Out of Hours...Office Affairs: Can't Get Enough / Wild Nights with her Wicked Boss / Bound to the Greek

She had to admit, she’d come a long way from her initial impression of him. He wasn’t as big a swine as she’d always imagined. In fact, he was quite kind, she decided, remembering his deft handling of her claustrophobia. Admitting that Jack Brook was not the devil incarnate she’d always classified him as was like opening herself up to the suggestion that the world might not be flat: too much was predicated on all her previous assumptions and judgments. Their whole past relationship was founded on the basis that she didn’t like him, he didn’t like her, and never the twain should meet.

“Hinges at one end, catch at the other. I don’t think we’ll even need that crowbar of yours,” Jack was saying, and she snapped her focus back to the current issue and away from the scary thought that more than just her claustrophobia was getting a workout in here.

The ceiling was quite high, she suddenly realized.

“Can you reach it?” she wondered out loud, and he gave her a pitying look.

“I think we’ll be fine,” he said confidently.

But when he reached casually for the catch they both quickly saw that even standing on the very tips of his toes, he could only just get his fingertips on the mechanism. He didn’t so much as glance at her once he realized he’d spoken too soon, so she leaned against the side of the lift and watched as he jumped up and down futilely a few times, his hands flailing uselessly against the catch each time he made contact with the roof. He finally gave up and turned to her, a warning expression writ large on his face.

“Don’t say a word.”

“Did I even open my mouth?” she defended herself.

“You don’t need to. Come on, I’ll give you a boost.”

She hung back a moment, not really sure how to go about this.

“Come on,” he said impatiently.

She stepped forward slowly, deeply reluctant to be in physical contact with him. It just didn’t seem…right.

“What should I—” she began, but Jack was already bending forward to grab her around the waist and lift her toward the ceiling. At about the same time her feet left the ground she became aware of his face pressed into her cleavage, and she stared down at his dark head, appalled.

6 (#ulink_ee998658-24bd-5022-b328-cffbe92a43d3)

“COME ON, I’m not Atlas, for Pete’s sake,” Jack grumbled, his words muffled by her breasts.

Oh, boy. A thousand and one sensations skittered along her nerve ends and she closed her eyes against the assault. His stub-bled cheeks rasped faintly against her skin, and she could feel his breath, hot and moist, with each impatient word. His arms were two strong bands around her body, his chest against her belly, her legs hanging a foot or two off the ground.

He made an exasperated noise, and she belatedly looked toward the ceiling, but it was miles away.

“This isn’t going to work,” she told him, and the tension in his arms relaxed abruptly and she dropped back down to earth, sliding along his body all the way.

Her heart was beating out of control, and somewhere deep inside, something long-ignored awoke and lifted its head to look around drowsily. Desire. His skin had been hot and smooth and hard, and it had been way, way too long since she’d been held by a man. She didn’t need to look down at herself to know that through the mere act of talking into her cleavage, Jack had managed to turn her nipples into two embarrassing declarations of arousal.

And for my next act, I shall implode with humiliation, she thought as she hurriedly crossed her arms to hide her traitorous nipples.

How on earth could her body react to Jack like that? It was as though she was suddenly being held captive by some strange alien force. Come on, she told her body, the guy’s a poster boy for everything I dislike in a man. We’re complete opposites. We have nothing in common. He doesn’t even like me. How can you do this to me?

But her body wasn’t taking any calls. Instead, it was resolutely hanging on to the memory of his flesh against hers, his hands splayed firmly across her back, the prickle of his whiskers on her breasts.

“Okay, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of smart ideas,” Jack said, his own arms crossed over his chest now.

Ideas? Boy, did she have ideas. Instantly, her out-of-control body imagined a dozen X-rated scenarios, all of them involving Jack naked, ready and willing. She fought the urge to cross her legs and squirm.

“Um. Sure. You could…you could go down on all fours and I could stand on your back,” she finally managed to say past the lump of misguided lust in her throat.

He uncrossed his arms, and she watched, almost hypnotized, as the muscles along his chest and stomach rippled in reaction. Cool. Make him do it again, her body urged.

“I know it would probably satisfy some deep inner need for you, but you are not standing on my back to reach for the sky,” Jack countered.

“Okay, okay.” Desperately she searched around for another idea, anything, before he realized she was acting like a crazy woman, her eyes practically falling out of her head ogling him.

“What about a shoulder ride?” she suggested.

He gave it a moment’s thought, then shrugged his lack of objection to the idea. She tried not to get too absorbed in following the ripple of muscle this caused down his body. But she must have been staring, because the next thing she noticed he was giving her a really weird look. The kind of look you give a dog when you think it might have rabies. She almost lifted a hand to check she wasn’t foaming at the mouth.

“You want to do this now?” he asked warily.

“Sure.”

Concentrate, she warned herself. Concentrate, and we’ll write off the last five minutes as some extremely strange reaction to oxygen deprivation.

He squatted in front of her, and she froze a moment, staring at his well-muscled back. He really was in fine shape. Most guys who had desk jobs as he did would have let themselves go soft and run to fat, but he either had a truly stunning metabolism, or a natural affection for exercise. For the first time, she understood how Fiona from Legal, and Katherine and all those other women were unable to resist him. He was just plain sexy. Tall, and strong, and handsome, and…

“What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation?” he asked.

She blinked. What is wrong with me?

“Let’s just get this over with,” he suggested, impatience oozing from every pore as he swiveled his head around to look at her.

Slapping every inappropriate thought to one side, she hitched her skirt around her waist, stepped toward him, and slung her left leg over his shoulder. She almost jumped when he immediately enclosed her ankle in a warm, firm grip.

“Other leg, come on,” he ordered, leaning forward a little so she could find her balance.

She obediently slid her other leg over his shoulder, and before she could brace herself he’d locked her other ankle in place and was surging to his feet. For a scary moment she teetered on his shoulders, and instinctively she grasped at his head for balance.

His hair was thick and wavy, and she ploughed her fingers into it as she searched for a grip.

“Yow!” he howled, and she immediately loosened her death grip.

“Sorry.”

“Can you reach it?” he asked, and she tried not to register the rasp of his stubbly cheek against the tender skin of her inner thighs.

Jack Brook with his face against her thighs? She had trouble even processing the thought, let alone the sensation. Forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand, she studied the catch on the cover a moment, then flicked it open. Tentative, she pushed the cover upward, but it gave way readily, flopping open to clang loudly on the elevator car’s roof.

“Done!” she said with satisfaction.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, she shoved a hand up into the opening.

“Much cooler out there. Hopefully it’ll make a difference in here,” she reported.

She was about to suggest he put her down when he slid his hands up her shins and over her knees to grasp her firmly just above each knee. And then he began jiggling from side to side, causing her to renew her death grip on his hair.

“What are you doing?” she squeaked.