Standing in the Shadows (McClouds & Friends #2)(60)

"Wait a minute. Hello. Earth to Erin. Let's just set aside the fact that I'm currently your bodyguard. Let's ignore that phone call we got last night. Let's assume that trifling detail wasn't even an issue. After what has just happened between us, you are still planning to have lunch with your goddamn millionaire while I wait out in the lobby like an *?"

She gaped at him, appalled. "Connor, be reasonable. I've never even met the man. There's no reason to be jealous. This is about my work. It isn't about you, or Mueller, or—"

"Like hell it isn't. You played your cards wrong, sweetheart After a night in bed with me, you can forget the romantic, private gourmet lunch with another man. Just… f*cking… forget it."

The possessive fury that emanated from him was like a blast of wind in her face. He advanced on her. She backed up. The wall bumped into her back. "Stop, Connor," she said. "You're making me nervous."

"Good. Be nervous. That'll make two of us, and I wouldn't mind some company."

"Connor, I—"

"I'm not letting you out of my sight. If you so much as have to pee, I am following you into the ladies' room. That is how serious I am about this. You reading me? Are we finally communicating?"

He pinned her to the wall, crushing her breasts against his chest. She lifted her chin. "You're acting like a caveman," she informed him.

"I'm not acting," he said. "No masks, remember?"

"That's not fair!" she snapped. "I will not be bullied! Just because we spent the night together does not give you the right to—"

"I'm not bullying you, Erin. I'm just telling you how it is."

He cut off her reply with a hard, marauding kiss. She struggled, but he just swallowed her muffled protests and moved his strong hands over her body. Oh, please. How ridiculous. Trying to stake his claim by brute physical force, the rude, arrogant…

And all at once, her anger betrayed her, lending all its furious heat to the hunger that flared inside her. She shuddered in his arms.

He wrenched the wide, scooped neckline of her nightdress down over her shoulders, exposing her breasts, and trapped her arms behind her in a tight swathe of white cotton and lace. He spun her around, pinned against his chest A brief moment of fruitless struggle, legs pumping in empty space, and he sank down onto the bed with her on his lap, facing the mirror. He yanked the nightgown up over her waist.

Their eyes locked in the mirror. She went very still in his arms. She should be spitting mad. She should tell him straight out that this display of macho, he-man garbage did not impress her in the least. But the words weren't coming. She was speechless, her thighs clamped tight around an embarrassing secret. She was turned on.

No, worse than that. She was extremely turned on. She vibrated in his arms. Her face was red, her breath shallow and labored, her eyes dilated. She couldn't hide it from him. He knew it. She saw it in the triumphant glow in his eyes, the proprietary way he nuzzled her neck. So confident of his power over her.

Dear God, this was awful. She'd been kidnapped by a repressed part of her subconscious, her body taken over by a wanton nympho with no dignity who was sexually aroused by bad behavior.

She shut her eyes to block him out. "Why are you doing this to me?" she demanded. "Why are you torturing me like this?"

"There's torture and there's torture." He shoved the hair away from her neck, and ran his lips over an exquisitely sensitive spot. She jerked and quivered. "And you're torturing me, too, Erin. The virgin bride nightgown is a calculated cocktease, did you know that? I take one look at the thing and in my mind I'm ripping it down the front and throwing you onto a Victorian four-poster." He stroked the tops of her clenched thighs. She thrashed uselessly in the unrelenting circle of his arms. "Open up," he urged. "Let me in."

She bit her lip. "Oh, God. Please, Connor."

"I never know exactly what you're begging me for," he murmured. He kissed his way up her neck, tugged her earlobe between his teeth, and suckled it. "I'm always off balance with you. Always guessing."

"Hah!" She shook with breathless, almost hysterical laughter. "You, off balance? Give me a break. I'm the one who can't move. I'm the one who's being yelled at and pushed around and manhandled!"

His grin flashed. "Open up for me," he pleaded. "Then look in the mirror and watch what I do to you. I promise, it'll be good."

She glared at him in the mirror. "Why are you even asking?" she snapped. "Wouldn't it be more Neanderthal to just make me do it? Shove my legs open, Connor. Go ahead. Doesn't that fit your script better? You'll do whatever you damn well please with me anyway."

His warm, callused hand stroked over her hip with exquisite tenderness. "Nah. It's more satisfying to coax you into opening those beautiful thighs of your own accord." His Voice was low and silky. "The conquest is deeper that way. It's a bigger rush. Way bigger."

She wiggled madly. "Conquest, my butt. This is nothing but a stupid power trip, and I'm not falling for it."

He kissed her neck again, the seductive bastard. "All I want is to make you melt," he crooned. "Go with it, Erin. If giving in to me makes you hot, that's great. I don't think any less of you for it."