Strong and Sexy.2 (32 page)

Dani pulled him in. “It’s perfect. Don’t you see? We’ve ended up where it all began.”

Looking as if he’d just won the lotto, Shayne nodded and pulled her into his arms, right where she belonged.

If you liked this story, you’ve got to try

THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE HIDDEN BEAUTY

by Donna Kauffman, available now from Brava.

Turn the page for a sneak peek...

Elena backed down the ladder from her loft apartment over the outer stables, yawning deeply and wishing like hell she’d remembered to set the timer on the coffee pot the night before. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon and last night the temperature had dipped down a bit further than it had recently making for a chilly late spring morning. She shivered despite the long underwear top she’d donned under her overalls this morning. Teach her to be a smartass and offer up a dawn class. But then, she hadn’t really expected him to take her up on it. He struck her as more night owl, than early bird. Serve her right if he stood her up. Her luck, Rafe was probably still tucked in his nice warm bed. Which was where she should be. Well, not in Rafe’s bed, but...

No way could she stop the visuals that accompanied that little mental slip. It wasn’t a shot of warm coffee, but it did have the added benefit of getting her blood pumping a little faster. Of course, if she were in the same bed as Rafe, she wouldn’t need any coffee, just... stamina.

“Morning.”

His voice surprised her, making her lose her footing on the last rung. An instant later two strong hands palmed her waist and steadied her as both feet reached the ground. She could have told him that putting his hands on her was not the way to steady her at the moment, but she was too busy trying to rally her thoughts away from imagining him man-handling her like this while they were both naked amongst tousled sheets.

Then he was turning her around, and she was getting her first look at a scruffy, early morning Rafe. And whatever words she might have found evaporated like morning mist under a rising sun.

Goodness knows her temperature was rising.

He had on an old, forest green sweatshirt and an even older pair of jeans if the frayed edges and faded thighs and knees were any indication. It was standard weekend morning clothing for most men, but, until that moment, she’d have been hard pressed to visualize it on him. Of course, on most men, that combination would have given them a disheveled look at best. In fact, she was feeling incredibly disheveled herself at the moment. Rafe, on the other hand, without even trying, looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of the latest Ralph Lauren ad. She’d resent the ease with which he made scruffy so damn sexy, except she was too busy fighting off the waves of lust the look inspired.

“So,” she said, her tone overly bright. “You ready for lesson number two?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

She led the way down the aisle toward Petunia’s stall. “It’s been a while since your first lesson, so keep in mind that you’ll probably need to reestablish your report with Petunia.”

“Check.” He said nothing else, just followed behind her.

She stopped at the tack room door and went inside. “I haven’t set anything out, so we need to get her saddle, pads, bridle, everything.”

He followed her into the smaller room. “Just point to what we need.”

She could feel him behind her, her awareness of him as finely tuned as her senses were to the animals she worked with. Except with him, there was all that sexual energy jacking things up. She cleared her throat, maybe squared her shoulders a little, then made the mistake of looking back at him before reaching for the first of the gear.

Something about the morning beard shadowing his jaw, the way his hair wasn’t quite so naturally perfect, made his eyes darker, and enhanced how impossibly thick his eyelashes were. And she really, really needed to stop looking at his mouth. But the ruggedness the stubble lent to his face just emphasized all the more those soft, sculpted lips of his.

Her thighs were quivery, her nipples were on point, and the panties she’d just put on not fifteen minutes ago, were already damp. The morning air might have been head-clearing. Her body hadn’t gotten the message at all.

“You take the saddle there,” she said, trying not to sound as breathless as she knew she did. Dammit. “On the third rail,” she added, pointing, when he kept that dark gaze of his on her.

“What else?” He didn’t even glance at the rack.

“Grab one of the pads. Same kind that we used last time. I’ll get the halter and bridle.”

“Okay.”

She waited a heartbeat too long for him to move first. He didn’t.

So they were officially staring at each other now. The silence in the small space expanded in a way that lent texture to the very air between them. The room was tiny, the temperature warm, with little ventilation. The sun hadn’t risen enough to slice through the panels on the roof, leaving the room deep in shadows, with thin beams of gray dawn providing the only light. There was a light bulb overhead, but she’d have to reach past him to get to the switch.

He stepped forward. “Elena—”

“Rafe—”

They spoke at the same time; both broke off.

He paused. “Yes?”

She really wanted to know what he’d been about to say, before she potentially made a very big fool out of herself, but went ahead before she lost her nerve. “I can’t—I mean, not to be presumptuous here, but I can’t—don’t—mix business with pleasure.”

“Are we?”

She didn’t back down. She might not be the most experienced person in the world when it came to relationships, but she knew the way he was looking at her wasn’t of the innocent teacher-student variety. “It feels like more than a simple riding lesson to me.” There. She’d said it.

He took another step closer, and her breath suddenly felt trapped inside her chest. So much for being brazen.

“It is a simple riding lesson,” he said. “Not a corporate merger. So what if there is more? I don’t really see a conflict of interest here.”

“You’re a close friend of my boss.”

He stepped closer still. It was a small room to begin with. He was definitely invading her personal space. Again.

“And you’re not planning on staying here long term anyway, right?”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Meaning that as potential conflicts go, that one is temporary at best. As is anything that may happen between us. No commitments, right?” His voice was all just-rolled-out-of-bed rough.

“What are you saying, then?” she asked, tipping her chin up slightly as he shifted closer. She felt the bridle rack at her back. “What is it you want?”

“I just want to learn to ride.” His lips curved then, and her thigh—or more accurately, the muscles between them—suddenly felt a whole lot wobbly.

His eyes were so dark, so deep, she swore she could fall right into them and never climb back out. And that smile made it dizzyingly clear that horses weren’t the only thing he was interested in riding.

It was too early in the day for this. She couldn’t handle this kind of full out assault on her senses. Or on her mind. Or... hell, what part of her didn’t he affect? He muddled her up far too easily. Muddled was definitely not what she needed to be right now.

But when he lifted his hand, barely brushing the underside of her chin with his fingertips, and tipped her head back a bit farther... she let him.

“I think about you,” he said, his voice nothing more than a rough whisper.

Her skin tingled as if the words themselves had brushed against her.

“Too often. You distract me.”

“And that’s a bad thing.”

“It’s... an unexpected thing.”

She wasn’t sure what to think about that. And his neutral tone made it impossible to decipher how he felt about it. “So, this is... what? An attempt to exorcise me from your thoughts?”

His smile broadened as his mouth lowered slowly toward hers. “Either that, or make all this distraction a lot more worthwhile.”

She had a split second to decide whether to let him kiss her, and spent a moment lying to herself that she was actually strong enough to do the right thing and turn her head away. Who was she kidding? Her body was fairly humming in anticipation and it was all she could do to refrain from grabbing his head and hurrying him the hell up.

Like he said. It was just a kiss. Not a contract.

His lips brushed across hers. Warm, a little soft, but the right amount of firm. He slid his fingers along the back of her neck, beneath the heavy braid that swung there, sending a delicious little shiver all the way down her spine at the contact.

He dropped another whisper of a kiss across her lips, then another, inviting her to participate, clearly not going any further unless she did. She respected that, a lot, even though part of her wished he’d taken the decision out of her hands. It would make all the self-castigation later much easier to avoid. Given his aversion to commitment, somehow she figured he knew that. They were either in it together, or not at all.

He lifted his head just enough to look into her eyes, a silent question in his own. Will you, or won’t you?

She held his gaze for what felt like all eternity, then slowly lowered her eyelids as she closed the distance between them and kissed him back.

Tensions are running high in

Charlotte Mede’s

EXPLOSIVE,

available now from Brava...

“What exactly is the nature of your agreement with de Maupassant? Is it money? The promise of notoriety?”

Devon turned her head sharply to look up at him, absorbing the stark lines of his face, the wide mouth above the strong jawline. She pivoted gracefully in his arms, holding herself stiffly as though more conscious than ever of a confused upsurge of unwelcome sensations, of fear and desire. Blackburn felt her invoke her steeliest reserve.

“My relationship with Le Comte has nothing to do with us.”

“He has everything to do with us,” Blackburn muttered. “He’s thrown us together quite deliberately. And he’s prepared to give you access to the Eroica, despite your denials,” he said just as the orchestra struck up a lively minuet.

“It’s not that easy.” Her mouth was set in a firm line. “I don’t want or need your offer of money, or anybody else’s for that matter.”

“Don’t take me for a fool, Mademoiselle. And I won’t take you for the innocent that you pretend to be,” he said in a softly uttered threat. “You know how to play Le Comte for a puppet, and you know exactly how to convince him to relinquish the score to you.”

The confusion and embarrassment clouding her eyes was a fine bit of acting, he thought, looking at her drift away from him a few steps, in perfect time with the music’s rhythm.

“Tell me, is La Comte sparing with the purse strings?” he continued ruthlessly as his strong arms propelled her back toward him. “One should think those emeralds around your lovely neck would keep you satisfied. Or are you trying for diamonds?”

“Stop it,” she whispered under her breath, then in the next instant lifted her gaze to him boldly as though changing her mind. “Rubies, actually,” she said with a brittle voice. “I’m trying for rubies, if you must know.”

He didn’t like the answer or her bravado. “Then perhaps we should turn up the heat.”

She gave him a mockingly sweet smile, for his benefit or for their audience, he wasn’t sure. “And how do you propose we force Le Comte’s hand?” she asked.

“With the utmost discretion, of course,” he said, fooling neither her nor himself. “As strategies go, you of all people must know how potent the combination of seduction, jealousy, and deception can be, Mademoiselle,” he explained, his voice rough velvet as he led her from the center of the ballroom to the protective shadows of a grouping of leafy plants.

She was a tall woman but he still towered over her, backing her into a corner. In the wavering candlelight, he thought he glimpsed uncertainty and fear in her eyes as she refused to lower her gaze, staring steadily, courageously into his face. Vulnerability was difficult to feign and for a moment, Blackburn questioned his own powers of observation. He watched the tip of her tongue slide from her lips, the gesture deliberate, he didn’t know. All he knew was how his body reacted with a blast of heat.

As though to make it easier for her, his shadowed face moved fractionally closer as he slid his fingers deep into the mass of her hair to tilt her face upward. It was just one way to fight the battle, he persuaded himself, before taking her face in both palms. Her mouth trembled beneath his, moist, pliant, and intensely female.

The tension eased out of her by slow degrees as his lips brushed lightly against hers. Instead of drawing away, Devon drew unconsciously closer, her lashes lowered, closing her eyes. He teasingly nipped her lower lip, his tongue licking inside. She surrendered her mouth, opening to the voracity of his deepening kiss while the strains of violins and the protective covering of fronds receded in the distance.

More insistent and demanding, the pressure of Blackburn’s lips increased in a velvety heated stroking as his tongue suggestively explored, caressing her sweetness, tasting her mouth with a lazy greed. Slow and inexorably consuming, his mouth devoured hers until she gasped for breath. He heard her groan as she pressed her breasts against him, oblivious to the sharp edges of the pilaster biting into her back, sighing against the succulence of their hot, ravenous play.