With a groan, he surrendered himself to the sensations pouring through him, refusing to think about anything beyond this moment. This kiss.
This taste of her that was filling cold, dark corners within him.
Their tongues tangled together, breath mingled and her soft sighs gave him all the encouragement he could have wanted. Sweeping one hand down her back, he traced her curves and wished he could peel her out of the dark red shirt she wore. Instead, he settled for tugging the hem of her blouse free of her crisp, white linen shorts and then slid the palm of his hand across her bare skin. She shivered as his fingers caressed the line of her spine, up and down and then up again. He needed the feel of her as badly as he needed her taste in his mouth.
Her arms came up and wrapped around his neck as she leaned into him. Her br**sts flattened against his chest and he felt the hard points of her n**ples pushing into him. He groaned again, felt his body go hard and ready and ground his h*ps against hers, looking for ease, but only managing to torture them both.
Christian kept his mouth on hers as he lifted her off her feet and deepened the kiss further. Slower, longer, hotter, he wanted all, wanted everything. For days now, his mind, his body had been clamoring for just this and now that he had his hands on her, his mouth on her, he didn’t want it to end.
The roar of the river was right behind them, the insistent rush of it playing counterpoint to the thudding of his own heartbeat. When he finally tore his mouth from hers and dragged in a ragged breath, she smiled up at him.
“So much for medievalism.”
His breath strangling in his lungs, he nodded. “I’ve never had to work so hard to stay within the rules. But I’ve wanted to taste you since the moment we met.”
“Good to know,” Erica said, moving one hand to cup his cheek in her palm. “I felt the same way. I still do. I want you, Christian.”
His body tightened even further and he wouldn’t have thought that possible.
“You’re not making this any easier,” he said, setting her back on her feet, keeping his arms around her, one hand on her bare back.
“I’m glad. It shouldn’t be easy. It should be damned hard to walk away from whatever it is that’s between us.”
“It is. That’s why I brought you here. I need to have you to myself. If only for today.”
“And that would be enough for you?”
“No,” he admitted, sliding both hands under her shirt now, moving over her skin to cup her br**sts over the lacy cups of her bra.
She gulped an unsteady breath.
Through the lace, his thumbs and forefingers toyed with her n**ples, eliciting another soft moan from her. “I’ve thought about tasting you, touching you. I’ve dreamed of having you alone and under me, over me.”
“Oh, my…”
Slowly, he moved his hands until he reached the waistband of her shorts. She took a shallow breath as he deftly undid the snap and zipper.
Her gaze locked with his and Christian couldn’t have looked away if it had meant his life. Suddenly the entire world, or at least all he wanted to know of it was there, in her amber-colored eyes.
“I need to touch you,” he whispered, his voice almost lost in the thunder of the swift-moving river.
“Yes,” she said, leaning toward him again, giving him all the welcome he needed.
He snaked one arm around her waist while his other hand dipped down, over her belly, beneath the thin elastic band of her panties. Then lower still, inch by glorious inch, past the tight curls at the juncture of her thighs. She gasped and stiffened, holding herself perfectly still as his fingers smoothed over her heat.
A low-throated groan slid from him as he felt her wet warmth and knew it was all for him. That she wanted him as desperately as he did her.
Then she jolted in his arms and a tiny, want-filled sigh slid from her lips. Her eyes closed as he dipped his hand lower still.
He touched, he caressed, he explored her delicate folds, learning her, learning what pleased her, what sent her soaring. He watched her face as he took her and her every sigh fed the flames of his own desire. He claimed her with a slick stroke across that single bud at the heart of her. That one spot that was the most sensitized and she trembled in his arms.
As sunlight played down around them and the world went about its business, Christian took Erica on a fast ride to pleasure. His fingers deft, he drove her relentlessly until she whimpered and pleaded his name on sighs torn from her throat. Her h*ps rocked into his hand as she sought release only he could give her. She parted her thighs wider, hoping he would take more, silently offering the invitation.
And he did. Dipping his head to the line of her throat, his lips and teeth left a trail of flames along her skin as he dipped first one finger and then another deep into her heat.
“Oh, Christian!” She swayed against him, but then held still as if afraid he’d stop.
He wouldn’t. The feel of her beneath his hands was magic. Everything he’d dreamed and more. He wanted to lay her down and take her body with his completely, right here, on the soft, warm grass under the shelter of the trees. But he wouldn’t. Couldn’t risk someone stumbling across them. So he would settle for this stolen moment. This one instant when the two of them were alone and nothing was more important than the next sigh.
He took her higher, his fingers moving over her most tender flesh. She gasped, she sighed, she shivered against him and still he pushed her on, dragging out the sensations, taking her to the edge and then drawing her back. Lifting his head, he looked down at her and she opened her eyes as if needing to see him as tension coiled tighter and tighter within.
“Let go,” he whispered, bending to brush her mouth with his. “Let go and come for me now.”
Her fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt and clung to his shoulders as if she were half-afraid she would slide off the edge of the world.
“Christian…” His name came on a breath as she trembled against him.
His thumb caressed her again and then she shattered in his arms. Her body quaked and shivered, her eyes slid closed. She held on to him as pleasure rippled through her again and again until finally, the last waves died away and she was left nearly boneless.
He held her closer, wrapped both arms around her middle and held her pressed tightly to him. His own heartbeat was crashing in his chest and matched hers beat for beat. This was so much more than he had thought it would be. He felt so much more than he’d expected.
Somehow, he had thought that touching her would bring him satisfaction. That having her in his arms, sighing his name, would ease the need that had been gnawing at him for days. But it hadn’t. If anything, that need was sharper now, clawing at his insides, demanding more. Demanding all.
Christian’s head fell back and he stared at the sky as he realized that something incredible had just happened. Something life-changing.
But the question was, did he want his life changed—and was it too late to stop it?
For the next couple of days, Erica hardly saw Christian, but she almost didn’t have time to notice. Her new life was racing straight ahead and she was forced to run just to keep up. There was a lot of work still to be done to prepare for the opening of the gala and she was working at a disadvantage, since she was coming in at the tail end. She had to catch up with Trevor’s plans, and with the marketing scheme he’d devised and already had in motion.
Working with Trevor was more fun than she’d expected it to be. She knew about PR. How to market a product so that a customer would be not only slavering to have it, but instantly convinced to buy it. Working the ins and outs of a gala as big and splashy as the Jarrod Ridge affair was, at its heart, no different. There were posters to see to, artistic signs, menus for some of the out-of-town vendors and professionally shot photos, showing impossibly perfect people at play.
Jarrod Ridge was about to become the center of the food and wine industry for several weeks and Erica was right in the thick of it.
She couldn’t remember being happier.
Her office on the ground floor of the Manor was bigger than her old one in San Francisco and bright with sunlight pouring in through a bank of windows. There were fresh flowers in the room, and a top-of-the-line computer and printer. She had all the assistance she needed from the employees at the business center and she had Trevor to bounce ideas off of and to argue with occasionally, as well.
What she didn’t have, she thought now, was Christian.
He’d made himself scarce the last couple of days. She’d barely caught a glimpse of him. Erica stood up from behind her desk and looked out her window at the English-style garden beyond the glass. Scrubbing her hands up and down her arms, she forced herself to accept the fact that he was deliberately avoiding her. But why?
Those stolen moments beside the river rose up in her mind as they’d been doing regularly in every spare second. And in a heartbeat, she was back there again, his mouth on hers. His hand touching her intimately, pushing her into a pleasure so deep it was like nothing she’d ever known before.
It had been the most incredible encounter of her life.
So why wasn’t he coming to her again?
Did he really mean to stick to Don Jarrod’s ridiculous rules? Would he turn his back on her and what they might find to keep his job? Okay, yes, she could understand wanting—needing—to keep his mother safe and happy. But wasn’t he allowed to be happy, too?
Or, she thought miserably, maybe he was happier without her. Maybe what they’d shared on the banks of the river hadn’t touched him as it had her. Maybe he hadn’t felt a damn thing. Maybe it hadn’t meant anything from the start and he was just—
Her office door opened behind her and she whirled to face… “Christian,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Erica.” His voice was cool, polite.
She nearly caught a chill from across the room. But two could play at this game, she told herself. If he wanted to pretend there was nothing simmering between them, then that’s what they would do. Be damned if she would show him that she was hurt. That he was stomping on her heart even now with his professional air and distant tone. No, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Can I help you?” Her words were as polite as his. Her tone every bit as cold.
“I’ve come to introduce you to—”
“Me,” another man said as he walked into the office and looked at her. “I’m Blake Jarrod.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, maintaining the professional manner she’d begun with. Erica saw no warm welcome in his eyes, so she wasn’t going to act as though they were any two siblings greeting each other.
Blake studied her and could see what his twin had already mentioned to him. Their newest sister did have the look of the Jarrods about her, so there was clearly no mistake made. He could see it in the defiant tilt of her chin. In the flash of her eyes. Hell, she probably had more of Don in her than Blake did.
But that didn’t mean that he’d welcome her into the family like the prodigal daughter. Or that she deserved a share of the estate. Being blood didn’t mean jack if you didn’t earn your place, he told himself. Everyone else might be willing to give her a chance, but he wasn’t so easily taken in. She’d have to prove herself to him.