Taming the Last St Claire (12 page)

Joey was too lost in the vortex of pleasure to question why it was she was responding so totally to Gideon, of all men.

‘Aren’t you…a little overdressed still …?’ she prompted restlessly, desperate now to touch him in the same way he was touching her.

‘A little.’ He gave a rueful smile as he straightened, slipping out of his jacket and pulling off his tie before dropping them down on the floor with Joey’s discarded clothes.

‘Let me.’ Joey gently pushed his hands away as he would have unbuttoned his shirt himself, and her gaze easily held his as she slowly unfastened each of those buttons. She only lowered it to look at him as she took off his shirt completely, to bare his tanned chest.

His shoulders were so wide, his muscled chest so clearly defined, with a light dusting of golden hair that dipped lower, to taper down beneath his trousers. Joey touched him lingeringly, running her fingers lightly over that tanned flesh. Gideon’s nipples were hard little buds beneath her fingertips where they nestled amongst those golden curls.

Would kissing one give Gideon the same pleasure he had just given her? she wondered. She satisfied that curiosity, knowing by his sharply indrawn breath as he cupped the back of her head and held her against him that the answer to that question was a definite yes.

Emboldened, she turned to give the second hard bud the
same treatment. His skin felt hot to the touch, and Joey was able to feel the rapid beating of Gideon’s heart beneath her fingertips. Her hands moved lower, feeling the leap of his hard shaft as her fingers swept against him tentatively.

‘God, yes, Joey …’ Gideon groaned achingly, his hips pushing against her hands. Her caresses instantly became bolder at his encouragement, and she started to stroke the pulsing length of his erection harder and faster.

Gideon unbuttoned and unzipped his trousers himself, pushing them and his boxers down to his hips and instantly feeling relief as his arousal sprang free. He growled softly in his throat as he felt her hands taking possession of his bared flesh, instinctively thrusting into those caressing hands, knowing he was on the brink of release, and needing-oh, God—needing it so badly.

‘Change places with me, Gideon,’ Joey encouraged urgently, and she released him long enough for him to take her place on the marble seat. Now she knelt in front of him, stroking her tongue lightly across his sensitive tip, licking and tasting as her hand continued to stroke him firmly.

Gideon’s vision became slightly blurred as he looked down and saw Joey taking him into her mouth, her slender fingers still curled about him, her tongue continuing that rasping, rhythmic swirl.

‘I’m going to come if you don’t stop! ‘

In complete contradiction of that warning Gideon moved one of his hands to the back of Joey’s head, and his fingers became entangled in the glossy red of her hair, holding her to him as he instinctively began to thrust deeper. At the same time his other hand cupped and caressed one of her uptilting breasts, teasing, squeezing, before rolling the engorged nipple between finger and thumb.

Joey moaned in pleasure even as she felt the responsive warmth flood between her thighs.

She had never been this intimate with any man before. Never
wanted
to be this intimate with any man before Gideon. Had never felt this heady exhilaration at the giving and receiving of pleasure. Her caresses were purely instinctive.

‘Yes, Joey …’ Gideon’s eyes glowed like molten gold between narrowed lids. ‘Oh, God,’ he groaned.

‘Gideon?’ A knock sounded on the bathroom door. ‘Are you unwell, Gideon?’ Concern could be clearly heard in May Randall’s voice as she obviously stood on the other side of the locked bathroom door.

Joey froze, totally stricken, shocked at her complete lack of inhibition!

‘O
KAY
, so you were proved right. Attempting to make love in a bathroom
wasn’t
the most sensible thing I’ve ever thought of doing!’

Gideon paced Joey’s office impatiently fifteen minutes later as she sat looking at him guardedly from behind her desk. Both of them were now fully dressed, and the pallor of her cheeks told him exactly how upset she still was.

Was is embarrassment at the depth of the intimacy they had shared earlier? Or disappointment because that intimacy had been interrupted? Gideon wasn’t sure.

He did know that they had both reacted like guilty teenagers when May Randall knocked on the bathroom door. Joey’s face had been stricken as she’d stood up to turn her back on him, quickly dressing in her cream lace bra and silk blouse. Gideon hadn’t been much better as he’d forced his still aching erection back inside his boxers and zipped up his trousers. Tersely, he had assured May that he was fine, and would join her in her office in a few minutes, before pulling his shirt on and fastening the buttons with hands that had shaken slightly.

No, it certainly hadn’t been Gideon’s finest hour.

As he had just told Joey it hadn’t been his most sensible one, either. Sadly, his usual cool sensibility had gone out
of the window the moment she had come to work in the adjoining office!

‘Will you please say something, Joey?’ he pleaded now, at her continued uncomfortable silence.

Maybe she would break her silence if she could think of something to say. If she wasn’t still so totally shocked by her own behaviour.

Ideally she needed to say something dismissive and sophisticated. But, as she didn’t feel in the least dismissive
or
sophisticated at the moment, she had no idea what she could say without sounding ridiculously gauche and inexperienced.

Just looking at Gideon now, remembering the depth of the intimacy between them earlier, was enough to make her want to crawl away somewhere and hide. At least until she stopped feeling as if she might die from embarrassment every time she so much as looked at him. Which would be never.

Maybe the best thing was to just avoid the subject altogether. ‘Have you had chance yet to look at that security disk?’

Gideon stopped his pacing to stare across the desk at her incredulously. ‘Is that the best you can do?’

‘I can see no benefit to either of us in talking about what just happened.’ Especially as she was still in shock because of it!

Neither did he. Until, that was, Joey expressed her own reluctance to talk about it.

Just being near this woman made him behave recklessly, impulsively, illogically. Something he never, ever did—in any situation. Hearing her dismiss that behaviour as if it were of absolutely no consequence was enough to make him want to shake her!

He glowered down at her from the other side of the desk.
‘How about we discuss a time when we can finish what we started?’

Green eyes met his briefly before Joey looked quickly away again. ‘That would be extremely stupid of us.’

‘No more stupid than me walking about with a constant erection and you on the brink of orgasm!’ he retorted.

Two bright wings of colour appeared in the pallor of her cheeks. ‘You’re being deliberately crude—’

‘I’m being honest,’ Gideon corrected.

‘Then perhaps you ought to consider being less honest and a little more circumspect!’ She glared up at him.

Gideon gave a humourless laugh. ‘Until you came along,
circumspect
used to be my middle name. It seems to have abandoned me.’

‘Then I suggest you find it again! ‘

She briskly shifted some papers on top of her desk, drawing Gideon’s attention to the golden dragon sitting majestically at the front. Those glittering yellow eyes seemed to glower at him malevolently.

‘Your good luck charm doesn’t appear to be working at the moment,’ he murmured ruefully.

‘My good luck charm is working just fine.’ Joey reached out to touch the dragon defensively. ‘It’s the two of
us
who are behaving irrationally.’

Gideon looked slightly self-conscious. ‘I have no more idea than you do what’s going on between us.’ He scowled his frustration. ‘But something obviously is,’ he added less forcefully as he gentled his expression. ‘And we obviously can’t keep doing this.’

Her fingers curled about the golden dragon. ‘Doing what?’

‘Going a little further each time we make love and then stopping.’ He frowned darkly. ‘Besides being frustrating as hell, it’s totally disruptive!’

Joey smiled tightly. ‘How typical that you should look at this from the point of view of how it affects your work—’

‘Totally disruptive for both of us in regard to just living our lives,’ he corrected her. ‘Damn it, Joey, you’re like a constant itch I can’t scratch.’

‘I believe that’s the first time a man has compared me to having the irritation of a rash! How complimentary!’ she said sarcastically.

‘I don’t recall using the word irritating.’

She shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, it was there in your tone of voice.’

Gideon growled his impatience. ‘You don’t know me well enough yet to say
what’s
in my tone of voice.’

‘And I have no wish to know you well enough, either,’ Joey stated firmly. ‘Gideon, I can’t stress strongly enough how much of a mistake I consider our earlier behaviour to be.’ She met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘Especially when you consider how much we dislike and disapprove of each other.’

Gideon became very still, his expression guarded, as he considered whether that statement was still true. In regard to himself, at least. He certainly hadn’t liked or approved of Joey before she’d come to work with him. Right now he wasn’t sure what he felt towards her.

‘You’re right, of course,’ Gideon said calmly.

Joey looked up at him searchingly, unsure about his sudden capitulation. Gideon’s expression was back to being cold and aloof, and revealed none of his real emotions.

Perhaps that was as well, considering how badly shaken she still was at the way they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other the moment they saw each other again.

‘And the answer to your earlier question is no—I haven’t
had a chance to look at the security disk yet,’ he admitted. ‘I thought—obviously mistakenly!—that it was more important for me come in here and offer you reassurance over what just happened rather than look at it.’

The inexperienced Joey would have welcomed his reassurance fifteen minutes ago—after May had first interrupted them. Now she just wanted to forget the whole embarrassing incident.

She gave a haughty inclination of her head. ‘Obviously you
were
mistaken.’

Gideon dragged in a harsh breath and resisted the impulse he had to reach across the desk, grab hold of Joey’s shoulders, and shake her until her teeth rattled—a move guaranteed, as it involved touching her, into tempting him into pulling her back into his arms. Which would take them God only knew where!

His jaw clenched as he ground his teeth together. ‘Let’s go and look at the damned thing now, if that’s what you want.’

He turned on his heel and strode forcefully into the adjoining office without waiting to see if Joey followed him. At that moment he didn’t particularly care whether she did or not.

Gideon had known from the first that having her working here was going to cause unwanted complications—he just hadn’t realised what direction those complications would take.

He always chose his bed partners with care—invariably because those women were able to regard physical relationships with the same detachment Gideon did. Yet just the smell of Joey’s perfume, combining sexily aroused woman with a lightly floral scent, as she once again came to stand beside him as he brought up the image on his computer screen, was enough to cause a resurgence of
his earlier arousal. So much for detachment, he thought frustratedly…

‘I know him.’ Gideon bent down for a closer look as the image she had frozen earlier, of a bearded man, reappeared on his computer screen. ‘Where the hell do I know him from?’

‘Maybe he works here after all?’ Joey suggested helpfully.

‘No, that isn’t it.’ Gideon continued to study the image. ‘Maybe if we took away the beard? Put a little weight on him? Possibly a shirt and tie—’

‘And you’d have Richard Newman,’ Joey said slowly.

Gideon glanced at her briefly, before turning his attention back to the man on the screen. ‘We have Richard Newman,’ he agreed.

The same Richard Newman who had been only too happy to let Joey’s sister Stephanie be named as the other woman in his divorce a couple of months ago, in order to protect the woman he was really having an affair with—namely his boss’s wife. Richard Newman who had subsequently lost his wife and custody of his children, his home and his mistress, and his job, when the truth finally came out.

A truth that Gideon and Joey, between them, had discovered and revealed.

Well…mainly Gideon, to be perfectly honest. But Joey had certainly been working towards proving her twin’s innocence, too.

Which was perhaps why Newman had now chosen to target both of them with malicious sabotage?

Gideon turned to look at Joey, frowning slightly as he saw that she had stepped away from the desk and now stood with her back towards him in front of the window, her arms wrapped almost protectively about her waist.

‘Joey?’

She didn’t answer, but her shoulders began to tremble.

Gideon pushed his chair back to stand up slowly. ‘Joey, are you okay?’

‘Am I
okay?’
she repeated sharply as she turned, those jade-green eyes glittering brightly. ‘We almost made love in the damned bathroom, and now—’

‘Let’s just concentrate on Richard Newman,’ Gideon muttered grimly.

She shook her head. ‘They warned me about this when I took my law degree. The possibility that some dissatisfied client might one day turn nasty. But I never thought—I never imagined it would ever happen to me. Or realised how awful it would feel if it did.’

‘Joey—’

‘I
spoke
to him, Gideon!’ Her voice broke emotionally, and her eyes were wide with distress now as the trembling intensified. ‘I stood in front of him in the coffee shop, and when he came outside he deliberately engaged me in casual conversation. And all the time he—It can’t have been a coincidence, Gideon. He must have been watching me. Must have followed me to the coffee shop! Deliberately stood behind me in the queue—oh, God …!’ The trembling became full-blown shaking as the enormity of that supposedly casual meeting hit her.