her before you...you...”
“She ceased to matter the moment I saw you. And she mattered way less before I saw you. Trust me, baby, what I have in mind is dirty, filthy fucking that will make you scream your throat hoarse. But to get it you need to invite me in.”
Evocative images bombarded her senses but she managed to shake her head. “I’m not inviting you in, Noah.”
Her stomach churned at the calculating intensity that narrowed his eyes. His hands smoothed up and down her arms, eliciting tiny shivers that made him smile with pure male satisfaction.
He dropped his head until their lips were a whisper apart.
“I’m not fucking you out here in the hallway, baby. Your clothes stay on in public. That’s non-negotiable. Another non-negotiable issue is the fact that you’re not fucking anyone else on this trip. Everything else I’m willing to negotiate.”
“Negotiate your hands off me. Right now. Before my knee negotiates itself between your legs.”
Something in her voice must have finally got through to him. Eyes narrowing further, he dropped his hands and took a step back.
“Are you afraid of me, Leia?” he asked, a tension seizing him that made a twinge of shame suffuse her.
He overwhelmed her. He made her stomach cave in on itself with a hunger that defied reason. He made her clit throb and her pussy clench with desperate greed. But he didn’t induce fear in her.
She should know. She knew what real fear looked and felt like.
Compelled to be truthful, she shook her head. “No.”
He exhaled, his shoulders relaxing a touch. But the tension didn’t completely leave his face or his body. He stared down at her for another handful of seconds before he speared a hand through his hair.
“We seem to be tripping over the right way to do this. What can I say to convince you that I want what you want?” Frustration bit through his voice.
“We can agree to keep this...light.”
He stared at her for several minutes. Then his eyes dropped to the pulse beating in her neck, then lower to the agitated rise and fall of her breasts. Even lower still until even her soles tingled with the look in his eyes.
By the time he raised his gaze to hers, she was ready to abandon all reason and throw herself at him.
“I don’t do light, baby. Not when it comes to kissing and not when it comes to sex. It’s the deep end or not at all. But I don’t want to walk away, so I’ll make you a promise.”
“Wh-what?”
“Invite me in and I promise to keep my clothes on until we land.”
“What happens after we land?” she asked, noting shamefully that her voice had grown husky and breathless.
He shrugged. “We go skiing.”
Acute disappointment scythed through her but she managed to stop herself from blurting out a sharp refusal to his proposal.
Leia found herself moving from the wall into the doorway, walking backward as he stalked her into the room. Her heart rate tripled when he nudged the door shut with his foot.
For several seconds they just regarded each other with that insane electricity arcing between them.
Noah breathed in deep, drawing her attention to his massive chest. She’d felt that chest up close, briefly explored the hard pecs and solid muscle beneath his shirt. The knowledge that she’d passed the chance to explore him again cut like a knife through her.
She couldn’t change her mind again without sounding like the nut job he no doubt believed her to be.
Whirling around, she entered the small living room adjoining her bedroom suite. An extensive drinks cabinet stood next to the entertainment center. “Would you like a drink?” She turned to find he’d followed her, stood mere feet away.
“I don’t think another drink is a good idea.”
She floundered. “Okay...”
He took pity on her, grabbed the remote on the coffee table and pressed a button. A large screen slid forward from behind a recessed panel.
He strolled to the wide gold and cream stripped sofa and lowered his lithe