Baby, Be Mine (19 page)

He desired her. Every fiber of his being wanted to show her how much, but his conscience kept kicking his feet from under him before he could cross the room.

This was
Jaxi
.

He wished he had never walked down the hallway.

Jaxi opened her eyes, her gaze unfocused for a second before she noticed him standing in the steamy room like some ghostly Peeping Tom. Her quick intake of breath showed clearly enough she didn’t expect anyone, hadn’t realized she’d been putting on a show.

Now was a perfect time for him to drop his head and slip away. He couldn’t do it. She stared back at him through the mist hanging in the air, her eyes as big as silver dollars. She bit her bottom lip, and he fought a mental battle to leave, fought to stay quiet.

Then he noticed her nipples change. Tightening even as he looked at her. Electric pulses shot through him, and his hands itched to touch her, to lift the weight of her breasts and lap at those gems that had grown erect beneath his gaze.

Jaxi turned off the water and stepped slowly toward him, head held high. She sauntered up, slippery and wet, naked as a jaybird. Her skin glowed with heat as she stopped inches away, staring unendingly with those mesmerizing grey eyes. She reached out, her naked skin brushing his shoulder. She drew back, her arm clasping a towel she’d grasped from the hook beside his head.

He thought she’d wrap herself up quick. Instead she rotated her fingers and let the towel hang as she held the fluffy fabric to him. He glanced down, saw the way her hand trembled even as she put on a bold face and kept her body motionless under his heated gaze. He reached for her, his hand moving of its own accord before his brain fully engaged.

What brain? All the blood he needed for thinking had pooled in his groin.

This was the second time she’d taken him by surprise, and he couldn’t make the same mistake. He’d been haunted since the first incident.

He couldn’t let anything happen. It wasn’t right for them to be together.

Blake withdrew his hand.

And fled.

He usually gets what he wants. What he wants is her…and all that comes with her.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

© 2014 HelenKay Dimon

Men at Work, Book 1

Sex in the office? Lincoln Campbell knows better. His assistant, Thea Marshall, is off limits—until her back hits the door and her clothes come off. The next day brings more than morning-after regrets. It brings damning evidence that Thea stole business secrets.

Three months later, he can’t shake the doubts in his gut, so he heads for Thea’s family cabin by the lake, ready to talk. He’s not ready for the woman who answers the door. She was shapely before…and it won’t be long before she’s a totally different shape.

After Linc escorted her off company property while her protestations of innocence fell on deaf ears, facing off with him now isn’t exactly Thea’s idea of a good time. She needs a few more weeks to plan the drastically different direction her life has taken, but now he’s here—and refusing to leave.

With a storm rolling in and snow piling up, there’s nothing to do but face the past…and try to resist the real man behind the suit.

Warning: A hot businessman who usually gets what he wants. A strong woman who refuses to be pushed around—on the morning after, or any other time. And a cabin where the showdown begins.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Baby, It’s Cold Outside:

Thea Marshall’s back hit the wall. Words caught in her throat as strong hands skimmed up her skirt and along the bare skin of her upper thighs. A mix of heat and need pulsed through the office.

The breath rushed out of her and the room went wavy, but she welcomed the rush. She’d craved his touch, dreamed about this moment, since that first day she walked into the executive suite of Campbell Construction four months ago.

Everything about Lincoln Campbell worked for her. From the scruff over his chin to the short, almost military-cut brown hair and intense blue eyes. That simple black-band watch he always wore.

The chest, the face. And the hands. Those long fingers were pure perfection.

“This is a mistake.” He said the words against her neck, but his mouth kept moving. Licking and kissing while he hooked a palm under the back of her knee. With a tug her leg landed high on his hip, leaving her open and vulnerable to his touch.

“I know.” Part of her wanted to relax into him. Let those fingertips travel all over her until every cell screamed for him to push inside. She needed all the intensity he usually focused on the job to switch to her. Surround her.

But she didn’t plan to sit back and watch. She’d strip him, taste him. One by one she opened the buttons of his crisp white dress shirt, placing a kiss on each muscled inch she uncovered. Next went the aqua tie that highlighted his eyes.

No wonder her control had finally cracked tonight. She’d opened the door to say goodnight and let him know everyone, including the cleaning crew, had cleared the floor. Knocked right into him and now their mouths roamed all over each other.

One of his hands slapped against the wall next to her head as the other slipped past the elastic band of her panties. She angled her hips, trapping his fingers between them.

“I can’t stop.” His fingers mirrored his words. One rubbed against her. Slid right into her folds and brushed up and down.

Her head fell back as the room began a lazy spin. “Me either.”

“We should—”

“No.” Her head snapped back up when she heard the brief return of his hesitation.

She spared a second’s thought for the blaring HR warnings and all those mandatory workshops about undue influence at work. They were necessary, but not for them. Linc wasn’t using her. She wanted him and absolutely knew what she was doing.

“Thea.”

He was going to back away and go into emotional-lockdown mode. No way could she let that happen because she would never get him back to this place again. Not after all the months of waiting and hoping, watching him go out with a series of cool blondes in the evening after spending afternoon meetings looking away the second she glanced in his direction.

She put her palms against his cheeks and forced him to meet her gaze now, willing him to listen and believe. “This is my choice. I’m saying yes.”

“You’re my—”

“Kiss me.”

She pressed her lips against his. Before one breath could pass to the next, the kiss turned raw and hot. His mouth explored hers as her ankle snagged the inside of his thigh. This close his taste, his smell, seared her senses. Sensations bombarded her, and she grabbed onto those impressive shoulders to keep from sliding to the floor.

After a minute his mouth broke off. Instead of pulling away, his lips went to that tender place right at the back of her ear as his fingers maintained a steady rhythm, back and forth over her.

“I know better than this,” he said.

The shiver started in her chest and shook to her knees. “Stop talking.”

One of those amazing fingers pushed up inside her. Her internal muscles clung to him, bringing him in deeper. When she tightened her thigh until it locked their bodies together, a groan rumbled from his chest. It sounded as if it had been ripped out of him.

A sudden stillness fell over him. His biceps bunched and tension radiated around them. Slow and steady, he dropped his head until his forehead rested against hers.

No, no, no
. “Linc?”

“Walk away.”

She shook her head, letting her hair drift over her shoulders. “No.”

“Please.”

“I want you.” She lifted his head and whispered the words against his lips. “Forget I’m your assistant and you’re the boss. Forget the rules. This isn’t about power and we both know it.”

He barked out a harsh laugh. “I should at least take you to dinner first.”

As if she could choke down a bite right now. “I doubt we’d make it to the elevator.”

He lifted his head. The steady gaze from those ice-blue eyes pinned her to the floor. “Then the wall it is.”

The words barely registered before he slid out of her arms. Frantic, she reached for him, thinking to draw him close again, but he had his suit jacket off and his shirt unbuttoned to his waist. His shoulders blocked her view of the rest of the plush corner office as the heat simmering between them caused her vision to blur.

She blinked to regain her focus. When it cleared, she saw a blank space in front of her. Looking down, she found the top of his head and her heart picked up in a crazy hammering beat.

She watched as his knees hit the floor. He tugged and pulled her skirt until the material bunched at her waist. Fingers danced over the lacey band of her thigh-high stockings. The ones she slipped on when she thought about him.

With his hands locked on the back of her thighs, just below her ass, he lowered his head and pressed a kiss against the damp crotch of her panties. When he did it a second time, her hips lifted away from the wall.

“Linc.” Her hands clawed at his back. “Do it now.”

His finger joined his mouth. “Not yet.”

The steady friction of silk against her sensitive skin had her insides clenching. The scrape against her thighs as he drew the panties down her legs to her ankles had her body shaking in anticipation. And when he traced his fingertip over the thin strip of hair that covered her, she almost shoved him to the floor and climbed on top of him.

“I want you inside me.” There, after weeks of thinking it and all those time she’d practiced telling him, she finally went with blurting it out.

“Soon.” He slid a finger just inside her.

“Now.”

“You’re so wet.”

Her hands went to his head as her palms smoothed over his hair. “For you.”

He glanced up at her then. The corner of his mouth kicked up in a smile that promised nothing but pleasure. “I’m going to lick you until you scream.”

“Yes.” The word escaped her lips more as a breath than a word.

“After you come—and you are going to come, Thea, over and over—I’m going to drag you to my desk.”

The words ricocheted through her, setting a fire in their path. “Now.”

“With you riding my dick and these soft thighs tight against my sides, I’m going to enter you. Deep, in one long stroke, like I’ve been dying to do since that first day you walked in wearing that prim navy business suit and I spent all afternoon mentally stripping it off you.”

Her mind cleared for a second. “Wait, you’ve been dying to…”

“Later.”

Her fingers tightened in his hair and words jumbled together again when his tongue licked inside her. Her heartbeat hiccupped as she struggled to bring in enough air to breathe. “I think I’m going to fall down.”

“I’ll catch you.” He mumbled the words against her and the vibration had her gasping.

“Do it now.”

Baby, Be Mine

Vivian Arend

What the mind forgets, the heart remembers.

A
Thompson & Sons
Story

Since the moment Katy Thompson transformed from annoying tagalong to desirable woman, Gage Jenick has awaited his chance. When she kicks her boyfriend to the curb, he doesn’t hold back—in spite of the next-day work assignment that will take him completely off the grid for two long months.

After a head injury sustained on a storm-swept road, Katy can’t remember her own email password, much less how the little pink “positive” on the pregnancy stick got there. Barring an influx of midi-chlorians, she’s at a loss to explain what happened, or when...or with whom.

Suddenly Gage is back in her life as if he has a right to be there. While she vividly remembers the crush she had on him, she’s no one’s charity case. But another thing she’d forgotten was just how stubborn Gage can be—especially when her domineering ex tries to stake a claim…

Warning. An unforgettable night that gets forgotten. A crazy redneck ex, and a hero who’s ready to take on the world, and his past, for his heroine.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

Baby, Be Mine

Copyright © 2014 by Vivian Arend

ISBN: 978-1-61922-041-6

Edited by Anne Scott

Cover by Angela Waters

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: February 2014

www.samhainpublishing.com