A Convenient Arrangement(14)

Hello. Leo’s rock-hard sex pressed against her hip. She could handle this. Absolutely. She channeled her inner badass, willing her expression to radiate “I really don’t have time for you, so get over yourself.” Damn, the oranges again…and soap…and man…why did he have to smell as sexy as he looked? Who smelled this good? Her body betrayed her, her nipples pebbling beneath her bra, almost like her cells remembered all the pleasure from last night. Tingles shot between her legs. Even as angry as she was, Leo completely turned her on. The pressure of his cock against her hip told her he was turned on too.

Huh. That tidbit of information could be useful. Very very useful.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Leo hissed.

“Attending my best friend’s family’s New Year’s Day party, and you?”

“You said you weren’t coming.”

“And you said the same.” She shifted her body to nudge her hip a little more firmly against Leo’s hard cock.

“Ah…I…”

“What was that?” Gwen asked, fluttering her eyelashes.

Leo leaned back, moving his hips away from hers. “When you…ah…decided you weren’t coming”—his gaze drifted from her eyes and down her neck to land on the v-neck of her sweater, which revealed a hint of creamy cleavage.

“Yes?”

His eyes darted back up to hers. “Right, right, when you said you weren’t coming today, I knew one of us needed to be here, otherwise everyone would think we were together.”

His sweet breath caressed her face, his lips intoxicatingly close to hers. His lush… No, no, no…hard-ass woman. She had to focus.

“That’s exactly why I’m here. You texted that you weren’t coming, so I did. I mean, if I’d known you were going to be here, Leo, I most definitely wouldn’t have come. I don’t want to make things awkward for you.” She leaned forward slightly, completely aware of how her décolletage popped from the top of her sweater. If he was going to be an ass, then let him, but she absolutely was going to make him pay for the privilege.

His eyes narrowed in confusion. “Difficult for me?”

Gwen nodded and smiled and gave him her best doe-eyed stare. “Yes, you. I don’t want me being here to be awkward for you.”

His mouth dropped open. Speechless? She had rendered Leo speechless. Score one for the party planner! She was much better at this nonchalance thing than she’d thought.

“Uh…”

“Look, Leo, I mean, it’s me. This is completely my fault. Like I said this morning, you are an amazing guy, but right now I’m completely into my career and I know you are too.” She widened her gaze. Damn, she was laying it on thick, but she had to get out of this room with some pride. Her body, though, couldn’t care less about her pride. All she really wanted to do was close the tiny distance between them, press her lips to his, rip off his clothes, and roll around on the rug like horny wildebeests.

“Right…your career. My career.” He nodded, his gaze distant. She couldn’t quite tell from his look if he was contemplating tomorrow’s hostile takeover at work or her words. “I’m starting to feel like maybe the lady doth protest too much.”

“Shakespeare? You’re going to quote Taming of the Shrew to me?”

“Hamlet”—he lifted his brow and the corner of his mouth—“but who’s keeping track?”

She’d like to kiss that smirk from his face. Gwen leaned back, but Leo tightened his grip around her waist.

His soft, sculpted, kissable lips were a millimeter from Gwen’s. That mouth had pleased her last night, made her moan his name. Her belly tightened and her breathing grew heavy. His breath tangled with hers…jeez, how bad did kung pao scallops smell after a few hours? Of course, she’d brushed her teeth buuuut…

“I know neither of us want a relationship, but maybe this thing between us doesn’t have to be a relationship.”

Gwen swallowed. “Are you asking me for a—”

His lips claimed Gwen’s. Her brain buzzed and did the fuzzy white snow thing that happened when the cable was on the fritz or had been turned off because you couldn’t pay your bill…until this year she’d spent a lot of time with her cable turned off.

Leo’s tongue stroked the seam of her mouth. My God, what the man could do with his tongue. One arm, still circling her waist, pulled her close, but his free hand trailed sneaky fingers up her arm to clasp her neck, then slid back down to the decadent décolletage she’d teased him with.

Bad move on her part. Because now he was using her décolletage the way one might grasp the back of a cat’s neck to paralyze it. As his fingertips gently stroked over the top of her breasts she couldn’t move, heck, she could barely breathe. My God, what could she do? Nothing, nothing but stand here with this insanely sexy man kissing her and try to pretend he had no impact on her at all. His tongue thrust deeper as the hand that had been around her waist slid down and cupped her ass. Oh my, and her ass, it was as though her ass remembered last night, because her hips rolled forward and pressed against his hard cock. Flash of bare skin and hot kisses and his thick shaft sliding into her flooded her mind.