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“Of course.” She felt Connor’s arm tighten beneath the fine cloth of his suit as if he was holding himself in check.
“Good.” His father turned slightly, dismissing them both.
“I thought I’d invite Holly to join us. You don’t mind, do you?” Connor’s challenge hung in the air, and he faced down the shocked expression on his father’s face. He turned to Holly. “You don’t have any plans for the morning do you?”
“But I—” she began to protest.
“I’m sure Holly—” Tony Knight spoke simultaneously.
Connor raised an eyebrow at Holly. “Well?”
“I can’t intrude.”
“So you have no plans, then, for tomorrow?”
“No.” Her response was barely a breath on the air. She hated having to admit it. Hated it, and the unwanted sympathy it always engendered, with a vengeance.
“Fine. We’ll be there at ten-thirty, Papa.”
Holly felt as though she’d been hijacked. At what point had Connor decided to use her in some game he was playing against his father? And why? The older man’s eyes were spitting chips of ice although he reined in his anger well. If she hadn’t already been so finely attuned to the atmosphere between the two men, she might not even have noticed.
“Don’t be late.” Tony Knight bit off the command, acceding he’d been outmanoeuvred.
“We won’t be.”
Before she could further analyse their veiled animosity, Connor was guiding her towards the door.
In the elevator Connor released a deep sigh and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes briefly. He was sick of playing his father’s games. Tony Knight had tried to control each of his three boys at some time or another. Connor had always counted his blessings that he’d been last in the queue. But tonight, especially tonight, he’d resolved not to play his father’s game any longer. There was no way he’d be put on parade for yet another matchmaking attempt with yet another distant cousin. The pressure his old man had been exerting, initially subtle and then later not so, for Connor to get over Carla and find a new woman to make a home—a family—with, had been the last straw. Especially today.
He shouldn’t have used Holly like that, though. It was shameful. He’d seen the questions flinging around in his father’s mind as if they were graffiti, starkly spray painted on the boardroom wall. What was he, Connor, thinking? Christmas had always traditionally been for family. Only family. The last woman he’d brought had been Carla, as his wife. He knew he’d be in for a grilling tomorrow. What the hell? It’d be worth it. Maybe he’d even get around to telling his father about the grandchild he’d never get to know or love.
He glanced at Holly. The slender line of her throat arched slightly as she held her head tilted, staring at the numbers as they lit consecutively on the overhead console. A man could dream about making love to a neck like that. Feathering gentle kisses along the pale-blue pulse that beat beneath her ear. Stroking his tongue down the feminine cord of her neck, lower and lower until he bit softly at the curve of her shoulder.
Heat flooded his groin, driving his body to full, pulsing life. What the hell was he thinking? Holly wasn’t some potential conquest to reignite the flame of hunger his wife had annihilated with her deceptions. Yet, for some reason he couldn’t tear his eyes from her throat, and his mouth dried as he imagined living out the fantasy of the image playing in his mind.
At their floor, the doors slid smoothly open and she stepped out ahead of him, affording him a delectable view of her smooth straight back. Her skin glowed with a hint of colour that made him wonder if she’d be that colour all over.
A jolt of need struck him, deep and hard. Suddenly, Lord help him, it was crucial to find out.
Three
“It always feels weird being here when everyone’s gone home.” Holly retrieved her suit carrier and handbag from the cupboard in her office.
“Yeah,” Connor agreed from where he leaned against the wall, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets.
Holly turned, startled by the odd note to his voice. He watched her, his dark black-brown eyes unblinking. The burning heat in them made her stomach lurch with a nervous flip-flop.
She needed to get this business about Christmas Day sorted now. “About tomorrow—”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning. I’ll need your address.”
He pushed off the wall and came to stand closer. The fresh citrus scent of his cologne together with the underlying spice of pure male filled her nostrils. They flared involuntarily, as if trying to inhale his scent deeper. Instantaneously she shut down the urge to breathe in deep, switching instead to short, shallow intakes through her mouth. It was one thing to believe yourself in love with your boss but quite another to believe he was interested in return. Somehow he must have unconsciously picked up the message that she was attracted to him, more than attracted if her wildly chaotic hormones were anything to go by. He was strong, he was male, no doubt he was reacting instinctively to whatever signals she’d been sending. The signals had to stop here and now.
“Look, it won’t be necessary. I’ll call your father in the morning and make my apologies. You don’t need me gate crashing your family’s special day.”
“Nonsense. You’re coming.” Connor strolled towards his office, loosening his tie before discarding it on the couch against the wall. “And speaking of special days, how come you never told me it was your birthday?”
He knew? “It’s not important,” Holly responded sharply.
“All birthdays are important. Besides, I got you something. Come in here for a minute.”
Holly’s heart hammered in her chest like a woodpecker at a tree trunk. He’d bought her a gift?
She placed her things carefully on her desk and stepped into his office. The door swung silently to a close behind her as he turned from his desk, a large cellophane-and-tissue-wrapped parcel in his hands.
“I noticed today how much you seem to like these things, but I wanted to get you something a bit different. Here, happy birthday.”
Connor stepped forward and placed the white poinsettia in her hands. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry until weary emotion got the better of her and sudden tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked, hard, and kept her head tilted down, not trusting herself to speak. She would not break down in front of him.
“It’s beautiful, Mr. Knight. Thank you.”
“Hey, I thought we’d agreed you’d call me Connor.” He lifted a long finger and tipped up her chin so she couldn’t avoid drowning in the concern reflected on his face.
Her breath hitched, and she blinked again. Except this time she couldn’t stem the acidic burn of moisture in her eyes.
“Tears, Holly?” His eyes narrowed as one fat tear hovered for a brief second then spilled off her lower lashes and tracked its inexorable path down her cheek to the corner of her lips. She turned her face, pulling away from the tenderness of his fingers, the pity in his gaze.
She’d had a lifetime of pity and she couldn’t bear to look up and see more from him. Not now. Not ever. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, instinctively reaching for the anger she knew she needed to shore herself up and carry through with the rest of this farce.
“It’s nothing. Just a headache, that’s all.” She held the gift with numb fingers, the crunch of the cellophane rippling in the air over her laboured breathing.
Connor stepped forward and removed the plant from her hands. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”
He put the plant back on his desk, then turned and caught her hands in his, drawing her closer until her breasts brushed against the fine-textured cloth of his suit. Beneath the fabric of her gown her nipples tingled and tightened almost painfully.
Her reaction to his nearness, to him, didn’t go unnoticed. His eyes gleamed like black fire, his pupils dilating, almost consuming the rich dark brown of his irises.
For an infinitesimal moment Holly allowed herself to dream, to believe he might want her. To believe he might return her love. In that moment, she was certain, her heart laid itself bare to his scrutiny, her own eyes the shimmering window to her feelings.
But then the smouldering anger flamed back into life. Love, ha! He didn’t love her. He pitied her. Otherwise why would she be here, pressed up against the hard wall of his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing as it matched her own. She couldn’t allow herself to be so vulnerable. Vulnerability was an indulgence she simply couldn’t afford. She pulled free of his hold, her body mourning the loss of his heat even as she did so.
“I must go. Thank you for the plant.” She wrenched the poinsettia back off his desk and swivelled on her heels to leave, silently castigating herself for a being a fool to want more than she had a right to.
Three weeks away from work, away from Connor Knight, would be a godsend right now. She wanted distance and she wanted it now. Yet a tiny chink in her rapidly assumed armour whispered, Liar. You want him.
“Holly—?” He caught her by her elbow and swung her around to face him.
Refusing to make eye contact, she stared blindly past his shoulder at the sparkling vista of the Auckland city lights, dazzling like a pirate’s treasure against the skyline and inky black harbour beyond. He could keep his wretched pity and he could keep his blasted plant along with it.
He brushed another errant tear from her cheek with the back of his hand, his touch igniting the banked embers of desire she was working so hard to contain.
Contain it be damned.
She’d probably regret this in the morning. Heck, probably, nothing. Regrets were for the weak. If life had taught her anything it was how to be strong. To grab what you wanted and hold on tight. And right now, more than anything, she wanted Connor Knight.
The poinsettia dropped, unheeded, to the soft carpeted floor. The crinkle of cellophane as it rolled to one side, spilling a little dark soil on the pristine grey wool surface, barely registering against the roaring sound in her ears.
Holly reached up and laced her fingers at the back of Connor’s neck and drew his head down to hers. She parted her lips, drawing in the taste of him before she pressed her mouth to his.
A jolt of shock shuddered through him. Shock and desire. Hot, hungry and hard. It had been years since he’d felt like this. Since he’d allowed himself to feel like this. Tonight Holly had struck at something deep within him. Something he’d held encased in ice, since desire and trust had been eviscerated from him by his ex-wife. Something that was now beginning to thaw.
Connor angled his head to taste her more deeply. While she’d led, he now took control. It was what he did best, and his body had been dormant for far too long. His tongue probed the moist recess of her willing mouth, stroking, tasting and wanting more. He slid his hands around to the small of her back, tilting her hips forward, drawing her closer towards his heat, his very need. A groan wrenched from deep in his throat at the contact—the warmth of her body igniting a fever in him, making him want with a savage hunger that ached through his entire frame.
He stroked one hand along the length of her exposed back, drawing her closer until he could feel the softness of her breasts pressing against his chest. And it wasn’t enough. Right now, he felt like it would never be enough.
His hand travelled further, upwards to the nape of her neck, where tiny strands of fine dark hair had fanned out and escaped the confines of her formal hairdo. Tiny strands that had enticed and goaded him all evening to feel their softness—a hint of the woman beneath the touch-me-not armour.
Her skin tightened and reacted to his touch, much as his had earlier this evening when she’d helped him transform into Santa Claus. But he felt anything but jolly and benevolent right now. He was like a dormant geyser, coerced into boiling, surging life. A geyser about to erupt.
His lips left her mouth. He had to taste her skin, to feel its texture against his lips, his tongue. He relished her sudden gasp as his tongue traced along the base of her hairline and he welcomed her weight as she sagged bodily against him.
Yet still, it wasn’t enough, he wanted more of her. To touch. To see. To explore.
“Stay right where you are,” he instructed, his voice nothing more than a husky growl.
Connor moved swiftly behind her and skimmed both hands under her dress to coax the fabric over her shoulders until with a ‘shoosh’ of lining it dropped forward. In the reflection of his privacy-tinted floor-length office window he watched, mesmerised as the falling fabric exposed the delicious line of her collarbone. The dim lighting of the office lent ethereal mystery and shadows to the creamy caramel of her skin.
“Lift your arms,” he instructed, and slid the fabric down further as she did so.
A groan of approval, husky and raw, escaped him as he exposed the full roundness of her breasts, her dark rose-tinted nipples tight and distended.
“So beautiful,” he murmured.
Holly felt a moment’s panic as his warm breath sent flickers of dancing flame across the nape of her neck. She watched their reflection as his strong hands cupped her breasts, taking their weight, testing them. Then panic was overwhelmed by sensation as his thumbs stroked the aching peaks. Tension swamped her body, and her legs began to tremble as sensation arrowed to the core of her body, tighter and tighter until moist heat gathered then pooled in her panties.
She shivered and sucked in a breath as Connor nipped gently at the tender skin below her ear. The tiny pleasure-pain the pressure of his teeth left against her skin was foreign, yet deeply addictive at the same time.
She uttered a tightly strangled sob when his hands left her breasts. She wanted more with a desperation she’d never known. Not even when she’d been a child, wanting and needing a family to call her own. A family to belong to. She might not belong to Connor Knight forever, but she could belong to him for now—this moment—couldn’t she? For this one exquisite moment?
She sighed as his hands trailed gently down her back to where her dress had arrested at her waist. The movement of his wrist was slight, but sufficient to send her gown cascading in a pool of crimson to her feet, exposing her matching lace bikini briefs and the length of her bare legs.
In the window she watched, mesmerised, as his hands slid over the gentle curve of her hips and the tension at the apex of her thighs ratcheted up another notch.
“Do you like what you see?” His voice was a tantalizing whisper in the shell of her ear.
Holly trembled as his hands slid around to the front of her body. One hand stroked upwards to caress her breast, and the other down where it slid inside the sheer lace of her panties and dragged them away to expose the dark coils of hair that led to her private core.
“Y-esss,” the word hissed past her lips as he parted the folds of her flesh and gently stroked the centre of tension that wound her body hard against his like a bow. Unaccustomed sensation cascaded through her, building in undulating waves, but riding on the crest of those waves surfed a flicker of fear. She was losing control, surrendering absolutely to him.
“So do I.”
His words were almost her undoing, yet she clenched her body tight—holding on, holding back, trying to regain some measure of restraint.
Connor slid one finger inside the liquid heat that threatened to send him over the edge. He struggled to meet the challenge of maintaining an intellectual distance from the vision in the glass and the waves of heat and passion that emanated from the woman shaking in his arms—against his insistent body.
Their reflection only served to incite him to a higher plane of need. Her glowing creamy skin fractured by the scanty line of red lace and framed by the darkness of his black suit behind her. The total contrast in their state of dress did nothing to lower the raging want that almost threatened to undo him, to send him uncontrollably over the edge in a way he hadn’t experienced since his early teens.
He focused on Holly’s face and noted, with powerful pleasure, how her eyes glittered. No longer with tears, but with a dark intense blue flame of passion.
With a slick finger he circled the hood of swollen flesh concealing the sensitive bud of nerve endings he knew would send her over the edge. Her breath quickened and the luscious swell of her breasts tightened and lifted as he gently increased pressure.
Her cry of release was a trophy to his ears, and he supported her body against the screaming responsive demands of his own as she shuddered to completion. He felt all-powerful. For the first time in forever, he felt like a man who had it all.
Well, not quite all, he acceded as he slid her underpants further down, exposing the globes of her buttocks, buttocks that as they’d pressed against him had been driving him closer and closer to losing control.
He bent her forward, placing her hands to rest on the surface of his desk, and swiftly released himself from the confines of his trousers. He guided himself forward until his tip nestled at her entrance. He was acutely sensitive, still feeling the tiny tremors that pulsed through her, waiting, holding back until he could hold back no longer.
The guttural cry that ripped from his throat as he thrust forward was as foreign to him as the concept of making love to his PA on his desk, yet for some reason—here, now—it all seemed perfectly right.
She was tight, almost unbearably so, and from somewhere he miraculously found the strength to hold back until he felt her mould to his length, to sheath him with her wet heat until instinct overrode sensibility. Her body stiffened as he drove his full length into her and he reached around again to caress her sensitive nub. Taking the time to bring her to climax again was excruciating, until the rhythmic pull of her inner muscles took him suddenly, gloriously, over the edge.
Spent, mentally and physically, and breathing in great gulps, Connor collapsed over Holly’s back. Bit by bit he became aware of their surroundings. Of the way his body pressed against hers, the feel of her silky smooth buttocks against his groin, her knotted fists beneath the spread of his fingers where he’d imprisoned them against the polished surface of his desk.
His desk.
The distant “ping” of the elevator returning to their floor rudely brought him to his senses. Someone was outside in the main office.
Reluctantly he withdrew from Holly and hastily rearranged his clothes before bending to assist her with the twisted swathe of her gown from where it lay about her feet.
As she slid her underpants back up, Connor caught sight of a telltale stain on her inner thighs. Blood?
“Here,” he said, retrieving a handkerchief from his pocket, “You have your period.”
“No.” Her voice was strained. “It’s not my period.” She shimmied back into her gown, hiding the luminescent glory of her skin behind the rich glowing fabric.
“What?”
“I said I don’t have my period.” Holly smoothed her gown with shaking hands.
“You mean…” Connor was lost for words. She was a virgin? Or at least she had been until he’d taken her like a rutting stag. He grabbed her hand and stopped her as she started to walk away.
“Holly, you can’t just leave. We need to talk.”
A knock sounded at his inner office door.
“I think we’ve just said everything we needed to say for tonight.” Holly lifted her chin and summoned every ounce of poise she’d worked so hard to develop. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Knight.”
As an exit line she knew it was sadly lacking, but her mind was so scrambled she could barely think straight. She slid from his grasp and walked over to the door, swinging it open.
“Yes, Janet?” Holly dragged every scrap of composure she could garner. No mean feat when her heart still pounded like a marathon runner’s and her legs were the consistency of jelly.
“I, um, I came upstairs to get my things, and I thought I heard something in Mr. Knight’s office. I didn’t realise you were still here.” A flush of pink dusted the younger woman’s cheeks, emphasizing the unsettled look in her eyes as her voice petered out. Holly only hoped her own embarrassment wasn’t as visible.
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