The Elliotts: Bedrooms Not Boardrooms!

He hoped like hell she had the strength to end this, because he didn’t think he did. Her damp lips quivered. She blinked as if trying to clear the haze from her heavy-lidded, dark-lashed eyes, and then she lowered her gaze and her hands to his waist. But instead of pushing him away, she yanked his shirttails from his pants.

Liam sucked in a sharp breath. Every muscle in his body clenched rock hard as she bared his chest one button at a time. When she spread her palms and swept them over his skin, he shuddered and then quickly lifted his arms above his head to unfasten his cuff links. He pitched them onto the end table with a clatter and then his shirt hit the floor. Her fingers fumbled with his belt and he nearly lost it.

Catching her wrists, he stilled her hands and then released her and reached for her top. He whisked it over her head and groaned at what he discovered. No bra. Dark puckered tips crested her small breasts, and his mouth watered in anticipation of tasting her. She lifted her hands as if to cover herself, but he beat her to it, covering her warm flesh. Her nipples prodded his palms. He caressed her in a circular motion and the taut tips beaded even harder. Each circle coiled something achy and tight deep inside him.

Aubrey’s head fell back on a moan. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she tugged. Liam didn’t refuse the invitation. He bent, stroked his tongue over her sensitive tip, raked her gently with his teeth and then suckled deeply. Her nails dug into his shoulders. He transferred his attention to the opposite breast and rubbed slick fingers over the one he’d abandoned.

Her knees buckled. Liam caught her up in his arms and carried her to his bedroom. One, because he wanted to savor every inch of her. Two, because he needed condoms. He’d long since outgrown the need to carry them in his wallet. His affairs these days, though few and far between, were planned like dessert after dinner. He never had lunch and an unexpected afternoon delight. Maybe the surprise factor explained why Aubrey had hit him so hard.

The love bite she planted on his neck derailed his train of thought. He almost walked into a wall. Her teeth teased his earlobe seconds before her tongue traced his ear. Embers ignited in his gut. He quickened his stride, reached his bedroom and set her on her feet beside his bed. He hadn’t bothered to open the drapes this morning, but a sliver of afternoon sunlight seeped through the gap between them, slashing across his bed like a laser pointer indicating, “Here. Now.”

No kidding. The ray of light was much easier to understand than a painting about female body parts.

Liam sat down on the micro suede comforter and turned Aubrey around so that her back faced him. He strung a line of openmouthed kissed along her vertebrae while his suddenly clumsy fingers fumbled to release the back button and zip of her pencil skirt. The skirt crumpled to the floor. He vaguely registered her kicking it and her shoes aside, but his gaze was fastened on her bottom in—heaven help him—a thong and nothing else. Black. Satiny. Tiny. He traced the waistband and then the strip between her cheeks. Goose bumps rose on her pale skin. His blood rushed south, leaving him dizzy with desire and gasping for breath. Impatient, he hooked the black bands with his thumbs and pushed them down her legs.

She stepped out and turned. Like a kid with a giant ice-cream sundae, Liam could only stare, not knowing where to start or which flavor to sample first. His hands found her breasts. His mouth skimmed her belly, edging downward in sips and nips toward her tangled brown curls. She trembled. The tiny quakes traveled up his arms, through his lips. He lifted his head and met her slumberous gaze.

“Please,” she whispered. “I need to touch you, too.”

An offer too good to refuse. Liam rose.

Aubrey tackled his belt and then the hook of his slacks. Her knuckles dragged across his erection as she lowered his zipper, and stars exploded behind his tightly closed lids. She shoved his pants and briefs down his thighs. He distracted himself from her mind-numbing caresses by mapping her slight curves with his hands, learning her body the way a blind man reads Braille, by feel. He found the crisp curls and delved into the slick moisture they concealed.

Her gasped “Yes” encouraged him to stroke long and slow until he discovered her magic spot, and then he teased her with short, quick brushes over the swollen flesh before dipping deeper. She arched into his touch, pressed hungry kisses along his jaw, until he covered her mouth with his and mimicked the thrust of his fingers with his tongue.

She clung to his shoulders as release shuddered through her. Her cries filled his mouth and then she collapsed against him, skin to skin. Liam slowly eased his fingers from her dampness and ripped back the bedding. When he turned around again, Aubrey was on her knees in front of him, her passion-glazed eyes gazing up at him.

He ground his molars, clenched his fists and prayed she’d give him a second to recover before she touched him. If she didn’t, his afternoon delight would be over in a nanosecond. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of lasting if she put her mouth on him.

Three

At the pub Aubrey had tagged Liam as buff, blond and built. The description didn’t begin to do justice to the man in front of her. Liam hadn’t developed those thick muscles sitting behind a desk. He worked out.

Aubrey skated her palms up his hair-roughened calves and thighs. His long, thick erection jerked as she brushed past the tangle of wiry dark blond curls to shove on his hips so he’d sit down. Liam sat, knees splayed but cuffed by his pants at his ankles. Aubrey debated leaning in for a taste of him, but the urgency pulsing through her veins insisted she hurry rather than linger. Judging by the taut tendons of Liam’s neck, she knew he teetered just as close to the edge of control as she.

She quickly removed his shoes, socks and pants and tossed them aside. Bracing her hands on his thighs, she levered herself to stand before him. The desire in his eyes poured over her like heated oil, burning, but in a good way. An incredibly arousing, blood-boiling way. Not something she’d previously experienced.

He lifted her hands, sketched a nerve-tingling erotic kiss in each palm with his tongue and then transferred her hands to his shoulders. His satiny skin stretched tight over corded muscle. She couldn’t resist tracing each swell and crevice, and raking her fingers through the coils of burnished gold spattering his chest.

Liam’s hot mouth found one breast. His talented fingers teased the other. When he devoured her that way, stroked and molded her that way, Aubrey didn’t feel inadequate, unwomanly. Despite the breathtaking release he’d just given her, her body tightened once again, hungry for more. “Please, Liam. I can’t wait.”

He lifted his head, his gaze locking with hers, and then he reached for the bedside table, opened the drawer and extracted a square packet.

Condoms. She’d forgotten. So unlike her. But then everything about today was beyond her realm. She’d never fallen in instant lust, never become intimate with a near stranger.

He slowly rose, sliding inch by inch of his hot skin against hers. For heart-stopping seconds his shaft burned against her navel and then he leaned back and ripped the packet open with his teeth.

Aubrey stroked his back, his waist, his firm buttocks, bringing her hands around to curl her fingers around his thickness and cup the heaviness below. Her thumb found a slick droplet and smoothed it over his silky skin.

His breath whistled through clenched teeth. He muttered a curse and ground out, “Enough.”

He brushed her hands aside, donned protection and urged her onto the bed. With one foot still on the floor, Aubrey leaned back across the oyster-colored sheets and lifted a hand, beckoning him into her arms. The mattress dipped under his weight. His hands, hot and slightly rough, cupped her bottom and lifted as he stood beside the bed and positioned himself. Aubrey’s breath caught in anticipation and then gushed from her lungs as he plunged deeply, filling her with a solid thrust.

He withdrew and thrust again and again. She arched to meet him and then reached up and curled her fingers around his nape to pull him closer. Liam planted his hands beside her head. His molten blue gaze locked with hers and his biceps bulged as he slowly lowered until his chest hairs teased her breasts. His breath stirred the fine hairs on her neck and then finally, finally, his lips sealed hers. She hooked one leg around his hips, drawing him back each time he withdrew and urging him to go faster and deeper as everything inside her twisted tighter and she raced toward another climax.

Ecstasy hit hard and fast, rocking her and robbing her breath. She threw her head back and cried out as Liam slammed into her and groaned as his own orgasm undulated over him.

Breathing heavily, he collapsed to his elbows and buried his face beside hers on the bed. Aubrey traced the line of his spine and he shivered against her. The weight of him, the heat of him, blanketed her in a sensual cocoon. A satisfied smile curved her lips and a sense of well-being flooded her, weighting her limbs and her eyelids. Bliss.

Her racing heart and laboring lungs slowed and then with a sudden icy shower her conscience washed away the haze of desire.

What had she done?

She’d taken the enemy to bed and in doing so guaranteed she’d disappoint her father yet again, because she couldn’t sleep with Liam and then betray him.

Aubrey stiffened beneath Liam and then shoved hard against his shoulders. He forced his drained and satiated muscles into action and rolled to her side, reluctantly disengaging from the slick heat of her body.

She pressed her fingers to the pleat between her eyebrows. Regret tightened her features and flattened her luscious, kiss-swollen mouth.

Liam’s stomach clenched as reality sank in.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” Aubrey whispered as she reached for the sheet, dragging it across her body and sliding to the edge of the bed.

“Probably not.” No probably about it. This afternoon had been a mistake. They both knew it. Chalk it up to his unerring ability to choose the wrong woman.

“I have to go.” She clutched the sheet with one hand and reached for her skirt with the other. The bed sheet tethered her inches short of her goal, and she didn’t look like she wanted to release it and let him see her naked. Ridiculous, considering the taste of her still lingered on his lips.

He scooped up her skirt, passed it to her and then raked a hand through his hair. “Aubrey—”

Without looking at him, she held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Please. No post mortems.”

What could he say? There could be no future in any relationship between them. And for the first time in Liam’s life that bothered him. Until now he’d been the king of dead-end-and-damned-happy-about-it relationships.

He rolled his tense shoulders. Blame it on all the new shiny jewelry being shoved in his face at EPH. Wedding and engagement rings had multiplied like bacteria among the staff—Elliotts in particular. His grandfather’s aim might have been to increase productivity with his little competition, but what he’d done was run off employees and cause a rash of romances.

“Would you like to shower first or—”

“No. No, I need to go.” She shimmied her skirt over her long, lean legs and her round, tight, bare butt. Watching her move made his pulse accelerate and his groin tighten all over again.

“Can I call you a cab?”

With her arms crossed over her chest, she shoved her feet into her shoes and bolted out the bedroom door. “No. Thank you.”

He yanked on his pants, ducked into the bathroom to ditch the condom and followed her into the den. She dragged on her top, shrugged on her jacket, snatched up her purse and briefcase and wasted no time hustling toward the door. She still hadn’t looked at him. That stung.

“Aubrey, wait.” He planted a palm on the door, holding it closed.

She paused with her hand on the knob. Her spine remained steel-girder stiff, and she kept her chin tucked as if she wanted to hide from what had just happened.