She half halted, causing his hand on her back to slide closer to her waist as the momentum carried him past her for a step or two. He looked down at her as she came to a complete stop, allowing the full scope of his interest to show on his face as he gently stroked his fingers just above the front of her hip bone. Lacey inhaled sharply at that, her gorgeous indigo eyes widening as she looked at him. Her masses of blonde hair, caught up in some fancy hairdo, just begged to be let down to flow around her shoulders.
Sebastian tried to bite back a groan at the thought, but she must have caught it. She swallowed hard, her pulse leaping beneath the soft skin of her neck in a way that made him want to lick her there.
To claim her.
Damn his insistent, primitive-minded dragon. Only sex, he reminded himself roughly. This was only about having sex with this amazing, gorgeous woman that he couldn’t get his mind off of. No claiming would be involved.
The faster they could get to said sex, the easier it would be to control his increasingly unruly dragon side.
Forcing himself to still touch her with only his hand on her waist, he said in a tone so low it was close to the sound of his dragon growling, “I suggest you keep walking with me. Because if you don’t keep moving, my sweet beauty, I’m going to push you up against the wall in this hallway and kiss you until you can’t think straight. And since we’re still in view of the rotunda, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Do you?”
***
Sebastian’s point blank suggestion sent shock waves through Lacey. Mouth suddenly dry, she attempted to swallow, then licked her lips. His intense gaze shot straight to her lips. Then he looked back into her eyes, and she nearly swallowed her tongue. His expression hadn’t changed, but the heated waves of energy rolling off of him and washing over her had. The hallway seemed charged with crackling fire that raced through her, leaving her nerve endings alight. His provocative, presumptuous, extremely arousing words from the other night echoed in her head.
You will want to feel my touch, Lacey. My fingers on your skin. Stroking, traveling along your body, dipping into every curve and rounding over every soft swell. And you won’t want me to stop.
She looked back up at him now, almost instantly wishing she hadn’t. Something was changing in his eyes. The green flecks seemed more pronounced. Brighter, somehow. The sheer desire that sizzled between them—it was palpable. Like a living thing. As if he was calling to her, driving her toward him with some sort of indomitable force. A force she really, really wanted to give into, despite her rational side contending that this was only the road to emotional danger and professional madness.
“I’ve been watching you all evening. Wanting you.” The liquefying deep bass of his voice quickened her breathing despite her attempts to control her ridiculously aroused body. “And I always get what I want.”
That self-assured note managed to shake Lacey back to a semblance of her usual strong self. “Oh, really, Mr. Bernal? Always?”
She really didn’t mean for that to be a leading question. But the sudden blast of hunger in his eyes, and what she could swear was a deepening intensity of his addictive scent bathing her in his outrageously primitive pheromones, clearly told her she’d just thrown down the gauntlet.
“Yes, Ms. Whitman.” He prowled closer, trapping her with his stunning eyes. “I do in fact always get what I want.”
“Is that a fact.” Her voice sounded like she was panting a bit, darn it. Not exactly like the cultured, professional employee she strove to be. “And what exactly is it you want right now?”
Another step, and his face was inches away from hers. Her rational side instinctively battling for control over the body that desperately wanted to find out exactly what it was he wanted to have, she could hardly breathe as his proximity struck a match to the hot flicker of sheer lust she’d been attempting to douse all evening.
“I thought I made that clear the other night, Lacey. I want you.” The sheer male possessiveness in his tone sent a knee-knocking shiver racing through her. “I want to taste you. To touch you. To hear what your voice will sound like when you can’t say anything other than my name.”
With each descriptive word he said, Lacey’s brain cells promptly fell over and played dead. Acutely aware of the pulse banging in her throat, which she knew he noticed because his eyes strayed to it with an expression she couldn’t quite decipher, and her rapid breathing that she just couldn’t seem to control, she tried one last weak plea for rationality. “We—we already discussed this. You’re my employer. You hold a position of power over me. This isn’t something either one of us can do.”
She sounded thoroughly unconvincing even to herself.
“Oh, yes, it is.” His hot breath brushed over her cheek as he added in a whisper, “No consequences for either of us. I promise that. And no regrets. Just stolen pleasure as I bend you over that desk of mine, as I’ve been fantasizing about doing all evening.”
Oh. My.
Well, in that case, all her protests about propriety were really unnecessary.
“That…sounds just lovely,” she said like an absolute idiot, her libido roaring through her like an out-of-control freight train.