Сандра Хьятт – Affair with the Rebel Heiress / The Magnate's Pregnancy Proposal: Affair with the Rebel Heiress / The Magnate's Pregnancy Proposal (страница 10)

“I thought the flowers were just a ruse.”

“That’s no reason not to enjoy them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find flowers at midnight on a Friday night?”

He grabbed a vase out of one of the cabinets. It was an ornate job with elaborate curlicues. As he filled it with water, he waited for her response. She always seemed to have some snappy comeback.

It was her silence that alerted him something was wrong. He dropped the flowers into the vase and turned, thinking maybe she’d retreated to her bedroom or even left the apartment. Instead he found her sitting on the living room’s sole sofa with her elbows propped on her knees and her face buried in her hands.

His nerve endings prickled with alarm.

He sent up a silent prayer. Please don’t let her be crying. Between his three sisters, Patrice and Suz, he’d faced down his share of weepy women.

The one thing his vast experience with crying women had taught him was that running like hell would only make things worse.

“Hey,” he began awkwardly. “What’s—”

Then Kitty stood, her eyes red, but dry.

No tears. Thank God.

She crossed to stand before him, her posture stiff with anger. “What’s the matter?”

She got right in his face, stopping mere inches from him. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter.”

She shoved a hand against his shoulder. Surprise bumped him back a step. “You are the matter.”

She bopped him on the shoulder again. This time he was ready, but she was stomping forward, so he backed up a step anyway. “You come here and push your way into my company. Into my life. Into my apartment. You push and you push and you push.”

With each push she shoved against his chest and with each shove he stepped back, trying to give her the room she needed. But she followed him step for step.

“Maybe it’s time someone pushed back.”

By now he was—literally—up against a wall. With his back pressed to the living room wall, he had nowhere else to go. She stopped mere centimeters away from him, her hands pressed to his chest, her eyes blazing with anger.

“I’m—” he began.

But she didn’t let him finish. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Sorry won’t cut it. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it.”

“I—”

“Well?” she prodded.

He gripped her shoulders, resisting the urge to shake her. “Stop. Interrupting. Me.”

Her chin bumped up and she glared at him through stormy eyes. “Well?” she demanded again.

“I—” What?

Suddenly, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been about to say. All he could think was that this was what he’d wanted for the past two months. He wanted to see her again. To sleep with her. To strip her clothes off her, lay her bare before him in a proper bed and spend hours worshipping her body.

“‘I—I—I—’” she copied, mocking his stammer. “Is that the best you can do?”

Man, she was annoying sometimes.

“No,” he said. “This is.”

Cupping her jaw in his hands, he shut her up the best way he knew how. He kissed her.

Five

What exactly did she have to do to insult this man? She’d sneered at him. She’d acted like a tease. She’d ditched him in the middle of their date. She’d insulted him and made fun of him. And now he was kissing her?

What was wrong with him?

Worse still, what was wrong with her?

A hot and heavy make out session with Ford was the last thing she needed right now. She wanted peace and quiet to process the events of the night. She wanted to kick Ford out of her apartment. She wanted him out of her life. She wanted to go on kissing him forever.

After months of living on memories, he was actually kissing her. Months of pretending she’d forgotten him, of believing she’d never see him again, of shoving him out of her mind during the day, but then dreaming of him when she slept. After months of waking in the middle of the night, panting, heart racing, body moist and heavy with need. After months of that, he was here. In her apartment. Kissing her.

His tongue nudged into her mouth, tracing the sensitive skin behind her lip. She shuddered, opening herself fully to him. He tasted of smoky Scotch and heat, of neediness and lust. So familiar, even though she’d only been with him once. Her body sparked to life beneath his touch.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that he’d sneaked back into her life uninvited. It didn’t matter that he’d deceived her. That he pushed too hard. That she couldn’t intimidate or control him. All that mattered was that he just keep kissing her.

Her body remembered his touch as if it were yesterday. No matter what lies she’d told him earlier, she remembered. She remembered every second of their time together. As if for those few hours they’d been together she’d been more alive than at any other time in her life. As if she’d been more herself than she was in real life. The way he’d kissed her then. The cool night air on her skin when he’d kissed her in the parking lot of that god-awful bar. The heat of his hands against her flesh. The cold metal of his truck door pressed against her back.

His fingers had fumbled as he pulled her shirt over her head. She’d lost an earring. Yet when he’d touched her breasts, he hadn’t been clumsy. His touch was deft. Gentle. His fingertips rough as they’d pinched her nipples, sending fissures of pleasure through her body.

He’d shoved her skirt up to her waist and his jeans had been rough against the insides of her thighs. He’d shoved her panties aside, touched her there. A slow, rhythmic rasping of his thumb that had driven her quietly wild. By the time he’d plunged into her, she was already on the brink of climax. The feel of him pumping inside of her combined with the chafing of his fingers had sent her over the edge.

Now, kissing him in her living room, with memories flooding her, his touch was so achingly familiar. Her body trembled with need. Moisture seeped between her legs as desire pulsed through her. She was ready for him already.

His arm snaked around her back, holding her body to his as he walked her backward, one step, then two, still kissing her. His mouth nibbled hers as if he would devour her one tiny bite at a time. And she felt powerless to stop him.

The backs of her knees bumped against the arm of the sofa just as his hand cupped her breast through the bodice of her robe. The silk provided little protection against his roaming hands, not that she wanted any. She felt her nipple tighten, hardening to his touch. Heard a groan stir in his chest.

He pulled his mouth from hers. “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.”

But he poured kisses along her neck as he said it. Proof that he was as powerless against her as she was against him.

Her hands clutched the lapels of his jacket. Pulling back, she tried to glare at him. Which was hard to do through the fog of her desire.

“How you wanted it to happen? What about what I want?”

He grinned wickedly, his hand flicking open the folds of her robe. Brushing the outside of her panties, he said, “I think I know what you want.”

Her panties were damp with her need for him. She knew it. Maybe it should embarrass her, this desperate lust for him, the way he only had to kiss her and she went wet for him, but it didn’t. Not when she knew he felt the same way. She may be wet, but he was hard. Panting. Pulsing against her hand when she ran it down the front his pants.

“You do, don’t you?” Her voice came out husky. “Know what I want, I mean.”

“I do.”

His gaze was disconcertingly serious as he muttered the words. For an unsettling second, she considered the possibility that maybe this was about more than just sex for him. For both of them. But she shoved the concern aside.

Sex was all they had. All she wanted.

Because she couldn’t think about anything else. Anything beyond this minute. This very second. She couldn’t think about the mistake she might be making. Or the mistake she’d already made.

She couldn’t think about the pair of pregnancy tests she’d hastily thrown out when the doorbell rang. Couldn’t think about the twin pink lines on those pregnancy tests. She couldn’t think about the baby already growing in her belly.

Logic told him to slow down, but she didn’t let him. One minute he was merely kissing her, the next she was tumbling over the arm of the sofa, pulling him on top of her. He barely caught himself in time to keep from squashing her. He braced one hand on the back of the sofa and the other right beside her head.

For all her height, she felt tiny beneath him. He didn’t want the weight of his body to pummel her. “That was close,” he muttered.

“Not nearly close enough,” she purred, bucking against him. Her hips rocked against his. Not in a light and playful way, but frantically, as if she were seconds from losing all control. One of her legs crept up the outside of his thigh, hooking around to anchor her hips to his.

Then she bucked against him one last time, rolling him off the sofa altogether, following him down onto the floor. Thank God for plush carpet, though even that hadn’t been able to keep the breath from being knocked out of him.

Or maybe it was just her that took his breath away. Kitty. Demanding. Arrogant. Unapologetic. And sexy as hell.

She walked her hands down his chest, slowly pushing herself into a seated position astride his hips. Her robe gaped open, barely covering her breasts as it caught on her nipples. The sash was still tied at the waist, but the robe revealed enough for him to see she was naked except for her underwear. A little scrap of fabric that felt silky and damp beneath his touch. Just kissing him had made her wet. His erection leaped at the very idea, straining against the front placket of his pants.