Beyond Breathless

A moment gained, a moment lost.

Her fingers drummed impatiently on her tightly crossed legs and his gaze locked on her hand. Realizing what she was doing, she stopped.

The tension in his face relaxed and he shot her a smile of gratitude.

And he had lots of reasons for gratitude. He hadn’t been chewed out by Newhouse’s warden of a secretary, only moments ago, saying that “A cut power line is no excuse for tardiness.”

Being a woman in the financial industry wasn’t easy. A lot of men either wanted her to be a secretary or a willing vassal for their penis, never an equal.

A man like Andrew wouldn’t need to prepare like she had for one of the most ambitious deals in the history of Bond-Worthington Financial. No, he had looked happy as a clam while chatting away about margins and puts. Probably because he had a blond secretary with plasticized implants. Probably named Amber.

A tiny sigh escaped from her lips.

He was attractive, he was successful, he was a man, she reminded herself, even though parts of her were already tantalizingly aware of that fact. But what did that matter? Because of today, she was probably going to lose her deal, and she never lost a deal. She would face the walk of shame back at the office, having to explain to Walter why she couldn’t leap over tall buildings in a single bound, why she couldn’t start an electrical-powered locomotive, and God only knows that she couldn’t stop bullets with her chest, much less traffic.

But Jamie liked being the star performer in the office. More importantly, she couldn’t live without it.

It was all she had.

No, life was definitely unfair. Her eyes looked at his. Deliberately, her hand rose to her throat.

Tossing caution to the wind, she unfastened the tiny button. It was a small, insignificant gesture, nothing overt or slutty, but for one slow second in time, she wanted to disrupt his manly existence, to explore this new feeling inside her, and right some of the injustices in the world.

He stopped talking.

Blinked twice.

Swallowed.

Mission accomplished.

2

IT WAS A SMALL HALF-INCH of flesh. Not golden tan, more like pale peach. Andrew valiantly attempted to keep up with the back and forth of the conference call, but failed. Instead he was mesmerized by the lure of naked skin.

It wasn’t cleavage or thigh. It was nothing but an uncovered throat.

God, he was losing it.

He dragged his eyes away from the sight of temptation and studied the lined paper in his lap, but the words blurred together. The voices in his ear buzzed like a mosquito on a summer’s day and he struggled to make out the words: “a marketing strategy to focus on old-fashioned honesty in our financial dealings.”

Okay, that made sense.

“Dave, do you think traders will really buy into that?” he asked, rather proud of himself for coming up with a halfway lucid contribution.

Even better, he could ignore her. He could ignore the raging hard-on that had blood streaming down from his brain to his cock. He could ignore the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in eight months.

Okay, that one he couldn’t ignore.

It explained much of his current situation.

He’d never been a New York playboy like his younger brother, Jeff, who chased after supermodels and party girls. Most of the women who Andrew dated were classy, but not clingy. Never clingy. The idiosyncrasies of a relationship took too much time, so by default the ones who lasted were the ones who made few demands.

Whatever worked.

His gaze traveled upward, leaving the relative security of the legal pad to skim over nicely turned breasts, past the lurid throat, and finally coming to rest on her face.

Jamie of No Last Name looked to be hell on wheels. A woman who threw you down on the bed, and…

No, no, no…

He’d seen guys in the office succumb to the lure of the velvet power of the p-whip, but not Andrew. Too many people were counting on him.

That thought helped gird the loins that were currently raging with lust.

But she was cute, although he suspected she’d kill him if he said it aloud. Certainly not cute in a kitten and babies sense—thankfully. Her brown hair was pulled back in an elegant ponytail, her light blue eyes were never still, blinking to one side then another…

…blinking mindlessly while he was pounding inside her.

The loins came ungirded.

Damn.

“Drew, do you have anything to add?” asked the voice in his ear.

He cleared his throat. “No, I think we’ve covered it. Thanks, everyone, for dialing in. It’s been a productive meeting.”

It was all bullshit, and Andrew didn’t usually go for bullshit, but there was a time and place for it, and when you’re currently having Technicolor fantasies about the woman sitting across from you in a tank of a limo—well, bullshit didn’t seem out of the question.

He snapped his briefcase closed with a bang that seemed obscenely loud. She looked up at him, and he saw a quick flash of panic. Somebody else was nervous, too.

Andrew stared out the window, away from the cold sweat of her gaze, and watched the cars inch forward at a snail’s pace.

Distraction. He needed a distraction.

He pounded on the speaker button. “Driver, how’re we doing?” he asked, like he couldn’t tell.

“Two hours to Connecticut. We’ve almost made it across the Whitestone, sir.”

“Thank you,” he said politely, and then heaved a breath. While he obsessed over the currently unclothed throat of the mono-monikered Jamie, the oxygen was turning thin—all at one hundred feet over sea level.

He needed to label her, use the brand like a wedge, because it was obvious that the three feet between the car seats wasn’t going to do it.

Urges, when unchecked, were a dangerous thing, leading to forgotten responsibilities, sloppily completed tasks, and poor credit scores. Andrew had deferred gratification his entire life; there were other things more important, namely food and rent.

Drew looked over at the object of his current urge, while considering extremely inappropriate behaviors. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and frankly, the state of his hard-on was about as desperate as he’d ever been.

“Sound Design. Gross receipts last year over forty-seven billion.”