Bombshell (Hollywood A-List #1)(54)

Brad came to the kitchen with his beat-to-hell white T-shirt and jeans. My hormones rushed through my blood like marauders setting the village on fire.

“If she’s down, I’m going to the back,” I said. “If you need me—”

He was on me in half a second with that mouth, those hands. I was utterly powerless against his kiss. His tongue found its way into my mouth. He tasted like a bad decision. He tasted like the thing you always said you shouldn’t have done, but didn’t regret anyway. A little bit of starlight. The tart sting of the forbidden and the sweetness of a sin you think you’re getting away with.

Every inch of my skin came alive, and I felt heavy and swollen between my legs. One big undeniable throb set to the rhythm of his kiss.

We stumbled into the hallway, and without the sound of Nicole’s patter, we became unhinged. Desperately, wildly irrational. I was leaving, and once I wasn’t in the house caring for his child it wouldn’t matter. I’d be a target for the paparazzi, but not as the nanny.

He pushed me against the wall. Something rattled. Me. I rattled. He yanked my shirt up, getting under my bra and pulling it over my breasts. It happened so fast, his mouth on my nipple, testing its limits, his hands pulling my jeans open.

I whispered his name, and he shushed me by putting his mouth over mine again. I groaned once, and when he put his hand over the crotch of my jeans and pressed it hard, I groaned again.

“I’ve wanted you for weeks,” he said between his teeth. “Now this.” He pressed his fingers against me hard, and I gasped with pleasure. “I’m going to have it.”

His eyes were so blue, so intense, and his voice wasn’t the laid-back party boy I’d met. He was a guy who didn’t take no for an answer, and I was a girl who wanted to say yes.

He picked me up and deposited me on the kitchen table. I wrapped my legs around him, and he pushed me down, grinding his erection into me, mirroring the motions of his tongue in my mouth.

“Yes,” I said. No time for another word. Joined below the waist like magnets, he carried me down the hall, kissing faces and necks, all tongues and lips, my hands under his shirt. He was hard everywhere. Taut. Skin stretched over lean muscle.

He pushed his dick against me and I pushed back. Pure heat. Friction fire. The flame of potential of what was coming. I couldn’t get enough of him in my hands. They were too small, clawing at clothes and skin.

“You ever been eaten out by a southern boy?”

I had to think. There hadn’t been many, but no one from Los Angeles was from Los Angeles.

“Southern England.”

“Doesn’t count.” He hooked his fingers under my jeans and started peeling them off. “You’re in for a treat, sweetheart. Us southern boys eat * like pie. And I like pie.”

Yes. Yes and yes. S’il vous pla?t and thank you too. The world could take these last weeks in his employ and shove them right where the sun don’t shine because—

“Daaaaaadddeeeeeee . . .”



“I have no idea how this happened,” Brad said softly. He was lying down in the dark on the other side of his daughter’s sleeping body. I could see him over the edge of her soft round cheek. Her arm was draped over me, and her legs were thrown back to hook his to her.

“You’re spoiling her, that’s how it happened.”

“She’s afraid of having a nightmare. Then she became one.”

I’d never seen him say a negative thing about his daughter or show signs of a short temper. I was glad to see he was finally getting involved enough to get grouchy.

He reached over her and touched my hair.

“You’re real pretty on the kitchen table.”

“We should wait anyway.”

“Not interested.”

“We agreed.”

His voice got sharp with urgency, but not unkind. No. Just ferocious.

“There is no way I can stand seeing you and not f*cking you.”

I pointed at Nicole, raising my head a little to make a face, mouthing the word language. Nicole groaned and opened her eyes halfway.

He and I waited in silence for her breathing to get regular again.

“What’s the difference?” he whispered.

What was the difference? People.

“I had lunch with Ray Heywood today,” I said. “There was a dog pack outside Kate Martello’s, and they wanted to know how you kissed. Ray showed me pictures from the party. It was us in the yard. It was dark. It could have been anybody . . . but they all know it’s me. And he knew it too. He was going to offer me my job back but couldn’t because of the pictures.”

“What did you say?”

“I thanked him for not printing them.”

“About how I kissed. What did you say?”

I picked my head up. Nicole didn’t stir.

“Brad, really?”

You’re a challenge to him.

“Well that was a real short one the other night. Just now? Before the little nightmare? I think you got a better sense of what you’re refusing.”

“I’m not refusing. I’m postponing.”

Nicole scooted down in sleep, nuzzling her head into my neck and her body into her father. She wasn’t between our faces anymore, and I could see him in the half light. I could have leaned up and kissed him with the slightest effort, except for what that would have led to.