Round-the-Clock Temptation by Michelle Celmer Page A

looked even more excited, more determined.
    â€œI’m warning you,” he said, “don’t do that again.”
    With her eyes locked on his, taunting him, she very deliberately planted her hands on his chest, ready to give him another good hard shove.
    All the anger, all the frustration he’d trapped deep below the surface broke free in a red-hot gush. Before he could stop himself, he caught her wrists in his hands and backed her hard against the door, pinning her arms over her head. He wanted to hurt her, and he wanted scare her and he just plain wanted her, as he’d never wanted a woman before.
    She gazed up at him through the pale light, but instead of looking frightened, instead of being angry with him, her lids were heavy with desire, her cheeks flushed.
    Before he even knew what he was doing, he lowered his head and crushed his mouth to hers—a hard, punishing kiss—pressing her to the door with the weight of his body. Her mouth was hot and sweet and demanding, her body soft and needy.
    He lost himself in the flavor of her mouth, the thrustof her tongue against his own. His hands slipped from her wrists and found their way to the curve of her hips, down the swell of her backside, and Nita moaned into his mouth. Her arms wound around his neck and she hooked one leg over his hip, grinding her body against him.
    That’s when he started to melt, when the last of his control began to slip. He began to feel—as he’d never felt before. Arousal and lust and longing. It overwhelmed him.
    And scared the hell out of him.
    He pried her arms from around his neck and backed away, drawing a hand across his damp mouth, fighting to catch his breath. “Now you see what you’ve done?”
    â€œYou say that like it’s a bad thing.” She looked like pure sex standing there, her chest heaving, her cheeks the same vivid red as the stripes on her shirt. It was almost more than he could take.
    â€œI’m not doing this with you, Nita. No matter how much we both want it.”
    She studied him for a long moment and something in her eyes told him she knew it was a lost cause.
    â€œThat’s a fine attitude, now that you’ve gotten me all hot and bothered,” she said, her voice low and husky.
    â€œI sincerely apologize.”
    â€œNo need to apologize.” She flattened a hand over her chest where her collar opened, then slipped it inside, caressing the top of her breast, her eyes pinned on his. “Guess I’ll just have to go upstairs and take care of business myself.”
    She gave her breast a squeeze and he nearly fell over. It would take the willpower of ten men not to pull her back into his arms, yet somehow he managed all byhimself. But she wasn’t finished with him. As she opened the door to leave, she dealt the blow that nearly brought him to his knees.
    â€œLater, when you’re lying in bed and you hear me cry out from the next room, know that it’s you I was thinking about.”

Eight
    C onnor sat in a leather arm chair in the cigar lounge of the Cattleman’s Club, head resting on his fisted hand, struggling to stay awake. Figuring Nita would make good on her threat last night in the stable, Connor had slept sitting up on the bench in the foyer. Far enough away that he couldn’t hear her cry out, as she’d put it, but where he could catch her if she tried to sneak down the stairs and give him the slip again—which she had, at 5:45 that morning. And though he’d slept in far worse conditions in the Rangers, sheer sexual frustration had kept him awake most of the night. That and his own self-doubt.
    He couldn’t stop thinking about what his brother had said, about what the right woman could do to a man, and how Connor needed to do something for himself. It wastrue that, since he’d been away from the engineering firm, since he’d started working the farm with Nita, he’d lost that feeling of