A Groom For The Taking: The Wedding Date

All that heat and release and temptation and response, from the light, lean creature bobbing in his arms.

Compared with the intensity of what they’d just experienced she felt so slight. So small. So breakable. He felt an immense urge to hold her close. To keep her safe from all harm.

It was a crazy thought. Random. And impossible. Especially considering he was the biggest threat she had in her line of sight right then.

He slowly uncurled her from around him, hoping physical distance might make the floor of the spa not feel as if it was about to give way at any moment.

Only the second she lifted her head and smiled up at him, all lethargy and loose limbs, his gaze went straight to her mouth. To her moist pink lips. Between one breath and the next his body revved up like a hot-rod car, waiting for the green light. And all he could think was, More.

Apprehension flashed inside his head. If that hadn’t sated him, at least for the moment, what on earth would it take? Well, whatever it took, it had to be done by the end of the long weekend.

It was already after four in the morning on day two. They had hours of daylight in which to sleep. It certainly wouldn’t hurt him taking until sunrise to find out just what it might take to get Hannah Gillespie out of his system for good.

With a caveman grunt, he hauled her over his shoulder and walked them out of the pool.

‘Where do you think you’re taking me?’ she yelled, laughing, pounding useless hands on his back.

‘Bed.’

She lifted her head and tried to angle it around to see his face. Her backside wriggled against his cheek. He literally began to shake with arousal. Sunrise was an arbitrary end point, surely?

‘Bed?’ she cried. ‘But we’re sopping wet!’

‘That’s why I’m going to yours,’ he added.

She laughed. Easy, free, gorgeous. Ready for more. Ready for anything.

He kicked open her bedroom door. This was going to be some night.

Waves of gold and pink blurred across the backs of Hannah’s eyelids. Keeping her eyes closed, she stretched, her naked limbs sliding unhindered across her massive bed.

She creaked her eyes open to find sunlight pouring through the windows. It was morning. Make that late morning. And muscles she hadn’t even known existed twinged in protest.

Then, in a rush of bright and beautiful heat, it all came back to her.

Bradley. The slow dance. The kiss. The rebuff. The resolution not to take it lying down, so to speak. The spa. Oh, my—the spa! And lastly, but certainly not least of all, hours and hours of the most intense feats of sexual prowess in the bed in which she now lay.

Taking a sheet with her, she curled luxuriously onto her side. And grinned.

‘Wow,’ she whispered, her voice rough and husky.

Wow, indeed. If anyone had asked how she’d hoped the first day of her long-awaited holiday might turn out, she’d never, even in her wildest dreams, have imagined she’d end up in bed with the boss.

A whisper of cool air tickled at her feet. And at her conscience. She curled up tighter and rubbed them together.

Everything was fine. Gorgeous, even. Had been from the moment Bradley had opened his beautiful mouth and said the magic words, ‘Whatever happens in Tasmania stays in Tasmania.’

The second he’d uttered those words the fantasies that had niggled at the corner of her mind since she’d known him had been given free rein. Within limits. Limits that meant she had no choice but to put a stop to any hope this might become more. Limits that gave her the comfort that in the aftermath Bradley wanted things to go back to normal too.

And once they got back to town—to real life, to work—they could both count on the fact that everything that had happened that weekend would be over. Niggling desires satisfied. Blissfully, beautifully, erotically satisfied.

Bradley could go back to being aloof and cool and stubborn and untouchable.

And she could happily continue …

What? Not dating? Ignoring the sensual side of herself so as to concentrate on her serious side? While hoping to one day magically find herself a man who could give her the love and loyalty and romance and openness that she refused to settle without? A man who would somehow manage to live up to what had happened to her last night. Who could make her feel wanton and cherished and beautiful and sexual, as she did when Bradley’s lips were on hers. When his teeth scraped over her hipbone. When his tongue slid around her breast. So far, in the first twenty-five years of her life, she’d never even come close to feeling that way with any other man.

Hell.

The crackle of oil popping on a frying pan sizzled through the ajar door. Breakfast! The desire to stick her head under the pillow and stay there for ever had to wait. It turned out she was beyond hungry. Stomach-rumblingly, mind-numbingly famished. And the man of the moment had ordered Room Service.

She wrapped a massive king-sized sheet around herself, and made a quick stop to check herself in the bathroom mirror.

‘Wow,’ she said again.

Her eyes were huge wells of liquid green, surrounded by smudges of leftover make-up. Her lips were puffy. Her cheeks pink and warm. She looked ruffled, tousled, and well-ravaged.

She glanced towards the door. Well, he was the one who’d done that too her. And brilliantly too. What was the point of pretending nothing had happened when it most certainly had? Without fixing a hair on her head, she swept up her makeshift toga and headed towards the delicious smell.

Halfway to the über-modern, stainless steel and Caesar stone kitchenette, Hannah pulled up short.

Bradley was cooking. And he was cooking what looked and smelled a heck of a lot like eggs Benedict with extra bacon. Her favourite meal on the entire planet. She was ninety-nine percent sure she’d told him as much. A few dozen times.

He’d remembered. Just as he’d remembered her favourite drink. While seeming intent on nothing more than working her to the bone, he’d paid attention. Her stomach felt as if it had been inhabited by a chorus line doing fan kicks.

He looked up, his quicksilver eyes grazing her naked shoulders before moving down the massive expanse of white sheet trailing behind her. It felt as if his hands had followed the same path.

‘Good morning,’ he said.

‘Oh, so it is still morning?’

‘Just.’

‘How long have you been up?’

‘A while.’ He glanced at the empty coffee cup and open newspaper on the glass-topped breakfast table.

With a yawn, and an inelegant hitch of her sheet, she said, ‘You should have woken me.’

His mouth hooked into the kind of half-smile that made the chorus line in her stomach start bumping into one another in blissful confusion.

‘I could have,’ he said. ‘But I thought you might need the rest.’ He didn’t need to add, After last night’s marathon efforts.

‘I’m fine,’ she said. Unfortunately another yawn cut off her declaration halfway through.

Bradley laughed softly, then turned away as a pair of English muffin-halves popped up from a toaster.

Hannah and her sheet managed to curl up on a gilded, beautifully adorned, wrought-iron dining chair. ‘This place does have Room Service, you know.’