In Bed with the Devil / High-Society Mistress: In Bed with the Devil

Meri waited until nearly midnight, then climbed the stairs to Jack’s office, prepared to let herself out onto the balcony and enjoy the beauty of the heavens. She didn’t expect to find him on his laptop.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she grumbled as he glanced up. “It’s late. You need your rest.”

“I see you’ve changed your seduction techniques. These are interesting. Less effective, in case you were wondering.”

“I’m not here to seduce you. I have more important things to do with my time.”

He glanced out the French doors toward the sky. “I see. And I would get in the way?”

“You’re going to ask a lot of irritating questions. You won’t be able to help it. I’ll try to be patient, but I’ll snap and then you’ll get your feelings hurt. I’m just not in the mood to deal with your emotional outbursts.”

Instead she wanted to stare at the sky and let the vast beauty heal her soul. Okay, yes, getting Jack into bed was her ultimate goal, but there was a time and place for work and this wasn’t it.

“I suspect my feelings will survive just fine,” he said.

“No way. You’ll go all girlie on me.”

She shouldn’t have said it. She knew that. She hadn’t actually meant to challenge him—she was simply impatient to get out into the night and use the telescope.

He stood without speaking and moved around the desk until he was standing in front of her. Looming, actually. She had to tilt her head all the way back to see into his eyes.

“You think I’m girlie?” he asked in a low, slightly dangerous voice. A voice thick with power. A voice that made her realize he was a whole lot bigger than her and that there were a couple of floors between her and help.

“Not at all,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to say it. The words just slipped out. Bad me. You should probably stalk out and teach me what for by leaving me alone.”

Instead he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you play all the men in your life?”

She swallowed. “Pretty much.”

“Does it work?”

“Mostly.”

“Not this time.”

He cupped her cheek with his hand, bent down and kissed her.

She’d sensed he was going to and should have had time to brace herself. It was just a kiss, right? No big deal. They’d kissed before, and while she’d liked it, she’d managed to keep perfect control…sort of.

But not this time. The second his mouth touched hers, she started dissolving from the inside out. Technically that couldn’t be true, but it felt true. Heat poured through her, making her want to move closer. Again something that didn’t make sense. The closer she got to Jack, the more their shared body temperature would rise. Wait—it wouldn’t rise exactly, it would…

He moved his mouth against hers. This wasn’t the angry, something-to-prove kiss he’d given her at the gym. That had been easy to deal with. This kiss was different. It offered instead of taking. He applied just enough pressure to make her want to lean in and do a little demanding of her own.

Without meaning to, she reached up and rested her hands on his shoulders. He pulled her close until they were touching all over. Shoulder to knee, man to woman. He was hard and unyielding, a combination she found wildly erotic.

One of his hands slipped through her hair, tangling in the waves. The other moved up and down her back. Slowly, so slowly. Not touching anything significant, but still…touching.

He continued to brush his mouth against hers, keeping the kiss chaste yet arousing her until she wanted to grab him, shake him and tell him to get on with it already.

When he licked her bottom lip, she nearly groaned in relief. Fortunately she managed to hold in the sound. She even waited a nanosecond before parting for him. She didn’t want to seem too eager. But then his tongue was touching hers, and staying cool was the last thing on her mind. Not when her blood rushed through her body at Mach 1 and every interesting female part of her began to tingle and ache and move toward begging to be touched.

He kissed her deeply, exploring, teasing, circling. She met him stroke for stroke, wanting to arouse him as much as he aroused her. Not to prove a point, for once, but because a kiss this good should be shared. Because it felt right.

She breathed in the scent of his body. She wished she were physically capable of crawling inside of him so she could know what he was feeling at that exact moment. Instead she tilted her head and continued to kiss him as if this had been her plan all along.

She felt the hardness of his arousal pressing into her midsection. He wanted her. There was physical proof.

It should have been a moment of rejoicing. She should have pulled away and crowed about her victory. She was more than halfway there. But while she did pull back, she didn’t say a word. Instead she stared into his dark eyes, at the fire there, the fire that matched the one raging inside her.

Then she did the only thing that couldn’t possibly make sense. She turned and ran.

Five

If there wasn’t twenty million for charity on the line, not to mention the house itself, Jack would have been on the road back to Texas the next morning. But he was stuck for the month. All the other guys had survived their time at Hunter’s Landing, so he would, too. But he would bet a lot of money that their weeks had been a whole lot less hellish than his.

He didn’t want to think about his most recent kiss with Meri, but he couldn’t seem to think about anything else. It had been different. He’d felt the power of his need for her all the way down to his bones. He’d ached for her in a way that was more than unsettling.

Trouble. Meri was nothing but trouble. She’d been a whole lot easier to handle when she’d been a teenager.

He walked into the kitchen, intent on coffee, only to find one of her team members pouring a cup. Jack frowned slightly, trying to put a name with the face.

“Morning,” the guy said and held out the pot for Jack.

“Morning…Colin,” he added, remembering the smaller man from his arrival.

“Right.” Colin pushed up his glasses and smiled. “Great house.”

“I agree.”

“It belongs to your friend, right? Meri’s brother? The one who died.”

Casual, easy words. The one who died. They cut through him like a razor and left wounds only he could see. “Yes. Hunter had this house built.”

“Meri said this house was being turned over to the town or something. That it’s going to be a place where sick people can recover and regroup. That’s cool.”

It was pure Hunter. Wanting to make a difference even after he was gone.

“How’s the work coming?” Jack asked, not wanting to talk about his friend anymore. “Making progress?”

“Not yet. Theoretically there is a way to increase thrust within the confines of a safe formulation, but the nature of our planet seems to be that going faster and longer always means creating something toxic. Meri is determined to change that. When we consider the finite nature of our resources and the vastness of space, there are going to have to be some spectacular breakthroughs before we’ll ever have a chance to explore our solar system, let alone the galaxy.”

Colin took a quick gulp of his coffee. “The truth is, the next few generations are going to be like the early Vikings. Going off on the rocket equivalent of rafts into a great unknown. If you consider their total lack of technology, the analogy is even more interesting. Because we consider ourselves cutting-edge, but compare what we have now to the first Russian launches. It’s like they used paper clips and rubber bands to hold the whole thing together. But if they hadn’t launched first, would Kennedy have pushed space flight? If you knew the number of modern innovations that came out of the space program…” He trailed off and looked slightly confused. “What were we talking about?”

“How your work was going.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I get carried away.” Colin shifted slightly. “I like your car.”

“Thanks.” The sleek sports car wasn’t practical, but it was fun to drive.