back, feeling the strength of his body under her touch.
If she were braver she’d press her body closer to his so she’d have the imprint of him against her to recall when she was back in the office and they were simply employer and employee again.
His finger under her chin startled her into opening her eyes and when he tipped her head back and their eyes met, she realized that there was more happening here than just a dance. She saw something else in Tristan’s gaze. There was such sadness there, she thought. A kind of pain that she recognized all the way to her lonely soul.
Tristan Sabina, lonely?
The thought was ludicrous.
She shook her head. What the hell was she doing? This was her boss. She pulled back, put a respectable few inches between them, and he let her.
She got the message loud and clear. There wasn’t more to this than Tristan feeling lonely at the reception and wanting…what exactly?
She tipped her head to the side as he brushed his finger along the line of her jaw. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I never realized how beautiful your eyes are.”
She caught her breath. She wasn’t beautiful and she knew it. Her eyes were brown. Not the kind of luscious chocolaty color that poets wrote about, just plain brown. She shook her head.
“Yes, gorgeous. I could get lost in them.”
“Tristan—”
He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip and her thoughts dissolved. She felt a tingling from that contact that spread down her neck and shoulders. And she realized that the safe little way in which she’d been obsessed with Tristan had turned into a dangerous and exciting attraction.
She knew that he wasn’t himself tonight. That Monday morning, when they were back at work, they would return to the relationship they’d always had.
A sane person would turn around, walk off the dance floor and go back to her room.
But she’d been alone in her room for much of her life. In a box of her own making where she was safely insulated from pain. From the men who always left her.
She looked up at Tristan. He stared at her lips. His own parted as he stroked hers. And she wondered if knowing he was leaving, figuratively speaking, after one night would somehow lessen the pain of being left once again.
And she didn’t kid herself that it wasn’t going to be painful when he left. It was always painful, but being with Tristan…being in his arms and experiencing the things she’d dreamed of since the first time he’d walked into her office…well, that might be worth it.
Wouldn’t it?
She didn’t know and didn’t want to analyze it. For once she wanted to forget that she was a plain-Jane kind of woman. That she was the kind of girl who usually went back to her room alone. For tonight, she was the woman that Tristan Sabina was looking at with lust in his eyes.
He and Sheri danced together for the rest of the evening and once Christos and his bride left, Tristan thought of leaving, too. But he glanced over at Sheri and was unable to walk away.
He drew her back out onto the dance floor, moving their bodies together. Feeling the rightness of the way she fit in his arms and against his body.
If she pulled back, of course he’d let her walk away. He had never had to coax a woman into his bed. But with Sheri, he was tempted. He was tempted to ply her with champagne and kisses.
Kisses.
He’d tasted her lips once, and now that was all he wanted to do. Stroke his tongue over the seam between her lips until she sighed and opened her mouth. Let his tongue sweep into the softness of her mouth. She would taste sweet…of champagne and something else that was uniquely Sheri.
He could not resist. He lowered his head, and she rose to meet him. She moaned into his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck and leaning up on her tiptoes to keep their mouths together. He held her waist, lifting her against him. He felt the impact of her breasts against his chest and wanted to groan out loud. How could he ever have missed the fact that Sheri was a damned attractive woman?
He pulled back and looked down into those deep chocolate eyes of hers. They were wide and dreamy-looking. She brought one hand from his shoulder to her mouth and traced her lips with her forefinger.
“Sheri?”
“Hmm?”
“Would you like me to kiss you again?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” she said, licking her lower lip and leaning her weight on him as she stretched up toward him.
He bent lower and as soon as his lips brushed hers she opened her mouth and her tongue met his. Just a soft, tentative touch, and then she made that little moaning sound and he felt the gentle edge of her teeth against his lower lip as she sucked him into her mouth.
He opened his eyes and saw that hers were closed and she was absorbed totally in the moment. He realized things were going too far for a public dance floor. Sheri’s burgeoning passion was for him, and him alone.
Damn, he’d never felt this possessive about a woman before.
He lifted his mouth from hers, tucked her head into the curve of his neck and shoulder. Rubbed his hands down her back until he thought he could walk without each step being painful.
The crowd at the reception had thinned. The photographer from the Sabina Group was still there, but otherwise the event was paparazzi free. The guards that Christos had hired had provided an environment where his bride and his guests could relax and not have to worry about being pursued.
“Sheri?”
“Yes, Tristan?”
He couldn’t ask her to stay with him tonight, he thought. This was his assistant. The woman he counted on to be cheeky and funny and to keep his New York office running efficiently. Yet he wanted her, and he wasn’t in the habit of denying himself anything he wanted.
“Did you like that?”
“Kissing you?”
“Mmm, hmm.”
“Oh, yes. Very much. And dancing with you,” she said, her eyes sparkling as she shimmied against him in time to the slow jazz number playing. “Did you enjoy it?”
“Kissing you or dancing with you?” he asked, just to tease her.
“Both.”
“Yes.”
She arched both eyebrows at him. “Really? I know you’re used to more sophisticated women.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. He never discussed his private life at the office.
“I searched you on Google. I read the Post. And Lucille sends me the French tabloids with pictures of you.”
“Why?”
