“My feet hurt.”
He looked down. “I can see why. Those are stilts, not shoes. You know that, right? We could go get some drinks. Sit down. Talk.”
“Fine,” she said. “One dance. Then we’re done.”
Grayson took her hand. He led her to the middle of the dance floor and pulled her close.
She immediately debated the wisdom of it. More than once this weekend, she’d made a fool of herself, but try as she might, her body still wasn’t capable of pulling off a harmless, meaningless embrace with Grayson. As soon as she inhaled his cologne, her breath caught and her heart pounded against the wall of her chest.
His hands were warm and gentle against the bare skin of her back. To avoid looking in his eyes, she turned her head and rested it against his chest. But then she could feel each breath he took, every shift of his body.
Against all logic, she slipped her arms further under his jacket, around his waist. In the dim light and soft music, they moved and held each other.
He squeezed her tighter, and it became a struggle to even breathe correctly. Then he buried his nose in the curve of her neck and inhaled her. The intimacy of the act made her whole body tremble.
This is exactly how they’d gotten into trouble last year. A couple of drinks. An intimate dance. A warm buzz flowing through her. Only this year she was pretty sure it wasn’t alcohol induced. For the most part, she’d stuck with the punch.
Yet, the whole thing was stirring emotions she’d been trying to put to rest for a long time. The last thing she needed was to get caught in the same dangerous black hole that had sucked her in a year ago.
She lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him. “What are we doing?”
“I think it’s called dancing.” He smiled, but she didn’t appreciate the joke.
“I think we’ve been dancing around each other since yesterday. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
They both stilled.
“I know. I owe you an apology after what happened earlier. And an explanation,” he said. “Let’s get something to drink and find a private place to talk. Please.”
It was one of those decisions she instantly knew she was going to regret. But she wanted an explanation, he owed her that much. She nodded.
Grayson took her hand again and led her to the bar, then out of the ballroom, and down a hallway. Just as they rounded a corner, a heard of bizarrely dressed people nearly mowed them down. The man who bumped Jessie sported a mustache, beard, and a spectacularly short mini skirt.
Grayson had a drink in one hand but managed to catch her around the waist with his other. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” Jessie laughed. “But I think I spilled most of my punch on him.”
“Good.” Grayson took a few steps and gaped at the odd cluster of people disappearing down the hallway. “Seriously. What the fuck was that? Did you see the dress that asshole had on?”
“Kind of hard to miss, and his shoes weren’t half bad either,” she answered. “He could give lessons to Scully about running in heels.”
Grayson shook his head and looked at her. “Fucking Vegas. The least he could do is shave his beard if he’s going to wear a mini skirt.”
“Yeah, but his legs looked amazing. Clearly great shoes can make even a man’s spindly legs sexy.”
“If you say so.” Grayson rolled his eyes, and wiped the punch from her hand with a napkin. He led her to an unused meeting room and peeked inside, then proceeded to take her through the darkness and out onto a small balcony that held a handful of tables and chairs.
She walked to the edge and took in the view. She could see the spectacular Masquerade fountain. A bit farther away, the Vegas strip glowed with its never-ending light show. “I hesitate to ask this, but how did you know this balcony exists?”
He chuckled. “You think this is where I bring all my dates?”
“I have no idea what to think about you.”
He moved closer and took the drink from her hand and set it on a table. “I had lunch in this meeting room on Friday. I stepped outside to make a phone call, alone, and I thought the view was pretty cool. Does that answer your question, Ms. Cynical?”
“Says the man who freely admits to not believing in dating, romance, or love.”
The shot was well on target. His face sobered. “That’s not exactly what I said.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Okay, it’s not exactly what I meant. It’s not that I’ve never dated. I enjoy going out, being with women who have similar ambitions, who put their careers first. I’ve just never particularly seen myself as the long-term relationship guy. With the hours I keep at work, it wouldn’t really be fair.”
He eased her back against a table and lifted her to sit on top of it. Then he pulled out a chair, sat, and moved her feet into his lap. “Why on earth would you torture yourself by wearing these?”
“Duh. Because they’re sexy.”
Grayson chuckled, then unbuckled the strap from her ankle and slid the shoe off. “You’re right. I find it incredibly hot when a woman hobbles out of a ballroom as if the soles of her feet are on fire.”
She laughed but poked him in the belly with her toe for good measure. The slide of his fingers on the bottom of her foot almost made her choke on the punch. She thought the fresh air might help the dizzy spin of her head, but so far, not so much. Especially not when he stroked her foot like that.
“My grandfather had a heart attack a few months back.”
His comment seemed rather out of the blue, but she hoped it was leading somewhere. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“The man has literally worked twelve hour days, six days a week since I’ve been old enough to understand what working is. I had no idea until I took over. The amount of work is insane. Even last year, when I was going to conferences and screwing around, I still didn’t get it.”
He looked up. “And no, I don’t mean screwing around literally. I’m not in the habit of randomly sleeping around either.”
“Could have fooled me,” she teased.
“Yes. Well, you’re an exception.” He unstrapped the shoe on her other foot and began rubbing it too. “The exception to just about everything I’m figuring out.”
He could claim whatever he liked about no romance in his life, but something told her that hers were not the first feet he’d worked this magic on. The man had brilliant hands. Of course she knew that already. Memories of all the different ways he’d used them on her rose to the surface. She swallowed down the embarrassment and looked at him.
Their gazes connected and held. The intensity of his stare was enough to cause a momentary stunning of her senses. There was a slit in her long black dress almost up to her hip. He bunched the material to the side and out of his way. Then proceeded to massage her feet and legs.
Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. “You have no idea how amazing that feels. My feet were killing me.”
His eyes lingered on her legs. Finally, he took a deep breath and blew it out, long and slow. “That whole damn dress is killing me.” He reached for his drink.
“So,” she said, knowing someone needed to get them back on track and quickly. “You feel that it’s your obligation to work twelve hour days, six days a week until you’re ready to keel over from a heart attack, too. Thereby eliminating a meaningful relationship as a possibility from your life.”
He chuckled. “It’s not quite that simple, Dr. Freud.”
“Perhaps it should be,” she answered. “There are these new inventions called personal assistants. Maybe you’ve heard of them. A good one could probably turn your twelve-hour day into a ten-hour day. Maybe even six days a week into five. Then you’re just an average millionaire who has time to enjoy being disgustingly rich.”
He grinned and shook his head. “You’ve got a happy ending for everything, don’t you? But in my world, it’s not that easy.” When he looked up, she saw his resigned expression. “I’m not sure my grandfather
or I know how to do anything but run a business. It’s just who we are.”
No. It wasn’t. The man who’d sworn off love and romance like it was a deadly sin was gently and tenderly rubbing her feet. She didn’t know what kind of man his grandfather was, but Grayson had needs that went far beyond the boardroom. She’d seen those needs. Hell, she’d been one of those needs.
He ran his fingertips down her shin. “Damn woman, your ankle is even swollen.”
“Yeah, but that’s not from the shoes. It’s from the skydiving.”
He looked up, and his whole demeanor shifted. “Why the hell would you jump out of an airplane, anyway?”
She shrugged. “Why not. It was for a good cause.”
He sat perfectly still for a long moment. “It was a dumb risk to take.”
“Yeah, well. Business is your specialty. Dumb risks are apparently mine. Sometimes the dumb risks turn out pretty spectacular.” Like the night they’d spent together. His gaze met hers, and she was certain he knew exactly what she was referring to, but neither one of them dared to acknowledge it. She shrugged. “Then sometimes, you just get a broken leg. But if you don’t gamble, you don’t get a payoff.”
“You don’t get killed either.” His hands stilled on her calves. “I was in my office when gramps plowed through the door and said you’d been in an accident. It was two days after we released your second book. I pulled up the video clip of the jump on my computer. At the time, we didn’t know how badly you were hurt or if you were even still alive. It took us hours to find out where you were and what had happened.”
“Yeah,” she said a little breathlessly, because his hands had slid to her knees now. “It wasn’t one of my favorite days either.”
He rolled her thigh-high stocking down below her knee. “Is this where you had the surgery?”
Unable to find her voice, she nodded.
He leaned over and kissed her scar.
That was it. Her resolve melted right along with all her other girl parts. She put her hands on his cheeks and pulled his lips against hers.
Using the long slit in her dress, he pushed the material to the side, then scooted her from the table and onto his lap. His hands moved against her back as if he couldn’t touch enough of her skin fast enough. “I can’t make you any promises beyond tonight, Jess. So if you’re going to walk away, do it now.”
There were plenty of reasons why she should be walking away, but she didn’t give a damn about any of them. If one night was all he could give, one night was what she’d take. “My feet hurt too badly to walk away.” She smiled, then brushed her tongue against his lips. “How about you?” she whispered. “Any plans to walk away?”
He had her body shifted and turned so that she straddled his lap before the sentence fully formed on her lips. He really did have good hands. His breath heaved as he murmured, “Not even if someone screamed fire.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “Well, if our lives are in mortal danger, I could probably give you a rain check.”
“Nope.” He ran his hands up her thighs. “Because I’m pretty sure I can come before the smoke inhalation takes me out. And I don’t really care about anything else.”
She laughed again. “You’re terrible.”
The convenient slit allowed his hands to continue the erotic exploration of her legs. When he reached her hips his eyes opened wide and he sucked in a breath. “I’m terrible. Holy shit. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Embarrassed, her cheeks flushed hot. “My dress is tight around my ass and this material shows panty lines.”
“You really are a bad, bad girl. I wondered if your panties would be black. I wondered if they’d be lacy.” He put his hand over her bare mound and whispered close to her ear. “If I had known they weren’t there at all, I’d have fucked you on that dance floor tonight.”
Goose bumps erupted all over her skin. That was the Grayson she’d fantasized about for a long, lonely year—the guy who dared to say things that made her shiver and want like she’d never wanted before. “If you’d asked real nice, I might have let you. That’s why I knew we had to get out of there.”
He moved his fingers over her, slipped one easily though her wet anticipation. He groaned. “You’re fucking killing me here.”
She took in a shaky breath and shamelessly rocked against his hand. It had been a long, excruciating dry spell. He was right—this release wasn’t something she could walk away from even if the hotel burned down around them. He stroked a finger deep inside her, sliding and rubbing the one spot that made her body coil and pulse.
He took her mouth again, licked inside the seam of her lips and stroked his tongue against hers, just as expertly as he used his hands.
Her body trembled against him and he swallowed her moans.
She curled into his neck for a moment to recover, but she could feel how hard he was and knew the kind of tension that was pounding through his tight body.
He reached for his drink and threw back the rest of it.
“Anyway you want me. Anything you want,” she whispered in his ear. “Take me to your room.”
“God, Jessie.” Her grabbed her shoulders and put some space between them. “This fucking world hates me.”
For a second she panicked, wondered if maybe she’d done something wrong, or if maybe he’d changed his mind. Again. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not having you on this fucking patio because once I get you naked, that’s the way you’re going to stay for a very long time.”
She smiled with relief and stood. Nope. He hadn’t changed his mind, he was just debating a location. She put a hand under his chin and tilted it up. “Poor, poor baby. You’re going to have to wait a whole seven or eight minutes until we get back to a room to have sex.”
“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to walk through a ballroom with a dick hard enough to drive nails.”
She bent and gave him a soul-searing kiss then held out her hand. “Come on. I think I know a different way to the elevators. My room or yours?”
…
Grayson trapped Jessie between the door of his suite and his aching hard-on. He ravaged her sexy lips while groping for his key. Why hadn’t he dug it out of his pocket while they were in the elevator?
Probably because he’d been preoccupied. Jessie had opened his zipper and stroked him as if it weren’t a very real possibility someone could get on the elevators with them. The bulk of his blood supply certainly wasn’t coursing through his brain. If it was, he’d put the brakes on long enough to come clean about the sale of the romance division. It was the entire reason he led her to that patio in the first place.
Yeah… Not. Gonna. Happen.
When he managed to open the door, they both stumbled through the threshold like they had a roaring buzz. What the hell was in that punch?
He shoved the door shut and pushed her up against it. The room was black as pitch. The jagged hitch of their combined breaths filtered through the quiet. He trapped her wrists against the cool wood and let his lips travel down her neck. His teeth sank in near the collar of her dress. “This damn dress should be illegal.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“That’s not what I said. Oh, sure, I like it now. But in that ballroom with a hundred other guys gawking, not so much.”
Jessie laughed and holy hell the sound just about did him in. She unhooked his belt, slid it free from his pants, and tossed it. Everything was taking too long. Normally he’d appreciate a slower seduction, but not tonight. He took her mouth in another frantic kiss and started peeling out of his clothes, tossing his jacket one way, his tie another.
He reached behind Jessie’s neck and released the clasp holding up the halter part of her dress. All of the material covering her breasts fell down around her waist.
“Jesus.” The room was dark, but the soft glow of the outside lights silhouetted her slim frame. Grayson sucked in a breath and cupped her breasts, letting his fingers play against the h
ard little peaks. He’d been with beautiful women before, but Jessie had a substantial rack that drove him nuts. He lowered his mouth to her nipple.
“Ah, yes,” she groaned. “God, that feels good.”
He loved how responsive she was. Loved that she gave as good as she got.
She ripped open his shirt. Buttons clicked as they bounced against the wooden floor of the entryway. “Sorry. Hope it wasn’t a favorite.”
He lifted her bottom and urged her legs around him as he pinned her against the wall again. He could have come right then and there if he hadn’t wanted so desperately to be inside her.
And he wanted to see her, all of her, naked and writhing under his hands like he’d envisioned it so many times over the last year. He carried her a few feet and reached out to turn on the lamp in the foyer.
Jessie bit down on his earlobe and he knocked the fucking lamp to the floor. It shattered around them.
“Uh-oh,” she said.
He chuckled. “See. Told you the universe hates me.”
“Should we call someone?”
“No. Just keep your feet wrapped around me and off the floor. I’ve still got my shoes on.”
“And you say heroes don’t exist.”
He managed to turn on the next light without breaking it and then carry Jessie to the couch. He fell back with her still wrapped around him. “It’s not heroic, just because I don’t want to stop long enough to get you a bandage.”
She snickered and stood. “I don’t think you give yourself enough credit.” Lowering a small zipper on the side of her dress, she wiggled her hips until the material pooled at her feet.
She was naked. And so fucking sexy that his hands shook with anticipation. He fisted them at his side to keep from grabbing her and having the whole thing over before it began.
Jessie knelt, stroked him through his pants, and then slowly tugged down his zipper.
Knowing his judgement was dwindling fast, he managed to pull a condom from his pocket before she climbed on top of him again.
With a devilish smile, she smoothed her hands up his thighs, curled her finger around his waistband, and tugged his pants past his hips and down his legs. Then repeated the slow, torturous process with his underwear.
Tamed by the Outlaw Page 8
