The Cinderella Mission (Family Secrets #1)(45)
Author: Catherine Mann

Like hell.

If he were a better man, he would leave. But he wasn’t and he couldn’t, not tonight with the world shifting under his feet and this woman offering forgetfulness. He was through resisting her.

But first, he had to take care of one thing.

Ethan turned away. Kelly’s light gasp of surprise behind him fueled him to move faster. He hooked his foot on a low shelf and swung himself up to the camera hidden in the corner among dangling ferns. Arm arcing back, he flung his jacket over the lens.

“How long has that been there?” Kelly called up to him.

He dropped to the ground. “Since the day after I found you in here.”

She studied him through narrowed eyes, her body outlined in curve-hugging Lycra as she stood—too far away. “Have you been watching me?”

Maybe this would make her send him packing. “What do you think?”

“I think you have.”

“You’d be right.” He waited, certain now she would tell him to haul his sorry butt out of her greenhouse.

A slow smile curved her full lips, and she leaned one luscious hip against a table of potted flowers.

His mouth turned drier than the sack of soil beside him. “You’re okay with that?”

“Of course. You were doing your job.” Her eyes flicked up to his dangling jacket. “Can anyone hear?”

He shook his head. “There’s no microphone. I couldn’t have survived seeing and hearing you. Not and manage to maintain any objectivity while watching over you.”

“So you were watching to keep me safe?”

“What do you think?” he repeated.

She tossed her head, hair rippling. Her lithe body exuded a newfound inner confidence in her own appeal. The whole package radiated such lush sexuality Ethan almost dropped to his knees.

Instead, he charged across the greenhouse. Five bold steps—he counted every one, begrudging each inch between them—and Ethan gathered her against him. He tasted her. No, absorbed the giving feel and flavor of her lips. Her arms flung around his neck without hesitation.

He gripped her hips, tucked her in a perfect fit between his thighs. “I gave you your chance to send me away.”

She pressed closer. Hotter. “I know.”

“If you ask me to stop, I will,” he muttered against her lips.

“I won’t ask.”

Forcing himself to draw back, he stroked her hair away from her face. “Kelly, there can’t be any question, not after what happened to you.” He held himself apart from her, waiting. “I need to hear you ask me to stay.”

“I don’t want to talk about that now.” She stretched up on her toes to nip his bottom lip, her soft hands gliding down his back. “Don’t want to think about it.”

“I know, honey, but I have to. For both of us.”

She cupped his face in gentle but sure hands. “Do you have a condom tucked away anywhere?”

In his pocket, always had kept once close since the first time he’d kissed Kelly. He’d known this could happen. Would happen. “Yes.”

“Then stay.”

A rush of relief surged through him, quickly followed by a pulsing need to claim her. Finally. Fully. Damn the consequences. He had a truckload of regrets in his life, and he wouldn’t add never knowing Kelly to the list.

He would be her first, if not her last. And he would damn well tap every ounce of restraint he possessed to make certain it was a “first” worth remembering.

Kelly watched every line of Ethan’s body tense. She’d studied him long enough to know. He was coiled and ready to act. All that wonderful strength and determination would be directed at her.

He tapped the aquamarine between her br**sts until it swayed gently. “Let’s take this inside.”

Forget delays of even a second. The cold blast of the snowy winds and outside world could too easily bring the chill of reality. She didn’t want reality. She wanted her fantasy moment, her dream come to life with Ethan. “No. Here. Now. With the heat and the flowers.”

A smile of wicked promise creased his face. “So you like the flowers?”

“I love flowers.”

“Then you’ll have flowers.” Ethan’s hand stroked down her arm and away.

He reached past her, returning with an orchid. With the barest whisper of a touch to her face, he trailed the bloom down her forehead, along her nose, over her lips.

“Hmmm.” She inhaled, savored, smiled against the milky petals.

He tucked the orchid behind her ear. “A flower for you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not done.”

She certainly hoped not.

The hard length of his body pressed her back against the edge of the wooden table. Slowly he plucked flower after flower and tossed them on the blanket.

Orchids, lilies, gardenias fluttered over her onto the puffy comforter, until finally he ended with crushed roses raining petals and perfume over her head, drifting and catching along every sensitized inch of her.

She clasped his wrist. “Ethan! Don’t waste them all.”

He pried his arm free and flung a fistful of daisies to their makeshift bed below. “They’re mine to do with as I please, and seeing them against your bare skin would please me.” His voice lowered, rumbling husky, dark, with even a hint of danger. “Very much.”

Ethan draped his arm over her shoulder, drawing back until a yellow tulip grazed along her shoulder. She shivered in spite of the humid warmth of the greenhouse.

His eyes followed the tulip’s trek down in a glide between her br**sts. Her ni**les tightened beneath her sports bra, already eager for his attention.

Ethan didn’t disappoint her.

With the same finesse he managed in every aspect of life, he skimmed her top up and off without even dislodging the flower from her hair. The cold weight of the stone teased her skin. Every nerve tightened, from the brush of air or his eyes, she didn’t know and couldn’t scavenge the will to figure it out.

He retraced his path between her br**sts, detouring lower to explore each curve, under, around. The petals kissed each pointed tip in turn, Ethan’s hungry gaze devouring her. “Kelly,” his hoarse voice echoed, “your br**sts are so damned pretty.”

Heat tingled all the way to her bare toes, but not from embarrassment. His compliment stirred a swirl of excitement. The sincerity of his words, the simple compliment, somehow seemed so much more believable to her than some lavish poetry about beauty she didn’t possess and shouldn’t be important.