Mad About The Man by Stella Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

ear. "Gaby, Gaby." Holding her ever more strongly against his arousal, he pushed his fingers through her hair and returned to her mouth.
    He sucked her lower lip gently between his teeth, then thrust his tongue deeply into her mouth.
    His hand shifted from her hair, smoothed her shoul der, slipped to cover and knead her breast. In an in stant he'd eased down her low neckline and found a straining nipple. Pinching lightly, rolling, he turned her legs to useless things and her womb to a molten place that drove her hips against him again and again.
    Farther down he shifted the loose bodice, far enough to free her naked breasts.
    "Oh, my God!" Panting, pushing him away, push ing back her hair, Gaby tore herself from him. "What do you think you're doing?"
    He took his hands from her, held out his palms. His chest rose and fell with great, dragging breaths. "I'm doing exactly what you know I'm doing." De sire made his eyes brilliant, the lines of his face rigid. "We're doing exactly what we know we're doing. Sometimes these things are meant to happen. This is one of those times."
    "No. No." Hitching at her dress she backed away. "Never. Not to me. This doesn't happen to me."
    "This?" He shrugged away from the tree and winced.
    Gaby's eyes went to his pants and she looked quickly away. What had happened to him wasn't go ing away. Her own desire throbbed in every vein. And it was nothing but lust.
    "Gaby. What do you mean by this?"
    "Casual encounters." She shook her head vio lently. "I a sked you to talk to me about… professional matters. Business was what I had in mind."
    He smiled, the slow, incredibly sensual smile that made her throat feel entirely closed. "There's no rea son to a llow business to infringe on… other things."
    She stared. "Take me back, please." This man was telling her that there was no reason to allow major differences in every other area to interfere with the possibility of great sex. Gaby managed to swallow. If what had happened was a barometer, sex with Jacques Ledan would be unb elievably great. "I want to go back."
    "Fine. I'll take you. But don't think this is a closed subject. And I'm not talking about business."
    Gaby started walking. "We are on opposite sides in a war."
    "Not between us. Not unless you call what just happened some sort of battle." He caught up easily and slipped an arm around her waist, jerked her back when she tried to escape him. "That kind of battle I' ll engage in any day. As many times a day as I can persuade you to be with me."
    "There won't be other times. This won't—what happened won't happen again."
    He spread his hand over her ribcage until his thumb could range back and forth across the soft underside of her breast. "It's going to happen, Gaby," he said softly and laughed. "It's going to happen again and again."
    "No!"
    "Yes." He swung her easily around to face him "Right now I'll do what you want. I'll take you back to Goldstrike and safety. But you're never going to be safe again. Not from me."
     

 
    4
     
     
    A nother wad of aluminum foil zipped past Jacques, hit sagging pink insulation and dropped to the base of an exposed wall stud.
    Jacques rounded on Bart and said, "Enough with the missiles," in a low voice. The three workmen who wandered the length of the unfinished space, tapping, banging and muttering, were unlikely to hear, any way.
    Bart Stanly, slouched in a discarded metal lawn chair with no cushions, began rolling another piece of foil from a very old TV dinner cover. "We're wasting time in this dump." He formed the tarnished ball deliberately between his palms . "You don't need an office downtown. Not that you can say this burg has a downtown."
    "I do need it," Jacques said shortly. "Damn, it's hot up here." He undid several buttons on his khaki shirt.
    "Yup." Bart rolled and rolled the foil while his eyes lost focus. "And it's going to stay hot up here. Heat rises, in case you haven't noticed. What's wrong with the office at La Place?"
    "The office