Sheila's Passion (8 page)

But her mother hadn’t known Nick Casey.

She was almost anticipating a fight with him, as much as he seemed to be anticipating one with her.

She could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice.

Hell, she could feel it radiating in the sexual intensity that suddenly seemed to consume them both.

“They need to get a room,” Cooper grunted behind Sheila.

“You are becoming such a fuddy-duddy,” Sarah laughed. “Tell him, Morgan, he’s becoming a prude. Nothing like the wild man I married.”

Morgan was turning away as she spoke, his expression somber as he poured drinks, his eyes downcast.

“Sarah, sweetheart, you’re too nosy,” Casey warned her as he laughed back at her, though he didn’t release Sheila, and it seemed he had no intentions of doing so.

“And you are being way too intense, Casey.” Sarah shook her head.

“And this conversation is beginning to bore me,” Sheila informed them all, though the look she shot Sarah was filled with an apology.

She wasn’t bored, but she could definitely feel the fear beginning to travel up her spine.

Not a fear of harm. Or at least, not a fear of personal harm.

A fear of having her heart broken was another matter entirely.

“Bore you?” Casey growled. “I rather doubt it.”

“Dance with me or shut the hell up, Casey,” she finally demanded in exasperation. “If you’re going to stand around holding on to me like a damned junkyard dog, then the least you could do is make it worth my while.”

It was her mother’s advice to choose her battles wisely that rang through her head as Casey led her to the dance floor. A slow, sensual beat began to fill the air, drawing couples to the floor and heating the building with the power of human lust.

At least, that was what she tried to tell herself as she felt Casey’s arms wrap around her and allowed him to draw her to him. Possessively.

“What is with you and the ball-and-chain attitude?” she asked, genuinely bemused with the way he was acting.

“Trying to become a ball and chain?” he asked.

She almost stopped in the middle of the dance floor.

“Are you proposing, Casey?” She could feel her heart beginning to race in her throat. “Because if you are, then this is a lousy way to go about it.”

He snorted back at her, pulling her closer once again as he bent his head against hers and swayed to the lazy, sexually charged music filling the building.

“You’ll know when I’m proposing, Sheila. There will be no question about it.”

Son of a bitch.

Casey was cursing silently with every four-letter word he could come up with and a few he knew were illegal in several parts of the world. Probably in the States as well.

Yeah, it was sort of a proposal.

Casey was a man who accepted what he knew he didn’t have a chance in hell of changing. And the feelings burning inside him for Sheila weren’t going to change.

Fidelity being the key. In the months he had been slipping in and out of her bed, not even once had he found another woman attractive. It purely, simply sucked, though, that she seemed to think he was so horrible at the whole proposal thing.

What did he have to do, anyway? Get on one knee?

He scowled back at Cooper as they swayed around the floor. This had to be his fault. That big lug had gone down on his knee to Sarah and presented her with a diamond the size of a tennis ball.

Okay, so maybe it had been slightly smaller, but that had to be where she had come up with these ideas. Sarah had to have told her.

“You’re acting strange, Casey,” Sheila informed him. “Like a man making a claim, and I’m not some pretty doll you can claim and expect me to fall into line with it.”

“Darlin’, I wouldn’t expect you to fall into line with anything. We’ll just keep on keepin’ on till you see things my way, is all. I didn’t say I expected you to agree with me overnight.”

“Until I see things your way, huh?” He could hear the amusement in her tone, along with a rather vague confusion. As though she weren’t entirely certain how to deal with him.

That was a good thing. Keeping Sheila off balance was always a damned good thing if a man could manage it.

“Yep,” he agreed, hiding his smile in her hair. “We’ll get along better that way, you’ll see.”

“You know, I can’t decide if you’re truly insane, or if you’re just trying to make me crazy.”

And if it were the latter, he wondered, was it working?

Of course, it could be the former as well, because God knew she had managed to turn his life upside down.

“Does it matter which?” he asked softly against her ear, feeling that little shiver of response as it raced down her back. “Tell me you really want me out of your life, Sheila. Go ahead, lie to me and I’ll walk away.”

Could he walk away? He didn’t think it was possible. Not as long as he could feel her body heating for his, as long as he could feel that response for him in her kiss.

“No, you wouldn’t, Casey,” she denied as he finally felt her softening in his arms. “You’d just try to find another way to convince me.”

Hell, she knew him too well.

He hadn’t expected that.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you want from me, Casey.”

They both came to a stop as the music faded away.

His head lifted as she turned her gaze up to him, those deep violet eyes nearly drowning him in the knowledge, the sadness that filled them.

“Tell you what?” he asked her softly. “How much I want you? How hard you make me? Hell, Sheila, you already know all that.”

She shook her head softly. “No, Casey. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me what you want from me, or from my father. Don’t you know I still want you so desperately that I’d probably give it to you, or convince Dad to do it? You don’t have to play these games with me. You never did have to play these games with me.”

You never leave a lady standing on the dance floor.

Never curse a lady.

A lady was a lady even when she wasn’t behaving like a lady.

Never embarrass a lady in front of friends and coworkers. Especially if she holds a position of power.

Those lessons had been drummed into him as a child before his parents’ deaths.

He could remember lazy summer mornings as a young boy spent fishing on the banks of the river that eventually killed his parents and listening to the amusing assortment of rules his father had attempted to teach him where women were concerned.

Those lessons came in handy now.

He allowed his fingers to deliberately curl around her upper arm as he led her from the floor and back to the bar. He should have left her at the bar. Hell, he should have parked her right at the bar with Sarah and Cooper and left himself.

Hanging around was the worst thing he could have done. And allowing himself this confrontation with Sheila was sure a real bad decision.

He just couldn’t seem to help himself.

Anger, resentment, and pure male pride had him by the throat while lust still had him by the balls.

It was a hell of a combination.

And even as he pulled her past a watchful Morgan and shouldered open the swinging door that led to the kitchen and offices, he knew he was making a damned mistake.

It might even be the biggest mistake of his life.

SIX

This was what she got for being honest, Sheila thought as she allowed Casey to pull her into one of the small offices. This was what she got for trying to lay to rest the doubts that filled her own mind, and to get whatever relationship they had on an equal footing.

He was pissed.

She could feel that anger vibrating through his body and threatening his control.

She didn’t know whether to be frightened or turned on, because she had never seen Casey like this. She had never seen him so angry that his eyes glowed like burning chocolate, backlit with a tobacco flame.

She had a glimpse of those eyes as he swung her around at the desk, placed his hands on both sides of her and leaned into her until they were nose to nose.

“Do I look like a fucking man whore to you?” he snarled into her face, causing her to flinch with the rage in his voice. “Do I look like someone who would fuck a woman to gain anything other than both their damned pleasure?”

His words seemed to pierce a part of her that instantly latched on to the end of his statement.

“Their pleasure,”
he said. As though it was a lover’s pleasure and satisfaction that caused his own.

“Casey, I never meant—” She hadn’t meant it to sound that way.

But the rest of the words were cut off.

“The fucking hell you didn’t.” His nose was touching hers.

His eyes were so dark they were nearly black, body heat pouring from him in waves as rage seemed to burn through his system. “That’s exactly what you meant, Sheila. Was I a fucking man whore willing to climb between your legs for a favor from you where your damned father is concerned? Do you want to know what I think of any favors your father could fucking give me? Do you, Sheila?” he all but yelled in her face.

“Not really.” Weak, more submissive than she liked, her voice trembled as her gaze held his.

Not in fear, but in a variety of other emotions. Emotions she wasn’t certain she knew how to adapt to.

She only wished her response to this new, volcanic Casey was fear. Fear would have been easier to handle. It would have been far easier to understand than the other emotions she felt.

Especially the lust. The hunger.

The angrier he became, the more she wanted him.

She could feel her nipples hardening and tightening, growing more sensitive by the second as he glared into her eyes.

“Not really?” he snarled back at her. “Maybe I want to tell you anyway. Just for the fucking hell of it.”

“If you feel you have to.” She shrugged, almost catching her breath at the feel of her nipples raking against the material of her bra.

And she wasn’t the only one who felt the lust. Amid his anger, that hunger was there as well. The feel of his erection pressing wide and hard against her belly assured her of that. He wanted her just as fiercely as he wanted to rage at her.

“Then tell me, Casey,” she retorted, albeit breathlessly.

Her clit was aching with a swollen intensity she didn’t know if she could bear much longer. In turn, she could feel the clench and flushed arousal tightening her pussy as well as the heated, slick warmth easing through it.

Had she ever been this aroused by him?

She was certain she had never been this aroused in her life. For him or any other man. For anything or at any time.

His eyes were still blazing with fury, his expression twisted with it when she lifted her leg and let it slide up the outside of his.

The silk of her skirt slid back along her thighs, the rasp of his jeans against her sensitive inner thigh had her breath catching.

His gaze jerked down, locked on the pale flesh as her skirt slid back.

When his eyes came back to her, that rage was diluted, the smallest bit, with another fire. One of hunger and of lust.

“There’s not nothing, not a single friggin’ thing your father has that I want with the exception of his stubborn, wayward, completely intractable daughter.”

“Completely intractable?” Her hands pushed beneath the soft cotton of his shirt and touched the iron-hard abs beneath.

With just her nails, she stroked up his abdomen, being certain to find the flat, hard points of his male nipples.

His fingers wrapped immediately around her wrists, holding her in place.

“What the hell are you up to?”

Had she ever made the first move when it came to their sexual encounters? Casey knew she hadn’t. She’d always left that first step to him.

Until tonight.

Until this confrontation.

And now, she was simply hotter than hell. Hot enough to burn through his senses and make him almost, almost, forget the anger surging through him.

It was his pride. That sheer male core of the man that she had stabbed that dagger into. To dare to suggest that he wanted more than the woman he was holding in his arms was more than he could countenance.

How could anything she or her father possessed or had access to be more important?

“I could get up to many things,” she whispered. “But at the moment, I’m more interested in what you’re up to.”

Her hips tilted upward, causing her lower stomach to press and rub against the erection barely contained by his jeans.

Releasing her wrists he allowed one hand to slide along her arm until he reach her underarm. From there, his hand skimmed down her side, to her lifted leg. Curving his fingers beneath her thigh, he reached around until he could rub the silk of her panties against her sensitive pussy.

There, he found her hot and wet, the juices of her pussy dampening her panties as he rubbed against the sensitive bare lips beneath the material.

Her head tilted back. Dark, violet eyes became drowsy, heavy-lidded as her hand smoothed back down his abs to the heavy arousal beneath his jeans.

“You make me want to bite nails.” His tone was between a growl and a hungry groan. A sound he had never made before with a woman he couldn’t stop wanting, no matter how often he had her.

“Is that what you want to do?” she asked softly, her fingers curving around the hard shaft pounding beneath them.

“That, among other things.” Narrowing his eyes, he watched her closely, wondering how far she would go.

It was the first time she had made the first move; was she willing to continue that path? At least, for as long as he could allow it.

He was all for Sheila making her mark on him. Hell, there were nights he dreamed of it, fantasized about it.

Then, her hand slid away as disappointment began to tighten his body. But only as long as it took for him to realize those slender, delicate hands were gripping the hem of her camisole top and slowly easing it upward until she drew it over her head.

His breath caught, then he completely lost the ability to breathe as the sheer lace of her bra revealed the spiked, dark pink of her nipples as they begged so prettily for attention.