His Christmas Acquisition (15 page)

‘It is.’ Even to her own ears, she could hear the telltale waver in her voice.

‘Okay, I won’t touch you, but feel free to touch
me
,’ he said in a husky undertone. ‘Any time you like and anywhere you like because I’m happy to admit that you make me feel like a randy teenager. In fact, right now I’m hot for you, and I won’t run screaming like an outraged virgin if you decide to touch me and feel for yourself.’

He hadn’t just thrown down the challenge, he had hurled it like a javelin, and it lay between them now, waiting for her to decide what to do with it.

‘Why do you have to make me laugh? It’s not fair.’ Jamie’s breathing was shallow and painful and she leaned forward, resting on her outstretched hands, already knowing what she would do with that hurled challenge.

‘Life seldom is. If you want me, you have to reach out and touch me.’

‘Just while we’re here,’ she said on a soft moan. Of its own accord, her hand reached out to curl into the opening of his shirt, between two buttons, so that her knuckles were brushing his chest. ‘Just for this week. If we can pretend to be something we’re not for the sake of your mother, let’s just pretend to be different people to one another. I won’t be your secretary. You won’t be my boss. Just for a few days, can we simply be two people, strangers who happened to meet on a very beautiful island in the Caribbean? Can we?’

‘We’ll pretend whatever you want,’ Ryan growled. ‘Now, take off your tee-shirt. Very, very slowly. And then your bra, also very slowly. I want to look at every intimate inch of your glorious body before I begin to touch it.’

A shiver of wicked, exquisite anticipation ripped through her. She should have been back-pedalling; she wasn’t. Being here was a step out of time and why shouldn’t she just give in to this thing? She had always lived a life of responsibility. She had always toed the line, trundling along in the slow lane, while her sister had lived life to the full in the fast lane. She had spent so much time picking up the pieces of Jessica’s misadventures that she was in serious danger of forgetting what being young and carefree was all about.

So why shouldn’t she spend a few days out here remembering? She had a sudden craving for some misspent time before it was too late.

With a smile and then a gurgle of laughter, she hooked her fingers under her tee-shirt and did as he asked. She pulled it over her head very, very slowly. Then she reached back to unclasp her bra, which she also removed very, very slowly.

Then she gave Ryan a gentle push back and when he was lying on the sand she straddled him, her breasts like ripe fruit waiting to be handled.

Between her legs, his erection was a rod of steel pushing against her.

And the look in his eyes! The hunger and the appreciation.

‘What else,’ she asked wickedly, ‘would you like me to do?’

R
AMPANT
appreciation flared in Jamie’s eyes. She couldn’t help it and, after days of blissfully throwing caution to the wind she no longer bothered trying to keep her guard up. Why should she? Ryan was nakedly, enthrallingly turned on by her. In their moments of wild passion, he would whisper how much into her ear, and every husky syllable represented yet another wrecking ball aimed at her defences.

And it wasn’t just about the sex. They took time out, shooed out of the house by Vivian who claimed she needed peace and insisted that the only way she could get it was if they weren’t making a racket in the house. Not that they did, but Ryan was happy to go with the flow. The island was stunningly beautiful and he had seen precious little of it. He hadn’t realised how much of his work he took with him wherever he went, and for the first time he sidelined it in favour of showing Jamie around.

He took her to the Blue Hole where they swam in crystal clear waters. They took boats to the various islands. She forced him to traipse through bush so that they could experience some of the wildlife and laughed when he confessed to a fear of all things creepy-crawly.

‘I think you’ll find that
real
men, like me, are proud to admit to things like that,’ he informed her haughtily, keeping
a healthy distance as she allowed a praying mantis to scramble over her hand.

She had never had overseas holidays as a child. Losing her dad at such a young age had imposed financial restrictions on their lives. In the still, dark hours with just the sound of the sea lapping on the beach below the house, it seemed easy to shed her natural reserve and observe her childhood from a distance, with Ryan sitting next to her, an encouraging listener.

And of course they still worked together. Their mornings were still spent in the office in the house, but working had taken on a whole new perspective. They never touched one another, but sometimes he would lean over her, reading something over her shoulder on her computer, and his proximity was tantalising and electric. She would look at him and their eyes would tangle with full-blown lust even though they would be conversing perfectly normally about something mundane and technical.

Right now, Jamie was primly logging off her computer, but under her tee-shirt she was bra-less and under the small stretchy skirt the dampness between her legs announced the urgency her body felt at the prospect of being touched there.

Ryan was on the telephone, sprawled back in the leather swivel chair, his eyes broodingly following her movements as she stood up, smoothed down her skirt, caught his eyes and held them in a bold, inviting gaze.

‘We got the contract.’ He pushed back the chair, stuck his feet on the desk in a manner that was so typically him that it brought a half smile to her lips and beckoned her to him with his finger. ‘George was eternally grateful for your exquisite attention to detail in the reports you emailed to him before the meetings began.’

‘Good.’ Jamie allowed herself a smile of professional satisfaction.

‘Is that all you have to say by way of congratulations?’ Ryan murmured, his eyes darkening as he took in the gentle sway of her breasts under the tight tee-shirt.

He was finding that he could barely look at her without his body slamming into immediate response. Where was the man with the formidable control when it came to women? He seemed to have been hijacked by a guy with a semi-permanent erection and a head full of erotic images that only went away when he was in deep sleep. Even then he had woken up on a couple of occasions to find himself thinking of her, needing an immediate cold shower, because despite his attempts at persuasion she had refused to share his bed for the duration of the night.

‘What else would you like me to say?’

‘I’m someone who believes that actions speak louder than words.’

‘How would you like me to act?’ Jamie blushed when he raised his eyebrows fractionally and let his eyes travel with slow, lazy insolence over the length of her body. ‘We can’t.’ Her voice was breathless. ‘Your mother will be waiting on the veranda for us to join her for lunch.’

‘Forgot to tell you. She got Junior to drive her into town for a check-up with the consultant and she said that she’s going to meet one of her friends for a bite out while she’s there. I have yet, to see someone recover more quickly from a health scare,’ he continued drily. ‘In fact, I haven’t seen her so relaxed in a long time.’ Now that he and Jamie were open in their relationship, whatever that relationship might be, his mother was as chipper as a cricket, lapping it all up, planning who only knew what in that head of hers.

Ryan closed his mind to what lay round an otherwise unexplored corner in the future. Instead, he focused on the sexy, sexy woman standing inches away from him in a skirt
that revealed newly brown, slender legs and a top that was begging to be ripped off.

‘So you have all the time in the world to demonstrate how thrilled you are that we’ve managed to hook this new, lucrative contract. On second thoughts, I think that
I
should be the one to show
you
how impressed I am for your invaluable contribution to us closing the deal.’

He sat forward and ran his hands along the sides of her thighs, stroking their soft, silky length until he felt her begin to melt. Then he slid his hands higher, hooked his fingers over the lacy elastic of her underwear and tugged. Jamie trembled. She propped herself against the edge of his desk and closed her eyes, losing herself in the glorious sensation of skirt and panties both being pulled down. She was burning up even though the air-conditioning was on, circulating cold air through the room.

Their love-making was usually at night, after his mother had retired for the evening. The stars and the moon had borne witness countless times to them on the beach, lying on a giant rug on the sand, lost in each other. Twice they had cooled off in the sea only to fall right back into each other’s arms the second they were out. They had made love in his bedroom. In her bedroom. Once, memorably, in the kitchen, late at night and with the kitchen door shut just in case, which had involved certain mouth-watering delights that Ryan had enjoyed licking off her.

But the office had been a designated work area so that now there was something deliciously wicked about being in it half-undressed.

‘We should go upstairs,’ she whispered. Her fingers sifted through his thick, dark hair. She looked down as he stared up at her for a few seconds.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Ryan drawled. ‘It seems only appropriate
that I should show my deep and undying gratitude for your hard work in a working environment.’

‘What if one of the gardeners sees us through the window?’

‘Good point. I’ll dip the shutters while you stay right where you are and don’t move a muscle.’

She did and when he resumed his position on the chair she yielded to his devastating fingers and tongue until she was on the point of collapse. He tasted her until she thought that her whole body was going to explode, until she was begging him to take her. Her breasts ached under the tee-shirt and she was driven to roll her fingers over her sore, tender nipples in a bid to assuage their painful sensitivity. Every time she glanced down to that dark head buried between her thighs, she felt weaker than a rag doll. There was something intensely erotic about the fact that he was still fully clothed while she was dishevelled and half-dressed.

‘I can’t stand this any longer,’ she groaned shakily, and she knew that he was smiling as he continued to tease her throbbing clitoris with his tongue.

‘I love it when you say that.’ Ryan finally released her screaming body from the onslaught of his attention and carried her, cave-man style, to the long sofa where she lay and watched as he stripped off his clothes. She never tired of feasting on the hard muscularity of his body.

Of course, he worked out. In London, he was a member of a gym, where twice a week he treated himself to gruelling games of squash with a couple of guys from the office. He also seemed to play every other sport imaginable. Here, he ran—at five in the morning, he had told her a few days ago. She hadn’t believed him until this morning, on the way to the bathroom, she had glanced out of her window to see him disappearing down the drive. They had only gone their
separate ways a few hours before. He was a man who needed next to no sleep.

When he lightly touched himself, an involuntary groan escaped her lips and he grinned. Her arm was resting lightly across her forehead and she looked like a very beautiful Victorian maiden caught in the act of swooning. Which, now that he thought about it, was an image that was intensely appealing.

‘I’m glad you’re satisfied with my level of appreciation, milady,’ he told her huskily.

He positioned himself directly over her, her legs between his, and he pulled her tee-shirt over her head. She was already arching back, inviting his mouth to her breasts, offering the twin peaks of her nipples for his pleasure. Irresistible. Making love to her was a constant struggle to keep himself under control. The challenge of breathing in the dampness between her legs had been struggle enough when it came to self-restraint, and it was no easier as he dipped his head so that he could suckle on her nipples, one at a time, loving the way they engorged in his mouth.

He entered her with one single thrust when they could no longer bear to go so far but not far enough. Her body shuddered as within seconds she was climbing that peak, tumbling into an orgasm that rocked her body, taking him with her, their slick, slippery bodies fused as if one.

It was bliss to lie with him, squashed on the sofa, as they gradually came back down to earth. It was just as well that his mother was out, Jamie thought, because she knew that there was no way she could have sauntered out onto the veranda for lunch without betraying the tell-tale signs of a woman who has been branded thoroughly by her man.

She stretched, settled down more comfortably against his body. He cupped her breast absently, as though it was impossible for him to be this close to her without him touching
her intimately. She loved it. She loved that feeling of possession. Sometimes he would cup between her legs or else just distractedly stroke her nipple with his finger, circling its outline and then teasing her as he waited for her to react to his feathery touch.

Jamie could have stayed like this for ever.

She said, reluctantly raising the subject, ‘Now that the deal is done and dusted and your mother is pretty much back on her feet …’

Ryan stilled because he knew that this was a conversation they had to have. He was needed back in London. He could delegate, but only to a certain extent. Decisions had to be taken about crucial deals and those decisions could not be made out here where the tropical sun and gratifying, relaxing sex on tap—not to mention their daily jaunts out where thoughts of work disappeared—were combining to erode his appetite for ferocious concentration.

Jamie waited for him to pick up the threads of the conversation, but he didn’t and she stifled a sigh.

‘We should be thinking of returning to the UK.’

‘Yes,’ Ryan said slowly. ‘We need to.’ Until this moment, he had really not considered the matter in a truly concrete way. He did now. It took seconds. The truth, laid bare in front of him, was that he couldn’t walk away from what they had begun. Had he envisaged this outcome when he had casually enrolled her in his clever plan to placate his mother’s nervous concerns?

‘I’ll need to make reservations.’

‘You know how to ruin an atmosphere, Jamie.’

‘I’m not trying to. I’m just … being realistic.’

‘We’ll leave on the weekend. That’s the day after tomorrow.’ He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling where the sun filtering through the half-open shutters played on the woodwork in an ever-changing kaleidoscopic pattern.

‘And then we go back to being the people we were before we came here.’

‘How easy is that going to be?’ He inclined his head to look at her, but her face was giving nothing away. ‘Do you really imagine that we’re going to be able to return to the soulless working relationship we had before all of this?’

‘It wasn’t a soulless relationship!’

‘You know exactly what I mean. We can’t tell the past to go away because it’s inconvenient.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying that this stopped being a game of charades the second we climbed into bed, and if you think that we can pretend that none of it ever happened, then you’re living in cloud cuckoo land. It happened, and it will still happen even when we’re back in London and you’re sitting at your desk and I’m at mine. When we look at one another, we’re going to remember, and you can’t wish that simple fact away.’

‘We should never have started this.’ There was always a price to be paid at the end of the day, and for so much pleasure the price was going to be steep. Jamie was now realising that she had got far more than she had bargained for. She had thrown off her old, careful, cautious self and let in a sentiment she now knew had been hovering on the sidelines, barely kept at bay, waiting to devour her. She had fallen in love with him and now she was drowning.

‘Tell me I’m not going to get a long sermon loosely based on the notion of regret,’ Ryan said curtly. ‘I really thought that we had moved past all of that.’

‘To what? Moved past it to what, exactly? You’re right. It’s going to be impossible to look at one another and pretend that none of this ever happened.’

‘So we do the logical thing.’ He smiled slowly and relaxed.

‘Which is?’

‘We continue seeing one another when we get back to London. What we have isn’t going to go away because we tell it to, so why bother to try? If anyone had told me two months ago—less—that we would end up in bed together, and loving every second of the experience, I would have thought they were crazy. But here we are and I’m not willing to put this thing to sleep, not yet, not when I still burn for you and you’re on my mind every second of the day.’

Not yet.
Those two words stuck in Jamie’s head and in between the glorious temptation to greedily take what was on offer the reality of its inevitable ending dripped through the fantasy like poison.