neck arched and her fingers clung to the broad width of Jaxon’s shoulders when his lips left hers to kiss across her cheek before travelling the length of her throat—kissing, gently biting, as he tasted her creamy skin before his tongue plundered and rasped the sensitive hollows at the base of her neck.
Her back arched as Jaxon’s hand moved to cup beneath one of her breasts. The soft material of her dress was no barrier to the pleasure that coursed through her hotly as his thumb moved lightly across the roused and aching nipple, and she was only vaguely aware of it when his other hand slowly lowered the zip of her dress down the length of her spine before his hand touched the naked flesh beneath, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Jaxon heard the voice in his head telling him to stop this now. Offering Stazy comfort was one thing—what he wanted was something else entirely. He heard that voice and ignored it—had no choice but to ignore it when he could feel how Stazy’s pleasure more than matched his own.
He reached up to ease the dress down her arms, baring her to the waist before he moved his hands to cup beneath the swell of her breasts. Such full and heavy breasts, when the rest of her body was so slender. Full and heavy breasts that Jaxon wanted in his mouth as he tasted and pleasured her.
His hands remained firmly on her waist and he moved back slightly to look down at her nakedness. The heat of his gaze on those uptilting breasts tipped by rosy pink and engorged nipples stayed for long, admiring seconds before he lowered his head to take one in his mouth.
Stazy moved her arms so that her hands were flat on the desk behind her, supporting her as the pleasure of having Jaxon’s mouth and tongue on her coursed hotly from her breasts to between her thighs. She felt herself tingle there as he took her nipple fully into the heat of his mouth and began to suckle, gently at first, and then more greedily, as his hand cupped her other breast and began to caress her in that same sensuous rhythm.
She was on fire, the ache between her thighs almost unbearable now, building higher and higher, until she knew Jaxon held her poised on the edge of release. ‘Please, Jaxon …!’ she groaned weakly.
He ignored that plea and instead turned the attentions of his lips, tongue and teeth to her other breast. His lips clamped about the fullness of the nipple as his tongue and teeth licked and rasped against that sensitive bud, driving Stazy wild as she moved her thighs restlessly against his in an effort to ease her aching need for the release that was just a whisper of pleasure away.
She trembled all over with that need, her breath a pained rasp in her throat as she looked down at Jaxon with hot and heavy eyes. Just the sight of his lips clamped about her, drawing her nipple deeper and deeper into his mouth with each greedy suck, caused another rush of heat between her restless and throbbing thighs.
‘Jaxon …!’ Instead of deepening that pleasure, as she so wanted him to do, it seemed as if Jaxon began to ease away from her, gently kissing her breasts now, his hands once again a soft caress against her back. ‘Stop playing with me, please, Jaxon!’ she pleaded throatily.
‘This isn’t a sensible idea, Stazy,’ he groaned achingly, even as his arms dropped from about her waist before he straightened away from her.
Stazy looked at him searchingly for several long seconds, easily seeing the regret in his eyes before a shutter came down over those twin mirrors into his emotions. ‘Jaxon …?’ she breathed softly.
He gave a shake of his head, his expression grim. ‘We both know that you’re going to end up hating me if I take this any further …’
‘You’re wrong, Jaxon.’ She gave a disbelieving shake of her head, continuing to stare up at him dazedly as she pulled her dress back up her arms to hold it in front of the bareness of her breasts with one hand while she pulled the material down over her naked thighs with the other.
‘I am?’ he prompted huskily.
‘Oh, yes,’ Stazy breathed softly. ‘Because I couldn’t possibly hate you any more than I do at this moment!’ Her eyes glittered with humiliated anger now, rather than tears.
Jaxon knew he fully deserved that anger—that he had allowed things to go much further between them just now than was wise when Stazy was already feeling so emotionally vulnerable. But he also knew that Stazy was wrong—she would definitely have hated him more if they had taken their lovemaking to its inevitable conclusion. And on the plus side—for Geoffrey and Little, that was!—Stazy was now far more angry with him than she had been earlier with either of them!
That, in retrospect, was probably the best outcome. He was scheduled to leave here at the end of the week, whereas Geoffrey and Little would both be around for much longer than that.
Jaxon kept his expression noncommittal as he stepped fully away from Stazy, his shaft throbbing in protest as he did so. No doubt another cold shower—a very long cold shower!—would be in order when he got back to his suite of rooms. ‘There’s the possibility you might even thank me for my restraint in the morning …’ he murmured ruefully.
‘I shouldn’t hold your breath on that happening, if I were you!’
‘Stazy—’
‘I think you should leave now, Jaxon.’ It was definitely anger that now sparkled in her eyes.
‘Fine,’ he accepted wearily. ‘But you know where I am if you can’t sleep and feel like—’
‘Like what?’ she cut in sharply. ‘I thought we had both just agreed that this was a very bad idea?’
‘I was going to say if you feel like company,’ Jaxon completed firmly. ‘And I don’t remembering saying it was a bad idea—just not a very sensible one, given the circumstances.’
‘Well, “given the circumstances”, I would now like you to leave.’ Her chin rose proudly as she held his gaze.
Jaxon gave her one last regretful glance before doing exactly that, knowing that to stay would only make the situation worse.
If that was actually possible.
‘THAT really wasn’t very clever, now, was it?’ Jaxon looked at Stazy impatiently as he entered the drawing room almost two hours later, to see her pacing in front of the bay windows, now dressed in a thick green sweater and fitted black denims, with her red-gold hair neatly plaited down the length of her spine.
She shot him only a cursory glance as she continued to pace restlessly. ‘Shouldn’t you be fast asleep?’
He closed the door softly behind him. ‘Little came and knocked on my bedroom door. He seemed to think I might like to know that you had tried to take my Harley in an attempt to go and see your grandfather tonight.’
‘The traitor …’
Jaxon gave a rueful shake of his shaggy head, having quickly pulled on faded denims and a black tee shirt before coming downstairs. ‘Exactly when did you take the keys to the Harley off my dressing table …?’
‘When I heard the shower running in your bathroom.’ She had the grace to look a little guilty. ‘I am sorry I took them without your permission, but at the time I didn’t feel I had any other
