When his breath ghosted over her ear that way, she was powerless to move away from it. “I…I slept very well.”
He caught her lobe in his teeth and worried it tenderly. “You really should do something about this habit you have of lying, Megan. Lord, you taste good.” He was taking small bites from the fragile skin behind her ear.
“Josh…” What should have sounded like an admonishment came out like an entreaty. What power did he have over her, that he could reduce her to a quivering heap of raw nerves? With him she lost touch with the woman she was to everyone else. Her professionalism flew…
Professionalism. Professionalism.
Her mind focused on that word and repeated it like a catechism until it registered. How dare he insult her as a professional by using her as a sexual toy? Reaching up, she threw off his hands from around her neck and vaulted out of the seat. The animated picture showed up watery and diffused on her torso, and a huge shadow of her was cast on the screen.
“You really are a loathsome bastard. Joshua Bennett. How many professional women do you lure into your den under the auspices of business and try to seduce? Well, count me off. I'm above playing footsie with a client.”
She picked up her purse from the next seat and made to move out of the aisle, but Josh threw one long leg over the back of her seat and, with an agility that impressed her, jumped over it. He blocked her exit in the narrow aisle.
“This has nothing to do with professionalism, and you damn well know it. I'm not fooled by that excuse, and I don't think you are either. What's between us—”
“There's nothing between us except antipathy and a debt I didn't even know I owed.”
“What the hell are you talking about? What debt?”
“You got me my job!” she shouted.
She could tell by his startled expression that he hadn't expected that. “Who told you?” he asked warily.
“Doug Atherton, just yesterday. When I expressed my reluctance to become involved with the Seascape account, he strongly urged that I reconsider. I was then informed of your power play to land me my job.”
The expletive that hissed through his angry lips normally would have shocked her, but rage made her immune to such trivialities.
“I never wanted you to know about that.”
Her chin jutted out belligerently. “Well, now I do. And I don't know who's been disgraced the most, you for so shamelessly throwing your weight around, or me for unwittingly letting you get away with it. Did you think getting me a job would absolve you from guilt for my husband's death?”
His fingers bit into the tender flesh of her upper arms as he gripped them hard. “I've already told you, James did nothing here that he didn't want to do. As for getting you a job, yes, I wanted to help you out. I would have wanted to help out the widow of any of my employees.”
“I didn't want your help! I didn't need it.” She shook her head furiously.
/> “Maybe you didn't, but it didn't hurt you any either.”
“You're the last person on earth I would choose to be indebted to.”
“You're not indebted to me, damn it,” he said through clenched teeth. “I only got you there. You did the rest yourself. I knew you had the talent to carry out the job and to succeed at it. If you were old or ugly, fat or frumpy, I'd have smiled proudly over your accomplishments and at myself for making the right decision and that would have been the end of it.”
He moved closer and drew her against his solid body. “That's not the case, though, is it?”
She pleaded with her heart not to knock so solidly against her ribs, for surely he could feel it. Fight back, Megan. “It's collection time, is that it?” she demanded. “Why did you wait three years? I'd have thought you wouldn't let a debt ride that long. Am I to thank you for your generosity, or were you just letting the interest, which I'm sure is usurious, accrue? Tell me now, Mr. Bennett, what's the price of my job?”
In the room's dim light his eyes glinted hard and brassy. “I've told you one has nothing to do with the other,” he said menacingly. “If you were car-hopping at the local root beer stand, I'd still want you. I don't know what happened to us that night before your wedding, but something did.”
“No.”
“Yes. Nothing like that has happened to me before or since, and I couldn't have felt as strongly as I did unless you had felt it too. Deny it all you want to, Megan, but you know you're lying—to me and to yourself.”
“I felt nothing,” she denied hotly, mortified to realize that scalding tears were flooding her eyes.
A stricken expression crossed his face. “Don't cry,” he pleaded, crushing her against his chest and stroking her back soothingly. “The last thing I want is to make you cry. I've acted high-handedly. I admit it. But only because I didn't know any other way to get your attention. Please, Megan, don't cry.”
His hands cupped her face and tilted it up to his. As the moving picture of a little boy and his father riding a bicycle built for two wavered across their bodies, his lips molded onto hers. His tongue invaded the sweet interior of her mouth even as his body moved suggestively against hers.
Beyond conscious thought, responding purely out of physical and emotional need, she arched against him, fitting her femininity to his complementing masculinity. The contact was exquisite and breathtaking, and their soft gasps of pleasure and pain harmonized. Their hungry mouths refused to be denied as the kiss mellowed to a controlled violence. His arms wrapped around her like bands of steel. Her hands disarranged the soft cloth of his shirt as she scoured the muscles of his back with greedy hands.