Sweetened With a Kiss (5 page)

He caught her by the arm when she reached the foyer. “Oh no, you don’t,” he snapped, pulling her back before she could reach the door.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “I’ve seen enough.”

“You haven’t started.” He dragged her back through the dining room into the most amazing kitchen she had ever seen. The island alone could seat twelve people.  The marble counter top offered an incredible workspace and the stainless appliances included a commercial-grade range. Then another set of full-sized single ovens, double-stacked in the cabinets. And it all still managed to look like a farmhouse kitchen. 

“Tell Rogan the kitchen is perfect,” she said, the painful lump in her throat making her voice lower than usual.

“You can tell him yourself.  He's staying in the Carriage house.”

“Angie's not back yet?”  She stepped forward to take a closer look at the ovens.

“No,” he said, watching her closely as she opened and shut the oven doors. “Rogan insisted on the three ovens.” It was obvious he had no idea why.

“I guess so I can bake red velvet cake and bread pudding at the same time.”

“Probably,” Stefan started but his cell phone interrupted them again.  While he took the call, Jen went down the three steps to the keeping room off the kitchen. She stood by the French door looking out at the landscaped back yard, actually large enough for the lap-style swimming pool and completely surrounded by a high brick wall. A wood pergola teeming with vines covered a patio. There was a small stone pool house that looked like an English potting shed. It was perfect. She could imagine all their friends over for a barbeque or just laying out by the pool with Lizzie. They could get a dog. Jen’s heart squeezed so painfully she thought she might actually pass out.

Not only did Stefan expect her to live here, he expected her to love living here. It wouldn’t even occur to him that she wouldn’t. Her breath caught in her throat when he stepped up behind her and put his arms through hers, clasping his hands low on her stomach. Overwhelmed by the heat radiating off him all she could think was that he smelled so good.

“Why are you fighting me so hard on everything?” he whispered against her ear, causing all the tiny hairs on her body to tremble. “Tell me what’s going on, Jen. What made you run away to Paris?”

She lost the battle to keep her eyes open. Her stomach twisted painfully as his words reminded her of all the reasons she should not be in this house with him. She definitely shouldn’t be standing this close to him dreaming about dogs and barbeques.  Home. It just hurt too much.

“Pastry school,” she lied softly.

He kissed the delicate place where her shoulder and neck met and her skin shimmered. If he ever really tried to seduce her, Jen knew she wouldn’t have a chance. Not that she wanted a chance. She wanted him. All of him. So much it was killing her. So much she didn’t dare move, knowing he would stop if she made the slightest attempt to kiss him or touch him. Her fingertips burned and the ache inside her deepened. Jen knew life wasn’t fair. She’d learned that at a young age. She didn’t expect things to be fair. But this, this with Stefan, was just cruel.

“Eventually, I will find out what happened.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” When she couldn’t take another second of his breath against her skin and his hands on her, she turned around, reaching up to kiss him. He did exactly what she expected and stepped back. Knowing he would back off didn’t stop more cracks opening up inside her chest when he did. At some point, she had to start getting used to it. Proving again she was an idiot, because she couldn’t possibly live long enough to get used to this kind of pain.

“Keep looking around,” he said gruffly. “I need a shower.”

“Me too,” she said, then almost smiled at the way he stiffened.

“I’ll take a guest room,” he said. “Master bedroom is at the end of the hall.”

She watched him walk out, then heard his footsteps on the stairs. It was a few minutes before she could move. She wished desperately that she was brave enough, or brazen enough, to strip off her clothes and get in the shower with him. It had totally crossed his mind. She'd heard it in the gruffness of his voice and seen it in how quickly he’d left the room. What would the high and mighty Stefan Seller do if she did?

She sighed. He’d laugh himself silly.

The size of the kitchen and open living room should have prepared her for the master suite. The master bathroom was incredible. They had taken in a bedroom to create it. While it flew in the face of the history of the house, one look at the huge custom shower, and she forgave Rogan. There were at least ten different jets in it and a complicated control panel that she didn’t know where to start with. There was also a deep tub with whirlpool jets that she stared at wistfully for a minute. She hadn’t had a hot soak in forever. The tiny apartment in Paris had had a closet sized bathroom with the smallest shower she’d ever seen.

She stared doubtfully at the control panel for a minute. How hard could it be? She pulled the dress over her head and slid it down her arms.

“It’s already preset,” Stefan said, surprising her. “Just hit this button.” An arm brushed her back, reaching around her to press the panel.

Jen went cold, then hot, and realized two things at once. She hadn’t heard him come in, and she was standing there in a sheer black bra and leggings and nothing else. It didn’t matter that for just about every summer until her senior year, she’d lived in a bathing suit around him when they spent weeks at the beach house. Now she felt exposed and off balance. Vulnerable.

“Don’t you knock?” she hissed, scrambling to pull her dress back over her head.

Warm fingers curled around her upper arm, stopping her. “Not on a door I’m paying for, no, I don’t. And it occurred to me you wouldn’t know how to work the shower.”

Her head fell forward and her stomach clenched. He was too close. The heat from his body burned along her back. He was wearing running shorts and nothing else. She should have kept her mouth shut. She gasped when the back clasp on her bra released. She could not wrap her brain around him undoing her bra. Then one warm finger slowly traced the line of her spine down to the small of her back to slip under the waist band of the leggings. It was like having a live wire caress her. She lost her breath and she arched her back? as he trailed his finger back up.

Her whole body lit up. She felt like the head of a match someone had just dragged across flint.
Step away from him
. One step would break the contact, before the rest of the match caught. Of course, he read her mind again. He was shockingly good at that. His hand shot around and flattened against her stomach bringing her back against bare skin and hard muscles that scorched her. He pushed the thin bra straps down over her arms. She crossed her arms to cover herself.

“Don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling. There was only so much she could take.

“What?” he asked, his breath warm against the curve of her neck. “Don’t help my fiancée get into the shower before she collapses from exhaustion?”

“I don’t need any help,” she insisted, wishing he would just leave before she swung around and threw herself at him. Of course, if she did, he’d walk away.

“Be still.” He pushed her hair away from one side of her neck and kissed her. She just melted. Just absolutely dissolved into a puddle of jet fuel. The match hit the puddle and she went up in flames. Her lacy bra slid to the floor and he caught her wrists and pulled her arms up and back over her shoulders where they wound around his neck. She turned her head so he could cover her mouth with his. It was a scorching, erotic, carnal kiss she was certain she could live on for the rest of her life. And since she might actually have to, she went with it. She at least wasn’t going to make it easy for him to walk away this time.

He turned her in his arms without breaking the contact of their mouths, and crushed her against him. He was burning up. She slid her hands down to flatten against his chest, on the sculpted pectoral muscles she fought herself not to lick every time she saw them. It went on and on. He devoured her until she didn’t even remember who she was, who he was, or where they were. Words like
beautiful
,
amazing
,
sweet
, drifted through the haze. Then his right hand slid down her back and past the knit waistband of her leggings to discover she was wearing a thong, and the sound that rumbled out of his throat told her he didn’t want to stop. Not at all. Something close to triumph surged through her and she pressed closer, pushing her arms around his neck so he could lift her to get her closer. And just as her legs went around his hips, Prince Charming kicked in and Jen really
really
wanted to kill somebody.

He set her back from him, not as roughly as he had in the car, but it hurt just the same. And pathetic as she was, she tried to step forward, but he just moved farther away. And because her humiliation would not be complete without them, hot tears blinded her as he left. He wasn’t even breathing hard. She hated him. Hated him. Hated him. Hated herself.

Stripping off the rest of her clothes, she could not get under the hot water fast enough. Her skin burned under the steaming jets of water as she tried to stop shaking. She ached everywhere, her body screaming for him to come back.  Scorched inside and out, she still couldn't get the water hot enough to wash the feel of his mouth off hers, or the feel of his hands off her skin. It was ironic, really, that he kept breaking her into smaller and smaller pieces when she knew he believed he was protecting her.

Stefan stood two doors down, his forehead leaning against cold tiles as he waited for his erection to go away on its own. Despite the freezing cold water, it didn’t budge until he did something about it, but doing something about it didn’t even begin to help. He let the water catch his hoarse cry, then slid down to sit on the cold floor and catch his breath.

She had been wearing a thong. His hands shook as he pushed his fingers through his wet hair. He wondered faintly what color it was. He suspected not white.

He could sleep on the couch in his office on the first floor. That would work. He slowly released the breath he was holding.  He definitely couldn’t sleep up here. There was no telling what he would do. Not seeing her in so long had made him sloppy.

Another deep breath. Another exhale. Still not really helping.

Who was he kidding? He’d never felt like this around her before. Out of control. Primitive. Starving. He’d never felt like this around anyone.

And he’d never once in his life gotten off thinking about her and all that soft, warm heat he’d finally let himself get near. He closed his eyes.

Sloppy.

But somehow not feeling guilty. Not like he’d expected to feel.

Should feel.

No, just a lot of frustration and aggravation, and he really needed to run and soon. His fingers curled into fists and he forced himself to get up and try to get clean. Because that’s what he really felt like. A drug addict and she was skimming through his blood stream at an alarming rate. He definitely needed to run.

He shouldn’t have kissed her earlier. She was upset, exhausted, and overwhelmed. He just hadn’t been able to stop himself. Now he beat himself up remembering how pale she’d looked, and how much weight she’d lost, and how she’d gone up like kindling and burned every shred of common sense he had right out of his mind. He still wasn’t sure how he’d walked away from her. He didn’t actually remember letting her go. He just remembered her muffled cry of protest when he did and his next memory was standing in an icy cold shower trying to get his breathing under control. The moments between those two events were white, hot and blank.

He’d definitely be knocking on doors first before he walked into rooms where she could be undressed, despite what he had told her. He didn’t trust himself to walk away the next time.

He heard the TV turn on in the master bedroom when he walked back down the hall to check on her. Just to check. Because he was sleeping in the office.

She was sitting up in the huge bed, flipping channels on the flat screen when he knocked on the half-open door.

“That shower is amazing,” she said, her voice gentle, breaking the tension between them. He stepped just inside the room.

“You need anything?”

She shook her head.

“I’ll be downstairs if you do.” He turned to leave, knowing there was no way in hell he was getting any sleep tonight. Not now that he’d noticed she was wearing one of his favorite Saints T-shirts. The one that had disappeared a few years ago. It was a lot more faded now, and lightning sizzled at the back of his skull as he realized she’d probably been sleeping in it for years, naked underneath it except for maybe a thong. Probably a cotton-candy pink thong. His whole body tightened up again.

“What’s going on at STI, Stefan?” she asked before he could leave. “All these phone calls and you look ready to break something.”

He sighed, leaning against the door, relieved she thought it was work keeping him so wound up. He resisted his first instinct to tell her not to worry about it. But STI
was
half hers. And she was twenty-two years old now. She needed to take an interest in the company and what was going on. “Volikovneft is gearing up to drill off the coast of Cuba. They want the Taylor valve and we’re also going to supply the bolts and other materials. But Maretti is trying to convince the Russians that we can’t deliver the amount of valves they need. He is trying to sell them a cheaper version he manufactures in China.”