She shook her head and told herself to pay attention as Shane kept talking.
“Tess said she’s quitting her job. So I’m thinking, what if we just hire her to work for us?”
“She does,” Rachel argued and wondered why her tongue suddenly felt a little thick. “She writes a column for The Buzz.”
“Yeah, but if we made her a staff writer, she could call her own shots. Do advice, gossip, whatever.” He jumped to his feet as if unable to sit still beneath the onslaught of too many ideas. “The readers love her, Rachel. She’s funny and smart and that comes across in her column.”
She almost said thank you. Catching herself just in time, Rachel frowned at her champagne and leaned forward to carefully set her glass on the coffee table. A buzz was good. Drunk was not.
“Why is this so important to you, Shane?”
He turned around to look at her. Taking a long gulp of his wine, he shook his head. “Not sure. All I know is she’s good and I’m not going to let her slip away.”
“I don’t think you have much choice.”
He smiled at her and something warm and liquid slid through her veins, leaving a trail of fire that seemed to be burning right through her skin.
Oh, boy.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re my secret weapon, Rachel.”
“Me?”
“You’ve got more contacts in the city than the mayor. You can find out who Tess is and where we can find her.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
Setting his glass down on the table, Shane reached for her and pulled her to her feet. She swayed a little, but he steadied her fast.
“Rachel, you can’t quit on me now.”
Quit? How’d he know she was going to quit? She stared up at him and, just for a minute or two, lost herself in the green of his eyes. “Did you know,” she whispered, “you have tiny gold flakes in your eyes?”
The smile faded from his face and his hands on her arms gentled, his thumbs rubbing against her silk blouse. “I do?”
“Yes,” she said, leaning in even closer, tipping her head back to keep her gaze locked with his. “I never really noticed before, but…”
“Your eyes are green, too,” he said, his voice almost lost under the slow pulse of the music. “Soft green. Like summer grass.”
Her pulse quickened, her heartbeat jangled wildly and a swirl of something hot and needy settled in the pit of her stomach. And Rachel was loving every minute of it.
His hands slid across her back and dropped to her waist. She felt the heat of his touch right through the fabric of her blouse and she wondered absently if his handprints were branded on her skin.
She hoped so.
“Rachel,” he whispered, his hands moving on her back again in long, languorous strokes that fanned the fire simmering inside her into hungry flames. He took a breath, held it as his gaze moved over her face as if he’d never seen her before. As if she were the most beautiful thing on the planet. Then he released that pent-up breath and said, “I’d better—”
Go.
He was going to leave.
Already he was releasing her, taking a small step back, putting a small slice of safety between them. And suddenly Rachel knew she couldn’t let this moment pass. Let him leave without at least showing him once just how she felt.
“—kiss you,” she said, finishing his sentence the way she wanted it to be. She went up on her toes, slid her arms around his neck and tipped her head to one side. He watched her, not moving. She felt the tension in his hands. She was pretty sure time itself stood still for one amazing moment.
Then she laid her mouth over his and put everything she had into the kiss she’d been daydreaming about for a solid year.
Four
For a fraction of a second, Shane was too surprised to react.
He caught up quick.
Rachel’s lips were warm and soft and the taste of champagne clung to them, giving him more of a rush than drinking the expensive wine itself had. He pulled her tighter, closer, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing as he devoured her mouth.
Random thoughts flashed through his mind like fireflies winking on and off on a hot summer night.
Rachel.
He was kissing Rachel.
And it felt good.
Right.
Her mouth opened under his tender assault and his tongue swept inside to taste her more deeply. To feel her heat, to claim…something.
Something he couldn’t name but knew was within his reach. Something that he’d never thought to find.
Fin had long teased him about the right woman being there under his nose for four years, but he’d never really considered that she might be correct. His twin had hinted that Rachel Adler could, with a little effort on his part, be much more to him than a fabulous assistant.
But he hadn’t listened. Hadn’t really believed that Rachel and he would be able to…connect so completely. So amazingly.
Her hands slid up his back and he wished to heaven he’d taken his suit jacket off when he arrived. He wanted to feel her small, capable hands with their short, neat nails on his skin.
That thought jolted through him with the impact of a crashing meteor.
Then a ball of fire settled in the pit of his stomach and stretched out tentacles to every corner of his body. Heat radiated from him and fed the raw, raging hunger clawing at his insides.
He tore his mouth from hers and ran his lips down the length of her neck. “Sweet. So sweet.”
“Shane.” His name, on a sigh of sound that rushed through him with the force of a category 5 hurricane.
Her hands tangled at the back of his neck, fingers twining through his hair, nails scraping his skin. Sensation boiled within and Shane had to fight for air.
He’d never known such an overwhelming desire. Such a demand from his body.
Such all consuming need.
He slipped his hands beneath the tail of her silk shirt and smoothed his palms over her back. Her skin was more tantalizing than the silk. Smoother, softer. He sucked in air like a dying man and licked the pulse point at the base of her throat.
She gasped and tipped her head to one side, silently inviting more of his attention. He gave it to her. As his hands stroked her back, he nibbled at her throat and covered that pounding pulse point until he could taste her need for him throbbing with every beat of her heart.
“Rachel,” he murmured against her skin. “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but I want you.”
“Oh good,” she said, sighing again and leaning into him more completely. “That’s very good. I want you, too. Now, okay? Does now work for you?”
He smiled and lifted his head to look down into her passion-glazed eyes. His smile faded in a new burst of hunger. “Yeah, now works for me in a big way.”
He looked around the room, as if expecting a bed to magically appear. If it didn’t, he was thinking the couch would do. Plenty long enough. And if she didn’t like the couch, then the floor. Or standing up against a wall.
Something.
Soon.
He had to have her.
Had to bury himself inside her and feel her heat taking him in. Had to watch her eyes blur and feel her breath catch. Had to see a climax shatter the cool green of her eyes.
“Bedroom,” she said, lifting one hand to point. “Through there.”
“Right.” He didn’t waste time. Couldn’t. Sweeping her up into his arms, he crossed the room in a few long strides and kicked the partially ajar door wide-open.
A double bed with four heavy posts sat against one wall, its mattress covered by a floral quilt. The curtains were open and through the lacy sheers, a streetlight shone from outside, illuminating the softly falling snowflakes drifting past the glass.
They were three stories up. No one was going to be peeking in at them, so Shane left the curtains open to the pale wash of light. He wanted to see her.
Wanted to watch her.
He carried
her across the room and set her on her feet. She staggered slightly and Shane smiled. He knew how she felt.
Everything was just a little off center.
“You’re not changing your mind, are you?” she asked.
“Not a chance,” he whispered and reached for the top button of her blouse. In less than a few seconds he had them all undone and was pushing the silk down her arms to let it fall onto the floor.
“That’s good,” she said, swallowing hard and nodding. “Really good.”
Shane nodded back at her. “How about you? We can still stop.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked and stepped into the circle of his arms, wrapping her own arms around his neck and hanging on. She looked up into his eyes and said, “No one leaves this room until we’re absolutely through with each other.”
He gave her a quick grin. This was the Rachel he knew and admired. Sure of herself. Confident. “I learned a long time ago that it pays to listen to my assistant.”
Then he kissed her again and quickly worked the hooks at the back of her bra. The fragile lace parted and she twisted in his arms, freeing herself while simultaneously pushing his jacket off his shoulders.
Shane felt the same urgency pounding inside him and worked with her. In a couple of minutes, they were both naked and tumbling onto the mattress. The quilt was cold against his skin and the fabric felt old and soft. The antique bed creaked and groaned under their combined weight, but neither of them noticed.
In the wash of light streaming through the windows, Shane looked his fill of her. Full breasts, narrow waist and rounded hips—she was built with curves in all the right places, as, in his opinion, all women should be. He ran his hands over those curves, tracing every line with his fingertips until she was writhing beneath him, her breath coming fast and furious.
As her need peaked, so did his. He felt every one of her thundering heartbeats as if it were his own. He touched her and she shivered. He stroked her and she sighed. She lifted one hand to drag her nails across his chest and he felt each gentle scrape as if it were a flaming arrow.
“Yes, yes,” she whispered, “you feel so good, Shane.” She turned into him, parting her legs for his questing fingers.
His heartbeat jumped, his breath caught. He slid one hand down, down across her rib cage, over her abdomen and past the juncture of her thighs. She jerked in his arms and tried to close her legs.
“Rachel?”
“I’m too on the edge. It’s coming. And I don’t want it to,” she breathed shakily. “I want this to last. I don’t want it over so fast.”
“It’s not over,” he assured her, his voice tight, scratching past the knot of need lodged in his throat. “We have all night. Now let me take you.”
She clutched at his shoulders as his fingers dipped lower to find her depths. She was hot, damp, ready for his touch. He watched her as he slid his hand lower, caressing her intimate folds.
She gasped and stiffened in his arms at that first molten contact. “Shane!”
Her climax hit her hard, shaking her from head to toe. She tipped her head back into the mattress, bit her bottom lip and, keeping a death grip on his shoulders, shuddered as her body erupted from within.
More aroused than he’d ever been in his life, Shane watched her as she rode the crest of pleasure, shaking, trembling in his grasp, her fingers clutching at him. Mouth dry, pulse hammering, he bent his head and took her mouth as she gasped for air. He wanted to feel that again. Feel her body exploding for him, because of him. He wanted to hear her gasp and scream his name.
Her body still shuddering, he took her up again, pushing her high and fast. Sliding first one then two fingers inside her as his thumb stroked the very core of her, he stroked her inside and out.
Rachel dragged in air, knowing it wasn’t enough. She might never get enough air again. Her brain was melting, but that was probably because her body was on fire.
The first orgasm had hardly finished shimmering through her when Shane had her on the climb toward number two. And now that she knew how good it was, she couldn’t wait for it to happen again. Her body hummed and sizzled. Her blood felt as if it were boiling. Her limbs were weak and energized all at once.
She twisted up closer to him, loving the feel of his skin against hers. The soft curls of dark hair on his chest felt like silk, and the muscles beneath his skin felt like steel. His body was hard and strong and, right at the moment, as necessary to her as the breathing that just wasn’t working quite right.
Her mind numbed out, short-circuited from the onslaught of sensations rocketing through it. She couldn’t think, could barely see, and it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was that he not stop touching her.
His hands moved on her and she opened her legs wider, loving the feel of him on her, in her.
He took her mouth again in another kiss and she knew that breathing was no longer an option. But who needed air when she had Shane? His tongue mated with hers in an erotic dance that sent shock waves of need and desire sliding through her system.
His breath brushed her cheek and she moved toward him, somehow trying to burrow into him. She hooked her left leg over his hip and groaned when his fingers dipped deeper inside her.
“I’ve gotta be in you,” he whispered, tearing his mouth from hers to bury his face in the curve of her neck. His whiskers scratched her skin as he licked and tasted his way across her throat and down to her collarbone.
“Oh, yeah, inside me. That’s good. That sounds good to me, too.”
“Protection,” he muttered thickly, dipping his head to bite her neck.
His teeth stroked her fevered skin even as that one word he’d said sailed through her brain and came to a dead stop.
“Protection. Yeah. Okay.” And her without a single condom in the house. She couldn’t let him leave. Couldn’t not feel his body within hers. She had to have him. Now. Struggling to breathe and think and speak at the same time, Rachel finally found the words she needed. “I’m on the pill. I’m good if you’re—”
“Clean as a whistle,” he assured her.
“Me, too. Good for us.”
“Oh, yeah, excellent for us,” he whispered, moving over her, settling himself between her updrawn thighs. “Best news I’ve ever heard.”
She nodded. “Right there with you.”
And then there was no more talking. This was too important for talk. Too important for thought.
Too damn important period.
His body pushed into hers and Rachel’s breath caught. She arched up, meeting him, opening for him, welcoming him in deeper, harder. He was so big. So hard.
So wonderful.
He rocked his hips against hers, filling her, engulfing her with sensation. Then he took her hands and, capturing them in his, held them down at either side of her head. She tried to move and couldn’t. Then she realized she didn’t care about moving. She only wanted to feel.
He stared down into her eyes as he withdrew and advanced, his body lighting hers up like a fireworks show.
Every hard, solid inch of him filled her and when he pulled free of her body only to slide himself home again, Rachel groaned. This was all she’d ever dreamed of, wanted, and more.
As Shane’s body drove hers toward completion, she realized that she never could have imagined this. Nothing in her experience—all right, her experience was pretty limited—could have prepared her for this. For the clamoring feelings, the mind-shattering explosions, the frantic, demanding need.
He looked down at her and she stared up into eyes that were green and gold and dark with passion. His generous mouth tight, his jaw locked, he stared into her eyes as if he couldn’t have looked away if his life depended on it.
Music poured into the room from the stereo in the living room; the quilt beneath her felt cool and soft. And in the pale light, Rachel burned this image of Shane on her mind so that she would always have it with her.
He kept a tight grip on her hands, pinning her to the bed. H
er hips rose and fell with him to the rhythm he set, and when electric sparks began in her bloodstream, she raced with him toward the release she knew was waiting just out of reach.
“Shane?” she called his name aloud. Had to say it. Had to hear it. Had to convince herself that this was real and not just another of her lonely dreams.
“Come for me,” he said, his voice a rumble in the dimly lit room. “Come for me again. And then again.”
With a shriek of bone-deep ecstasy, she did. Clinging to him as her body exploded into a fiery burst of sparks and color, she was only dimly aware when he called her name and followed her into the void.
A kaleidoscope of colors was still revolving behind her closed eyes when Rachel felt Shane roll off of her and to the edge of the bed. “What?”
She forced her eyes open and looked at him. Just one look was enough to make her body start humming again, ready for another go. Apparently, though, Shane was finished.
“You’re leaving?”
He looked at her and gave her a grin that weakened her knees enough to make her grateful she was lying down.
“Just going to the living room. For the champagne.”
“Ah. Good idea.”
“Yeah,” he said, leaning down to plant a quick kiss on her mouth. “Seems I’m just full of good ideas tonight.”
She watched him leave the room and couldn’t complain about the view. He even had a nice butt. But a second later, Rachel closed her eyes again and shifted lazily on the quilt her grandmother had made more than fifty years before. She winced at that thought and rolled off the bed. Quickly she pulled the quilt back and draped it over the foot of the bed, then lay down again on the clean, lavender-scented sheets.
Every inch of her body felt used up and happy.
But just as she acknowledged that fact, her brain started clicking along, demanding to know what she was going to do next. How could she sleep with her boss? How tacky was that? And how could she ever look at him at the office again without imagining that great butt?
Stop it. She didn’t want to think.
Not tonight.
Heaven knew there’d be plenty of time for thinking and torturing herself later. For the moment, she only wanted to enjoy what she was feeling.
Dynasties:The Elliots, Books 7-12 Page 75
