Something Wild (10 page)

Oh God, it was true. She'd read enough articles in
Cosmo
and
Glamour
to know most people—women anyway—never did attempt to live out their fantasies. Most women probably kept them inside and saw them as impossibilities, even as things they didn't truly want to happen. But the moment Penny had started exploring hers, she'd known she really wanted them to take place. They were experiences she truly desired, adventures she intended to have. And her own thoughts a moment ago only seemed to confirm it; she'd been sitting there wanting Ryan even though she knew that
he
couldn't let it happen, and
she
couldn't let it happen, and that it was all wrong.

Suddenly feeling as transparent as a negligee, she thrust herself up from the couch and walked across the room toward the foyer, anxious to escape his gaze. She had no reply to what he'd just said, but it was as if he'd just shone a flashlight into the darkest corner of her soul. Coming to a stop before the mirror near the door, she fumbled for something to do with her hands, some way to distract herself from the nervous tension swirling through her. She adjusted the leaves of a philodendron spilling from a pot on a shelf next to the mirror, then reached below, turning on the stereo.

The low sounds of Marvin Gaye singing "Let's Get It On" wafted through the room.

She bit her lip. This probably wasn't a good moment for the sexiest song of all time, yet for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to change it.

That meant nothing, though. It didn't mean she was wild, nor did it mean she was waiting for something to happen here. She just didn't want to look panicky, that was all. She didn't want to do anything to let him know how tense and how … utterly
sexual
she suddenly felt.

And if she really
were
wild, wouldn't she start swaying her hips back and forth to the music, or stripping to it? As it was, she clamped both hands to the shelf supporting the stereo and held on for dear life, lest she faint from nervousness. Hardly the act of a wanton woman.

"I know about the limo now—" Ryan's voice came from behind her, low and sexy and close "—but what other kinds of fantasies do you have, Penny?"

She lifted her gaze to the mirror to find him standing behind her. His eyes burned with everything she felt, that same desire, that same undeniable want. One defensive part of her wished she could tell him he'd just crossed a line by asking her something so deeply personal, but considering what they'd done together in the limo, and that she'd told him it was a fantasy come true, she didn't really think he had. And she wished she were more offended by his forwardness, but nothing with Ryan ever felt wrong. Not from that first touch, that first kiss. It was a startling revelation. Everything she did with him always felt good and right and meant to be, no matter how much they both knew it shouldn't happen.

She should've been asking him what he thought he was doing, reminding him of his own rules. Instead, though, she skipped ahead to something that came from deeper inside, a fact she needed to make clear to him once and for all. "Take a good look at me, Ryan," she said, peering at him in the mirror. "I'm the girl next door. The teacher's pet. I'm June Cleaver and Mary Tyler Moore and all the Waltons rolled into one." She spread her arms helplessly. "I am
not
wild."

Never letting his eyes leave hers, Ryan reached up and pulled the clip from her hair, letting it fall down her back in a rush. Then, placing his hands on her shoulders, he gently turned her to face him. Without pause, his fingers moved to the buttons on her blouse, where he undid one, then the next, then the next. Penny tried to make herself protest, step away from him, anything, but her skin tingled with too much pleasure.
I am not wild, I am not wild,
she whispered silently. Yet her body didn't seem to agree with her at the moment.

"Maybe you're not wild on the outside," he said, his voice husky. "But underneath…"

As Ryan freed the last button on her blouse, he pushed it open to reveal a lacy lavender bra. The sight stole his breath and proved his point better than anything he could've said. Who'd have thought Penny the Sandwich Girl would wear
this
under her simple shirts?

Then he remembered the other night, the sexy black lace beneath his fingertips. And when he put that whole experience together with this discovery, he knew without doubt that everything he'd said about her was true—she was wild at heart. It went deeper than one night, deeper than one fantasy, and maybe she didn't know it, but he did. Nothing he'd ever done had felt sexier than pushing the blouse from her shoulders, unveiling the sensual woman beneath the facade of simplicity.

Tracing one fingertip down the lavender strap of her bra, he followed the seam over the rounded ridge of her breast to the center where a tiny bow connected the cups. "You're so bad for me," he whispered.

Her voice trembled. "I see it the other way around."

Part of him wanted to argue, to remind her that her commitment to Martin was over and she no longer had anything to lose, whereas he still had everything at stake. He wanted to tell her just how good for her he could be, how he could prove to her how unrestrained she was, if only his job didn't stand in the way. But he feared any words he spoke would bring this moment to a screeching halt.

And even though he knew he was committing career suicide, he was like an addict who couldn't see reason, who only wanted one more taste of her, one more touch. The longer he was with her, the longer they'd talked—be it about work or families or the little asides she'd shared from time to time about her neighborhood or the hot weather—the more desire had begun to build inside him. He liked her. He liked her laughter. He liked the innocence that draped so honestly over her sensuous side. He liked that she was smart and talented, which showed in the way she ran her business, yet she was equally genuine and down-to-earth, making the same lemonade her grandmother did. And he also liked her wild side, which had caused something else to gather in him without his quite knowing it, too—a compulsion, a driving need, to free her sensuality beneath his hands.

Lowering his hands to her slender waist, Ryan deftly unbuttoned her shorts, then slid down the zipper. He watched his fingers working, but heard her breathing. He wanted to do this gradually, leisurely, wanted to rediscover that slow, intense heat they'd shared in the limo, everything else be damned.

Dropping to his knees at her side as the music urged him on, he reached up to ease the shorts over her hips. She gazed down, biting her lip in what he read as sweet, sexy surrender, and gently wriggled free of them. The motion turned his knees to mush, especially when he discovered the matching lavender thong she wore beneath, the lacy elastic disappearing down the center of her rounded bottom.

This woman didn't know how incredibly hot she was? It seemed impossible, but Ryan felt bound and determined to show her, to make her know it, just as
he
did.

Bending forward, he placed a feathery kiss on her bared hip and listened as she pulled in her breath. Shifting slightly, he lowered another tender kiss to her rear, and then another. His chest tightened as his desire wound tighter and hotter. She arched her backside toward him and he glanced up to see her arms raised over her head as if she were some sensual statue. He rained more soft kisses across her perfect bottom, and her sexy sighs drowned out the music altogether until all Ryan knew was her body, her sounds, her scent, the sensuality that almost dripped from her.

"You're so incredible," he breathed.

"I … I don't do these things," she whispered from above. Just as he'd feared, he should've stayed quiet.

"It's okay, Penny," he said soothingly, nibbling around the thin strip of lavender at her waist. "If you're still afraid I'll think badly of you, I won't, I swear. We're both human."

"It's not that. It's just that … I really
don't
do these things. Not without knowing a guy. And even then…" she moaned when he moved his kisses to the other side of her rear "…it's not like this."

"What do you mean?"

"No man has ever … undressed me in my foyer and started kissing me this way."

He leaned forward to place a kiss at the small of her back that made her gasp, yearning to make her understand what was going on inside her, yearning to help her release it. "Then why are you doing these things with
me?"

She gazed over her shoulder, down into his eyes. "I guess it feels like I know you," she admitted. "I don't know why."

"I feel the same way," he told her. It was true. From the beginning.

"But we … don't. Not really."

"We're starting to. And I want to know you better."

"Yet there's still Martin to think about and—"

"Shh," he said, desperate not to let anything more interfere with the raging attraction he felt toward her. He hooked his thumbs gently into the elastic at her waist, his voice a mere growl. "Don't let any of that matter. Don't let it stop this."

At that precise second, the phone rang, and they both flinched. "Damn it," Ryan groaned as the trilling noise sliced through his pleasure.

Penny gasped. "Maybe it's Martin."

He ground out a muttered curse.

She tripped free from the shorts at her ankles and took off toward the phone in the kitchen, as Ryan pushed to his feet, then shoved his hand back through his hair.

"Hello?" Penny quaked as she thrust the receiver beneath her ear. Please don't let it be Martin. She didn't think she could deal with that right now.

"Hey, what's up? You sound out of breath." It was Patti, thank God. But then, in a way, that was just as bad.

"I was just…"
About to have sex with a stranger for the second time in a week.
Oh dear, she really
had
been about to do that! Her! Good girl Penny Halloran! "I was just cleaning. I was … up to my elbows in suds and I ran to get the phone."

"You were cleaning? At nine o'clock on a Tuesday night?"

Penny really didn't think it sounded so preposterous. Some people cleaned at odd hours. "Is there some rule against that?"

"No, but I just think it's strange."

"Well, I want to get back to it, so did you call for some purpose?"

"I just wanted to tell you I'll be late tomorrow. I have a dentist's appointment I forgot about. But hey, far be it from me to interrupt a late-night cleaning frenzy, so I won't keep you."

Penny felt bad for lying to Patti so much lately, not to mention that her behavior must seem extremely suspicious. But considering she stood in the kitchen in her underwear and Ryan still waited for her in the foyer, she took the out. "Okay. See you tomorrow. Bye."

Hanging up, she drew a deep breath and glanced toward the doorway, girding herself for whatever would come next. She couldn't quite believe she was about to let this happen, and she didn't know where Penny the Sweet One had disappeared to, but she wanted this. Even with Patti's interruption, even with her fears that it had been Martin calling, her body still hummed with the passion it seemed only Ryan loosed in her. She bit her lip as she rounded the corner, suddenly feeling as wild and sexy as he kept telling her she was.

5

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T
he instant Penny met Ryan's eyes, she knew everything had changed. He wore that torn expression she'd seen on his face before. He'd picked up her blouse and now held it out to her. She took it, painfully aware of the silence now filling the room; he'd turned the music off while she was away.

He lifted one hand to her cheek and his voice came low and deliberate. "I love the way you look right now, Penny. And I love how wild you are, even if you don't see it. But I have to go."

"Oh." She only hoped the hurt bubbling inside her didn't show.

"I like you so much; you don't know how much. But this is—"

"Wrong?" she supplied.

"Right," he said, meeting her eyes briefly before lowering his gaze. "I can't risk my job this way. I wish I could, but I can't."

"I understand," she replied, but her voice sounded hollow to her because she still wanted him to stay, still wanted things to be the way they were when they forgot about Martin and Schuster Systems. Suddenly feeling naked in her lavender underwear, she thrust her arms into her shirt, then held it closed in front.

Ryan moved to the desk to retrieve his laptop and jacket, then hurried back toward the door. He paused to lower a conciliatory kiss to her forehead as he passed by, but Penny hardly noticed, too stunned by how quickly things had shifted. A second later, the door shut behind him and she felt more alone than she had in a very long time.

She knew why he had to go; she knew it made sense. And earlier, she'd been all about trying to do the sensible thing, for the sake of his job, and for Martin's sake, too. But as she buttoned up her blouse, she still ached inside. As it turned out, there
was
something worse than making a move and getting shot down—having
him
make a move, then change his mind.

He'd left her on the night after they'd had sex in the limousine, and that had been fine. In fact, it had been the only reasonable thing about the entire evening. He'd left her again last night after the passionate kisses they'd shared and she'd still understood why it had to be, and that had strengthened her.