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 breath caught when he snapped open the waistband on his jeans, her heartbeat suspending as he ran the zip down.
‘Why aren’t you getting undressed?’ he threw over at her as he peeled off his jeans, revealing a huge bulge in his black underpants. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve gone all shy on me. Come now, Vivienne, you and I both know that the uptight image you project at work is not the real you at all. You’re hot stuff, sweetheart.’
Vivienne certainly felt hot at that moment. Her face flamed as she gulped then sucked in a much-needed breath.
Jack smiled a decidedly smug smile. ‘Ah, I get it. You like to watch. Fine by me,’ he said, and took off his remaining underwear.
Oh my... And she’d thought Daryl was reasonably well-equipped.
Compared to Jack, Daryl was... Well, he just didn’t compare! No wonder Jack wasn’t shy about showing off his body; he was incredible, Vivienne thought as her admiring gaze ran over him once again from top to toe.
‘You do like to watch, don’t you?’ he said as he reached for his discarded jeans and extracted his wallet from the back pocket. ‘Can’t say I’m much of a watcher. But with you, lovely Vivienne, I’m going to make an exception.’
Vivienne was taken aback when, after taking a condom out of his wallet and tossing the wallet back down on his jeans, Jack walked over to the bed. He stretched out on top of the duvet, dropping the small foil packet he was holding onto his chest before looping his hands behind his head and acting for all the world like he wasn’t stark naked with an erection the size of the Eiffel Tower.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m ready to watch. Take your clothes off. But very slowly, please. I want to savour every moment.’
When she just stood there, dry-mouthed and motionless, he shot her an intense look. ‘Come now, Vivienne, what are you waiting for? You know patience is not one of my virtues.’
When she hesitated further, her new, wicked self started whispering in her ear.
Yes, Vivienne, what are you waiting for? You want to take your clothes off for him. You know you do. You want to see him look at your breasts the way he did yesterday. You want to see those hard blue eyes glitter with lust for you. More than anything, you want to abandon every inferior feeling you’ve ever had about yourself when to comes to sex. Jack thinks you’re hot stuff. Then be hot stuff, girl. It’s now or never!
Her
