How to Trap a Tycoon(36)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

Whoa, baby.

Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been a dream.

And oh, but it felt so good to be this close to him again. Better than anything—anything legal, at any rate—had the right to feel. She told herself to ignore the flash of heat rocking her and continue on her merry way. She told herself to forget how good Adam Darien felt to hold. But she couldn’t ignore the heat, and she didn’t want to forget how he felt in her arms. Especially since she had promised herself most definitely that it would never, ever happen again.

Somehow she made her body move forward, only to halt it again when Adam dropped an arm across her path and planted it firmly against the wall on the library side of the archway. Oh. Okay. So then, probably, it would never, ever happen again, she amended. Possibly, it would never, ever happen again. Maybe. Perhaps. Um … what was the question again?

Because of Adam’s change of position and Dorsey’s brief forward motion, her upper torso now pressed lightly against his forearm, and a hot shaft of desire speared through her at the contact. Immediately, she tried to back up, but he hastily lifted his other arm to flatten his hand on the opposite wall.

And then Dorsey found herself effectively penned against one side of the archway, an opening that was barely a foot wide. There was no way she could avoid touching Adam, no way she could avoid acknowledging him. No way she could prevent the ragged trip-hammering of her pulse or the quickening of her breath or the heat that flushed her face. Instinctively, she retreated a step, an action that pressed her back against the hard wood of the arch. And before she realized what was happening, Adam claimed a step forward to compensate for her withdrawal, bringing his entire body within a hairsbreadth of her own.

"Adam…" she began to object halfheartedly. But whatever lame protest she had thought to utter died before she could give voice to it. Probably, Dorsey thought, that was because she didn’t want to protest what she could see coming.

"I’ve missed you this week," he murmured softly. Then, without a single hesitation, he dipped his head forward and covered her mouth with his.

It was an extraordinary kiss. Adam picked up right where he had left off the week before, brushing his lips lightly over hers once, twice, three times, before deftly slipping his tongue inside. Dorsey opened to him willingly, eagerly, curving her hands up over his shoulders, around his nape, into his hair. At her silent encouragement, he deepened the kiss even more, pressing his body into hers from thigh to chest.

His heat surrounded her, his scent enveloped her, and she wanted nothing more than to join herself with him, lose herself in him forever. Oh, she had missed him, too, this week. Even more than she had realized. Certainly more than she should.

The last thing she needed was for someone from Drake’s to stumble upon them this way. But before she could utter her concern aloud, Adam withdrew, nuzzling the sensitive hollow at the base of her throat before pulling his head back to gaze down at her. She murmured a soft sound of disappointment but let him go. Before retreating completely, however, he dragged his lips, briefly and with aching tenderness, one more time over her own.

The entire episode passed so quickly and was so wondrous she could almost believe she imagined it. Almost. Then she saw the way his face had grown flushed from the embrace, noted the way his pupils had expanded with his desire, marked the way his chest rose and fell in a rhythm even more ragged than her own respiration. More than that, she saw her own passion mirrored in his expression. And she realized that what had just happened was very, very real.

And very, very arousing.

"We need to talk," he said softly.

"Adam…" she said again, pleading for she knew not what, but pleading just the same.

"I can’t stop thinking about you," he said softly, ignoring her protest. "About what happened the last time I saw you. I thought maybe if I stayed away from the club this week, it would be better for both of us. But I still think about you all the time. And something tells me you’ve been thinking about me, too."

"Adam, please, I…"

In response to her unspoken request, he pressed two fingers lightly over her mouth. "We’ll talk later," he told her. "Make up some excuse to stay late tonight after everyone else has gone."

Dorsey tried to tell herself it was a bad idea and ticked off all the reasons why. He wasn’t her type. He was the kind of man she’d sworn to avoid. They had nothing in common. He wasn’t into long-term relationships. She wasn’t into long-term relationships. Her mother had hinted at a rather questionable liaison with his father. And—the big one—Adam and Lauren Grable-Monroe would never get along.

Then again, Dorsey thought, she and Lauren Grable-Monroe didn’t get along particularly well, either, so that was something she and Adam had in common, and that totally erased reason number three. And probably her mother hadn’t really been with his father—Carlotta did so love to tease—which eradicated reason number six. And really, when she thought about it, there might be one or two things to be said for long-term relationships, so she ought to exclude reasons number four and five until she had more to go on. Which left her with only, gosh, two reasons not to go through with it.

And, hey, two wasn’t so many.

"Okay," she told him softly. "We’ll talk later."

He didn’t drop his arm right away, however, and as she turned to squeeze past him, Dorsey bumped into him instead, breast to biceps. Touching him that way was, she decided, a very nice feeling, one she wished other parts of her body could experience, too. Adam seemed to agree, because instead of pulling away from her, he uttered a low sound of wanting, and his entire body began to draw nearer.

"Later," she repeated reluctantly. "We’ll talk later."

"Talk," he reiterated blandly. "Yeah, we’ll do that, too." Then, with obvious unwillingness, he dropped his arm and let her go.

* * *

Unfortunately, Adam thought, as he watched Mack cross to the bar on the other side of his library, between now and later he had a cocktail party to get through. Damn. He hated hosting parties to begin with, but it was a good way to conduct business in a laid-back atmosphere, to learn things about both his colleagues and competition that he might not learn in professional surroundings. And because the guest lists of his parties generally consisted of a pretty eclectic assortment of people, it wasn’t uncommon for Adam to get a nice story for Man’s Life here and there in the process.

He’d always hired Drake’s to cater the things because it was convenient and by now Lindy knew how he liked things done. But it had never occurred to him that Mack would work as one of the bartenders, because Mack didn’t normally work weekends. Now, suddenly, here she was, in his home, a place he’d fantasized having her on more than one occasion. "Having," of course, being a relative term in this case, because he’d also fantasized having her in a variety of other places as well—including, but certainly not limited to, the top of his desk at the Man’s Life offices, the deck of his sailboat, the back seat of his car, a Ferris wheel, a canoe, and one of the fitting rooms at Carson Pierie Scott. And now … and now…