Jack shook off the questions shooting through his mind. Chances were good that he’d get his answers in the information he’d requested. Until then, there was no point dwelling on the reasons, when his time could be much better spent getting to know everything about April on a firsthand basis.
Resisting the urge to glance back to see if Dom was watching, Jack punched the “up” arrow. It would be foolish to even try to conceal his destination. Hotels were the same all over the world. The up-to-the-second information available through their grapevines had saved his butt more than a few times. By now the kiss on the beach was certainly old news.
The doors slid silently open and he stepped inside and turned around. Not a soul was paying the least bit of attention to him. Jack smiled as the doors slid shut. April’s staff was well trained—efficient and, more important, discreet.
Once on the top floor, Jack headed toward the office that he’d noticed from down on the lawn. Cracking open the door, he stepped into an outer office. Glad that April didn’t have employees with her workaholic tendencies, he slipped past the unoccupied secretary’s desk and quietly leaned over to peek into the partly open door leading to her office.
He’d expected to see her at her desk, her dark head bent over a pile of paperwork. What he saw instead took his breath away and rooted him to the spot.
She stood with her back to him, gazing out the huge picture window behind her desk. Her silk caramel-colored dress was backless. He let his gaze drift down the delicate ridge of her spine exposed by the loose halter style, then rest for a moment on the narrow gold belt circling her waist. The slight flare of her hips could barely be seen above the low back of her chair. His pulse pounded when she shifted her weight slightly and a sigh whispered through her lips.
His hand went immediately to his chest, groping for the nonexistent camera. His need to capture the essence of this moment forever on film hit him so hard he had to clench his fingers in a fist to keep from pounding them on the door frame in frustration.
So he did the next best thing and allowed the impact of her to flow over and through him. He responded fully to the moment, to her, wanting to enjoy the rush while it lasted. He had an insane desire to trace his tongue along the length of her too-rigid spine, then slip his hands in the sides of her loose top. His skin tightened as he flexed his muscles against the response his body had to thoughts of how her small breasts would feel in his large hands, what they would look like, taste like.
He must have made a sound, because she whirled around, one small hand clutching the very spot he’d been imagining his hand touching.
“Jack! You scared me to death.”
She’d been a million miles away, but the startled look on her face made it clear her thoughts hadn’t been of him. Jack yanked his eyes from the silky fabric clutched in her hands and the way it pulled the fabric tight over her obviously braless breasts. It took a moment longer to regain his voice. “Sorry.” The word was barely more than a rasp.
April fell silent, simply staring at him. He did the same. She lowered her hand as his gaze traveled over her.
He wished the front of her dress plunged deeply like the back. The gathered silk that fastened tight at her neck kept him from discovering if her pulse was pounding as rapidly as his. Nonetheless, he found it next to impossible to pull his gaze away from that slender neck and focus on her eyes.
Surprise had been replaced by an open look of desire that rocked him to his knees. To look at her now—chin firm, those almond-shaped eyes meeting his gaze head-on—he couldn’t believe he had spent one second worrying about protecting her. Hers was the face of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
In a reflex gesture he lifted the cooler in his hand. “Hungry?”
She didn’t even glance at the cooler. “Famished.”
Jack stepped into the office and closed the door.
SIX
“What are you doing here this late?” April’s voice was lower, huskier.
“I might ask you the same question. But I won’t.” Jack moved to her desk and put the cooler down on one of the chairs. April remained behind the desk. “I told you I’d see you again. Are you really so surprised?”
Until that moment April would have denied just how badly she had wanted to believe he would find her here. That she’d prolonged leaving for just that possibility. Now that he stood not two feet from her she could feel her entire body responding to him, the mere sight of him, the sound of his voice. She didn’t even try to deny it. “No, I suppose not.”
Jack moved around the desk. At the last second April turned back to face the window, afraid she’d do something foolish. Like rub her body wantonly against him just to feel the satiny material of her dress scrape across her bare breasts as she pressed them against his hard-muscled chest.
His breath was warm on her neck as he moved behind her. She held her breath, wanting to scream from the intensity of the desire mounting in her body, knowing she would if he didn’t touch her. Quickly. All over. “Jack?” His name was a hoarse rasp, barely discernible even to her own ears.
“What do you want, April?”
Her only response, the only one she was capable of, was a shiver that ran the length of her spine and made her inner thighs quiver. She heard the soft rustle of fabric and then a click that plunged the office into darkness. The moonlight pouring through the open blinds provided surreal lighting.
“Do you want me to touch you, mi tesoro?”
Jack’s breath was warm on the skin beneath her ear. She nodded.
“Do you know that you affect me like no other woman? I’m intrigued by you, your control, your sensuality. Even when I arrived here half dead with fatigue, you got to me.”
Jack’s words were more excruciating than any caress and April thought she’d die from the mixture of wonder and need that laced his rough tone. Please touch me, she wanted to scream out loud. But she trembled in silence, wanting to hear only his voice in the darkness as he orally stroked her.
His body was so close to her now she could feel his heat on her bare back; the slight brush of his shirt against her skin was almost unbearably sensitizing.
“Yet, I can’t figure you out,” he went on relentlessly, his voice even deeper now. “Something has forced you to hide your responsive nature. You maintain such a careful distance. And yet you respond to me. Totally. Why, April?”
She didn’t answer, unwilling to say the words he wanted to hear, needed to hear. She wished he’d keep talking. But he remained damnably silent.
On a choked whisper, she finally said, “Because I can’t not respond to you.”
She felt him withdraw from her and fought the urge to cry out and beg him to return. She wanted him to bury himself deep inside her, not make her face the reasons she wanted him. She dropped her head forward against the blinds.
“Not good enough, April.” His gentle tone belied a controlled anger. “I want you. Here. Now. On the desk. On the floor. Up against the damn wall. But it’s you I want. Specifically, totally, and without regret. I think you want all that, too. Except for that last part.”
He abruptly moved up behind her until his body came into contact with the back of her body—enough contact to make his desire for her an absolute certainty. “I need that last part. No regrets.”
April had already come to the conclusion that they would make love, when she’d kissed him under the jacaranda tree. But she now knew it wouldn’t just be a physical joining, slaking only desire. No. He knew her too well. Yet, there was so much he didn’t know. This wouldn’t be simple or easy.
He would leave in a few weeks, but in that moment she knew she’d be the richer for having given her all to him—and, in return, having received all he would give to her. “No regrets,” she said softly, honestly. Her spine remained straight, though, still not giving in to the need to lean into him, to let him take the last of her control away.
“I know something, someone made you doubt yourself. I just don’t want
any doubt between you and me, okay?” He punctuated his question by pressing a heartbreakingly gentle kiss on the sensitive skin at her nape.
He understood. Beyond reason he understood, and April knew he would care for her—body, mind, and soul—as no one else ever had. Or ever could. His intuitiveness was as powerful a stimulant as his body and his words. She melted.
Jack groaned. “Don’t come undone on me yet, sweetheart. I’m so hungry for you it will take a while to work it all off.” He pulled the ebony stick holding up her hair, letting the shiny waves caress his face as he buried his lips under her ear. “I need to see you.” He pulled her pliant body back against his chest and reached for the cords that operated the blinds. He pulled them all the way up, bathing them in the glow of the three-quarter moon.
Wrapping his arms around her waist, he nuzzled her neck, willing himself to slow his need to take her immediately. He wanted to revel in her every breath, her every sigh. God, he wanted to pull her underneath him on the cold, hard floor. He took another deep breath of her sweet scent, the hint of muskiness rising from her skin burning his senses. Using everything he had in him he pulled the remainder of his control together, only to have her wrench it away completely with two words.
“Touch me.”
He bit his inner cheek. Hard. “If I do, I won’t stop. Not until every inch of your skin knows the feel of me.”
“Yes.”
No longer trusting speech, Jack moved trembling fingers up the length of her arms to her shoulders, then slid them slowly down along the sides of her halter dress. The high neckline, tight at the throat, covered her completely, yet provided the tantalizing freedom to slip his fingers in at the sides and across her breasts. She inhaled swiftly as he cupped her fullness and whispered softly in her ears. “So soft and sweet.”
Still holding the light weight of her in his palms, he gently rubbed long fingers across her nipples. Her breath came in small gasps then, and Jack was rocked by the knowledge that his need for her could actually intensify. Fiercely maintaining his control, he continued to gently manipulate her breasts, and was rewarded when they became fuller and firmer in his large hands.
Tempering the urge to use his teeth to tear open the buttoned neckline of her dress, he forced himself to release her breasts. But his hands never left her warm skin as he slid his fingers back along the edge of her top and lifted her hair. “I want you to see my hands on you.” He released the pearl buttons at her nape and her top fell to her waist, her dress held on only by her slim belt.
“Sweet heaven, are you beautiful.” Jack nestled his chin on April’s shoulder and whispered in her ear. “Look down. Watch my hands cover you.” He moved his thumbs in slow circles around her hardened nipples as he spoke, evoking small gasps and a light shudder. “So small and perfect.”
April couldn’t remain silent any longer. “So large and gentle.” When he paused, she covered his large hands with her smaller ones and he continued to caress her. The sweetness of his lovemaking, the eroticism of his words, made her feel almost removed from herself, yet more in touch within herself than she’d ever been, or could hope to be again. Except with him.
She watched the moonlight create shadows under his palms as he cupped her and whispered in her ear all the places she was going to watch him touch her. Small moans passed her lips unheeded. She was beyond coherent thought, responding to the purely primal demands of her body.
“Turn around. Touch me.” She did as he asked and he cursed the shadows that deprived him of seeing her. Lifting her onto the small windowsill, he pressed her back against the cool glass, inhaling her gasp into his mouth. He pulled her arms around his neck as he pressed his tongue deep between her open lips. He tasted her, all of her.
Their tongues dueling, then thrusting until he groaned, he pushed her skirt to her hips and pulled her legs around his hips. Finding the strength to leave her mouth he whispered, “Don’t let me go,” then moved to taste her breasts.
She whimpered and bucked against him as he drew first one nipple, then the other into his hot mouth and drew them out to their fullest. “Take off my shirt,” he commanded roughly. “I want to feel you against my chest.”
April was half out of her mind by then and all but tore the shirt from his body. Once he was bared, she didn’t pull him back into her arms. She couldn’t. Not yet. First she wanted to—had to—taste him the way he had her. Inch by slow, wet inch.
She felt the tremors race across his skin and thrilled in the knowledge that he was dancing on the edge too. She moved to the pulse point along the side of his neck, which was erotically illuminated by the moonlight. She pressed a soft kiss on the very spot that pulsed, then ran her tongue over it before gently biting it. Abruptly Jack yanked his upper body away from her, his chest rising and falling in deep, rapid breaths.
Jerked halfway back to reality, April’s mind swam for a moment and she spoke the first thought she had. “Did I hurt you?”
“Never, mi cielo.” He paused to take several deep breaths, completely unaware of the name he’d used or of the fact that her eyes came into sharp and complete focus almost immediately. “But if your hot little tongue had wet so much as another inch of my skin, I couldn’t have gotten my pants off in time to get inside you.”
April felt pummeled, confused by the hard reality of his words and her body’s continued response to them. Nonetheless, the endearment had thrown her, knocking her out of their syncopated rhythm. She felt lost, cheated, angry. But why? It was just a stupid nickname.
“April?”
The word was a combination query and demand. As in tune to her as she was to him, he had to know she’d pulled away too, in mind if not in body. She felt a hot burning beneath her eyelids and pressed them shut to keep the tears from falling.
All the beauty and passion that had built up to near bursting, only to be robbed of completion, of a satisfaction that would have fulfilled needs she’d never been aware of having. “I’m sorry.” It was a wild understatement.
She felt his finger under her chin and spent all of a second trying to resist the slight pressure. She started to speak as she lifted her chin. “It isn’t that I don’t—” Her words died as she looked into his eyes. Totally devoid of color in the lunar light, they pierced her heart. “—want you,” she finished softly, in awe of the intensity with which he looked at her, into her, into the very soul of her. And as quickly as that she was back on the edge.
“You touched me, kissed me, and …” He stopped, his voice giving out. He looked over her shoulder toward the distant waves.
For a long moment she remained silent. He seemed to be slipping away from her and she wondered if she’d imagined the wonder in his voice. She tightened her legs, which were still around his waist, and he moved against her immediately. This time she reached up and turned his chin toward her. “I know. And somehow you were already deeper inside of me than anyone has ever been.”
His eyes exploded in color as black pupils swallowed up the translucent irises in a savage wave of desire. She gulped at the naked hunger that drove into her like a physical thing, then without hesitation pulled him back toward her, needing to be what he wanted, to give what he needed. And more than anything, to be a part of the powerful force that was Jack.
“Nothing and no one can ever, ever compare to what you just gave me.” Jack had barely ground out the words before he claimed her lips in a punishing kiss that he instinctively knew she would return fully. She gave all of it back and more. “Hold on tight,” he ordered against her lips.
She clamped her thighs tightly and held on to his shoulders as he lifted her in his arms. He turned to her desk, but there was no place to put her down. She started to press small hot kisses on his neck and he looked wildly around her office, hoping for a couch or even a soft rug. Nothing but cold tile and narrow padded chairs met his gaze.
Her breasts crushed against him, she started nipping gently at the skin stretched across his shoulders, and he knew he would lose hi
s mind if he didn’t have her now. But it was when she pulled his earlobe into her sweet little mouth that he went out of control.
In one broad stroke he swept the entire contents of her desk into a crashing heap on the floor. She didn’t flinch, just pressed the tip of her tongue into his ear instead. A groan that started in his groin ripped through him and he went over the edge completely. He turned and sat her on the desk, pressing her back flat as he moved hard between her legs. She kept her legs wrapped around his waist and they began to move together as he ravaged her neck and breasts with kisses, sucking, licking, and biting every inch of skin he could reach.
April squirmed under him, hating the zipper grinding into her, needing him now. Hard. Long. And thrusting. Deeply. “Jack. Jack.” His name was a plea for release.
“Yes. Say it, April. What do you want?”
“You. Now.” They were both panting heavily, the heat from their bodies making their skin slippery.
Jack yanked his wallet from his pocket and threw it down next to her head on the desk. Then he ripped his belt open, pushing his pants down, tugging them from under the legs at his waist. “Where? Where do you want me, April?” She squirmed as he spoke and he pulled her dress out from under her belt, unhooking her legs only long enough to slide it down her legs and fling it across the room.
He looked down at her and felt his knees begin to give. Bathed in white light, she wore only sheer yellow panties and the slim gold belt. As his gaze devoured her, her back arched, thrusting her breasts high in the air. “Where, April? For God’s sake, where?”
Her hair was a wild mass splayed around her head as her gaze lowered from his eyes, moved down his chest, swept across his abdomen, and stopped when it encountered his throbbing erection. Without looking up, her voice thready with need, she answered, “Inside me, Jack. Deep inside me.”
Tango in Paradise Page 8
