The Playboy's Baby(48)

“Good thing Annie’s still awake or you’d be in big trouble. You should not have done that.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself.” She hesitated, the need swelling in her chest. “I want you.”

She’d been so wrong about him all these years, and the part of her that yearned for him tossed out every single reason why she shouldn’t let herself get lost in whatever happened between them.

An agonized groan rumbled out of him and he opened his eyes, shaking his head. “I meant what I said, Em. I don’t do serious relationships. I want you so much, but I don’t want to hurt you. I’m no good for you.”

“Maybe you don’t get to decide what’s good for me.” She leaned in, sipping at his mouth. She was delighted in the way, despite his protests, he sought her lips with a fervor that matched her own. “Maybe no strings attached is exactly what I want. Up until yesterday, I was a thirty-year-old virgin. Just once I want to do something completely not me. Get lost in passion for the first time in my life.”

She trusted him because he’d shown her that soft gentle side of him and simply because of what he did for her today. She wanted to lose herself in it, to stop allowing fear to dictate her life. For once, she wanted to close her eyes and jump in anyway.

He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes searching hers, clearly lost in indecision. But with a slow shake of his head he leaned in, whispering against her mouth. “I’m trying really hard to be a gentleman.” He kissed her once, twice, soft and lingering. “You keep saying things like that, and I’m not going to let you leave tonight.”

She bit her bottom lip to keep from grinning. “I’ve got to work in the morning.”

He growled against her mouth and kissed her again. Then he released her and took a step back. Lifting her coat off the hook, he handed it to her. “Then you better go. Before I make good on my threat. I’ll call you tonight.”





He had called her. Every night that week at bedtime he called from his office at the club and she lay in the dark, listening to his voice. The thought of those steamy conversations when Emma pushed her way through the thick crowd of the club had heat coiling low in her belly. Slowly over the course of the last week, their conversations grew softer, more intimate. They talked better, more openly when it was just a quiet voice over a phone line. They admitted things she wondered if they’d dare say to each other’s face. They shared dreams, heartbreaks, and visions of the future. He told her about the job he wanted her to do, how his days with Annie went. Told her about the things that made him laugh and even shared his frustrations.

Tuesday night, they both admitted how very much each wanted the other. She lay in the darkness of her bedroom, her body aching for his touch, when he asked, “You’re wearing that nightgown, aren’t you?”

The husky tone of his voice had made her tremble. “Yes.”

He growled low in his throat. “Take it off, Em.”

She did and told him so.

“Be my hands,” he whispered.

He brought her to heights she didn’t know her body could reach, and he hadn’t even touched her. Yet, at the same time, it felt intimate. She closed her eyes, did what he instructed, and got so lost in his voice she was sure, on several occasions, it was his hands and not hers.

Now the thought of seeing him again, after all the things they said to each other, had a knot of nervousness twisting in her stomach. Never in her life had she shared something so intimate with anyone. She had no idea how he’d react, what emotions would light in his candid brown eyes. Those steamy conversations made her feel wanton, wild. Emotions she didn’t know what to do with. She was always proper, responsible. The thought of the way she touched herself while listening to him made her blush.

Yet, they left her with a sense of freedom that made her want to lose herself in it.

A few minutes later, Dillon stood in the exact same place he was in the last time she came into the club—at the bar, surrounded by a throng of women. She stopped halfway down the bar from him, her hands trembling when she eyed the women. All those childhood insecurities twisted in her stomach. Two blondes and a brunette, all three of them tall and model beautiful. She couldn’t compete with that.

He turned his head. Heat flashed in his eyes, subtle but intense, and a warm smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. He touched the elbow of the brunette, his mouth moving, but his gaze remaining locked on Emma when he made his way in her direction. He made her feel like the only woman in the room.

She fisted her hands and squared her shoulders, butterflies tumbling in her stomach when he stopped in front of her.