He drew back. “I want to make you mine.”
Sadness filled her eyes.
He couldn’t help himself. His hand lifted and caressed her cheek. “If I were to be perfectly honest I would tell you I’ve thought of little else since I saw you in that elevator.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m probably no different than any other wanker you’ve ever dated, or slept with.” He took a fortifying breath before saying what needed to be said. “If you want me to move out, I will.”
“If I let you stay, are you going to attack me in the hallway again?”
He stepped back, breaking all contact.
“Mac?”
He looked her in the eye. “You didn’t push me away. You kissed me back. I wouldn’t have forced—”
Jennifer held up her hand. “I know. Now, it’s my turn to be honest. I needed that kiss. I wanted it, as much as you did. What I’m asking is, if you continue to live here, will it happen again?
“I don’t want to lie to you. Maybe. Probably. Not tonight, not tomorrow, but eventually. My kissing you again is a likely scenario.”
“You can stay.” She continued down the hall, into to her room “And, Mac?” She’d paused before closing the door.
“Yeah?”
“You are different.”
“Goodnight, Jennifer.”
“Goodnight.”
Beauty vs. power—a dangerous game with the heart as the prize…
For His Eyes Only
© 2009 Avery Beck
Jacey Cass radiates confidence and sensuality just once a year, when she meets her rich and powerful lover for a night of anonymous sex. The rest of her calendar is filled with the daily struggle to survive. Her cashier job at Insomnia, Miami’s hottest lingerie shop, doesn’t go far toward college tuition, but she’s determined to rise above her mother’s freeloading legacy.
Alex Vaughn is one promotion away from realizing his life’s ambition. For years he’s been forced to stand by and watch his father systematically destroy the values that made Insomnia great. Now, with an expected vacancy in the summer catalog, he takes a chance. He’s never formally met the fascinating woman he takes to bed every year, but he knows a marketable body when he sees one. The last thing he expects is for her to turn the opportunity down flat.
Jacey won’t consider a handout—even from the man whose white-hot caress is the one bright spot of her life. Then a modeling competition’s prize money lures her from behind the register and into the blinding spotlight, unaware of what the cost could be to her heart…
Warning: This title follows a young woman’s journey from fear of intimacy to trust in love, with frequent, explicit descriptions of the sensual lessons learned on the way.
Enjoy the following excerpt for For His Eyes Only:
They waited for the elevator. She wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck and kissed him, a chaste kiss appropriate for the public eye should anyone catch them. But when she pulled back and stared at him, the way her eyes darkened spoke volumes about the unchaste activities she expected to take place once they made it to his room.
Thankfully, the elevator doors closed before anyone else joined them. She slipped her arms inside his jacket, and the heat of her touch penetrated his shirt fabric while he pressed her to the wall, thrust his tongue into her mouth and ground his hips against hers.
“Well,” she teased when he rested the solid crotch of his pants against her thigh. “I can tell you’re ready.”
He closed his eyes, his hunger for her made almost unbearable by the taste of sweet wine she left on his lips. “Oh, don’t worry. You’ll be ready too.”
He put his hand beneath her skirt and trailed his finger along the satin edge of a soaking wet g-string, smothering her approving moan with another kiss. The ache in his groin intensified.
“I think you’re right,” she gasped when he let her go.
The doors opened. They greeted an older couple waiting to take the elevator and managed to maintain their composure until the door to his room locked behind them.
Then he couldn’t take it anymore.
“I’ve got to have you,” he insisted, expressing the thought that had plagued him all evening. He stepped up behind her and kissed the back of her neck, then lowered the zipper of her dress, his mouth following each tooth as it opened.
By the time he reached the zipper’s end, he was kneeling on the floor with the skinny strap of those panties right in front of him, urging him to tear the thing off. But he had just one night a year with her, and he wouldn’t end it within the first three minutes.
The dress and the lingerie hit the floor before he had a chance to contemplate his next move. He looked up, managing to catch the mischievous grin on his lady’s face before she turned and strode across the room, the silken curves of her ass draped in nothing but moonlight.
He stood, his fingers clenched with the need to touch her. “Where are you going?”
“You’ll see.”
She opened the French doors that led to a private terrace and disappeared around the corner. “Care to join me?” her voice called through the darkness.
He nearly ran to the balcony, stopping just long enough to pull protection from his pocket and take off his suit. When he found her, she was shoulder-deep in the hot tub, curling her index finger at him.
“Hurry,” she whispered. He could see her squirming beneath the bubbly surface.
“You sure know how to make a man crazy.”
He sank into the warm water and pulled her against him, relishing the reunion of their naked bodies. The money and power that accompanied his position at Insomnia never left him without a date for long, but this woman was no ordinary piece of arm candy. She charged him like an electric current, and their annual rendezvous was just about the only time he felt like a flesh-and-blood man instead of a corporate puppet.
Without exception, when he took other women out, they immediately brought up his job. Each of them shared a mammoth interest in his money and his ability to discover the next pin-up girl.
But not this one. The woman in front of him was wet, naked, and beautiful—and completely uninterested in his paycheck. He didn’t think he’d find a more perfect woman if he could design one himself.
Her fingers entwined in his hair, tugging him from his thoughts. She kissed him with a desperation that seemed to match his and pushed him down until he sat on the tub’s ledge, the water swirling around his ribs. Then she straddled his lap.
“I need your touch.”
Her words energized him and brought his full attention back to the reason they were there. He dropped his hand under the bubbles, skimming her torso until he found the softness between her thighs and unraveled her desire.
“Here?”
“Alex…” She surged against his chest and her fingernails dug into his shoulder.
“That wasn’t a scream,” he objected.
“Not yet it wasn’t.”
He massaged her, increasing the pace of his stroke while she squirmed and begged and then came hard, bucking against him and crying out loud. Still trembling, she shifted in his lap, took his shaft in her hand and rubbed it against her flesh.
“Do it,” she urged.
Her pleas turned to moans when he complied, slipping inside her and reacquainting himself with her warmth, her kisses, her cries. When he was lost in the taste and scent and feel of her, once again sharing with her the deepest kind of intimacy, he realized there was one problem with his perfect woman.
He didn’t know her, not the way he should. At least she could list some of his basic information, like his position at the company and what his mother had been calling him since birth. He couldn’t do the same for her. He knew that if he leaned down and sucked on her nipple right now, she’d come again. And if he gently bit the tender spot on her neck, right behind her earlobe, she’d arch backward and push him further into her body.