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Her breath leaked out on a shaky sigh.
Less than one week, and he’d already made her an addict.
The walls of her apartment seemed to crowd closer as the minutes passed. Her skin felt hotter with every wayward thought, memory, fantasy … all of which seemed to be wrapped around the hard body and intense blue eyes of Levi Davis.
She turned back to the living room, determined to find something on television to get caught up in. It was one day. She could absolutely make it one day.
The live band was one Levi had handpicked, always enjoyed, and brought a huge local following. Hell, like many of the bands he booked, they were already on their way to making the big time … but tonight the hard driving beat reverberating through the floors, walls, and bones in his head was too much.
He was edgy. Irritated. Prowling the club looking for trouble when he’d trained just about every employee too well himself to actually find any. Either that or word had spread like wildfire that he was on the rampage and everyone had wised up enough to make sure he didn’t find any slack.
Rounding the center bar, he checked the stock as Finn backed out of his way, quickly moving toward the customers at the opposite side. Trying to look busy. Or, more likely, just busy.
They were low on Grey Goose. Levi raised a hand to get Finn’s attention, but lowered it again as one of the barhands jogged up with a full bottle, then took a quick step back when he saw Levi.
Nice. He needed to wipe the scowl off his face and ease up. His people were doing a bang-up job and the fact that it hadn’t worked out to hook up with Elise today didn’t have anything to do with them.
Truth be told, it shouldn’t have mattered a lick to him. It never had before.
He wasn’t seventeen, so the driving force below his belt that was hammering his patience into dust didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Par for the course when it came to Elise, it seemed.
No sense in fighting it, making himself and everyone around him miserable. He’d give her a call. Let her know Bruno was all set, getting walked every two hours and enjoying his stint as the HeadRush mascot. He even had a lead on someone who might be interested in taking the dog, so it wasn’t as if he was calling just to hear her voice.
Hell no. He had a purpose. And if he happened to want to know what color her panties were when he got her on the line, then whatever … Or find out if she’d take them off for him if he asked just right … Okay, so maybe he did want to hear her voice. He wanted to hear what she sounded like as he learned just exactly what he could convince her to do with the sound of his voice alone.
The phone was out and he’d just finished texting the floor manager that he’d be off for the next thirty or so when he saw her. Little Miss Extraordinary Distraction herself, crossing the dance floor. She moved toward him, the rhythmic swing of her hips, short dress and high heels a seductive call to action.
Damn, she looked good. Almost as good as with the mud.
Sliding the phone back into his trouser pocket, he rounded the open-horseshoe end of the bar to meet her. He leaned close, drawing on that instant spark like a conduit. “Hello, beautiful. Isn’t this a nice surprise.”
“I hope you don’t mind.” Her voice barely registered over the noise from the band, so he wrapped a hand around her waist, urging her against him.
“Not at all,” he assured, letting his grip tighten the slightest degree. “Can I get you a drink?”
She shook her head, slowly brushing her cheek against his in a sexy, light caress. The contact felt good, only Levi pulled back, wanting to see her. Wanting to witness her reaction to the club he knew she’d never entered before.
His work. His creation.
Only she caught his sleeve and pulled him close again. Slid her hand down his arm and drew his palm to the lower curve of her hip.
His gaze dropped to his fingertips skimming the bottom hem of the simple sheath.
Damn. “What exactly are you up to, Elise?”
She leaned closer so her breath washed over the column of his neck as she answered him. “You look like you could use a distraction.”
There was nothing remotely subtle about their exit. Some poor kid in one of those bar uniforms came up with a question just after Elise had pulled the most brazen move of her life, but before the guy even had a chance to speak Levi told him to find the floor manager for whatever he needed. He was taking the night off.
And he’d said it without ever looking away from her eyes.
Now the hand she’d blatantly rubbed over her thigh was locked around her fingers, towing her through the far end of the club toward what appeared to be a service area congested with people. People who wanted Levi.
“Hey, boss—”
“Yo, Levi—”
“Davis, hold up—”
The calls shot out one after another, but Levi didn’t break stride or stop for any of them. His only response as they rounded a corner leading to the back stairs was a curt, “Floor manager. I’m off.”
Stopping at the base of the stairs, Levi let her pass, resting his hands at her hips as he followed her up.
Anticipation simmered through her veins as she climbed the short flight. With each step, her dress shifted under Levi’s palms. Inching up. Sliding down. The silky-soft friction of one sheer layer of fabric coasting over the other in a decadent rush.
At the second floor, Levi stepped close, tightening his grip. The hall was dim, the illumination more blue than bright, with a single door halfway down on the left. Guided by his body against hers, they walked the distance to what turned out to be his office.
Elise entered a room that was more functional than cool, outfitted with an oversized desk, bank of filing cabinets, low-profile table, black leather couch, and a couple of armless chairs that looked as though they’d come from restaurant stock. Like the apartment, there was nothing personal within. But unlike the loft, where the music could only be heard and felt, here she could see everything.
Crossing to the solid wall of smoked glass, she looked down over the main room of the club, the center bar, and the dance floor beyond where bodies moved in union to the heavy beat of the music. “Your club is incredible. You designed all this?”
“Concepts mostly these days. I’ve got a team working for me, so there’s a lot of credit to go around.”
“It’s wonderful.” Then, fingers trailing over the glass, she commented, “I didn’t realize there was anything up here.”
“It’s a combination of mirroring and other effects that basically keep it one way.”
Elise shot a glance over her shoulder to watch Levi close and lock the office door. Then test it once.
A smile tipped the corner of her mouth as wet heat licked a teasing path through her center. “One way. So no one can see me here?”
“No one but me.”
Levi blanketed her from head to heel as he pressed into her from behind, burrowed his nose into her hair. Starting at her shoulders, he followed the lines of her arms until he caught her wrists in a loose hold, brought them overhead to link around the back of his neck.
“Like this.” Warm breath washed over her ear and with it came a low groan of masculine appreciation that sent shivers of excitement shooting the length of her body, tightening her nipples and core.
Again those thick hands skimmed down her arms, following the outer swell of her breasts, drifting in to touch the frame of her pelvis and then down to the tops of her thighs and inward the slightest degree. Her breath caught as he played at the hem of her dress, fingering the bare skin beneath. Making her shiver with anticipation as he toyed with the sensitive flesh still too far from where she wanted him to be.
“Levi.” His name slipped out on a soft gasp at another light stroke of his fingertips against her inner thighs, this one higher, deeper.
And then his lips were against the shell of her ear, his breath teasing the whorl. “What did you come here for tonight, Elise?”
Her pulse skipped, though whether it was the question itself, or the light clasp of teeth against her over-sensitized skin, she couldn’t know. She loved it that he wanted to hear her say the words, loved that, with him, she wasn’t afraid to play this sensual game, or tease a little in return … no matter how far out of her depth she’d found herself.
Closing her eyes, she let the imp in her answer, “I thought we could talk.”
“Liar, liar.” The low rumble of his claim stroked over her, working her senses into a frenzied pitch.
Her gaze dropped to her dress, riding inches too high against his wrists where his hands dipped beneath. “How do you know?”
She could feel the smile on his lips at her ear as those knowing fingers stroked higher again. Hear the anticipation in the rough scrape of his words against her senses.
“Clubs like HeadRush aren’t conducive to intimate conversation. That’s not why people come to them. And then—” one finger brushed feather soft against the silk of her panties—the wet silk “—there’s this.”
A shudder ran through her, so intense it nearly buckled her knees. But this was too exciting—too intense to risk that it might stop. So she held strong, silently willing another soft stroke.
“Tell me, beautiful. Tell me what you want before I decide you’re going to have to beg to get it.”
Her head fell to the side, allowing more access for those warm, wet words to wash over her ear and neck. “Make me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELISE could feel the muscles behind her clench, the pressure of his palm at her thigh increase for one fleeting, delicious moment, before his quiet curse ground through gritted teeth. Reveling in the tightening strain on the tether of Levi’s control, she eased her hips further into his groin and was rewarded with the thick column of his arousal insistent at her lower back.
Heck, she was half ready to beg right now, but she wanted to see what holding back would get her. She wanted to play.
His fingertip followed an erotic trail along the scalloped edge of her panties and then hooked the sodden panel between her legs, giving it a light tug away from her body. Enough that the conditioned air circulating through the office around them washed cool over her hot flesh.
“I want these off.”
Oh, God. She wanted them off too. Gone. Savagely torn free by the bite of his teeth.
Or better, ripped from her body by those huge hands. Just the image alone had a quiet cry escaping on her next breath.
Only the hands that worked the panties down were gentle. Slow. Painstakingly careful as they nudged the delicate lingerie past her hips and let it fall to the floor where she gingerly stepped free of it.
Gathering her dress in his fists, Levi drew the garment over her abdomen, ribs, and the rise of her breasts—pausing to abrade the tight buds with a series of slow, soft circles that left her panting, hot and aching, before he worked the sheath to her shoulders.
At his slight nudge she released her hold around his neck and let him strip her completely.
She was bare. Completely exposed. Standing in Levi’s office, surrounded by a building full of employees and masses of club-goers who had no idea they were even there. It was the most provocative thing she’d ever done.
The car didn’t count. That had been an act of desperation. But this, this was conscious thought pushing her to dive headfirst into Levi’s pool of hedonistic pleasure.
When Levi’s hands returned, there was nothing between them and the bare skin of her body. He covered her breasts, taking the achy press of her nipples against his palms. Coasted lower to what she was beginning to recognize as his favorite hold at her hips, and pulled her back into contact with the steely ridge that fit snug against her behind, and the powerful slabs of his thighs and bulk of his chest.
One hand splayed wide and hot across her belly. The other resumed the downward trek to her sex, covering her there.
And then, with the nudge of his knee between her legs, Levi widened her stance and pressed a single finger between the parting flesh beneath.
“God, you’re wet,” he whispered into the hair behind her ear.
Her heart skipped as the anticipation built with his provocative words. His deliberately too light touch offering only enough contact to drive the breath from her lungs on a shuddering gasp and make her wonder if her knees could hold her, before she realized she didn’t care. “Oh, God, please. Levi.”
It shouldn’t have been possible to hear that satisfied twist of lips in his breath, but somehow she did.
“Mmm, that’s close, beautiful. But I want more.”
That soft sliding finger trailed another teasing path through her wetness, ever so lightly circling the tight bundle of nerves that threatened to make her Levi’s slave. He would come so close—only to veer away. She needed more.
Her hips began to move with his punishing caress, seeking more—though whether it was more contact or more of the sweet torture driving her wild she didn’t know. All she knew was no man had ever held her at the brink the way Levi did. No man had ever dragged her to the heights he took her, carried her beyond where she thought possible to go, and then taken her even further. No man had built her desire to such a peak that she believed nothing could surpass the pleasure derived from the journey alone—and then proved her so completely wrong. Giving her a climax so intense she didn’t just feel as though she had shattered, but the world around her had shattered as well.
That was where he was taking her now.
That was why she would wait as long as she could. Resist with everything she had. And draw out every single minute of the pleasure Levi offered her.
Her fingers slipped free of each other and wound into the short silk of Levi’s hair, eliciting a low groan of approval as his mouth opened over that tender spot where shoulder joined with neck—and he sucked.
Sensation shot the length of her, coiled round her womb and cinched tight just as he pushed his finger, thick and long, inside her.
“Levi,” she gasped, bucking against the long-awaited invasion, rocking in time with the slow thrusts, trying to take him deeper, trying to take what she’d only moments before been working to hold off. “I need … oh, God … I want …”
“Tell me. Is this what you need?” he asked in a taunt that told her he knew exactly what she needed. That this was all part of the game.
“Yes … more.” The answer was half plea and half cry, and was rewarded with the thick penetration of his fingers, stretching her in decadent pleasure. Ratcheting her tension higher until she bowed taut. Making her blind with longing until her throat worked convulsively as she swallowed back the sobs that threatened to break free with his every controlled thrust. Until restraint and control and resistance were crushed beneath desire.
She cried out, a desperate keening sound that found its beginning and end in a place within her she hadn’t known existed. And once tapped gave forth a font of pleas that voiced her every soul-deep need.
The angle of Levi’s thrust shifted, the heel of his hand making sweet contact with the spread of her feminine flesh and that single needy place. The air in the room, in her lungs, in the world around them seemed to collapse into the gravitational epicenter of her body, hold for an instant that rolled over with the weight of forever before releasing, surging outward and pushing sensation to the very extremities of her being. Overloading her nerve endings, filling her so past what she believed her capacity for pleasure to be, she thought she might burst.
Welcomed it.
Wave after wave washed over her, threatening to drown her in a bliss too deep, too wild and too far-reaching to find her way back from. But then Levi was there with her. His powerful arm braced across her torso, holding her tight to him when she didn’t have the strength to stand on her own.
Sucking great draws of air, she tried to find her place in the universe once again. The world spun as Levi turned her in his arms. Opening her eyes, she found him looking down at her, his features taut with barely restrained yearning, and she couldn’t breathe at all.
“That was …” he shook his head, his voice rasping gravel rough over nerves still overcharged and sizzling “… the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
If she hadn’t been staring into his eyes, if the truth of his words hadn’t been blazing in their blue depths, she wouldn’t have believed it.
A man like him. A woman like her.
It shouldn’t be possible, but in that moment it was.
She wanted to tell him it was him—that no one had ever made her feel the way he did. But before she could open her mouth, find the voice that she feared she’d left in the ether, rough hands lifted her atop the desk. Levi reached over his shoulder and, grabbing a handful of his shirt, tore it over his head even as his other hand made short work of his belt and fly.
“And I want to see it again.”
CHAPTER NINE
“ALL I’m saying is that it’s cliché. Not that it wasn’t good.”
Reclined against the black leather sofa in his office, Levi chuckled and looked down to where Elise lay on top of him, her stubborn little chin stacked on her hands over his chest. “It can’t be cliché if it was an emergency.”
One slender brow pushed up into an amused arch. “An emergency? How exactly was that?”
Catching one of those soft loops falling about her face, Levi twisted it round his finger before letting it spring free into its silky coil. “You needed a distraction. And I needed to hear you moan. The office was the closest place to make it happen.”
“Your apartment is next door. Literally attached to the club.”
“Too far.” And it had been. The moment Levi had seen her walking toward him, he’d been ready to strip that dress off her and put her up on the bar. Only he wasn’t a public display kind of guy and the chest-beating beast in him was typically of the mind that if Elise went the rest of her life without letting another man see that unbelievable expression of ecstasy on her face, it would be okay with him.
Hell, he couldn’t even think about her soft parting lips and half-lidded eyes without his groin starting to tighten.
Elise was giggling at his more-than-honest response. That lithe little body of hers moving in a way he couldn’t ignore. And then she let out a soft sigh and something inside his chest tightened too.
So different.
Her lips drifted over the spot and she kissed him there. Softly. And if he hadn’t liked the feel of it so damn much, he would have flipped her beneath him right then.
“Besides,” he added, “Bruno’s over there. You know as well as I do, if we’d gone through that door, we’d have been looking at a walk before we got anywhere near the bed. Plus the guys downstairs would be pissed if I threw off the rotation.”
“The rotation?”
“Yeah, they like walking him. Worked out some kind of system for who gets to do it when.”
A second passed and then another.
“Levi, you’re not what—” Swallowing once, she shook her head, then turned so her sexy mess of hair concealed her face and prevented him from seeing her eyes. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d normally care about—maybe it wasn’t something he’d even notice—but right now he was curious what she’d been about to say.
Gathering a bit of her hair, he was about to tuck it aside when she shifted above him and then began backing off the couch. “I should get out of here.”
Levi’s brows pulled down as he pushed to his elbows. She wasn’t looking at him as she slipped her dress over her head and let it slither down her naked body.
“It’s getting late and I have to work early.”
Right. It made perfect sense. And maybe the only reason it didn’t feel that way was because he was an arrogant S.O.B. and he hadn’t been the one to suggest it. Maybe he just didn’t like that Elise kept getting the jump on him … even when the out she offered was the one he’d always taken in the past.
Levi swung his feet to the floor and started pulling on his own clothing.
Or maybe what he didn’t like was the way that easy connection between them had evaporated between one breath and the next, and now Elise looked as if she couldn’t get away fast enough. As if they’d completed the sex portion of the program and, uncertain about what came after, she was ready to bolt.
He could tell her to stay. Wake up with her in his bed. Have her again and then drive her back in the morning.
Instead, he reached over and tugged her closer so she stood between his knees and he could rest his hands at the backs of her thighs. “I’m glad you came tonight.”
Light fingers trailed down his chest. “I was worried about interrupting you at work. I won’t make a habit of it.”
“Stop by any time you can.”
Elise wasn’t the type to show up at four in the afternoon and stick around until closing, sucking back drinks and getting stupid. Hell, she barely drank at all—which was one of the reasons he could actually relax around her. There wasn’t any gauging reactions and weighing responses. No questioning judgment or keeping an eye on her for her own good. He didn’t have to work when they were together and he liked that.
“Won’t I get in the way?”
Maybe if he were at the start of his project, rather than the end. But the truth was, HeadRush and its staff were virtually running without him. “No. Besides, everyone needs a break once in a while, right?”
She met his eyes. “I needed a break like you. Like this.”
Yeah, so maybe he’d needed it too. His palms coasted up her legs beneath her dress to— “No panties.”
Even in the dim light, he could see the blush rise to her cheeks. “I haven’t found them yet.”
“Is that so?” A quick glance across the office and he located the scrap of silk in a little heap against the base of his desk. Urging her closer, until her shins met the front of the couch, and then further still so all she could do was let out that soft breathy laugh and crawl back onto his lap—her knees straddling his hips as they sank into the leather cushions—he shook his head. “I don’t think it would be right to let you leave until we found them.”
“Oh, really?”
Really. He settled back into the cushions, pushed the bunched fabric of her dress even higher than it had ridden on its own. Ground his molars down. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
She arched that sexy brow at him, silently telling him she couldn’t wait to hear this.
“We’ll check the couch here first. Thoroughly. Then have a look around my apartment.”
“Your apartment, hmm. What about Bruno?” she asked, that sinful smile doing things to him that suggested the trip to his loft was a ways off.
“We’ll walk him first and then resume the search. I’ve got a good feeling about the bed. But if we don’t find anything … you’ll just have to stay the night.”
CHAPTER TEN
LEANING against the concrete pillar just outside the studio, Levi offered another acknowledging nod to the women clearing out of Elise’s class.
Shortly Elise herself exited with another woman, presumably the owner, who hung back to lock up.
“I wasn’t expecting you guys,” she said, jogging over with a wide grin.
“Yeah, well, Bruno was getting all riled up. So I thought we’d just swing by and walk back with you. Grab some Thai from that place on the corner.”
Elise reached down to rub Bruno’s knobby head. “That would be great. I picked up a late shift at the coffee house this evening, but I’ve still got a couple hours before I need to be there and I’m starved from skipping lunch.”
Over the past week, he’d been surprised by the complexity and extent of Elise’s schedule, and that for the first time in his adult life, he was the one doing the accommodating. He’d known she taught classes throughout the day at a couple of Chicago’s upscale fitness clubs and local studios, but the peripheral jobs she held to boost her income had been a surprise. Her odd shifts at a trendy coffee place and waiting tables one night a week meant she was pulling somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty plus hours, most days starting as early as five for the before-work crowd and, on waiting-tables night, finishing after midnight. She was relentless.