Hot Ice by Cherry Adair Page A

fingers curled and her nails dug into her palms. She had to touch him—
    "Where are the disks, Taylor?" he asked through a trail of sweet-hot kisses. Faint stubble from his beard scraped against her throat as he lazily nuzzled and nibbled his way up to her ear.
    If he'd only release her hands… She frowned, then opened her eyes. He'd called her by name. Her real name. Oh. My. Lord. He knew her name! How ? "Wh-What?"
    "Disks?" he repeated shortly, not sounding in the least bit loverlike despite the weight of his body pressing intimately in the cradle of her thighs, and his breath whispered across her ear making her shudder. "What. Did. You. Do. With. The. Disks?"
    Taylor struggled to bring the room and the man back into focus. His question made her feel like hot tea being poured over ice. The chill was sudden and effective. She scrambled to regroup mentally, while her body parts wept in disappointment.
    She blinked up at him while her heart thudded and galloped in her chest and their breath mingled intimately. She could read absolutely nothing in his enigmatic face. He might have been made of stone as he looked down at her, apparently unmoved. He was intently, wholly, focused on her. And not in a good way. She felt uncomfortably as though he could read her mind.
    "You seem awfully damn determined to butt into my business," she said, breath unsteady. She struggled to sound as emotionless as he, while battling equally hard to ignore her body's still clamoring response to his close proximity. Damn and double damn.
    Unlike herself, more fool her, he clearly hadn't been engaged in this activity one iota. She had to hand it to him. It was pretty damn effective. He'd actually conned her into believing he'd been caught up in the passion as intensely as she'd been. She could take lessons from this guy.
    She'd been outconned.
    He lifted his head to look down at her. His body, his long, lean, heavy body, stayed put. His eyes frosted from storm gray to sleet. "I want everything. Papers—documents of any kind. And those disks. Keep the jewelry."
    "Keep… ? Good of you to allow that."
    "Damn good of me. Considering."
    "Considering what?"
    "Considering that you lied to me about the location of the disks, knocked me unconscious, and left me handcuffed to a bed."
    Oh, yeah. She could see that indignity stung. Poor baby. "Okay, I give you those. I can see how they must've looked to your friends. I felt really, really bad about that," Taylor assured him sincerely.
    How much did he weigh, for God's sake? A ton? She couldn't move. Don't freak , she told herself, trying for a few deep cleansing breaths. Unfortunately all that did was press her nipples against his chest and revive her awareness.
    Uneasy under such close scrutiny, Taylor shifted. The slight friction between her dress and his shirt against her breasts was enough to cause her nipples to tingle. The hard ridge of his impressive erection, exactly where she wanted it, proved he wasn't as immune as he appeared.
    Good Lord. The man was, to her, like Kryptonite to Superman! He made her itch from the inside out.
    Her confused emotions—fear, sexual awareness, and intrigue—were dangerous. All three emotions gave her a rush. And God only knew, in her line of work she thrived on that adrenaline rush like a junkie. But it had never manifested itself like this. And the sexual awareness. That was a new sensation. She'd never desired any man quite so intensely. And the fact that he intrigued and fascinated her clanged all of her self-preservation alarms.
    She had to get out of his force field PDQ. "Look," she said reasonably. "Let's get up, maybe call room service for a snack, and talk about it. I'm sure we can make some sort of equitable deal."
    He didn't move. "I don't trust you."
    Well, ditto, pal . "Excuse me? You're the one who broke into my room. I get to be the one not trusting."
    If he'd get off her, give her the five seconds it would take to get to the slider and another four seconds