He dropped his hands to the hem of her sweater and slid his palms beneath the heavy knit material to slide across her skin. She felt the burn of his fingers, the sizzle and pop in her bloodstream as he stoked flames already burning too brightly.
Oh, it had been way too long since anyone had touched her, Tula thought, letting her head fall back on a soft sigh. And she’d never been touched like this before.
“Let me,” he murmured, drawing her sweater up and off, baring br**sts hidden beneath a bra of sheer, pink lace.
Cool air caressed her skin in a counterpoint to the heat Simon was creating. One corner of her mind was shrieking at her to stop this while she still could. But the rest of her was telling that small, insistent voice to shut up and go away.
“Lovely,” he said, skimming the backs of his fingers across her ni**les.
She shivered when his thumbs moved over the tips of her hardened ni**les, the brush of the lace intensifying his touch to an almost excruciating level of excitement. Tula trembled as he unhooked the front clasp of her bra and sucked in a quick breath when he pushed the lacy panel aside and cupped her br**sts in his hands.
He bent his head to take first one nipple and then the other into his mouth and Tula swayed in place. Threading her fingers through his thick hair, she held him to her and concentrated solely on the feel of his lips and tongue against her skin.
She wanted him naked, her hands on his body. She wanted to lie back and pull him atop her. She wanted to feel their bodies sliding together, to look up into his eyes as he took her to—
An insistent howl shattered the spell between them.
Simon pulled back from her and whipped his head around to stare at the doorway. “What was that?”
“The baby.” Still trembling, Tula grabbed the edges of her bra and hooked it together. Then she reached for her sweater and had it back on in a couple of seconds. “I’ve got the baby monitor in here so I could hear him while I worked.”
She waved one hand at what looked like a space-age communication device and Simon nodded. “Right. The monitor.”
Scrambling to her feet, Tula backed away from him quickly.
“Don’t do that,” Simon said, standing up and reaching for her. “I can see in your eyes that you’re already pretending that didn’t happen.”
“No, I’m not,” she assured him, though her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. Pushing one hand through the short, choppy layers of her hair, she blew out a breath and admitted, “But I should.”
“Why?” He winced when the baby’s cries continued, but didn’t let go of her.
Tula shook her head and pulled free of his grasp. “Because this is just one more complication, Simon. One neither one of us should want.”
“Yeah,” he said, gaze meeting hers. “But we do.”
“You can’t always have what you want,” she countered, taking a step back, closer to the open doorway. “Now I really have to go to the baby.”
“Okay. But Tula,” he said, stopping her as she started to leave. “You should know that I always get what I want.”
When Tula carried Nathan into her office half an hour later, she found a stack of colored file folders lying on top of her desk. There was a brief note. “Chaos can be controlled. S.”
“As if I didn’t know who put them there,” she told the baby. “He had to put his initial on the note?”
She set the baby down on a blanket surrounded by toys, then took a seat at her desk. Her fingertips tapped against the file folders until she finally shrugged and opened one.
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try a little filing, right?”
Nathan didn’t have an opinion. He was far too fascinated by the foam truck with bright red headlights he had gripped in his tiny fists.
Tula smiled at him, then set to work straightening up her desk. It went faster than she would have thought and though she hated to admit it, there was something satisfying about filing papers neatly and tucking them away in a cabinet. By the time she was finished, her desktop was cleared off for the first time in…ever.
Her phone rang just as she was getting up to take the baby downstairs for his dinner. “Hello?”
“Tula, hi, this is Tracy.”
Her editor’s voice was, as always, friendly and businesslike. “Hi, what’s up?”
“I just need you to give me the front matter for the next book. Production needs it by tomorrow.”
“Right.” For one awful moment, Tula couldn’t remember where she’d put the letter to her readers that always went in the front of her new books. She liked adding that extra personal touch to the children who read her stories.
The scattered feeling was a familiar one. Despite what she had bragged to Simon about knowing where everything was, she usually experienced a moment of sheer panic when her editor called needing something. Because she knew that she would have to stall her while she located whatever was needed.
“It’s okay, Tula,” Tracy said as if knowing exactly what she was thinking. “I don’t need it this minute and I know it’ll take you some time to find it. If you just email the letter to me first thing in the morning, I’ll hand it in.”
“No, it’s okay,” Tula said suddenly as she realized that she had just spent hours filing things away neatly. “I actually know right where it is.”
“You’re kidding.”
Laughing, she reached out, opened the once-empty file cabinet and pulled out the blue folder. Blue for Bunny Letters, she thought with an inner smile. She even had a system now. Sure, she wasn’t certain how long it would last, but the fun of surprising her editor had been worth the extra work.
“Poor Tracy,” Tula said with sympathy. “You’ve been putting up with my disorganization for too long, haven’t you?”
“You’re organized,” Tracy defended her. “Just in your own way.”
She appreciated the support, but Tula knew very well that Tracy would have preferred just a touch more organizational effort on her writer’s part. “Well, I’m trying something new. I am holding in my hand an actual file folder!”
“Amazing,” Tracy said with a chuckle. “An organized writer. I didn’t know that was possible. Can you fax the letter to me?”
“I can. You’ll have it in a few minutes.”
“Well, I don’t know what inspired the new outlook, but thanks!”
Once she hung up, Tula faxed in the letter, then filed it again and slipped the folder back into the cabinet with a rush of pride. Wouldn’t Simon love to know that he’d been right? As for her, she’d managed to straighten up a mess without losing her identity.