My Man Pendleton(66)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“No, you weren’t,” she repeated sleepily. “But Orlando Bloom was.”

Pendleton’s smile fell. “Orlando Bloom? I thought I was the man of your dreams.”

She chuckled low, a profoundly erotic sound. “Oh, come on, Pendleton. Why should you be the man of my dreams when I can have Orlando Bloom in them?”

He scooted over to close what few inches of space separated them, then rolled to cover the top half of her body with the top half of his. Man, he loved the feel of Kit McClellan na**d beneath him.

“Why should I be the man of your dreams?” he repeated. She looped her arms loosely around his neck and nodded.

“Because I’m the one who knows where to touch you so you make that extremely erotic little sound that drives us both wild.”

He reached down between their bodies to touch her in that very spot, and her eyes fluttered shut as she emitted a quiet murmur of delight.

“Yeah, that’s the sound I was looking for,” he said with a smile, his body tightening at hearing it again. She bent one knee to facilitate a more thorough exploration, and Pendleton took advantage of her offer.

Gently, he nudged her thighs further apart, palming the heated core of her, noting the immediacy of her dewy response to his touch. Her eyes closed more tightly, and she bit her lip, but the gesture did nothing to quiet the ripple of pleasure that escaped her lips on a sigh. Wanting to hear more, he dipped a finger deep inside her, reveling in the shudder that wound through her entire body.

“Oh,” she murmured. “Oh, what a wonderful way to wake up in the morning.”

This time, Pendleton was the one to respond, “Mmm.”

He parted her soft folds and plowed her more deeply, furrowing his fingers back and forth and around and around, until she bucked her h*ps up to meet his petting.

She curled her fingers around his nape and pulled his head down to hers for a voracious kiss. “More,” she commanded him.

He rolled on a condom and tumbled his body over hers, then entered her swiftly and deeply, setting a rhythm that was at once leisurely and demanding. Over and over he buried himself inside her, until their entire bodies rocked with their reactions. At precisely the moment she arched herself against him, crying out in her completion, he, too, went rigid.

For a moment, they remained as if frozen in space and time, neither moving, neither speaking, neither breathing. Then, gradually, Pendleton relaxed, blanketing Kit as her body eased beneath his. He threaded his fingers through her hair, kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheek, her jaw. Then he pulled back far enough to gaze upon her face.

What he saw there nearly stopped his heart. Nothing. He saw absolutely nothing in her expression. Kit had pulled a shutter closed over her face that made it impossible for him to tell what she was thinking or feeling about the intimacy that just passed between them.

“Kit?” he said softly. “Are you all right?”

She nodded in silence, then lifted her hand to feather her fingers through his hair. It was a simple, affectionate gesture, but for some reason, it felt like neither of those things.

“I’m okay,” she said softly. “I just—”

She never finished the statement, because the alarm clock erupted on the nightstand beside her, and she jerked at the shrillness of the sound. Pendleton slapped a hand down over the intrusion, but the moment of her revelation—whatever it might have been—was gone, and there was little chance of recapturing it this morning. So he dipped his head to hers again and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

“I have to get ready for work,” he said. “But there’s no reason you need to get up. Unless you want to, oh, I don’t know…shower with me?”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought she smiled at that. “I better not. You’d never get to work.”

“And the problem with that would be…?”

“Daddy would fire you if you missed two days in a row.”

“Not if I missed because I’m making wild, jungle love to his daughter, he wouldn’t. He’d probably give me a nice, big raise.”

He meant it as a joke, but something clouded her expression when he said it. Then he remembered it wasn’t a joke at all. Didn’t McClellan, Sr. do just that? Promise Pendleton a big, honking bonus if he married Kit and secured the family fortune? Of course, she had no way of knowing about that. But it made sense for her to conclude that if her old man once paid good money to chase a guy off once in an effort to save millions, then he’d certainly be amenable to offering cold, hard cash to another one, if it meant saving a bundle in the long run.

“Oh, come on,” she said, clearly striving for a levity she was nowhere close to feeling. He could tell that, because instead of sounding happy, she sounded wounded. “Daddy has a business to run,” she went on, her voice hollow. “Sure, he’ll be delighted to find out that you really are boffing his daughter, but—and I know this will come as something of a shock to you, Pendleton—my father’s not much of a romantic at heart.”

“Boffing his daughter?” he echoed, finding the suggestion more than a little distasteful. “I beg your pardon. What I’ve been doing to the boss’s daughter goes way beyond boffing.”

She arched her eyebrows in query. “Oh?”

He smiled and pressed another kiss to her forehead. “I’ve been making love to her, sweetheart. Big difference.”

She eyed him with an expression that was at once hopeful and disappointed. “You don’t expect me to believe there was any more to last night than a good time.”

“Why don’t I?”

“Because there was nothing more to last night than a good time, that’s why.”

Oh, sure, he thought. Like she expected him to believe that.

He threaded his fingers gently through her hair, framing her face with his open hands. For a long time, he only looked at her, silently willing her to please, just this once, open herself up to the possibility that there was more to what went on between a man and a woman than a financial arrangement. Yes, she’d grown up with the knowledge that her father only married her mother for her money. And yes, she’d been forced to acknowledge that the one relationship she was allowed to have with a man ended with a check for six figures. And yes, her father only ever looked at her in terms of her monetary value when it came to keeping the family fiscally sound. Money and the worth for being loved were irreversibly linked in Kit McClellan’s mind—she’d never been taught to separate one from the other.