And yet now he was here. Heaven only knew his agenda but from the way the air crackled all around them, Keyonna had a feeling that nothing on earth could save her from Nick’s feral pursuit.
Like a panther on the prowl, he closed what space was left between them. Even though he didn’t touch her, she felt his nearness like a blanket of warmth closing in on her. There was no doubt that Nick could turn up the temperature in a room without even trying.
He merely shook his head with a smile at her question and then murmured, “We're very much the same, you and I. Because we don’t let anything hold us back be it personally or professionally. I can tell that like me, you’ve broken a few rules – rocked the system, just to make sure you reached the next level. You do what you need to do, Keyonna. And I respect that. You’re sassy, you’re bold – and you’ve got one hell of a way of making your point.”
Nick flashed a sudden grin and Keyonna felt herself smiling back for like no apparent reason. Damn, but when a man like Nick switched on the charm, what was a simple woman to do?
Shivering slightly, Keyonna stamped down the urge to simply dissolve in a puddle beneath his scorching smile.
“While you, Nick Vitale, are a tyrant – and one hell of a contradiction,” Keyonna muttered, her eyes challenging him to deny it. Here he was, paying her high compliments when many nights ago, he’d painted a far less flattering picture.
Keyonna was still waiting for his apology for the way he’d spoken and treated her. Though all things considered, she’d more than given him a taste of his own medicine – in more ways than one.
He smiled, nodded once, and raised his glass in a toast. “I’ll drink to that. Cheers.”
Their glasses clinked, and Keyonna’s lips were twitching in a smile she had to fight back as their eyes met over the rim of their glasses. Who would have thought it? Both of them, drinking iced tea, smiling and toasting glasses like old friends – or lovers.
I really shouldn’t have thought up that last word, Keyonna realized, knowing Nick must have seen something on her face by the way his gaze narrowed suddenly. Both their smiles died off and an unspecified element of raw, intense awareness shot up between them. Slowly, he set down his glass, gently taking hers from her now nerveless fingers.
Keyonna didn’t think to react, not until his arms encircled her waist. Then she tried to pull back and yet found the effort futile because his hold was like bands of steel as he brought her chest-to-chest with him.
Keyonna’s head was reeling. Her body felt turned to jelly; she was in heat. This man. He was something else; he made her lose her self-control in ways she’d never dreamed possible. Just by holding her close, he rendered her speechless as she became achingly aware of every strong, masculine outline of his frame.
“This is what I really want,” he said huskily, his gaze sweltering, right before he swooped his head to the side and took her mouth in a demanding, eating kiss.
In a last bid at resisting, Keyonna fought to keep her lips clamped tight – only to have her resolve shattered almost instantly when his masterful tongue flickered out to run moistly over the seam of her lips, causing her to exhale sharply in submission. Unable to fight his manly skill, Keyonna opened up to him eagerly.
In seconds it became clear to Keyonna why she’d had innumerable sleepless nights since that first time they’d kissed. And like that second kiss inside his car, Nick called the shots, deepening and then easing off the kiss at will, driving her off the brink with his alternatively tender and rough probing of her moist, hidden secrets.#p#分页标题#e#
Keyonna heard a tiny whimper of pleasure escape her parted lips, her fingers curling into his jacket lapels. As she tumbled inside his exciting taste and aroma, his hands swept over her quivering form. His touch was possessive, heated, famished. He cupped the curves of her ass and brought her even tighter against his hard, overpowering masculinity. Time stood still for her as Nick made her maddeningly aware of the effect kissing her was having on him.
“Keyonna,” Nick said on a groan as he tore his lips from hers moments later, his breath ragged. “You’re doing it again…making me crazy. So crazy that I could rip off your clothes and ravish you where we stand.”
His lips were pressed to her neck now, tasting the thin film of perspiration and inhaling the intoxicating fragrance that was all Keyonna, always enough to inflame him so that anytime she was near, he wanted her. He may have been able in the past to successfully conceal his rampaging desire for her. But any close observer would have noticed that hidden beneath his pretense of dislike was a confounding desire for a woman who made his brain want to explode.