Explosive Read online

  Nothing could hide it from him, anyway.

  “Thomas,” she whispered. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” he replied, mesmerized by the movement of her lips. His fingers itched to delve through her soft, wavy hair, to ruin the knot that restrained it at the back of her head. He pushed the lock on her door, examining her reaction to his boldness.

  Would it frighten her?

  When he saw her furtive gaze drop down over his abdomen and crotch, and then the convulsion of her elegant throat, he got his answer. Whatever the magic—whatever the insanity—that was brewing between them was affecting her as much as him.

  The realization made his cock stiffen and throb next to his left thigh. He stepped toward her.

  “I’m not going to be all right until I bury myself in you,” he said truthfully.

  “Tom—”

  He bent down and covered the lush confection of her lips with his mouth. The sensation of her firm flesh amplified his hunger exponentially. He ate up her sexy, tiny whimpers and parted her lips with his tongue.

  He groaned as her taste registered in his brain.

  Christ, this was gonna be good.

  He lost himself in her, welcoming pure sensation, intoxicated by the feeling of her hips curving into his palms, made drunk by her sweet mouth and her fresh, floral woman-scent filling his nose. She slid her tongue against his eagerly, turning her head and pressing closer, the evidence of her returned ardor making lust roar like a torrential current through his veins. Sophie didn’t kiss like the innocent girl next door. No, she tangled her tongue with his wildly, shaped his mouth and created a suction his cock responded to wholeheartedly.

  His hands opened over her round ass. He pushed her against his erection and rubbed her softness against his hardness, uncaring about the lewdness of his actions . . . just feeling. Every nerve in his body screamed with need, just like they had as he dreamed last night. Kissing Sophie was like dipping his tongue into sex-sweet honey.

  He lifted his head after a moment, molding her lips with his own, nipping at her hungrily.

  “I have to have you. Now.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. The feeling of her hands moving anxiously over his back and around to the front of him, stroking his ribs, drove him crazy. He hissed when she drove her fingers through an opening in his shirt and touched him, skin to skin.

  He stared into her wide, liquid brown eyes as he began to unbutton her blouse. As he brushed his knuckles against the fullness of her breasts his cock lurched with longing. She might have felt it, because she murmured his name shakily and craned up to kiss him again.

  “No. Let me look at you,” he ordered tensely.

  She remained unmoving as he finished unbuttoning her blouse and parted the fabric, making his fantasy reality. Her skin had been sun-kissed light gold with just a hint of apricots. The simple, modest white bra she wore turned him on more than the raciest, skimpiest lingerie he’d ever seen. She shivered when he slid his hands along the satiny skin at the sides of her torso and reached for the clasp.

  “Oh, Sophie,” he mumbled in awe when he’d bared her pale, full breasts. Her nipples were delicate, pink and tight. Lust lanced through him when he held her firm, warm flesh in his hands and lightly ran his thumbs over the succulent tips, making them bead and stiffen even more. He glanced up at her.

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Thomas,” she whispered. She placed her hand on the back of his head and brought him down to her. He nuzzled the silky curve of a breast, inhaling her scent, before he slipped a nipple into his mouth, laving it with his tongue. His eyes burned with emotion that he couldn’t comprehend as he suckled her first softly and then, as his desire built to almost unbearable levels, ravenously.

  The pain of her gripping his hair as she held him down to her brought him back to himself—that and the sharp ache of his near-to-bursting cock. He raised his head, searching for a trace of sanity in Sophie’s eyes.

  Instead, he saw the glaze of a fevered lust shining in their depths and knew she suffered as much as he did. He would have hurried things for himself, but what he saw in the depths of Sophie’s eyes made him frantic.

  Or at least that’s what he told himself later when he was trying to justify his actions.

  He held her gaze as he placed his hands on her skirt and began to slide the fabric up her hips. They both panted into the thick silence. When his palms ran over the tops of smooth stockings and onto the warm silk of her upper thighs, a low growl vibrated in his throat.

  An explosion seemed to detonate in his brain. He turned her in his arms and pressed his cock against her ass. She didn’t balk when he pushed her upper body down, forcing her to bend at the waist. Her hands went out to brace their weight on the desk.

  “I’ll go slow next time, Sophie. Right now, I’m going to go crazy if I can’t get inside you.”

  She didn’t speak, but she turned and met his gaze as he lowered her panties. The sight of her damp parted lips and wide, glazed eyes caused his cock to jerk viciously in his boxer briefs. His face pinched in an agony of lust when he glanced down at her bared ass.

  God, he should stop this. It was madness. The things he wanted to do to her . . . lovely, kind Dr. Gable with the face of an angel and a smile that could warm a man on the coldest, bitterest days of his life.

  He wanted to fuck her like an animal.

  “Spread your thighs some, Sophie.”

  She followed his gruff order, her panties stretched tight where he’d lowered them to just above her knees. He unbuckled his belt rapidly, his eyes glued to the erotic image of Sophie bent at the waist, her skirt bunched around her hips, her white ass and the tantalizing glimpse of her pink flower between her spread thighs. He’d fantasized about how she looked under those prim, nondescript skirts, salivated at the visions his mind conjured.

  His fantasies paled. Nothing compared to the rich, carnal feast spread before him.

  He’d never wanted to put on a condom less, but he was careful to do so, mindful of her cleanness, of not wanting to dirty her with his bitterness and rage. His loneliness.

  And yet . . . he experienced a simultaneous need to take her like a savage, to desecrate her with his essence and scent . . . to mark her.

  His strange, mixed feelings created an unbearable friction in him; one that would only diminish once he’d exploded in her depths. He glanced up. She’d been watching him roll the condom onto his painfully sensitive erection. When he took his cock into his hand, her tongue slicked her lower lip anxiously.

  He palmed a round ass cheek, lifting her flesh, parting her slit. They both gasped when he pressed the tip of his cock into her.

  He groaned, deep and savage, when he slid several inches into her tight, sultry heat. He pumped his hips, trying to be as gentle as his fevered, pounding blood would allow, silently praying for admittance to heaven. She was gratifyingly wet. He heard himself moving in her juices as he moved his cock into her snug channel.

  His blood boiled in his veins. He required release. “Let me in, Sophie. Let me in.”

  He slapped her bottom.

  She gasped. Heat rushed around his cock. He slid into her to the hilt, grunting in sublime pleasure. Her pussy clutched at him like a hot, silken fist. He grabbed her hips and began to pump without pause, starved to feel every nuance of her tight embrace. His shirt kept getting in the way, causing him to curse. He spread a hand on Sophie’s buttock, his cock fully submerged, and ripped at the buttons of his shirt. When he’d shoved aside the cloth, baring his chest and abdomen, he noticed Sophie had once again turned her chin.

  Her hungry eyes made the skin on his torso prickle.

  He stroked her buttock softly while his cock throbbed deep inside her. Their gazes held while he began to fuck her, his strokes long, thorough, and forceful. Her mouth dropped open and her face tightened every time his pelvis smacked against her ass and thighs.

  After a moment, a low keen exuded from her throat and she dropped her for
ehead to the desk. He used his hands to lift her hips slightly, allowing him to take her at a downward angle that made him growl in feral satisfaction.

  The final shreds of his restraint evaporated. He took her in a fluid, frenzied fuck. Her desk rattled and scooted a few inches on the floor. Maybe he could have stopped himself if she protested his forceful possession.

  Maybe. Thomas didn’t know what the hell to expect from this frenzied, wild stranger that had taken over his body.

  But he needn’t have worried about her compliance. Sophie whimpered and moaned in pleasure. She bucked her hips eagerly. Despite the fact that he liked her display of eagerness, he swatted her ass. His cock leapt in her tight sheath at the smacking sound of his palm against firm flesh.

  “Keep still. Please,” he grated out. “I’m about to lose control as it is.”

  He began fucking her again with long strokes, his face clenched tight in an agony of bliss. Still, he wanted more of her, was wild to find some secret in her darkest depths.

  He pressed her chest and belly flat to the desk and lifted his knee, rising up partially over her. He placed his knee on the desk and fucked her with deep, short, frantic strokes, his eyes rolling back into his head at the delicious friction the new angle provided him.

  Sophie mewled in stunned pleasure.

  “You’re so damned hot. So tight. I’m not going to last,” he muttered as he thrust madly. He slid his hand to the front of her, his finger burrowing between her labia, seeking out her most sensitive flesh, needing her to share some measure of the burning inferno about to consume him.

  His curse was an acknowledgment of a blessing. She was wetter than a man could imagine in his most illicit fantasies.

  When she cried out and he felt her begin to convulse in orgasm around his pistoning cock, a red haze of lust clouded his vision, the mindless nirvana he’d sought so desperately.

  He placed his foot back on the floor and grabbed her hips. He thrust again and again, jerking her hips toward him, his arm muscles straining as he served Sophie’s sweet flesh to his raging cock.

  He bit his lip to stop himself from shouting when he came. He shook as he poured himself into the condom.

  “Sophie, Sophie,” he muttered between clenched teeth as wave after wave of blistering pleasure flooded his senses and all thought was blessedly erased from his brain.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  He fell down over her, gasping for air, feeling raw and exposed, like a fish tossed up on the beach. She’d turned her head, resting her right cheek on the desk. She panted, but nowhere near as hard as he did. He was in good shape, but Christ . . . fucking Sophie had been like racing toward heaven with the devil fast on his heels.

  He pressed his forehead to her temple, wanting the small contact with her while his body recovered from the raging storm. He wanted to hold her, but his heart and lungs demanded their due, paralyzing him for a moment.

  By slow degrees, he returned to himself. She shifted and murmured softly, lifting her chin and brushing her lips across his cheek. He realized he was pressing her soft body down onto the hard desk. His eyes sprang open when her vagina contracted around him. Need swelled inside him once again, fierce and raw.

  Grief had transformed him into a fucking animal.

  “Thomas?” she whispered when he abruptly stood. He clenched his teeth at the sensation of his cock leaving the warm, slick clasp of her body. It pained him for some reason, to see her bent over the desk like that, her white cotton underwear callously shoved down to her knees. He placed his hands on her lower legs and gently pulled up her panties, lingering to let his fingers slide across the curve of her naked hips.

  He winced as he removed the condom from his restiffening penis.

  He didn’t respond to her one-word query while he jerked up his underwear and pants, then knotted the condom, wrapped it in some Kleenex from her desk, and disposed of it in the wastepaper basket.

  She straightened as he came back toward her, pushing her skirt back down over her legs. Her cheeks were flushed pink from her arousal. Her glance held traces of confusion and concern, causing regret to lance through him once again.

  He took her in his arms and brushed back tendrils of hair from her cheeks. This close, he could see the gold strands seemed to hold onto the muted light, making them incandesce and shimmer. He pressed his lips to her temple. For a full minute, neither of them spoke.

  “What can I say?” he eventually asked next to her skin. “I don’t know where that came from. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t really seem adequate, seeing as how I just barged in your office and made love to you with all the finesse of a locomotive going at full steam.”

  She leaned back and studied him. He closed his eyelids when he felt her fingers burrowing through his hair. Her massaging fingertips caused a wave of heaviness and exhaustion to sweep through him. He dropped his forehead to hers. His world was spinning out of control, but Sophie’s touch steadied him. Maybe that’s why he’d entered her office earlier with such a single-minded purpose.

  “I am, though,” he mumbled. “Sorry I mean. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. You’re in pain. I wanted you just as much.” She glanced down between their bodies. “What’s happening between us has been a long time in coming. Thomas?”

  He lifted his head slowly, surprised by her words. What’s happening between us has been a long time in coming.

  She started to say something, and then seemed to edit herself at the last moment. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve been worried about you,” she whispered. “Those men—were they cops or federal agents?”

  Irritation pierced his feeling of languorous comfort. He should have known it felt too good to last long.

  “Yeah. FBI.”

  “What . . . what did they want?” she asked shakily.

  He inhaled through his nostrils, trying to calm his anger, which was never far from the surface these days. “You’ve probably heard on the news? About the FBI investigating my father . . . the allegations that ...” He swallowed in order to get the bitter words out of his throat. “ . . . he’s involved in organized crime?”

  She nodded.

  “They were here asking me questions about a Nicasio Investment client.”

  He felt her go still next to him.

  “Were they accusing you of being involved in organized crime as well, Thomas?”

  “No. But they were trying to link my father to a huge gambling operation, and using one of my clients to do it. They’ve already arrested my client for supposedly using his vending machine plant and distribution business to launder mob money. They were trying to use me to get a link between my client—Doug Mannero—and my father.” He glanced away from Sophie’s luminous face and inhaled slowly. “Tax evasion and money laundering are the least of the crimes the FBI would love to pin on my dad. Agent Fisk claimed they have someone on the inside providing them with information, but the only thing they’re being fed is lies,” he finished grimly.

  “You believe entirely in your father’s innocence?”

  He turned abruptly, causing pain to slice through his head.

  “Thomas?”

  He shook his head briefly, trying to bring her into focus as well as shake off a momentary vertigo. He peered at her closely. Why was he telling her this stuff—a virtual stranger?

  “Of course I believe he’s innocent. The FBI must be getting desperate these days. They were trying to get me to say my dad had referred Doug Mannero to me, but I refused to give them any fuel. I went over Mannero’s accounts myself when I first took him on. They were clean.”

  She swallowed convulsively and spread her hand on the side of his head. “What are you planning to do?”

  He glanced around her private office dazedly, feeling like he was just seeing it for the first time—which maybe he was, as consumed as he’d been by a fever to fuck earlier. Her office was about a sixth of the size of his, bu
t the cinnamon-colored walls, tasteful paintings, and candles on the end tables next to the ivory couch gave the room a warm intimacy that his workspace had never known.

  “I should go over to Mannero, Inc., and look at the books. I was actually on my way over there when I came here ...” He faded off, once again focusing on her somber face. Regret lanced through him. “I can’t imagine what you must be thinking of me.”

  Her brow crinkled. “I think you’re not yourself, Thomas. You loved your brother and nephew. You’re drowning in grief. The FBI’s investigation of your father must feel like another blow when you were already spinning. I can only imagine what it’s doing to your family.”

  He watched himself as he ran his fingertip over the soft shell of her ear. She was so delicate . . . so exquisite.

  He felt like swine when his cock tightened.

  “Abel was my godson, you know,” he murmured distractedly as he stroked her. “He was ten years old. I was teaching him how to water-ski. Rick and he were going to be picking me up at Diversey Harbor on that day. They never came.”

  She didn’t reply but she placed her hand over his heart. Her simple gesture made something dangerous swell in his chest.

  “I should go,” he said roughly.

  “Where?”

  The sharpness of her query made him blink. She probably thought he was abandoning her after he’d just fucked her like a madman.

  “Can I see you . . . later tonight?” he asked.

  “Come with me now, Thomas.”

  A trickle of unease went through him. She’d sounded soft, but the thread of steel in her tone confused him.

  “Listen . . . I know how strange the way I’m acting must seem to you,” he tried to explain. “You must be thinking I’m a real asshole for busting in here and making love to you so . . . forcefully for the first time while you were bent over a desk.”

  She paled and her mouth dropped open. She looked stunned, but he rushed ahead, needing to tell her this. Jesus. Here stood a woman who likely had an IQ that would put him to shame, forget about the body of a Venus, and look how he was treating her? He rushed ahead anxiously, trying to explain, even when he himself couldn’t understand what the hell he was doing.