Kili’s Ice Man by Delilah Devlin
One
Kili couldn’t help it. As Ice Man’s exhalations came sharp and harsh, her own shortened and rasped. Perspiration gathered on her upper lip. Each powerful thrust caused muscles along his glorious arms, buttocks and thighs to bunch, then stretch, as he reached to deliver another mighty drive. Kili’s body tensed, her nipples tightening hard as diamonds, heat coiling low inside her belly-
“Are you feeling all right, sweetie?”
Kili fumbled to flip off her bio-plasma screen before looking up at her best friend and cubicle mate, Willa. “Fine!” she said, her voice a little sharp and high. She cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?” Did her arousal show on her face? She plucked away her blouse from her chest.
“You look a little hot and bothered. Got a fever or something?” The sparkle in Willa’s green eyes contradicted her concerned words. Willa knew full well about Kili’s dirty little obsession. “Honestly, I don’t know how you can watch that stuff-those gladiator matches are so barbaric,” she said, shivering delicately.
“I was just prepping myself for the pitch to the Centurion reps. Have to know what I’m selling, right?” she said, reaching for her purse beneath the desk.
Willa lifted a finely arched auburn brow. “Uh huh, and that outfit’s what you usually wear to a marketing meeting?”
Kili glanced down at her short-skirted suit. “It’s black and covers everything.” She tugged down the hem in back. “Mostly. It’s slimming. ’Sides, I’ll be seated the whole time.”
Willa shook her head. “You know they’re probably going to send the home office management boys-pencil necks-to the meeting. Don’t get your hopes up they’d take anyone off tour for a little sales pitch.”
Kili stifled a twinge of disappointment. “A girl’s gotta dream,” she muttered.
Willa looked beyond Kili’s shoulder and stiffened. “Come to Mama!” She pursed her lips and whistled softly. “Spoke too soon. Looks like they sent at least one gladiator.”
Kili glanced over her shoulder just in time to see her boss, Wilson Pickering, and an entourage winding their way down the aisle. Behind Wilson strode the pencil-neck management team, but bringing up the rear was the man who set her pulse quickening faster than a starship caught in Black Hole gravity-
The Ice Man! The man she’d fantasized about for weeks since he’d been drafted into the major leagues. As he towered above the men in the lead, she forgot how to breathe, staring at his chiseled jaw and the unbelievable shoulder span that just got wider the closer he came.
“This is Kili Wilder,” Wilson said, smiling although he lifted one questioning eyebrow in her direction. “She’ll be presenting our pitch for the new network spots after lunch.”
Kili clamped shut her slackened jaw. Now was not the time for her to go starstruck over arms that looked like they could bench press a hover car. She shook hands with the management team, and then drew a deep breath to fortify her jellyfish legs as Ice Man reached for her hand.
She thought she was ready, back in control, until his large hand engulfed hers. One look up into his ice blue gaze and her tongue stuck to the top of her mouth. “Uhmmmm.”
Humor wrinkled the corners of his piercing eyes. “Nice to meet you, too.”
Kili almost melted into a puddle of goo. The low timbre of his voice wrapped around his words like a caress as his gaze swept over her face and down her body, lingering on the length of her bare legs.
Wilson cleared his throat, drawing her attention away from the way the gladiator’s blond hair brushed the shoulders stretching his wine-colored team jersey.
“We’ll meet back here at one o’clock sharp. Right, Kili?”
Wilson said the last with just enough emphasis to make her flush. Lord, had her lust been that transparent?
As the men walked away, Willa snickered behind her. “Wow, you sure made an impression.”
Heat flushed her cheeks as she stared after Ice Man’s amazing ass. “Some friend you are-you could have warned me he was coming.”
“And spoil the surprise? Oh my God, the look on your face!” she chortled, and slipped her arm through Kili’s. “Come on. Let’s do lunch. Give you time to lower your blood pressure. Think about it-he uses brute force and a saber. You’d be bored talking to him inside an hour.”
Checking her makeup in the mirror hanging on the cubicle wall, Kili snorted. “Remember, I’ve had smart. Daniel was clever enough to figure out how to date three women from the same department without any of us catching on. I don’t want smart. I want…”
“Ice Man?”
Her stomach still quivering, Kili assumed a bland expression. “Someone like that, yeah. Not too bright. But strong enough to make me feel overwhelmed.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Can you imagine stroking those arms?”
Willa leaned into her side and snorted. “I’m thinking his ass would be even finer.”
Kili groaned. “This isn’t helping. I need to get my mind off those glutes.”
“Girlfriend, I have just the thing to get him out of your system.”
Staring through the shop window, Gunnar Thorsson didn’t know whether to strangle the woman or haul her from The Lunch Break chair and kiss her breathless. The way she wriggled to snuggle her butt deeper into the contoured, black-upholstered chair succeeded only in raising the hem of her little black skirt centimeters higher. He wasn’t the only man in the vicinity to notice.
The technician in the lab coat who’d fitted her virtual-vacation helmet to her head had to readjust electrodes glued to her temples and chest because he couldn’t stop ogling her long legs.
Gunnar swore again. A perverse throb centered in the knot of flesh rising between his legs. Perverse because he shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be lusting after a woman who was as shallow as a mud puddle.
One thing for sure, he’d liked her better before she’d un-tangled her tongue to speak. The way she’d stared with those chocolate eyes when they first met, a blush rising above the collar of her pale blouse to flood her face with hectic color-her lips parting as she’d moaned-had him hard in an instant.
Instinctively, he knew she’d wear the exact same expression when he took her to bed.
He’d left Pickering and the management team and circled back to Kili Wilder’s desk, intending to ask her to lunch and arrived just in time to hear a mention of his name. Curious about her first impression of him, he’d ducked into a neighboring cubicle, feeling foolish as a boy with his first stirring of lust, and listened to the tail end of her conversation with her friend.
So she wanted him…or someone just as dim-witted. Disappointment, unaccountably sharp, pricked his irritation. She was just like all the “gladiator groupies” who’d thrown themselves at him since he signed. They wanted the “fierce warrior” fuck, not the real man inside.
He’d almost blown her off. But then he recalled her soft brown hair, slender figure and endless legs and thought, why the hell not? He’d give her exactly what she wanted-while taking his own pleasure.
So he’d followed the women to the food court in the belly of the office building, keeping well behind and taking a separate elevator so they’d never know their next meeting wasn’t an accident. When they’d passed the food kiosks, he continued to hang back, curious about their destination.
“Wow, you’re the Ice Man! Can I have your autograph?”
Gunnar started, surprised to find another Lunch Break tech standing beside him, his face flushed with excitement. The younger man must have rushed out of the store when he found a sports celeb gawking through the window.
A thought, reprehensible as it was delicious, crept into his mind.