by Karen Docter
Dan captured her lower lip between his teeth. His hands roamed her spine. When they reached her bottom, he ground her into his rock hard length. “Feel what you do to me, Tess.”
With a moan, she rubbed the ache at her center against him. Excitement zinged along sensitive nerve endings until she thought she’d go crazy if she didn’t touch his bare skin. Her hand dipped between them to release the buttons on his shirt. She brushed the silk aside and leaned down to drop random kisses over his broad chest.
Something cold and wet and stinky pushed between her lips and Dan’s hot skin.
“Colby! Stop that!” Dan tried to push his dog’s muzzle away but didn’t have much success. The shepherd had planted his front paws on the edge of the lounge chair and was proceeding to lick Tess’s face. “Colby,” Dan warned again. “You’re going to end up back at the pound if you don’t stop kissing my woman.”
Tess couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t get mad at him, Dan. He’s had you to himself for a long time.”
“It’s about time he learned to share.”
She giggled. “Well, I think it’s kind of cute!”
“I’ll show you cute.” He shoved the dog away and rolled to his feet. Without a word, he helped Tess to stand and tugged her toward the glass doors leading inside.
He led her through the darkening house, Colby racing at their heels, barking and yipping at this new game. When they reached Dan’s bedroom, he nudged Tess inside. Then, he slammed the double doors in Colby’s face.
The dog must have been startled because he stopped barking.
The silence was almost palpable as Dan slowly approached Tess. His admiring gaze slid over her. “Now,” he said, his husky voice reverberating through her, “where were we?”
With each touch of Dan’s searing gaze, a tiny wildfire bloomed under her skin. By the time he stopped in front of her, she was desperate to put all the fires out, one by one. “I think,” she ran her palms beneath the lapels of his shirt and slipped it from his shoulders, “we were about here.”
Dan glanced at the pile of material on the floor. “That looks like a good place to start.”
He reached out to unbutton her blouse. “Have I told you how much I like the color you’re wearing?” he murmured. “It reminds me of that bustier you bought for your birthday.”
Tess knew there was a reason for her choice of clothing when she redressed this morning. “You liked it, huh?”
He nodded, and then scowled. “I can’t say I was thrilled about your lover, Anthony, seeing it though.”
She threaded her fingers through the crisp hairs on Dan’s chest, watched his eyes darken. “No one’s seen it, but you. In fact, it’s never been taken out of the box.”
He grinned. “Good.”
“Until today.”
His grin slipped. He opened his mouth and closed it again. With one amazingly unsteady finger, he nudged the collar of her blouse aside. When he saw what she wore beneath it, he groaned and closed his eyes.
“Dan?”
His green eyes blazed at her. Without warning, he scooped her up and carried her to the huge four-poster bed that dominated the room. Only when they stood next to it did he allow her to slide down his length. “I’ve dreamed of seeing you in my bed,” he growled, “ever since you walked out of my store with that damned box.”
Climbing on the bed, Tess tucked her fingertips in the waistband of his khakis and pulled him after her. “Like this? Is this how you saw me?”
“This wasn’t in my dream.” Dan plucked at her blouse.
She quickly began to tug material out of her waistband, but slowed when she saw his breathing falter. Easing it off took forever, but she finally tossed it to the floor. “How’s that?”
His gaze fixed on her scarlet bustier. He swallowed audibly. “I...the pants—”
Tess was so intrigued by the reckless hunger that flickered across his face she didn’t wait for him to finish the broken thought. She unbuttoned and unzipped her pants. “I think I’ll need help.”
A second invitation wasn’t necessary. Peeling the linen down, he laid her back on the bed and pulled the pants completely off. When he finished, he leaned back on his heels and traced his palm over her bare skin from ankle to thigh. “Since the first time I saw you, I’ve wanted your luscious legs wrapped around me.”
Goose flesh raced in delightful waves over her body but Dan didn’t give her time to feel chilled. Working his way upward, he dragged a callused finger over the bustier’s lace panels. “I wondered where these fell.” He leaned over her to tug one aching nipple into the smoldering heat of his mouth.
Tess jerked on the bed and sucked in a breath of air. It was the last full breath she took for some time.
Dan suckled one breast, then the other. With one fingertip under each thin strap, he eased them off her shoulders, down, down, until she was bared to the waist.
She moaned when he pulled away. “Don’t stop!”
He leaned over to kiss her. It was fast and hot and immensely satisfying, but then he groaned and rolled off the bed. “Honey, I’ll be right back,” he said, walking across the room to his dresser.
When he returned, a foil packet in his hand, Tess was kneeling on the bed, the scarlet bustier draped open to her waist, waiting for him. With clumsy fingers that bumped several times over the hard ridge of his sex, she unbuttoned the fly of his khakis.
Before she could unzip them, though, Dan’s hand closed over hers and pulled her away from the bulge. “I...I’d better do that or this will be over before it’s begun.”
Dan kicked off his pants and briefs. He stood in front of her, masculine and proud, with an incredible need in his eyes that rivaled her own. Unable to help herself, Tess reached out to caress his broad chest, his flat stomach. Her body clenched when his did. She sighed with him. Gasped. His eyes closed and his jaw tightened when her hands wandered further afield, but he didn’t stop her exploration.
They were both breathing hard, when his eyes snapped open. “It’s begun,” he said urgently nudging her over on to her back. He tumbled into the bed after her.
“I love this bustier,” he said, finally stripping it off her and tossing it over his shoulder along with the matching lace panties. Kneeling between her legs, he traced fiery circles on her tender skin. “But,” he murmured, his breath warm against her soft breast, “I love this more.”
His mouth on her pushed every last coherent thought out of her head. Sensations ran over her. Simmering heat skimmed her skin beneath his cooler touch. Trembling need weakened her legs and arms, opening her to him. Insatiable desire made her pull Dan up to her for a hot, wet kiss in anticipation of their completion.
The howl of the approaching storm beat at the bedroom door and smote her ears, a relentless roar. Unconsciously identifying the ascending sound, she murmured against Dan’s lips. “Colby’s howling at the door.”
He lifted his head, poised over her, passion glazing his eyes to a dark green sheen. “What?”
“Colby’s howling at the door. He wants to come in.”
His face taut with desire, Dan smiled crookedly. “I know the feeling,” he whispered. He slipped his hands beneath her bottom and, with one quick thrust of his hips, pressed into her moist heat.
Chapter Ten
Dan peered into the grayish light illuminating his bedroom and listened to the sound of nature’s fury raging outside. The storm had slammed into the coast during the night, and then stalled there, gaining intensity with each passing hour as if it needed to store energy for a full-scale inland assault.
Fierce winds tore at the corners of the house, trying to rip the solid foundation off the cliff. Windows rattled in protest. A river of rain sluiced down the pair of slanted skylights overhead. But the tempest outside was a squall compared to the storm that had built inside him throughout his sleepless night.
The last time he’d felt such gut wrenching upheaval was a year ago, when he painfully acknowledged he had to make serious ch
anges in his life or lose his soul altogether. Buried deep in Tess last night, he’d known he’d lost more than his soul this time.
Why hadn’t he run while he had the chance? His brains might as well be used for fish bait for all the good they’d done him since he first spotted Tess on the bridge in the middle of the bay. His instincts had alerted him to what she was...a delectable smorgasbord for a man too long on a deprivation diet...unadulterated trouble on spiked heels.
He should have driven off that bridge and burned rubber away from her. One call and he’d have been off the hook at A Touch of Silk & Satin, sailing the Pacific with overworked businessmen learning how to enjoy the good life. But no, he had to follow Tess, tethered to her car bumper like a sucker fish.
How could he have fallen so completely, irrevocably, under her spell? Her willful stubbornness frustrated him beyond belief. Her relentless drive worried him sick. She carried the world on her shoulders, refusing to share her burdens with anyone, which drove him absolutely crazy.
A small, sane voice that sounded remarkably like his aunt piped up at the back of his mind. But, Danny Boy, isn’t it her strength and purpose and independence that appeals to you most? You’re two peas in a pod...no matter how far you think you’ve come in the past year.
Which was the real problem. Tess was too much like he was, or like he used to be, and had the disturbing ability to draw him back down paths he’d allowed to grow over. In truth, he’d spent the past twelve months too afraid to clear the debris to see what he’d left behind.
He’d torn deeper into that dark territory than he’d like since meeting Tess. She’d become his bane...his temptation...his lover.
He glanced down at her, tucked in his embrace where she’d fallen asleep exhausted after their tumultuous lovemaking. Her soft, rhythmic breathing brushed the fine hairs on his chest. Her slim fingers curled against his stomach, while one long leg sprawled over the top of his thighs. The sheet, twisted around her waist, revealed one rounded breast and an unsettling amount of smooth, silky skin demanding his touch.
The impulse to turn and slide home once again inside her warm, welcoming body stirred him, hardened him to the point of pain. But it was the hunger that transcended his lust and wrapped around his insides that threatened to consume him. He groaned...afraid his longing to hold Tess close, to make her smile, to slay her dragons was now as insatiable as his need to make love to her.
Tess’s hand moved on his belly and wrapped around him, unerringly giving his body what it craved. Her slow, languid caress stoked the fire in his groin to match the one roaring in his heart, burning away his restlessness.
Sucking oxygen into his lungs, he gave himself up to the lure of the rosy nipple that had tormented him for far too long. He wasn’t satisfied until it beaded into a hard knot between his fingers.
Arching into his hand, Tess murmured his name. She shifted and straddled his throbbing sex. His hands traced her ribs to her back, downward to the gentle curve of her bottom. Squeezing her buttocks, he thrust against her in a mock mating dance.
Her moan vibrated alongside the thrumming pulse at the base of his neck, dragging him closer to the edge of sanity. Closing his eyes, he guided her head up for an explosive kiss.
Her mouth was hot and sweet, soft, searching. Desire spiraled low in his belly, drawing tighter until he thought he’d explode with the wanting. But then, wanting turned over into having. Tess’s tongue plunged into his mouth at the same time her velvety heat slipped over his shaft. In an instant, Tess was all around him...inside him...in that place where differences didn’t count and they were one.
Drowning in the endless sensations, his eyes opened to watch the flush of pleasure sweep her face cradled in his trembling hands. He wanted to capture the passion in her cinnamon eyes, but they were closed.
A part of him was content to linger in the gentle, caressing movements that tore his pulse ever higher. But the desire to see Tess’s emotions as he loved her wouldn’t be denied. He stopped breathing, stopped moving within her, and waited for her to look down at him.
A sigh parted her lips...not the response he expected. She nuzzled her face into his hand and murmured something unintelligible.
Still not the expected response. Why didn’t she look at him?
He cursed, low and virulently, when he answered his own question. “Tess? Sweetheart, wake up.”
Her sultry eyes, laced with a lethal dose of innocent sleepiness and naked desire, drifted open. “Mmmm,” she purred, “I was having the most delicious dre—”
She looked down at their intimate position with a naughty little smile. “And a good morning to you, too.”
“It is now.” He pulled her into a searing hot kiss that demanded as well as coaxed her conscious response.
Minutes passed until the crashing storm outside could barely be heard over the thunderous beat of his heart. “I could devote the entire day to kissing you,” he groaned hoarsely, “from head to toe and everywhere in between.”
Moving her hips slightly, her eyes widened when he grew inside her. Her whisper was a throaty surrender against his mouth. “What an awfully tempting offer, especially that part about in betw—”
She glanced in the general direction of the bedside table and stiffened like she’d been doused with ice water. All color drained from her face as she gasped. “Sweet mercy! Is that the time?” Without warning, she scrambled off him and leaped out of bed.
Paralyzed by her abrupt abandonment, Dan was left watching her dash naked around the room picking up articles of clothing. It took him a full minute to find the presence of mind to snag her wrist as she made a pass close to the bed and yank her back on top of him, her bundle crushed between them. “Honey, slow down. A few extra minutes aren’t going to hurt now.”
Tess stared at him like he’d suddenly sprouted horns. “Do you realize it’s eight o’clock?” She glared at the skylight above them. “It’s too dark to be eight o’clock!” Her palm pushed firmly against his chest. “I should have been at work by six. Why didn’t you wake me?”
At the sound of her unloverlike tone, Dan let her go so fast she fell back on the pillows. He worked to control a flash of temper that had as much to do with his regret for the sudden loss of their intimacy as her righteous indignation. “First, I never bothered to look at the time because I thought it was early, too.”
He rolled to his feet. “Second, I didn’t set my alarm because I’m putting Aunt Mary on a plane back to Chicago this afternoon. My assistant manager is holding down the fort so I don’t intend to go to work at all today.” Good thing, too. He’d been far too wrapped up in Tess all weekend to think about anything as mundane as reality. “It wasn’t my priority.”
“Well, it sure in hell is mine!”
Guess that tells you where you fit in the scheme of things, Danny Boy.
A cold knot developed in his stomach. “That says it all, doesn’t it?”
She tossed his shirt at the wall of his chest and climbed off the far side of the bed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, sifting through the remaining clothes.
He watched her set each piece in a straight line on the bed, in order, from the skin out, the bustier he’d stroked off her only last night on the far left, ending with the pants he’d peeled off on the right. For some reason, it was this purposeful distraction which finally ignited his temper.
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about! You’re entirely too linear. It’s no damned wonder you’re stressed out all the time. Your priorities are not only skewed and unrealistic, but non-negotiable. There’s no room for mistakes, for modification, for living.” For him.
“You want to talk about mistakes and priorities that are skewed and unrealistic?” Tess glared back. “Try looking a little closer to home, Dan.”
He was having a hard enough time looking past her fists propped on her naked hips, however, he didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing him say it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
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“It means I didn’t learn a damned thing ten years ago!” Tess rolled her eyes and began to dress. “Nooo...I have to go and get involved with another man like Evan. No half-measures with me!”
Dan listened to her vent as she picked up the bustier, slipped it on, and began to hook it up. As he watched the tender skin at her waist disappeared, followed quickly by her luscious breasts. When he saw the last hook slip into place, he had a sudden urge to pull her down on the bed and set her free again. Physically and emotionally. He blinked when a portion of her tirade registered. “Is that the weasel that didn’t deserve you?”
“Who?” Tess stopped dressing with only one arm tucked into her wrinkled blouse.
“Evan. You know, the fiancé who wasn’t man enough for you.” At the time he overheard the conversation yesterday, he’d taken great satisfaction in knowing Michael Emory liked him better than his daughter’s choice of mate. But, that was before Tess started comparing him to the weasel.
Every visible inch of her flushed beautifully. “You were eavesdropping!”
“We weasels tend to do that.”
She shrugged on her blouse and buttoned it, her head ducked over her task. “I never called you that.”
Dan refused to be mollified. “Maybe not, but I’m being painted with the same brush. What did this fiancé of yours do to get dumped? Did he interrupt your sacred schedule? Demand you come home for dinner at a reasonable hour? Tell me Tess, why’d you dump him?”
Tess’s head snapped up. “You think I dumped him?” The shocked expression on her face revealed as much as the hurt that lined her voice.
Uh-oh. If she didn’t throw the guy out on his ear, did that mean she still carried a torch for him? Dan ran both hands through his hair to corral the unruly thought. “What the hell am I supposed to think? Until yesterday, you’d never mentioned him.”
“I never mentioned him yesterday either,” she reminded him. Staring at the bedroom window, she frowned when a gust of wind slammed at the double-paned glass. “Look, Dan, this will have to wait until later. I have to get to my office.”
