Rock Hard

by Nalini Singh

  It was truly, truly embarrassing how many nights she'd fantasized about watching Gabriel dress and undress. Even with her admonitions to herself about the danger of allowing her crush to deepen into something that could hurt her, she couldn't stop herself. The book lay unread in front of her as she imagined him shrugging off that shirt to ball it up and chuck it into the laundry basket, his shoulders gleaming under the light.

  Then his hands went to the belt of his pants.

  Toes curling, she swallowed and watched the strip of black leather slide out, drop to the floor with a clink of metal softened by the carpet. His fingers went to the top button of his pants, undid it, lowered the zipper.

  Triiiiing!

  Charlotte jumped, the book slamming shut as she stared at her cell phone with red-hot cheeks and a guiltily thudding heart. No one called her this late except for Molly, and that was after her friend texted to see if she was awake. Fear sent a chill trickle down her spine, but Charlotte grabbed the phone to look at the screen. She'd long ago decided she wouldn't allow the memory of evil to terrorize her inside her home.

  The caller ID showed Gabriel's name.

  12

  In Which Ms. Baird Has a Guilty Conscience

  Flushing even hotter, her breasts heavy and aching, Charlotte tapped the Answer icon. "Mr. Bishop?"

  "Sorry to call so late."

  "That's all right," she said, telling the giggly teenage girl inside her to shush. She didn't know why that girl had awoken after so many years, but her hopes were ridiculous. This wasn't a romantic call. It was a business one. "I'm usually awake now."

  "Night owl?"

  "Yes."

  "Me too." It sounded like he was smiling. "What are you doing?"

  Fantasizing about watching you strip. After which I would've fantasized about kissing and licking my way over every inch of your hot, hard, magnificent body.

  "Reading a historical novel."

  Intrigued by the husky tone of Charlotte's reply, her voice breathy, Gabriel wondered if she really was reading a historical novel. "Sure it's not an erotic romance?"

  "No!" A high, sharp denial that sounded so guilty he grinned.

  "Why, Ms. Baird, I'm shocked."

  Her breathing was rough. "Are you working?" she asked, changing the subject so abruptly that he made himself a promise that one day, he'd find out exactly what she'd been reading tonight--and then he'd make her read it aloud to him while he did naughty, debauched things to her.

  "I am," he admitted, leaning back in the chair where he sat, having spread documents across the dining room table. He liked working there when at home, the vista in front of him a sparkling cityscape.

  "You should take time off." A soft admonition. "You work all the time."

  "I date, as you pointed out," he said, just to see what she'd say.

  "I don't think what you do is considered dating."

  He grinned at the coolly snippy reply, though his body wasn't impressed by his continued self-inflicted torture. The fact was, he hadn't been with a woman since the day he'd realized his PA pushed all his buttons when she wasn't terrified out of her skin.

  Why go for any woman but the one he wanted?

  And Gabriel always got what he wanted. "I couldn't find that memo HR sent yesterday."

  "Check under this file extension." She rattled it off.

  Gabriel touched the memo where it sat right in front of him. "Got it." He'd called her to make sure she was okay, that her demons weren't hounding her. "Do you watch that show with the gourmet food and the race?"

  A small pause. "Oh, I know the one. I used to, but I have a very demanding boss these days, so I'm never home in time." When he laughed, she said, "Do you watch it?"

  "No, but we've had an approach from them to sponsor the next season in return for advertising and in-show placement of Saxon & Archer goods. What do you think?" He knew she loved cooking. Not only had she once come back from lunch having bought a bunch of spices he hadn't even known existed, she'd refused to work last Saturday morning because she'd had a class to attend.

  Something to do with fondant icing and cake sculpture.

  Now she gave him her thoughts, and he leaned back and listened. Yes, smart women were his catnip--and Charlotte Baird was very, very, smart.

  The drive the next morning wasn't as stressful as Charlotte had worried it might be; the fact she knew and trusted Gabriel didn't always equal control over her emotional responses, and she'd been terrified her claustrophobia would make an unwanted return. As it was, they ended up working most of the drive, thanks to the fact the company's CFO was down with food poisoning and Gabriel needed to sign off on things she'd normally handle.

  The hiccup wasn't, however, that big in the grand scheme of things, and Charlotte and Gabriel stuck to their plan to head to Rotorua. Once there, the meeting with the art collective went off without a hitch. The artists were all very protective of their work, but Gabriel's personal visit and his willingness to work with them in relation to special arrangements for some pieces eased their concerns. The end result was a signed agreement and enthusiasm all around.

  "Lunch?" Gabriel asked as they pulled away from the marae, the traditional meeting house set amongst velvety grass that gleamed bright green under the crisp winter sunlight.

  "You'll have to return a call first," she said, having fielded everything during the meeting. "It's Brent--he just needs two minutes."

  Gabriel took care of the matter using the car's hands-free phone system, then turned to Charlotte. "Trust me, Ms. Baird?"

  "Not when you smile like that."

  Gabriel laughed at the prim response that didn't quite manage to hide the twitch of her lips. It made him want to kiss her. "You know me too well." When her eyes sparkled, he said, "You have a cooking class or anything else you have to be back for tonight?"

  "No, not tonight."

  Since he didn't have coaching commitments either, he said, "Detour to the coast?"

  A smile that made his need to kiss her almost unbearable, his heart doing things inside his chest that he was sure weren't in the least macho. He couldn't find it in himself to care, because when Charlotte smiled that way, it destroyed him.

  "I'd love that."

  Gabriel could feel Charlotte's pleasure in the coastal scenery the instant it opened up beside them. He, too, loved the twisted beauty of the old pohutukawa trees, iconic against the blue-green sea that could be as cold as ice, the white sands glittering under sunlight.

  Slowing down to let a mother duck and her fat little ducklings pass safely across the road, Gabriel allowed his eyes to linger on Charlotte's face as she leaned forward to watch. It was rare for him to get a chance to look at his personal assistant without her noticing. When she was aware, he made sure not to do it because it discomfited her. Any attention discomfited her.

  Even in the ill-fitting clothes she insisted on wearing, men noticed her petite beauty, but every time one made any kind of an approach, she withdrew. Gabriel had quietly but harshly discouraged one particularly enthusiastic advertising executive. The man had continued to ask her out despite her earlier negative responses, to Charlotte's increasing distress.

  Once Gabriel added his knowledge of that situation to her wariness when he'd dropped her home, he had a very bad feeling he knew how she'd been hurt. If he was right, he had an even harder road ahead than he'd realized. Giving up, however, was simply not an option. He had decided on Charlotte. The first time he'd decided on something, he'd been eight and it had been rugby. A seven-year international pro career later, he'd suffered the injury that took him out of play. So he'd decided on kicking ass and taking names as a man who specialized in rescuing drowning companies.

  Now he'd decided on Charlotte.

  "So, where are we going?" Charlotte asked after the last duckling disappeared into the reeds on the side of the isolated road.

  "You'll like it, I promise." He rarely made promises, but when he did, he kept his word. It was important to him, a vo
w he'd made as a six-year-old who'd watched the bailiffs repossess the television his mom had worked so hard to get. Brian Bishop, Gabriel's father, had used the money intended to pay off the television, as well as two months' worth of rent money, to make an investment.

  "Forget the television, Alison." A huge grin, his father's hands on his mother's upper arms. "We'll be able to buy the fucking electronics store once I cash in these shares. I had to strike now, buy them while they were at rock bottom. We'll make a killing when they rise again, I promise."

  Only those shares had never risen. Another dud, like all his father's other schemes.

  "Gabriel."

  It was the first time Charlotte had used his given name. The intimacy of it sliced through the memory that marked the day he'd first understood the worthlessness of his father's promises. He'd stopped being a child that day. "Yes?"

  Voice hesitant, she said, "Your expression got very dark all of a sudden. Is everything okay?"

  "Just thinking over a contract situation," he said, his "father" a topic he preferred to avoid. "See that group of shops? That's our destination."

  Pulling into the small parking area out front half a minute later, he got out and watched Charlotte hop out as well, stretch her legs. He wanted to put his hand on her lower back, rub to ease the muscles there. And he wanted to hold her close, alleviate his own tension by breathing her in, her soft warmth against him.

  Hands fisting in his pants pockets, he led her to a tiny shop with a window to the street.

  "Award-winning fish and chips," Charlotte read out with a grin. "I'm starving."

  He'd taken women to Michelin-starred restaurants and never seen such open, unaffected joy. After buying the meal, which the owner wrapped in greaseproof paper, Gabriel took it to a weathered wooden picnic table by the beach while Charlotte carried over their drinks. They sat across from one another, the food on the tabletop between them, and ate in a comfortable quiet that did nothing to hide the thrumming sexual tension beneath.

  Charlotte might refuse to accept it, but it was there. He saw it in her blushes when she watched him, thinking he wasn't aware, caught it in her eyes in the mornings after he returned from a run. Maybe he'd stripped off his T-shirt a few times in the office rather than waiting till the shower just to see her breath catch.

  He was a guy, after all. He liked the way she looked at him.

  He'd like it even better if she'd touch and kiss and handle his body like her favorite treat. Sucking would be encouraged. As would licking. Hell, anything she wanted to do to and with him would be encouraged. As long as he got to put his hands on her too. The idea of having her naked and laughing and soft and silky under his hands...

  Shifting on the bench, he told himself to shut it down before his hard-on became so obvious he'd have to sit here for another hour to get rid of it. Instead, he focused on all the other things he liked about Charlotte, especially her mind. "You saw the new advertising package PR's proposing. What do you think?"

  As she spoke, face mobile and animated, he watched her. The wind had tugged several of her curls free of the bun in which she'd managed to confine her hair, and he enjoyed seeing them flirt against her face as she talked and sipped her lime-flavored milkshake. They disagreed on some of her points, but it was a friendly disagreement, Charlotte sassing him more than once.

  "Hey, no lip," he said lightly at one point and saw her face go stark white. "Charlotte." Getting up, he walked around to sit beside her, his back to the table.

  His instinct was to touch her, comfort her, but the way she held herself--shoulders hunched in and neck strained as she stared at the tabletop--told him she couldn't handle such contact. Seeing her shiver, he went to the car and grabbed his jacket. She flinched when he put it over her shoulders and his gut clenched... but then she tugged the jacket around herself, her fingers tight on the lapels.

  He sat again, and, angling his body to face her, braced one arm against the weathered wood of the table. "What did I say?" he asked when she shot him a quick look.

  Her throat moved, fingers flexing and tightening. "No, it's nothing." A whisper.

  "I'm not really a T-Rex, you know," he said gently and got a guilty look in response, Charlotte's cheeks flushing with color.

  "How did you..." She shook her head, shoulders no longer hunched in. "You have to admit you chewed up people and spit them out that first week. Very T-Rex of you."

  Relieved she sounded more like her usual self, he risked tugging on one escapee curl. "I won't use those words again." It was obvious the term "No lip" had brought something bad to the surface.

  Spark dimming once more, she bowed her head. "Sorry."

  "Why?" he said, continuing to play with the curl that had escaped the bun he hated with a vengeance. It was so distant and stiff and not at all like the fiery woman who was apt to snap at him when he snarled. "I got to touch this pretty hair because of it."

  Hot pink on her cheeks, her head jerking up. "That's not--"

  "Appropriate?" He leaned in close enough that it was pure torture not to bridge the final inches, taste the gold-dusted cream of her skin. "Should I stop?" He had to make dead certain they were on the same page. Because he was her boss, and because he wouldn't do the same thing to her that some fucking bastard clearly already had.

  The choice had to be Charlotte's.

  Huge hazel eyes met his before she got to her feet in a quick movement. "We should go."

  Gabriel rose with an inward smile. She hadn't said no--and she was still holding his jacket around her. It was a start.

  13

  T-Rex Gives Good Orgasms

  Charlotte called Molly after dinner, desperate to talk to her best friend.

  "Charlie!" Molly's excited face filled the screen of Charlotte's laptop, her friend's black hair a wild tumble around her head and her thin, royal-blue sweater sliding off one shoulder. "I've been dying to hear everything since your text!"

  Charlotte rubbed her finger over a nonexistent spot on the bedspread, the laptop on her thighs. "I overreacted."

  "Wait." Molly held up her phone. "It says here that T-Rex touched you. Are you telling me that was a lie?"

  Rolling her eyes at her friend's dramatic gasp, she said, "He put his coat around me... and kind of played with my hair." God, she felt like a teenager saying that. "Just the strands at the side," she clarified quickly when Molly squeaked.

  "He played with your hair? Don't tell me you don't know what that means."

  Charlotte's skin burned, her toes curling into the sheet. "Okay, it was maybe a signal."

  "Well, I suppose he could hardly drag you into his office and do bad, bad things to you."

  Charlotte's panties went damp at the idea of being behind closed doors with a Gabriel who was no longer acting as her boss. A Gabriel who surely would do deliciously bad things to a woman who gave him the green light.

  If that woman wasn't a timid mouse.

  Groaning, she dropped her face into her hands, giddy delight replaced by frustrated despair. "I had a flashback."

  Molly's expression, when Charlotte looked up again, had changed from glee to gentle encouragement. "What happened?" asked the friend who'd walked with Charlotte through the darkness, who had seen the scars firsthand.

  Drawing in a shaky breath, Charlotte forced herself to speak. "Gabriel said something in fun, but it was something Dick used to say."

  She hadn't been able to say Richard's name aloud for a long time. It was Molly who'd reduced him to Dick, and in so doing, stolen his power, or that had been the plan. Charlotte hadn't quite managed to strip him of power in her mind, but she was getting there. She no longer had nightmares where she thought he was in the house, and she could get a full night's sleep ninety percent of the time.

  "What did T-Rex do afterward?" Molly asked, the white lines around her mouth telling Charlotte her best friend's fury at Richard hadn't abated an iota.

  Charlotte thought of the warmth of Gabriel's jacket, of the way he'd been so delig
htfully inappropriate with her. "He was wonderful." The fact that the ride back had felt strained and awkward was her fault, not his. She'd been so angry and tense; the sudden flashback had come right when she'd begun to think she might have a shot at a life untainted by the ugliness of that brutal year.

  "What am I going to do, Molly?" At least she had the long weekend to figure that out--with Monday being a public holiday, she wouldn't see Gabriel till Tuesday.

  "Given his goal-oriented nature," Molly said solemnly, "I bet T-Rex gives good orgasms." A waggle of her eyebrows that made Charlotte splutter with laughter. "I say let him have at it. It'll be good stress relief for you."

  Knowing she was bright red, Charlotte pointed at the screen. "Not funny."

  "I wasn't being funny. Didn't you once tell me to go home with a rock star and have wild monkey sex?" Molly's grin was wide. "Clearly, that turned out well for me. So follow your own advice, Charlie. Have wild monkey sex with your very hot boss."

  Charlotte couldn't think about being naked with Gabriel without hyperventilating, so she said, "You doing okay?" Molly and Fox had recently dealt with a horrible invasion of privacy situation, and while Molly seemed to have come through it strong and unbeaten, Charlotte liked to check up on her friend.

  "I'm good." Molly touched the screen in an affectionate period to her words. "But don't think I'll let you change the subject." She put on a mock-stern face. "You're happy--I can see it. Be happy, Charlie." A deep smile. "You don't have to force yourself to be different. From everything you've told me today and over the past few months, Gabriel Bishop seems to like you fine just as you are."

  Charlotte continued to think about her friend's words long after they ended the call.

  Be happy.

  It had been a long time since she'd been truly happy. But today, prior to the flashback that had filled her mouth with the metallic taste of fear, she'd felt like the Charlotte she'd been before Richard. That Charlotte had been shy too, but she hadn't been scared; she'd been full of hope.

  In many ways, the worst thing of all was that Richard had been nice at the start. That was why it was so hard for her to trust any man, no matter how wonderful he appeared on the surface.

  That first meeting with Richard, it had been so sunny, so sweet.