Second Chance Proposal: A Man Without Mercy / Bring It On / Rancher to the Rescue. Miranda Lee
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I never even liked you, let alone fancied you. It was weird, the way I started having these wicked thoughts about you.’
‘What kind of wicked thoughts?’ he asked her.
Vivienne shook her head. ‘I...I’ve tried to work them out because they don’t make sense. All I know is that I want you to make love to me. Very much so.’
Jack did his best to stay cool. Despite dying to put her words to the test, he suspected that if he wanted any kind of relationship with Vivienne—as opposed to just a quickie—then he needed to show some sensitivity to her present, highly vulnerable state. If he rushed her into bed right at this moment—there was a king-sized one in the nearby master bedroom, he recalled—she might regret it afterwards. At the same time, the temptation to do just that was almost irresistible.
‘Hell, Vivienne, you shouldn’t say things like that.’
‘Why not? It’s true. Crazy, perhaps, but true.’
He didn’t like the ‘crazy’ bit.
‘Kiss me, Jack,’ she begged. ‘Please.’
Oh God, he thought as his groin twitched painfully. ‘If I kiss you, I won’t stop at kissing,’ he told her bluntly.
She didn’t say a word, just closed her eyes and parted her lips in the most provocative fashion.
Jack groaned, then pulled her back into his arms—hard—his head swooping down at the same time.
It was not a tender or loving kiss. It was rough and ravaging, his hands lifting to hold her face solidly captive so there was no escape from his merciless assault on her mouth.
Not that she tried to escape; Vivienne moaned her surrender the moment his lips crashed down on hers. Her body melted against his, the soft swell of her stomach pressing against his erection. This only inflamed Jack further, his teeth nipping and tugging at her lips until they felt swollen and hot. She gasped when he ran his tongue over their burning surfaces, moaning when at last his tongue darted deep into her mouth.
Jack’s gut tightened when her lips closed tightly around him, sucking him in even deeper. He immediately started imagining what it would be like when she did that to other parts of his body. Which she would at some stage, he was sure. Although a cool character on the surface, Vivienne was obviously a wildly passionate woman underneath. A woman who liked sex and needed it. The perfect candidate to become his lover. Or even girlfriend, if that was what she wanted. He didn’t much care, as long as he could have her in his bed on a regular basis.
When he tore his mouth away from hers, she moaned again, her green eyes glazed when they opened to stare dazedly up at him.
‘Don’t say a word,’ he bit out. ‘I’m not stopping altogether. Just till I get a couple of things straight.’
She didn’t say a word. He suspected she was almost beyond talking, a fact he found rather flattering.
‘I don’t want this to be just a one-night stand,’ he said. ‘Or should I say, a one-day stand. I like you, Vivienne. Very much so. I want more from you than that. Tell me now if this idea doesn’t appeal to you, then I won’t start making plans for afterwards. If you say you don’t like me enough to consider a relationship with me, then after this once, we’ll have to go our separate ways. Because once we cross this line, sweetheart, there will be no working together unless we’re sleeping together.’
Jack hoped Vivienne didn’t see his ultimatum as a form of sexual harassment, or even blackmail. He was just telling her as it was. He wasn’t her boss. Yet. But by God he wanted to be, especially in the bedroom.
Hot images danced in his head of her obeying his every command and demand; of her going down on him wherever and whenever he wanted; of her being tied naked to various pieces of furniture, totally at his mercy. All silly fantasies, he suspected. Because, as passionate as Vivienne seemed to be, she wasn’t the submissive type. Though who knew? Maybe she would enjoy being dominated in the bedroom.
His earlier fierce arousal, which had subsided somewhat with his talking, came back with a vengeance.
‘You don’t need to give me your answer right now,’ he ground out to a still silent but flushed Vivienne. ‘Afterwards will do.’ Unable to wait another second, Jack swept her up into his arms and headed for the master bedroom. When his sunglasses fell off the back of his head in the process, he didn’t bother to stop and pick them up.
VIVIENNE’S HEAD WHIRLED with conflicting thoughts as she clamped her hands around Jack’s neck and burrowed her face into the base of his throat. What remained of her sense of decency demanded that she stop him right now. She liked Jack somewhat better than she had, but to have sex with him wasn’t right—surely?
But the voice of decency wasn’t nearly as powerful as the voice of desire. It obliterated and overwhelmed all objections with its promise of excitement and pleasure. Jack’s impassioned kiss had given her a taste of what was to come. Not just excitement and pleasure, but abandonment and satisfaction. The kind of abandonment which she’d always secretly craved. The kind of satisfaction which she’d never really enjoyed.
Somehow, Vivienne knew that in Jack’s arms she would become a different woman from the one who’d kept her virginity until she was twenty-one, and who’d remained a shy, timid lover in the years since that first, uninspiring initiation into sex. With Jack, she would be wild and wanton. Maybe even wicked. Already her lips were opening to kiss his neck. Though it wasn’t a kiss for long, more of a slow, sensual sucking at his skin, her heartbeat quickening at the sheer audacity of her action.
When he groaned and tipped his head to one side, her mouth clamped him more tightly, as if she were some rabid vampire.
This time he wrenched his head away before setting her down abruptly in the middle of a large room, which was devoid of all furniture except for a huge bed, which looked new, its striped red-and-white bedding totally at odds with the pale blue shag-pile carpet and faded floral wallpaper. The air in the room was a little musty but surprisingly warm, probably because the sliding glass doors which led out onto the east-facing balcony would have caught the morning sun. Jack left her to go over and open one of those doors before turning and shaking his head at her.
‘Do you have any idea what kind of teasing I’ll get at work with a love bite on my neck?’ he said, and rubbed at the spot on his neck that she’d been ravaging.
Vivienne tried to summon up some shame but it seemed she was beyond it. ‘I can’t imagine any of your employees daring to tease you.’
Jack chuckled. ‘In that case, you don’t know men very well.’
‘Perhaps not,’ she murmured, the thought occurring to her that she didn’t know herself very well either. Certainly not this new uninhibited self, the one who was much more daring—and a lot more exciting—than the Vivienne she was used to.
‘Not to worry,’ Jack said and took off his jacket, tossing it onto the carpet with typical male nonchalance. ‘I’ll wear a shirt with a collar for a few days. But please,’ he added as he stripped off his T-shirt, ‘try to confine that sexy mouth of yours to areas of mine normally covered by clothes.’
‘Yes, boss,’ she said as she ogled his quite magnificent male body. His shoulders were impressively broad, his arms bulging with muscles, his chest superbly sculptured and nicely tanned with surprisingly little body hair, just a smattering of curls in the centre, plus a narrow line of them arrowing down past his six-pack, ending at his navel. His hips were slender but his thighs looked massive in those tight jeans.
So did something else...
Vivienne had always thought she would never be attracted to a big man; that their sheer size would intimidate her.
Well, guess what, Vivienne? You were dead wrong!
Her