She didn’t care. It was this or the grey jacket and straight skirt she’d worn to work.
She grinned at her reflection. Sparkles it was. But first… She unpinned her long, straight hair and combed it out. Really, she should get it cut. It was overdue. But for tonight she’d enjoy it loose around her shoulders.
Slipping her feet into comfortable slingbacks, she stuffed the comb into her bag, picked up her discarded clothes and walked out.
Straight into a tall body.
She froze, thoughts scrabbling at the feel of a hard, hot male body against her torso. Strong hands closed around her elbows, anchoring her, and she realised belatedly that she wobbled on her heels.
Greer gasped as, in slow motion, her clothes spilled from her grip. That gasp brought a familiar scent. A warm male scent, woody with an undertone of leather. Her pulse skyrocketed, making her heart thud against her rib cage.
Because she knew instantly who this was.
Something intense and shocking shivered through her insides.
Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her chin, taking in the crisp shirt beneath the beautifully tailored jacket. Up past his open collar that revealed a V of golden flesh and the dark bronze silk of his loosened tie.
He always mangled his ties.
Greer swallowed, searching for something to say. Something light and offhand about being clumsy or him surprising her.
Nothing came. She felt his chest rise on a breath, pushing against her breasts, but he didn’t speak. The friction made her breasts tighten and a hollow feeling open up low in her body.
She needed to move back, break the contact. And again her willpower failed her.
Because this felt so good. Too good.
Despite the heat flaring between them, cold fingers danced up her spine, lifting the hairs at her nape in warning.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Of course it was wrong to stand here, soaking up the sensation of Conall’s hard frame against hers. But maybe the knock to her head had damaged her willpower too. Since the moment they’d met she’d been supremely aware of this fruitless attraction and done everything to resist it, or at least hide it. Yet no matter how she told her legs to move, nothing happened.
Carefully she lifted her head, seeing the clean, enticing line of his jaw and then that sculpted mouth.
‘Are you okay, Greer?’ His voice sounded husky, probably distorted by the throb of her racing pulse. ‘You seem unsteady.’
Moistening her lips, searching for a semblance of normality, she looked up into concerned dark eyes.Wasthat concern, or something like the exhilaration she felt?
Conall’s gaze dipped to her mouth, lingering in a way that sent heat hurtling through her bloodstream. It spread over her breasts and throat, at the same time pooling low in her pelvis.
There was a new sensation too, fine fabric against her palms and beneath the fabric, the solid wall of his chest. She hadn’t known she’d lifted her hands until she felt her fingers moulding possessively over tensed muscles and realised she’d nudged his jacket open.
She wanted… How she wanted…
As if in answer to the longing she’d so ruthlessly suppressed, his head lowered to hers. So slowly she didn’t actually see the movement, just registered his features getting closer.
Excitement spiked. With it came elation and a hunger so profound it should have scared her.
Yet it felt perfectly, absolutely right. As if the answer to her earlier question about what she needed was simplyConall.
Conall holding her close, his body a bulwark against the world, his touch the route to all she craved.
Everything slowed, as it did during life-and-death events. Seconds felt like minutes or hours, while she registered details so thoroughly they stayed imprinted permanently on the memory.
The spiky fringe of his black lashes. The tiny furrow of concentration at the centre of his forehead. The arc of that tiny new scar on his jawline.
She wanted to trace his features. To know intimacies he didn’t share with anyone else. Even, foolishly, how he’d got that scar. But most of all she wanted, needed his kiss. She’d never needed anything so much.
