Something Wild(15)

She lifted her gaze to the mirror to find him standing behind her. His  eyes burned with everything she felt, that same desire, that same  undeniable want. One defensive part of her wished she could tell him  he'd just crossed a line by asking her something so deeply personal, but  considering what they'd done together in the limo, and that she'd told  him it was a fantasy come true, she didn't really think he had. And she  wished she were more offended by his forwardness, but nothing with Ryan  ever felt wrong. Not from that first touch, that first kiss. It was a  startling revelation. Everything she did with him always felt good and  right and meant to be, no matter how much they both knew it shouldn't  happen.                       
       
           



       

She should've been asking him what he thought he was doing, reminding  him of his own rules. Instead, though, she skipped ahead to something  that came from deeper inside, a fact she needed to make clear to him  once and for all. "Take a good look at me, Ryan," she said, peering at  him in the mirror. "I'm the girl next door. The teacher's pet. I'm June  Cleaver and Mary Tyler Moore and all the Waltons rolled into one." She  spread her arms helplessly. "I am not wild."

Never letting his eyes leave hers, Ryan reached up and pulled the clip  from her hair, letting it fall down her back in a rush. Then, placing  his hands on her shoulders, he gently turned her to face him. Without  pause, his fingers moved to the buttons on her blouse, where he undid  one, then the next, then the next. Penny tried to make herself protest,  step away from him, anything, but her skin tingled with too much  pleasure. I am not wild, I am not wild, she whispered silently. Yet her  body didn't seem to agree with her at the moment.

"Maybe you're not wild on the outside," he said, his voice husky. "But underneath … "

As Ryan freed the last button on her blouse, he pushed it open to reveal  a lacy lavender bra. The sight stole his breath and proved his point  better than anything he could've said. Who'd have thought Penny the  Sandwich Girl would wear this under her simple shirts?

Then he remembered the other night, the sexy black lace beneath his  fingertips. And when he put that whole experience together with this  discovery, he knew without doubt that everything he'd said about her was  true-she was wild at heart. It went deeper than one night, deeper than  one fantasy, and maybe she didn't know it, but he did. Nothing he'd ever  done had felt sexier than pushing the blouse from her shoulders,  unveiling the sensual woman beneath the facade of simplicity.

Tracing one fingertip down the lavender strap of her bra, he followed  the seam over the rounded ridge of her breast to the center where a tiny  bow connected the cups. "You're so bad for me," he whispered.

Her voice trembled. "I see it the other way around."

Part of him wanted to argue, to remind her that her commitment to Martin  was over and she no longer had anything to lose, whereas he still had  everything at stake. He wanted to tell her just how good for her he  could be, how he could prove to her how unrestrained she was, if only  his job didn't stand in the way. But he feared any words he spoke would  bring this moment to a screeching halt.

And even though he knew he was committing career suicide, he was like an  addict who couldn't see reason, who only wanted one more taste of her,  one more touch. The longer he was with her, the longer they'd talked-be  it about work or families or the little asides she'd shared from time to  time about her neighborhood or the hot weather-the more desire had  begun to build inside him. He liked her. He liked her laughter. He liked  the innocence that draped so honestly over her sensuous side. He liked  that she was smart and talented, which showed in the way she ran her  business, yet she was equally genuine and down-to-earth, making the same  lemonade her grandmother did. And he also liked her wild side, which  had caused something else to gather in him without his quite knowing it,  too-a compulsion, a driving need, to free her sensuality beneath his  hands.

Lowering his hands to her slender waist, Ryan deftly unbuttoned her  shorts, then slid down the zipper. He watched his fingers working, but  heard her breathing. He wanted to do this gradually, leisurely, wanted  to rediscover that slow, intense heat they'd shared in the limo,  everything else be damned.

Dropping to his knees at her side as the music urged him on, he reached  up to ease the shorts over her hips. She gazed down, biting her lip in  what he read as sweet, sexy surrender, and gently wriggled free of them.  The motion turned his knees to mush, especially when he discovered the  matching lavender thong she wore beneath, the lacy elastic disappearing  down the center of her rounded bottom.

This woman didn't know how incredibly hot she was? It seemed impossible,  but Ryan felt bound and determined to show her, to make her know it,  just as he did.

Bending forward, he placed a feathery kiss on her bared hip and listened  as she pulled in her breath. Shifting slightly, he lowered another  tender kiss to her rear, and then another. His chest tightened as his  desire wound tighter and hotter. She arched her backside toward him and  he glanced up to see her arms raised over her head as if she were some  sensual statue. He rained more soft kisses across her perfect bottom,  and her sexy sighs drowned out the music altogether until all Ryan knew  was her body, her sounds, her scent, the sensuality that almost dripped  from her.

"You're so incredible," he breathed.                       
       
           



       

"I  …  I don't do these things," she whispered from above. Just as he'd feared, he should've stayed quiet.

"It's okay, Penny," he said soothingly, nibbling around the thin strip  of lavender at her waist. "If you're still afraid I'll think badly of  you, I won't, I swear. We're both human."

"It's not that. It's just that  …  I really don't do these things. Not  without knowing a guy. And even then … " she moaned when he moved his  kisses to the other side of her rear " … it's not like this."

"What do you mean?"

"No man has ever  …  undressed me in my foyer and started kissing me this way."

He leaned forward to place a kiss at the small of her back that made her  gasp, yearning to make her understand what was going on inside her,  yearning to help her release it. "Then why are you doing these things  with me?"

She gazed over her shoulder, down into his eyes. "I guess it feels like I know you," she admitted. "I don't know why."

"I feel the same way," he told her. It was true. From the beginning.

"But we  …  don't. Not really."

"We're starting to. And I want to know you better."

"Yet there's still Martin to think about and-"

"Shh," he said, desperate not to let anything more interfere with the  raging attraction he felt toward her. He hooked his thumbs gently into  the elastic at her waist, his voice a mere growl. "Don't let any of that  matter. Don't let it stop this."

At that precise second, the phone rang, and they both flinched. "Damn  it," Ryan groaned as the trilling noise sliced through his pleasure.

Penny gasped. "Maybe it's Martin."

He ground out a muttered curse.

She tripped free from the shorts at her ankles and took off toward the  phone in the kitchen, as Ryan pushed to his feet, then shoved his hand  back through his hair.

"Hello?" Penny quaked as she thrust the receiver beneath her ear. Please  don't let it be Martin. She didn't think she could deal with that right  now.

"Hey, what's up? You sound out of breath." It was Patti, thank God. But then, in a way, that was just as bad.

"I was just … " About to have sex with a stranger for the second time in a  week. Oh dear, she really had been about to do that! Her! Good girl  Penny Halloran! "I was just cleaning. I was  …  up to my elbows in suds  and I ran to get the phone."

"You were cleaning? At nine o'clock on a Tuesday night?"

Penny really didn't think it sounded so preposterous. Some people cleaned at odd hours. "Is there some rule against that?"

"No, but I just think it's strange."

"Well, I want to get back to it, so did you call for some purpose?"

"I just wanted to tell you I'll be late tomorrow. I have a dentist's  appointment I forgot about. But hey, far be it from me to interrupt a  late-night cleaning frenzy, so I won't keep you."

Penny felt bad for lying to Patti so much lately, not to mention that  her behavior must seem extremely suspicious. But considering she stood  in the kitchen in her underwear and Ryan still waited for her in the  foyer, she took the out. "Okay. See you tomorrow. Bye."