His hand caressed up my throat and slid across my mouth. His breath was loud in my ear, fluttering my hair. He was close, too; I could sense it. Listening to the effect I had on him only turned me on more.
Then he feathered a kiss into the side of my neck, and it sent me falling over the cliff into a sea of black, wave after wave of pleasure crashing into me.
My orgasm set off his, sending another surge of ecstasy through my body as he jerked, leaving us both struggling for air. His hand fell away from my mouth. What was that odd stab of pain by my shoulder? I turned to look at him.
“Are you all right?” He kissed the indentation on my skin there. He’d sunk his teeth into my back, just below my shoulder, probably to quiet his own orgasm.
I nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.I rose off him slowly, my legs burning from the exertion, the rest of me tingling and numb as I sat on his lap. His mouth claimed mine, and he kissed me with so much passion it made my heart stop.
Naked in his arms with the soft fabric of his suit against my skin, I didn’t want to leave. Not ever. It was like he’d cast a spell and had a gravity I couldn’t escape.
I cupped his face, my thumbs brushing over the stubble forming on his cheekbones while he held me, pressing me into his embrace. Tenderness from him? It was too much. My emotions were spiraling terribly out of hand, and I’d have to put a stop to them.
But maybe not right now, because there was nowhere else I’d rather be.
Which, of course, meant his phone rang.
“Kara.” His voice was heavy with remorse. “They’re waiting on me.”
I climbed out of his lap. My trembling legs brought me to my clothes, and I tried to pull them on, finding my fingers clumsy. It took him no time to dress. He helped me then, zipping up my skirt as I put my bra on. He didn’t offer me the panties back and I didn’t bother to ask. He was sure to take great pleasure in knowing where they were.
And exactly where they were not.
A sharp knock came from his office door as I’d put my top back on, and his angry gaze went to the sound. It was obvious no one knocked on Corporate Shawn’s door. His whisper to me was urgent. “That’s not locked.”
I had my back turned, scrambling to pull an arm into the sleeve of my suit jacket when the door swung open and a pair of heels clicked across the floor. The angry voice confirmed it—a woman. The German words stopped abruptly, as if she’d just noticed me.
It left me with no choice but to finish putting my jacket on. It had to be obvious what we had been doing in his secluded office. Maybe there was a logical reason I’d have taken it off, but I knew if I were this woman, and knowing Shawn, sex had to be the natural place my mind would have gone.
The tall woman was slender, probably in her early sixties. She had beautifully dark hair and warm, brown eyes. My mouth went completely dry.
I had no underwear on and was about to meet his mother.
She examined me closely in a single look. Then her German was fast and furious, but I didn’t need to speak the language to understand. His mother had asked if I was Laurel’s sister. And when he nodded, she asked if I spoke German.
“No,” I said, somehow finding the strength to not act as naked as I felt. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I’m Kara Hayward.”
She looked at me, then her son, then back again. “Gisela Osterhägen. Forgive me, but why are you here? Is everything all right with L?”
“Yes.”
“She was here for a job interview,” Shawn said quickly. “I asked her to say hello when it was over.”
Gisela did not buy the story he attempted to sell to her. She went back to her native language, and the only wordI understood was Hayward. Shawn listened, respectfully and unflinching.
There was no point standing in his office being awkward when he needed to get going.
“It was nice meeting you,Frau,” I eked out.
My path to the door took a lifetime, and I probably ran the last few steps. I darted past the assistant’s desk and through the main glass doors as fast as I’d arrived, finally breathing again when I was alone in the elevator car.
19
SHAWN
How the hellwas I supposed to pay attention after that? I would have agreed to any proposal or signed anything put in front of me. I’d have sold the entire company with an idiotic smile plastered on my face.
I avoided my mother’s gaze, who thankfully was seated far down the conference table from me.
