An Inconvenient Obsession (8 page)

She didn’t do desperate. Not anymore.

It wasn’t until she’d reached the imposing double doors of her father’s study that she heard Ethan’s footsteps resume.

Cate immediately grappled with the door handle, wanting to maintain the distance between them. But his long legs had him catching up to her before her fumbling fingers could wrestle the door open. He reached for her wrist, his deep voice rippling the air beside her cheek. “I’m not going to bite you, Cate.”

She jerked away from his touch and glared up at him. “I can’t believe you said that to her.”

“I was just making an old woman smile.”

“Yeah, well, you can’t get her hopes up like that when nothing’s going to come of it.”

He reached to cup the side of her face, skimming his thumb along her jaw as his lips curved in an enticing smile. “Who says nothing will?”

She reared back, breaking the contact. “Ethan!”

“What?”

“Please don’t make things worse. I’m embarrassed enough.”

“Why?”

A stupid, stupid film of tears gathered in her eyes and she blinked furiously to keep them at bay. She hadn’t cried for nine years, and she wasn’t about to start now. “I don’t know, Ethan. Maybe because of how you’ve been reacting, all seductive and detached and angry and … grateful. I can’t read you anymore, and it puts me at a disadvantage. I don’t like it.”

His expression sobered and his gaze searched hers. “I grew up, Cate, just like you did. You can’t expect things to be the same.”

She pressed her fingers to her temple and winced. “I know.”

“So what do you say we move forward from here?” He collected her hand and then tipped her chin until she met his eyes. “Who knows where things might lead?”

Dropping her gaze, she pulled her hand free and lifted it between them. “No. Too much has happened.”

“Like what?” he asked, the timbre of his voice sensitizing her nerve endings while his thumb grazed her bottom lip.

She stepped sideways, shaking her head. “Tonight is about the island paperwork. That’s the only reason you’re here.”

His blue eyes slipped to half-mast. “No, it isn’t.”

“It is for me.” She firmed her jaw, ignoring the tremor of awareness humming in her veins. “I don’t want anything else.”

“Liar.”

She exhaled noisily. “Look. It’s been a really long day and I can’t do this right now. I just want to go to bed.”

Heat flared behind his eyes. “That could be arranged.”

Cate ground her teeth, berating herself for making such an artless statement. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Sorry, Catydid, but you can’t expect me to let that Freudian slip pass,” he said with abominable arrogance. “You want me. I want you. Let’s do something about it.”

She clamped her mouth closed and dragged in a calming breath before trusting herself to speak again. “I don’t want you for anything other than friendship, Ethan. And if you keep pushing, I won’t even want that.”

“Your kiss said otherwise.”

“It wasn’t my kiss. It was
yours,”
she protested.

The heat in his eyes deepened, its licking flame devouring her common sense. “It sure felt mutual to me.”

Desperation sharpened her tone. “You know what, Ethan? We’re done. You can see yourself out and I’ll send the papers
to your lawyers tomorrow.” She tried to step past him, but he moved left, blocking her escape.

“You don’t want my twenty-five million?”

“If this is the condition? No,” she said, shoving hard against his chest. He didn’t budge, and she felt as if she’d just pitted her strength against a concrete wall. Agitated and unable to do anything about it, she dropped her hands and her chin, trying to create some distance between them. “Move.”

“There’s no shame in wanting to finish what we started.”

“No.”

He tipped her chin up, refusing to grant her a retreat. “Admit you want me,” he told her, the rasp of his finger against her skin sending sparks of sensation all the way to her toes. “Just a little bit.”

She forced a glare to her eyes, praying he’d see the anger and not the desire that battled within. “Why don’t you go ask one of your models instead? I’m sure they’d be happy to assuage the demands of your ego.”

“I know,” he said while a predatory light flashed in his eyes. “But where’s the challenge in that?”

For a moment, Cate was rendered speechless. The fact that he was so horrifically confident in his ability to seduce any female he wished, coupled with the very real possibility that he didn’t overestimate his skills at all, served to tip her mood in anger’s favor. “You’re no better than a stray dog, sniffing after every female who crosses your path.”

In one smooth motion he closed the space between them, crowding her until she had to arch her head backward to maintain eye contact. Slowly, he bent over her and inhaled. Deeply. “Jealous?” he whispered.

“Of course not,” she said, grappling for control. “They can have you with my blessing.”

Ethan dipped his head, looming over her until she could see the hint of black whiskers shadowing his jaw, a masculine
edginess that enhanced his dangerous appeal. His mouth, quirked with sardonic command, held a trace of threat, a hint of dark intensity that dared her to answer him truthfully. “You don’t mean that, Catydid.”

Cate’s mood flipped right back into desire, her heart thudding heavily against her ribs. She pressed against the door, her shoulders and buttocks flattened against its substantial weight in an effort to reclaim her emotional equilibrium. It didn’t help. They stood immobile for several heartbeats, their bodies nearly touching while erotic urgency hummed its way along Cate’s nerves and created a knot of longing deep in her belly.

A sudden urge to surprise him, to gain the upper hand, swept through her. She wanted to eradicate his calm control, to flick her tongue against the corners of his mouth and graze her teeth along his flesh until
he
stumbled back, unnerved. She wanted him on the defensive, as subject to his own body’s cravings as she.

“Besides,” he crooned in a soothing, patronizing voice. “You know I don’t want any of those other women.” With that, he moved closer, his solid weight pressing her against the door and rendering escape impossible. His palms braced beside her head, creating a cage of muscle and sinew and bone. “I only want you.”

C
ATE
gasped as his thickly muscled chest wedged tight against hers. Silent and unbearably, achingly close, his breath caressed her cheek. For long, excruciating moments, he didn’t speak, as if granting her body the time it needed to assimilate the weight of his.

“I want to taste you again,” he finally breathed.

As insane as the impulse was, she wanted to plunge headlong into the abyss that was Ethan. She wanted to take that clever, teasing tongue of his into her mouth until he came unmoored, to scrape her fingernails over the snowy white pleats of his tuxedo shirt and feel every inch of his warm, satiny skin. “I can’t,” she said in a hoarse voice, thick with desire. “Please let me go.”

“Ah, Catydid …” His voice seduced her, brushing even closer as if he hadn’t heard her plea at all. “I don’t think I can just yet.”

Sensation rippled through her, pinned as she was between the cold, hard door and the hot, hard male before her. His body, so big and thick and strong, was not that of the slim boy she remembered. No longer narrow and wiry, he carried the width and breadth of a full-blooded man well into his prime. Powerful, ruthless and accustomed to claiming whatever he wanted, Ethan possessed a body to match his personality.

Determined to wrest control of the situation, or at least to
balance the scales in her favor, Cate reached blindly for the door handle and wrenched it down. The latch gave way and, beneath their combined weight, the door swung inward. She stumbled backward, flailing for balance until Ethan’s hands caught her upper arms and hauled her upright.

For one breathless moment, they remained unmoving, before Ethan’s mouth firmed and he stepped fully into the office. He kicked the door shut behind them, plunging them into the shadowed, predawn darkness of her father’s office. She gasped, her senses heightened by the absence of light. She heard his breath, as fractured as hers, as he spun her back against the closed door. And then his weight was against her again, his warm hands dragging from her shoulders to hips.

The heat of his breath against her cheek and the possessive demand of his wide palms as they mapped her curves elicited a visceral jolt of sensation deep within. She pushed against him, her resistance losing strength as her fingers met the hard contours of his chest. She absorbed the swell of thick muscle, the sturdy ladder of rib, then stiffened when his insistent exploration of her body detoured to the sensitive underside of her breast.

“Don’t fight me,” he rasped.

She bit her lip, failing miserably in her attempt to keep from becoming lost in the fragrance of him, the salty, musky, sex-scented incense that made her heart beat in heavy, painful blows against her chest. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked in a tortured whisper.

“You know why,” he muttered. “I’ve never stopped wanting you, never stopped wondering how it could be between us.”

Yes.
She no longer wished to fight him. Intellectually, she realized Ethan was a danger to her. He threatened the calm serenity of her life in a way that both frightened and worried her. Yet somehow, she couldn’t force herself to send him away.
Not yet. It had been so long since she’d felt this way. So long since she’d wanted to be touched.

But she didn’t want to make the wrong decision, take the crazy risk, and lose her heart in the process. Because no matter what lies she told herself, she knew if she allowed herself to love him again, to open her heart and soul when he felt nothing for her, the pain would drive her to her knees.

You’ve endured the pain already
, a small voice reminded her.
Why not enjoy the pleasure for just one night?

Yes. Her body ached to know his. In truth, it had never stopped yearning for the touch of his hand, the silky slide of his mouth. Her skin, her breasts, her innermost core, craved him. Her body begged her to indulge in just one stolen interlude of pleasure here in the shadows, where secrets could remain hidden and scars could remain unseen. Just once, she wanted to tip from the precarious ledge of arousal into shuddering fulfillment.

Just once. With him.

She’d waited so long.

“Just let me—” He broke off as her fingers rose to trace the harsh ridge of his jaw, the bristly contours of his chin. Frozen beneath her touch, his agitated breath buffeted the tips of her fingers as she gingerly brushed his parted lips.

Reveling in her ability to distract him and relishing the exquisite rush of arousal, Cate drew out the anticipation, slowly running her fingers along the lean lines of his face, up to his brow and the cool strands of his thick, wavy hair. She reacquainted herself with the shape of his skull, the curve of his nape, the resilient strength of his neck.

It felt like a homecoming, for whether she wished it or not, her body remembered his with undeniable clarity. She wanted to chart every inch of his skin, to test her memory against the changes that time had wrought. She wanted to taste him, lick the salt from his flesh and bury her nose in the scented cove at
the base of his throat. Heated lust, thick and humid and voracious, poured off her in dizzying waves, urging her to forget all the reasons that being with Ethan was so dangerous.

She sucked in a breath and dropped her hands back to his shoulders, imagining the sleek cords of muscle and satiny skin beneath the formal layers of cotton and wool. Wild, reckless and consumed by her own risky daring, she allowed her hands to glide to his back and then lower, lower and lower still, until with a subtle twist of wrist, her fingertips pressed delicately against the curve of his buttocks. He responded immediately, grinding his groin against hers and shoving her bodily against the door.

Excitement tore through her, her nerves tingling at the press of his hot, tensile length against her concealed flesh. Memories of his swollen hardness against her belly, of his mouth against her breasts, had her virginal flesh swelling with wet, aching, frustrated need.

“Ethan …” she murmured on a pleading moan.

His breath escaped on a hiss and then his hands dropped to her shoulders. He lowered his head, his mouth brushing her eyelids, her cheeks and her lips with a softness borne of exquisite control. His ability to sip when she wanted him to devour frustrated her, and she squirmed to get closer.

Ever in control, he skirted her advances, his mouth coasting from one side of her jaw to the other. He tarried for just a moment at her mouth, then continued his exploration down her neck and back up to the sensitive lobe of her ear. Blindly, she turned to catch his mouth, craving the full pressure of his lips against hers. He relented, slowly, claiming her by agonizing increments and eliciting a raw whimper of pleasure when he finally sank his mouth fully against hers.

Limp with relief, Cate opened to him, welcoming the questing demands of his tongue. He tasted her aggressively, probing her mouth with a poignant, practiced skill that eradicated her
ability to think, let alone resist. The tempo of her breath turned frantic, while inner muscles tensed with delicious need. She wanted to climb his hips, to straddle him in an embrace so consuming, so deep, that his flesh became indiscernible from hers.

Heedless of the fragile tightrope of arousal she danced upon, Cate rocked against him, seeking the intimate rhythm she’d craved for as long as she’d been a woman. The thought of having him deep inside her, filling her until she could take no more, sent a rush of liquid heat between her legs and toppled her into mindless desire.

Lifting her high upon his thigh, Ethan rounded his shoulders over hers and hauled her closer. With one hand clamped under her buttocks and the other reaching low to hook behind her knee, he spread her thighs and ground the ridge of his arousal against her aching center. Back, forth, then back again, he slowly increased the pace until their labored breathing mingled into muted sounds of primal mating.