A Puppy for Christmas: On the Secretary's Christmas List / The Patter of Paws at Christmas / The Soldier, the Puppy and Me

She clung to those wide shoulders as her knees buckled slightly. Not that there was any possibility of her falling when Jackson’s arms were clamped like steel bands about her waist. His hands stroked the length of her spine, his fingers a hot and arousing caress against the bare skin above her gown as his lips continued that plundering exploration, his tongue moist against her lips as he parted them before thrusting deep into the heat of her mouth.

His tongue stroked intimately against hers, evoking an explosion of pleasure, an aching response deep inside Bree. She felt heat burning between her thighs. Her breasts swelled and her nipples hardened as they pressed against the material of her dress, and she became fully aware of the hard throb of Jackson’s answering arousal as his hands cupped her bottom to pull her up and into him.

A hard and throbbing arousal that was entirely in response to her, Sabrina Jones!

Bree felt empowered by that realisation, moving her hands up as she gave in to the temptation to entangle her fingers in that honey-and-molasses hair, finding it just as she had always imagined it would be: thick and long and silkily soft, and so—

As she had always imagined it would be …?

She had imagined something like this happening between herself and Jackson?

Since when?

What—?

All thoughts fled—Bree even forgot to breathe—as Jackson’s hand cupped her breast before his questing fingers sought the swollen tip.

Bree gasped as Jackson’s lips left hers and his other hand moved to twist the long waves of her hair in his fingers. He arched her neck back, exposing it to his lips, teeth lightly nipping the lobe of her ear, before he softly kissed the swell of her breasts.

‘Your skin is like velvet!’ Jackson groaned.

His lips found her aching nipple through the silky material of her dress, his tongue stroking intense heat through the fabric to her breast for long, pleasurable seconds before he clamped his lips around her nipple and pulled it deep into the heat of his mouth.

An almost unbearable burning coursed through Bree’s body as she gazed down at him, his lashes long and thick against his sculpted cheekbones. His hand moved to cup her other breast, the soft pad of his thumb rubbing against the nipple in the same rhythmic caress. Raging fire burned between Bree’s thighs and she felt herself swelling and moistening there in a deep and aching throb that beat with the same rapidity as her heart.

She realised that it was Jackson kissing and caressing her so intimately!

Jackson of the wild and dangerous good looks. Jackson of the lean and muscled body. Jackson who had to be every woman’s wildest fantasy in the flesh. Jackson who could—and did—have any woman he wanted.

But at the moment he seemed to want Bree.

At the moment.

Chilling reality hit Bree with the force of a physical blow, erasing all pleasure, all arousal, as she acknowledged that this couldn’t—shouldn’t!—be happening. Not between herself and Jackson, of all people!

She knew for a fact that Jackson never became involved with the women in his working life. Not the models he occasionally used for commercial photo shoots, and certainly not his assistants. He had several times stated—as a warning, perhaps?—that he wouldn’t work alongside any woman with whom he had been intimately involved.

Tonight could definitely be described as intimate involvement.

How on earth was Bree going to extract herself from this explosive situation without also finding herself out of a job?

CHAPTER FIVE

‘JACKSON, is it possible that you’ve been drinking?’

‘What—?’ Jackson staggered backwards, dazed, as Bree pushed him away with a suddenness he hadn’t been expecting, before turning her back on him to rearrange her dress.

Expecting?

Hell, Jackson hadn’t been expecting a single thing about the way he had reacted to Bree this evening!

Not the way she looked with that beautiful waist-length hair loose about her shoulders. Not how sexy that thin scrap of a dress was, leaving so little to the imagination. Not the lure of those smoky-grey eyes. He certainly hadn’t expected her to taste and feel so good. Or the way she’d responded so readily to the caress of his lips and hands on her soft, creamy flesh …

And Jackson hadn’t expected to become aroused just by looking at her—nor the fact that he was still aroused, his shaft a hard and throbbing ache against his denims!

In spite of the accusatory way Bree was now glowering at him.

‘Have I been drinking?’ Jackson repeated harshly, stepping away and running a hand through the tousled length of his hair. ‘You’re the one who walked in here a few minutes ago looking like some slinky femme fatale from a forties movie!’

She raised her eyebrows. ‘It’s just a dress, Jackson. You’ve been photographed with dozens of women wearing far less than I am tonight!’ she added defiantly.

And truthfully, Jackson admitted with a dark frown. In fact Bree’s dress could be called modest in comparison with some of the evening dresses he had seen on other women. Except those other women weren’t Bree!

What the hell was wrong with him this evening? He had worked alongside Bree for almost a year now without so much as a single sexual thought.

Well … maybe the odd thought. But he wouldn’t be a healthy thirty-four-year-old man if he didn’t have the occasional fantasy about an attractive twenty-six-year-old woman, whether she worked for him or not!

Yet he was now totally physically aware of Bree.

Because he didn’t like the idea of her spending the evening with another man?

Or because of that small but tangible difference he had sensed in Bree today?

There was absolutely no reason why it should matter to Jackson if Bree went on a date, so it had to be the difference in her that had ignited this physical awareness.

But it was a physical awareness he must have been out of his mind to act upon.

‘I still can’t believe you went out in that dress!’ Jackson was more comfortable on the attack than on the defensive.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Jackson,’ Bree snapped irritably.

‘It’s positively indecent!’

‘Roger didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it!’

‘I don’t—Roger Tyler?’ Jackson gaped. ‘Your dinner date this evening was with Roger Tyler?’

‘That’s right,’ she replied coolly. ‘And I must say that, unlike some people I could mention, he behaved like the perfect gentleman all evening.’

‘Roger Tyler was the man you went out to dinner with this evening …’ Jackson repeated, as if to himself.

It was a little difficult for him to comprehend the fact that his assistant—a woman who hadn’t been out on a single date since she’d begun working for him—had just spent the evening with one of the most infamous womanisers in the public eye.

Damn it—of all men, Bree had been out with the reprehensible Roger Tyler!

Jackson’s eyes narrowed ominously as he sat down on the arm of the chair. ‘And exactly how did that come about?’

Bree shrugged her shoulders. ‘He arrived for his two o’clock appointment, after all.’