“Not nearly as many as there are purported to be.”
“I couldn't care less. And stop doing that to my neck.” Idle fingers were sliding along its satiny base under her hair. Her efforts to shrug him off were to no avail.
“What about you, Megan? How's your love life?”
“I—” She was about to say she didn't have one, but seeing the foolhardiness in that, she amended, “It's satisfactory—not that it's any of your business.”
“You're lying again, Megan,” he said tauntingly. “I've made it my business to know all about your love life. You've been out with exactly five men in the last three years. Three of them you only went out with once. You didn't spend the night with any of them.”
A flush of heat swept up from the bodice of her dress to stain her neck and face. A rage so encompassing that it frightened her filled every pore. “You—”
He silenced her by laying his index finger against her lips. “That kissable mouth shouldn't utter the obscenities you're thinking right now. Besides that, you're home.”
Before she could gather her wits, he was drawing her out of the backseat. The night air was redolent with the perfume of early summer flowers. A breeze cooled her fevered skin but not the anger boiling inside her. She was so upset that the intricacies of fitting her key in the lock defeated her.
He reached around her, plucked the key theatrically from her shaking fingers, and unlocked the door easily. In an instant they were inside the dark house and she was being pressed against the wall of the foyer.
“No!” she gasped before his mouth swooped down on hers. She fought him, pushing against the rock-hard wall of his chest, whipping her head from side to side, eluding the audacious demands of his mouth.
Manacling both her wrists in one iron fist, he raised her arms over her head and held them there. With the other hand he trapped her jaw to hold her head immobile while his lips moved over hers.
As much as she wanted to indict him for this insult, she couldn't fault him with brutality. His lips weren't hard and bruising, but soft and persuasive, as he kissed her once, twice, a third time, lingering longer with each touch of his mouth on hers.
A knot of tension deep inside her began to uncoil and spread to touch the erogenous areas of her body. Unwanted desire that had been biding in the darkest recesses of her being ventured out, testing its freedom, wandering at will.
When Josh's tongue probed at her lips and then pushed between them to stroke along her teeth, she heard her own soft whimper of hopeless, helpless despair. Fighting it, denying it, was an exercise in futility. She wanted this man. She had always wanted him. And he knew it.
But even that untenable fact didn't prevent her from indulging in this one forbidden kiss. She'd rebuke herself later. Remorse was always reserved for later. For right now she convinced herself that it was useless to struggle against his superior strength.
He possessed her mouth jealously. His tongue plundered it until his monarchy was established unquestionably, then he kissed her with leisure. He savored the honeyed crevice of her mouth, dipping his limber tongue deeper each time to catch every sweet taste.
She stood perfectly still, not daring to participate, yet holding a tight rein on every nerve in her body that cried out for her to join this orgy of sensations. It wasn't until his hand sinuously glided down her neck and throat to begin unhooking the buttons of her bodice that she realized she was precariously close to surrender.
She dragged her mouth from under his. “No, Josh,” she said, trying to twist away from him, but only succeeding in educating herself to the strength of his arousal. The hard proof of it against her soft middle alarmed her. Or was it her thrilling reaction to it that panicked her? “No!”
“Megan,” he uttered in a harsh whisper as he finally released the buttons and placed his palm on the lush curve of her breast, “there's a commandment against coveting your friend's wife, and I was guilty as sin of it while you were married. I've wanted you from the first night I saw you, held you, kissed you.”
His lips found the soft indentation at the base of her throat and planted ardent kisses there. His hand grew bolder, caressing her in ways that stole her breath away and elicited ripples of sensation throughout her body, sensations she hadn't felt since the last time he had touched her this way.
“I've given you time—time to heal, time to earn your own wings, time to prove yourself. But by God, my generosity just ran out.”
His declaration, not to mention the fingertips slipping past the lacy border of her bra to test the degree of her own desire, both frightened and aroused her. Acting out of sheer animal instinct for self-preservation, she resisted him. Knowing that if she surrendered, she'd be irrevocably, eternally lost, she closed her heart to its own pleadings. Knowing she could never overcome him physically, she used her only weapon.
“Am I to add rape to all the other indignities you've heaped on me?”
His head snapped up as though someone had grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked it hard. His raspy breathing echoed loudly off the walls of the still house as he met her accusing gaze.
If she had expected contrition, she couldn't have been more wrong. Angrily he brought her arms down and hauled her against him.
“I want you, and I'll have you. There's no doubt in my mind, or in yours, of the final outcome. The sooner you come around, the better for both of us.”
His scorching kiss was as much an assault on her senses as on her pride. Then, releasing her abruptly, he said a curt “Good night” and slammed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the entryway feeling utterly bereft.
Three
Only a moment after Megan entered her office the next morning, she was storming back through the door, confronting her secretary. “Where did those come from?” she demanded. Her pointing finger could leave no doubt what she was referring to. Arranged in a tall lead-crystal vase on her desk were two dozen roses interspersed with fern and baby's breath. That the roses were her favorite shade, a peachy pink color, made her unaccountably incensed.
“The roses?” Arlene queried, obviously perplexed by Megan's vexation.