Sandra Hill (14 page)

He seemed to consider her words before speaking. “You’re probably right. Fashion is certainly competitive, and a company is only as attractive as its most recent profit-and-loss statement or last year’s fashion coup. Still, we’ve
been protected somewhat by being a family enterprise.”

“That will all change in a few weeks.”

“I suppose.”

“Then make Naomi release us, dammit.”

“You still think I’m in on this deal, don’t you?” As an afterthought, he added, “Dammit.”

“Whatever!” She waved a hand with unconcern. “Somehow you…I…hell, both of us…have got to convince Naomi that it’s in her best interests to cut her losses right now. And don’t give me that bull about signing my rights away as a means to that end. It won’t happen.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway,” he said, raking the fingers of both hands through his hair in frustration.

He had really nice hair, Cynthia noticed. Thick and jet black. And sexy…especially when he combed it back off his face and behind his ears, highlighting the one gold loop earring and the strong neck and
…geez, I’m pathetic
.

“Why wouldn’t it work?” she asked, forcing herself to concentrate on the problem at hand…not the hunk at hand.

“Naomi doesn’t trust either of us. She thinks you would sign anything, then later renege.”

“She’s right.”

“And she thinks I’d help you escape, even if it meant jeopardizing the company’s future.”

“Is she nuts?”

He shrugged.

“So what do we do? Sit here and watch Elvis
videos and Cinderella cartoons while our professional futures get flushed down the Hudson?” She cast him a sweeping glare of disgust at his inability to save the day. She hoped he felt really bad about it. Some knight in shining armor this prince was turning out to be.

“I wasn’t going to mention this, but there is one possibility…no, forget I even brought it up.”

“What? Tell me.”

“No. You’d never agree.”

“Try me.”

That response brought a twitch, then a full-blown grin to his lips, which he quickly stifled. “Well, if you insist,” he said with a deep sigh of resignation. “But remember, I didn’t really want to make the suggestion.”

“Aaargh!” she shrieked. “Suggest away.”

He winced at the shrillness of her voice, gave her one of his overburdened princely looks of condescension, then licked his lips one last time. Holding her gaze, he said the last thing in the world she’d ever expected.

“Will you marry me?”

“Marry you? Marry you?” Cynthia launched herself forward like a rocket, propelled by sheer outrage, and knocked the prince backward on his royal patoot.

Somehow the creep must have discovered her old fantasy of a gallant prince galloping down Lake Shore Drive to rescue her from a life of abject loneliness and poverty. And his proposal was an attempt to use those long-dead dreams against her. The blue-blooded baboon!

Even worse, her not-so-chivalrous knight was laughing his royal ass off as he attempted to thwart her pummeling fists. “Can I take that as a no?” he chortled.

“You can take that as never, you egomaniac,”
she ground out as she aimed a punch for his smiling mouth.

He jerked his head at the last moment, and her fist landed on the mattress beside his head. But she was not above using her teeth or a well-placed knee. Every time his fingers immobilized one of her hands, she whacked him with the other.

“
Maldito!
Give it up,
chica
. It was just a proposal.”

“
Just
a proposal! How many of those suckers have you tossed out to gullible women across the world? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?”

He tilted his head at the vehemence of her words. “None,” he said softly.

“None?” At first, she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. Then she realized it was probably all part of some plot. Seduce the Wall Street pest, make her think she’s special, toss in a phony marriage proposal, then, when she least expects it, snare her into signing away her legal rights.
As if!

With a growl, she resumed her assault. She must resemble a madwoman…a shark on the attack. But she didn’t care. No one,
no one
, made fun of her. Not the hoity-toity girls at St. Bridget’s Academy, where Grandma had finagled her a scholarship. Not the Harvard boys who mistook her voluptuous form and gritty Chicago language for an easy lay. Not the Andrew Dice Clays in Brooks Brothers suits on the exchange floor. Not the Prince of Fools who
thought he could bamboozle her with a marriage proposal.

Finally, Ferrama stopped fighting off her siege and went still, glancing downward with horror. He’d just noticed the blood welling from a thin red welt one of her glow-in-the-dark pink fingernails had made across his chest.
Oh, geez! Did I really do that? I’m a maniac. The man has turned me into a maniac
. Ferrama’s complexion was turning kind of green. Her brave knight apparently had a thing about blood. Some knight!

His laughing eyes grew stormy then, as he regarded her with consternation. Quick as lightning, he wrapped his arms around her squirming body, which was plastered all over the top of him, and rolled over swiftly. Before Cynthia had a chance to blink, she found herself flat on her back, with the prince plastered all over the top of her.

I will not allow myself to consider what a great plasterer he is
.

He twined his fingers with hers and pressed them firmly against the mattress, high above her head.

I will not allow myself to consider how his chest hairs feel against my breasts
.

Then he locked his legs around hers, further arresting her movements.

I absolutely, positively will not allow myself to consider how his bare legs feel against my bare legs
.

“If you wanted to ravish me, princess,” he said silkily, “all you had to do was ask.”

Her only response was a low hissing sound.

He closed his eyes, sighed, then opened them again, impaling her with a glare. “All these sounds you make are enough to drive a sane man mad. Growls, snores, hisses. Are you deliberately trying to turn me on? Consider this fair warning, sweetheart, you’d better not purr or I won’t be responsible for my actions. Chivalry goes only so far.”

“What?” she shrieked. There he went again, making fun of her. As if growls and snores and hisses were feminine attributes to be desired! And she’d never purred in her life. And never would. Not ever. Really. “Remember one thing,” she raged. “Often the hound that was made fun of killed the deer.”

The expression on his face changed as he stared at her, suddenly somber. With a raspy Spanish curse, he rearranged his hold on her by clasping both of her wrists in one hand, still pressed to the bed above her head. Then he moved his other hand to cup her chin, tipping her face up for better study.

“You’re weeping,” he accused, as if she was engaged in some unpardonable act, like cheating at cards.

“No, I’m not,” she denied, even as she felt a fat tear slip out of her brimming eyes and begin a slow slide down her cheek. Cynthia never cried, but all the events of the past few days must be
affecting her nerves. She never had been able to take teasing well, fearing someone would discover how very vulnerable she was inside. Because she’d perfected a hardened veneer, few people ever suspected her deep-seated insecurities. This was the last straw, though. Having a real prince make a fake proposal to her, and then laugh…well, a woman could take only so much.

At least, that was what Cynthia told herself.

Using a thumb to wipe away the tear, Ferrama did an unforgivable thing. He licked the tear off his thumb with an idle flick of the tongue.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t,” he beseeched at the same time.

“Don’t what?” she asked. Her brain felt fuzzy and disoriented at his nearness. And he was moving closer. Good thing her arms and legs were restrained! Who knew what she would do?

“Cry,” he said tenderly.

She felt his breath against her mouth and barely stifled a sob. Instead, a tiny hiccough escaped.

He groaned.

She felt the pleasure of that sound all the way to her toes and out to every goosebump on her body. Who knew goosebumps were erotic zones?

“Those sounds you make are driving me up the wall,” he confessed with a low masculine grumble.

His grumble was pretty sexy, too, she thought.
Geesh, maybe they were both under the influence of Elmer’s fairy dust.

He used a forefinger with infinite gentleness to wipe another tear from her face.

Why the hell am I crying?

“Do you always weep when men ask you to marry them?” he inquired.

“No one’s ever asked before,” she admitted before she had a chance to bite her tongue.

“Really?” He smiled widely at that news, though why she couldn’t imagine. “Well, no one’s ever asked me, either. Do you see me crying over it?”

“You’re laughing at me again, aren’t you?”

“If I don’t laugh, I’ll be doing something else.”

“Like?” Normally Cynthia wouldn’t have asked such an open-ended question, but this man was having the most astonishing effect on her. Every brain cell in her head seemed to be engaged in meltdown. Her heart was racing madly. And she really, really wanted to kiss those full, sensual lips that were hovering only a tantalizingly few inches from hers.

“Kissing.” His breath was warm against her mouth as he moved an inch closer.

Huh? Is he reading my mind? Is he feeling sorry for me because I let a measly tear or two slip out? Is he still trying to seduce me into a settlement?

Who cares?

I care. This is taboo territory. If I let the prince kiss me, next I’ll let him do…well, other things. Then I’ll be lost, lost, lost
.

“No!”

He raised his somnolent eyes in question at her fierce protest. “It would be just a kiss,” he coaxed. “A way to pass the time.”

“Just a kiss!” she scoffed. “And what would that be pressing between my legs?”
That’s it, Cynthia, go for crude. Turn him off with your bluntness
.

“Oh.” He glanced downward sheepishly. “That’s Peter. Don’t mind him. He has a mind of his own.”

“You named your…your…?” she choked out. “Oh, good grief! As in Peter and the Twins?”

But he never answered her. He was too busy brushing his lips across hers, real slow, as if he was savoring every infinitesimal millimeter of the journey. “You have the most delectable, erotic, hot-as-sin mouth in the world,” he murmured against her parted lips, midway through his trek.

May the trek last forever!
she thought with mind-melting pleasure.

“I’ll try my best,” he promised huskily.

Oh, damn, did I speak aloud?
“Release my hands,” she begged.

“Why?”

“So I can hold on.”

“To what?”

“You.”

He raised his head to look at her. His lips were slack with arousal, and he hadn’t even given her a real kiss yet.

“Because…because when you get around to
really
kissing me, not just these little sissy brush strokes…well, I figure I’m going to need to hold on for dear life.”

“Sissy? Are you saying I sissy kiss?” His dark eyes lit up at the challenge. “Now you’ve done it, Cynthia. I’m probably going to regret this…you’re probably going to regret this, but I have no choice now. Nope. Dare a prince and you dare the devil.
Qué será será
.”

P.T. had lost control of the seduction about a hiccough and a sob ago. He was acting purely on reflex now, and his reflexes were being fueled by two zillion pounds of raging testosterone.

A sissy kiss, huh? I’ll show her
. If there was one thing a Spaniard—well, okay, a Puerto Rican—knew how to do, it was kiss. He put his heart and soul into his kisses. He savored them, like fine wine and good sex.

He released her hands and advised in a husky voice he scarcely recognized, “Hold on tight, Cynthia.”

Before she could ask what he meant, he spread his legs wide. Since they were entwined with hers, that meant her thighs went wide, too. Biting back a roar of triumph, P.T. insinuated himself with the precision of an F-14 pilot into the Irish channel, flush against the target.

She gasped, and her clear blue eyes went huge.

He would have gasped, as well, but his heart was beating so fast he could barely breathe. At
the same time, his blood thickened, causing his limbs to feel heavy. His movements, even the slight tilt of his head, took on a sluggish, slow-motion sensuality.

He wished this moment could last forever. The sheer, unadulterated pleasure of allowing his body to rest against hers—heart to heart, belly to belly, sex to sex—was the most intensely wonderful sensation he’d ever experienced. So intense that he felt tears well in his eyes at the wonder of what could only be described as magic.

When he lowered his mouth to hers now, her lips were already parted in welcome. Holding her gaze, he braced his elbows on either side of her head and furrowed his fingers into her wild strawberry blond hair, grasping her scalp.

Never breaking eye contact, she reached up and did the same with her fingers in his hair. The light pressure against his scalp was almost his undoing. Her gesture was clearly a signal of surrender. At the same time, she was giving notice that she would be an equal partner in this kiss…and whatever followed.

With a low growl of his own masculine surrender, he kissed her then. A savage, hungry melding of mouths and tongues and slickness, his and hers.

The kiss went on and on and on. Perhaps he feared that if he stopped, even for a breath, it would break the spell. And so he shaped and pressed and plunged and softened and nibbled
and devoured. And succumbed to the most glorious kiss of his life. Which was much more than a kiss. It was a statement of something so powerful, he couldn’t begin to understand its meaning.

Meanwhile Cynthia “The Shark” Sullivan was shaping and pressing and plunging and softening and nibbling and devouring him in equal measure.

And Peter was screaming silently for attention, “Me, me, me!” But P.T. didn’t dare move, down there, or this “kiss” would end far too soon, in a highly unsatisfactory manner.

Then Cynthia did the worst possible thing. She moved, down there. A slight arching of her hips. A little wiggle, side to side. A breathy moan. And all hell broke loose.

He rolled over so that she was on top, the kiss still unbroken. His hands roamed frantically over her shoulders and back and buttocks, especially her buttocks, which he massaged through her silk panties. When she began to undulate against him and pressed her sweet tongue inside his mouth, he saw stars behind his closed eyelids and rolled them over again.

Now he moved against her, rhythmically, and his tongue was in her mouth, where she sucked on it with a matching rhythm. He wanted to take this slow, to remove her clothing, inch by inch, to lick her breasts and other places. He satisfied himself with running his hands under her camisole and testing the weight and shape of her
breasts in his hands; the nipples were large and hard against his palms.

She cried into his mouth then, and tried to break their kiss. He realized that her breasts, with the wonderfully large nipples, were her sweet spot…the most erotic, sensitive zone on her body, and he smiled exultantly against her lips, refusing to allow her escape.

He began to manipulate her hardened peaks, first with circular motions of his palms, then between his thumbs and forefingers. His lower body began to thrust, involuntarily. Hard, spasmlike motions. She raised her knees to cradle his hips and spread herself wider.

He should stop now. He really should. In fact, he broke the kiss, panting. And realized immediately that it was a mistake. Watching her just spurred him on farther, and faster. Her eyes were closed. She licked her lips dreamily. Her cheeks were flushed with passion.

Without thinking he pushed her camisole upward, exposing two of the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. They were full and tipped with engorged, rose-colored nipples. Exquisite.

“No,” she whimpered. “Don’t look at me.”

But he was done looking. With a raw growl, he took one nipple into his mouth and began to suckle. The other breast got equal attention from his flicking fingertips.

She began to scream and he put his lips over hers again, taking her long, drawn-out scream into his mouth.

Her arms flailed wildly and her legs went rigid as she arched her hips off the mattress. Her orgasm was approaching at an uncontrollable pace, he knew that, but still he resumed suckling at her breasts, mercilessly. His erection felt hard as steel as it pounded against her slickness, which he could feel even through his shorts.