t be there yet, since she always arrived early enough to change into professional attire and get her desk organized before the day got hectic. He didn’t usually come in until around nine.
As nine o’clock drew closer she found it impossible to concentrate on her work. Her blood thundered audibly in her head, her heart banged against her ribs, and she kept catching herself nervously drumming a pen on her desk.
Oh, God. What would they say to each other? Hi. Good morning. Can I get you anything? Like me, naked on a blanket in the moonlight?
She cringed inwardly. She was preparing a complicated report with multiple columns of figures and the numbers jumped and buzzed before her eyes like performers in a flea circus.
Each time the doors to the elevator opened she fought an urge to dive beneath her desk like a creature startled to its burrow. Just the mail clerk. The assistant from finance with some new figures. Each arrival sent her into a frenzy of panic.
When a messenger arrived with a small box wrapped in gold paper, Sara’s eyes widened. Had Elan sent her something? She leaped out of her chair to receive it, a smile rising to her lips.
“Thanks!”
She ripped open the card with trembling fingers.
“Mr. Al Mansur, thanks for all you’ve done for us in Alberta. In eager anticipation of another banner year, yours, Tony Leon, Acme Drilling Co.”
It wasn’t for her. It was for Elan. A corporate gift. Probably another set of gold-plated golf tees.
Sara sagged with misery. How pathetic that she’d so quickly assumed Elan had made a romantic gesture.
Wishful thinking.
She put the box in his office and returned to her chair to resume her anxious vigil.
But he didn’t come in.
By noon she was confused and upset. He’d missed an important meeting with a supplier, yet had not asked her to take his place in it. Apparently he’d phoned his regrets to the other attendees.
“When is he coming?” asked first one caller, then another and another.
“I’m not exactly certain,” gradually became a mumbled, “I don’t know,” as Sara’s professional demeanor slipped a little further with each admission. She maintained his schedule, made all his appointments and usually knew his movements better than he did.
She was tempted to call his home to see if he was okay. But he’d excused himself from the meeting so he was obviously alive. He’d simply chosen not to come into the office today.
Had chosen not to see her.
“When’s Mr. Al Mansur coming back from Turkey?”
“What?” Sara glanced up from her work, anxiety spiking in her gut.
The Assistant VP for Production stood in front of her desk, a pen pressed to her carefully made-up lips. “It’s just that I really need him to sign these documents. I had no idea he was leaving for Turkey today.”
“Me neither.” Despair descended in a heavy fog. He’d left the country without telling her?
“Are you okay?” The other woman’s concern wrinkled her smooth brow as she hugged her thick folder of documents to her chest.
“Sure.” The word emerged excessively loud as she tried to exude self-confidence she didn’t feel. “I’m not sure when he’ll be back,” she said more quietly. She didn’t even know which airline he’d taken. He must have bought his own ticket.
“Is he there to look over the El Barak field? The one where the wells needed deepening?”
“I expect so.” She struggled to sound as normal as possible. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from him.”
“You don’t look well. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Just a slight headache, I’ll take an aspirin for it.”
She rested her head on her desk as the door closed behind her coworker. A woman ten years older than herself and in a position of considerable authority. She was everything Sara hoped to be herself: respected, liked and admired for her quick thinking and effective teamwork.
That could have been her in a few years. If I hadn’t slept with my boss.
If only she could take an aspirin for heartache.
Elan was gone for four days. She spoke to him twice on the phone and their conversations were entirely professional. He wanted some documents e-mailed to him. He advised her of his return flight. She reported the minutes of a meeting he’d missed.
There was no mention, or even suggestion, of what had happened between them.
Sara was sure she would be terminated as soon as he returned. After all, she’d promised that if she didn’t perform as agreed—including keeping her eyes and hands off the boss—he could fire her outright. With that promise she’d slammed the door on any sexual harassment lawsuit.
She attempted to polish her résumé, but realized she couldn’t even include this job on it if she’d been here only one month. It would be obvious she’d been fired.
She wondered if she could beg him to keep her on for a few more months, just until she could find something else. She wondered if she could brazenly insist on holding her job, as she’d done on the first day.
It takes two to tango.
Even if she’d been warned from the outset that tangoing with the boss was strictly not on the agenda at Al Mansur Associates.
“Good afternoon, Sara.” Elan swept past her like a gust of wind, blowing through the doors from the elevator and into his office. His door slammed behind him before her brain fully registered his presence.
She hadn’t even managed a polite greeting.
Her pulse pounded in her temple as she dragged herself to her feet. She picked up a big stack of papers and a long series of messages she’d collected. There was nothing for it but to go in. Might as well get it over with.
She hesitated, held up her trembling fist for a moment before rapping on the door. Should she say anything about what had happened? Attempt a preemptive apology? She’d have to play it by ear. Ears almost deafened by the blood thundering in her head.
She knocked.
“Come in.”
The door swung open to reveal Elan seated in his leather throne. He looked up as if startled, though he must have known it would be her. He sprang to his feet and ran a broad hand through his hair.
“Sara.”
She gulped. “Yes.”
He looked right at her and she froze, turned to stone. His eyes were narrowed in a penetrating gaze, black and shadowed, his face taut, jaw clenched.
“I feel I must offer my most humble apologies for the events of last week.”
Her gut seized and she held her breath.
“You are a valued employee here. I think it’s best if we do not mention those events again.”
Thoughts rushed her brain and swept around in minicyclones—he isn’t firing me.
He wanted to forget their night together.
The rush of relief at getting to keep her job was undercut by a harsh stab of humiliating disappointment. Had she really expected to continue some kind of intimate relationship with Elan? Even after he disappeared for days, fled to the other side of the world to avoid her?
The ache in her heart told her she had.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her voice emerged as a hiss of steam released from an overheated radiator, but she was relieved she could find it at all. “Thank you.”
She could almost swear she saw him flinch as she said “thank you.” Was he disgusted that she didn’t resign on principle? Someone wealthy like him probably couldn’t understand how you could need a job more than your pride.
He nodded curtly. She cleared her throat and attempted to give him his messages in as normal a voice as possible.
He listened politely and responded appropriately, but as she talked she could see him looking almost anywhere but at her. A muscle worked in his jaw and his shoulders were rigid with tension. His discomfort in her presence was obvious.
And he had good reason to be uncomfortable. Because even as she spoke, her mind wandered. Wondered. Remembered the feel of his hands on her. Remembered the scent of him as she buried her face in his neck. Remembered the sweet, soothing warmth of being held tightly in his arms.
He studied a document, following the lines with his finger. The finger that had traced a line from her chin, to her belly button, to her agonizingly aroused… She blinked and swallowed hard, trying to shove down the disturbing sensations creeping through her body.
What was it about this man that made her professional demeanor fly out the window? That unhinged her almost to the point of madness?
She tore her eyes from him and tried to focus on the papers on his desk, on the spectacular expanse of clear sky visible through the window, on the spotless gray carpet. But each time her attention drifted back, in imperceptible degrees, to the man who consumed it.
To the way his hair was starting to touch his collar slightly in the back, in need of a cut. To the powerful tanned wrists revealed by the turned-back cuffs of his white shirt. To the way his tie was loosened slightly, accommodating one opened button at the neck of his shirt. Elan always looked a little too confined in clothes, as if he’d like to peel them off and get comfortable.
Or was it just her that wanted to peel them off? The thought made her anything but comfortable. She closed her eyes, attempting to block the sight of him from her vision. To block the image of him from her mind. But his midnight gaze was burned into her retinas.
“Are you…all right?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice rather too high-pitched. He might well ask. He’d caught her standing in his office with her eyes closed. Was she all right? Most definitely not. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever be all right again. “Will that be all?” She managed to plaster on a thin veneer of professionalism, even as she started automatically backing toward the doorway.
“Yes, thank you.” Elan had turned away from her and bent over his desk, opening a drawer. She could see his biceps flexed tightly under the cotton of his shirt, his fists almost clenched. The tension in the air was suffocating, a cloying atmosphere of regret and recrimination that tormented them both.
What on earth had she been thinking when she touched Elan, when she kissed him, when she…
She turned on her heel and flew out the door. She accidentally slammed it in her haste to escape. Outside, she gasped a deep gulp of air and bent double as blood rushed to her head.
The only way she could survive this was to pretend it had never happened. To avoid thinking about it. It. The elusive it that sprang only too readily to the forefront of her consciousness. A night against which all other nights would inevitably be measured for the rest of her life.
