“You’re brilliant.”
Christopher complimented Ellen. Then he kissed her. One solid kiss on the lips before he shot her that dimpled grin. That grin that made her stomach flip-flop. That grin that made her realize just how much she liked having him kiss her.
That craving again.
Leaning across the table, she kissed him back.
Christopher’s reaction was much more impressive than hers had been. Before she could back away he’d driven his fingers into her hair, locking her against him so he could kiss her once more. A real kiss.
His tongue plunged into her mouth, stealing her breath. Her insides swooped again and her thighs tingled. The only thing she could say was that kissing him back sparked her craving as if she’d tossed a lighted match into a puddle of gas.
Their tongues tangled with urgency. She grew dizzier and giddier as the tabletop cut into her rib cage. Or perhaps it was only his kiss that crushed the breath from her lungs. Either way, Ellen knew she had to have him…now.
Dear Reader,
I lived half my life quite happily north of the Mason-Dixon Line and even have the accent to prove it, which most people catch when I ask for a cup of coffee. Then I moved south and discovered that while I may be a Yankee by birth, I’m a Southern belle at heart. Something about the Deep South just captivates me…and writing One-Night Man, Blaze #42, set in the Big Easy, only sparked my desire to write a romance that took me into the sultry bayous south of New Orleans.
Enter Ellen and Christopher. Ellen is a romance editor who doesn’t believe heroes exist off the written page. Christopher Sinclair is a savvy businessman…a real-live hero who is determined to prove her wrong. To make his case, he has developed a strategy that breaks all the rules, a strategy he calls red-hot pursuit….
Blaze is the place to explore spicy romance, a place where you’ll find steamy journeys to happily ever after. I hope How To Host a Seduction brings you to happily-ever-after, too. Let me know. Drop me a line in care of Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada, or visit my Web site at www.jeanielondon.com.
Very truly yours,
Jeanie London
How to Host a Seduction
Jeanie London
For the gypsy.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
SEX HAD ONLY CLINCHED THE DEAL.
Making love to Ellen Talbot had just proven what Christopher Sinclair had suspected since first meeting this remarkable romance editor at a friend’s wedding—no woman had ever affected him like she did. No woman had ever come close.
Ellen left his heart thundering, his muscles vibrating so hard that he collapsed against the sheets, unable to do much more than press his shell-shocked erection into the cradle of her warm thighs and try to catch his breath. His thoughts raced with the singularity of the event and just how shattering making love to her had been. Their first time. Damn.
Locking his arms around her, Christopher savored the feel of her bare curves, her long, long legs tangled with his, their skin clinging in a thin sheen of sweat. He’d never even realized he could feel the way he felt when he was with her.
The lack had nothing to do with experience. He’d just celebrated his thirty-third birthday and could honestly say he’d lived most of those years, had explored the challenges life tossed his way and added a few variations of his own. He’d experienced his share of incredible lovemaking and mind-blowing orgasms with some very lovely ladies.
Not one of those women had ever left him like this, so demolished he could only hang on tight until he recovered. And he needed to recover to gauge the effect he’d had on Ellen.
Pulling her closer, he inhaled the fresh scent of her hair, a shiny sheet of sable that cascaded over his arm and the pillow, cool silk to the touch. Her full breasts pressed against his chest, the tips he’d explored so thoroughly earlier sealed to his skin as if an extension of him. The lines had blurred. Christopher wasn’t quite sure where he ended and Ellen began.
“Mmm.” She breathed the sound on a sigh.
Even annihilated from the most awesome sex he’d ever had, Christopher managed a smile at the pleasure in her voice.
“Mmm, yourself,” he said.
Forcing his fingers from where they’d been idly threading through her hair, he hooked a knuckle beneath her chin and coaxed her to look at him.
She lifted her gaze…and his heart pounded impossibly harder. Her hazel eyes reminded him of a forest in autumn, a sultry, mysterious place where woodsy greens, browns and golds met in a striking clash of color he’d thought about often in the months since they’d started dating.
But now he found himself staring into eyes he didn’t recognize, eyes that seemed more golden than before, more mysterious. Eyes that reflected how contented Ellen was. And damn if he didn’t have the ridiculous urge to pound his chest in pride that he’d leveled her with their sex as much as she’d leveled him.
This was another singular sensation, and Christopher found himself grinning as her lashes feathered over those incredible eyes and she rested her cheek on his shoulder with another sigh, a breath that expelled across his skin in a soft burst.
He pressed a kiss to her brow, wanted to drift off with the scent of her filling his nostrils, to the whisper of her breathing. “Go to sleep. I want to wake you up with my mouth and make love to you while you’re still half asleep.”
Just the thought of this drowsy eyed beauty unfolding beneath him, of sinking into her moist heat in the quiet of late night, made his blood surge in a valiant effort at recovery.
But Ellen went rigid. The melting softness of her warm curves suddenly vanished, and before his orgasm-soaked brain could even register what was happening, she slid out of the bed.
“I never spend the night with anyone.”
In one fluid move she stood, every glorious naked inch of her bathed in the silvery moonlight streaming through windows that overlooked the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The sight of her, almost unreal with her long slim curves and pale loveliness, distracted him. By the time he’d thought to grab her, she was halfway across the room.
Christopher shook his head to clear it, then forced himself up on an elbow to watch her snag her hose from where he’d draped them over the armoire after he’d savored the pleasure of peeling them off her shapely legs.
“Really?” Here was an interesting turn of events. “Never?”
“Never,” she shot back.
Flipping her hair over