Temptation In The Boardroom: Tempted by Her Billionaire Boss / Beware of the Boss / Promoted to Wife?. Paula Roe

a deftness I’ve rarely experienced, Francesca. You have great natural instincts for business and you speak three languages.”

      So did her sister Federica: English, Italian and Spanish. And she was a psychologist.

      She gave him a pained look. “You don’t need to try and make me feel better. I’m at peace with who I am.”

      “Are you?” She didn’t like how his far too perceptive gaze seemed to look right through her. “You should shift some of your absolute truths into the department governing your opinion of yourself. Ten minutes with Juliana and she’s explaining the psychology of Leonid to you. That’s a gift.”

      “Speaking of Leonid,” she offered casually, “care to talk about what’s making your head too full?”

      His eyes flashed. “No, in fact.”

      The intimacy of their position, the way the hard muscles of his stomach quivered as she traced her way down toward the sexy dip between his abs and leg spurred her to dig a bit more. “Could you put up enough of a stink with the board that they would maintain Siberius as a separate entity? Keeping in mind, of course, we’re only talking in hypotheticals.”

      His gaze narrowed. “Perhaps. But when you only have so much political capital with a board, you choose your battles wisely.”

      “Right.” She left that hanging in the air between them because she wanted him to think about it.

      “Francesca,” he growled. “Stop meddling.”

      She followed the sexy dip down over his muscled thigh, luxuriating in the hard, densely packed muscle beneath her fingertips. “Juliana says Anton Markovic is an evil man. That he has underworld connections that make her wish Leonid didn’t do business with him.” She looked up at him. “Does he know you’re after him?”

      “No.” He captured her exploring hand in his. “And you can put his name out of your head. Juliana’s right. Anton Markovic is not a man to be played with.”

      “Yet you are...”

      “Francesca.” He bent his head and put his mouth to the curve of her breast. “I think I’m going to have to silence you.”

      That might be fine, too. His mouth closed over her hardened nipple, scoring it with his teeth. The way he used those sharp incisors was truly...remarkable. A moan broke from her throat. “That is not fair.”

      He drew her nipple into his mouth with a hard suction that made her whole body go rigid. The slide of his hair-roughened leg as it parted hers rendered her distraction complete. He really wasn’t finished with her.

      She moved against him, her smooth legs luxuriating in the feel of his harder male limbs. His teeth and lips teased her other nipple into a hard, aching button. It took him about five seconds to drag her back into the maelstrom.

      “Now we go freestyle.”

      Freestyle? Oh, the fantasy. That was apparently over and they were onto a very vivid, very real exploration of her stomach. The tender, vulnerable skin of her lower abdomen... She clutched his coarse hair in her fingers. He couldn’t do that. Not after what they’d just done.

      She tugged on his hair. “Harrison.” He made a low sound in his throat and nudged her tensed legs apart. She jammed her eyes shut as his fingers parted her and he slid his tongue against her slick flesh. The way he savored the essence of them was too intimate. Too much. But then again everything about tonight had been too much.

      He rasped his approval as her legs fell open and she surrendered completely. His licks turned long and languorous, intent on waking her body up. Then they became purposeful, unrelenting. He waited until her limbs stiffened, she dug her hands in his hair and came, shuddering against his mouth before he moved his way back up her body, slid another condom on and took her with a deep, breath-stealing thrust. She threw back her head and reveled in his possession. In the hot, sweet perfection they made together.

      When he sought his release with a ragged groan and buried his mouth in her throat, she held him to her while the storm they had created together unleashed its final fury. His breathing slowed, evened out. It was long minutes before she levered herself up onto her elbows and saw that he’d passed out in her arms.

      A primal instinct, a need to nurture, stirred deep inside her. It was stronger than the magnitude of what she’d done with her career tonight. Stronger than all of it. Because in that moment, she knew no matter what the morning brought, this had been right. She had pulled him back from the edge.

      If it had also tipped her feelings for him, a man she could never have, into dangerous territory? If her own emotions were wildly out of control? That was the stuff of tomorrow.

       CHAPTER TEN

      IT WAS THE LONG, elegant leg thrown over his that convinced Harrison something was very off in his universe. The floral perfume hit him next...heady and distracting. It occurred to him he might be having another of his very inappropriate dreams about his PA and he latched on to the desperate appeal of that thought with gusto. He opened one eye to verify. No, he was not dreaming and yes, that was Francesca sprawled on top of him, the tantalizing floral scent of her mixed with something that could only be described as steamy hot sex.

      That she’d had with him in this bed last night.

      Mother of God.

      He closed his eyes. Traced the steps back in his head. Leonid had agreed to sign the deal and for some bizarre reason instead of feeling elated, he’d felt curiously dead about it inside. The darkness had descended to take the place of the numbness, the monsters in his head had roared to life and it had all become much too much.

      Francesca, somehow sensing, with that bizarre intuition of hers, how low he’d sunk, had returned. At his weakest point. When he hadn’t been able to do anything but take her apart like he’d wanted to for the past two weeks. He had seduced her, drowned himself in her. And when it was done, he’d still felt like he’d only skimmed the surface of what they were.

      His hand clenched around her smooth thigh beneath his palm. Francesca murmured and moved against him. He extracted himself from her, his guts turning in a slow, discomforting twist. The intimacy they had shared had been overwhelming and unexpected. But far more damaging had been what he had revealed. The scary depths his mind could scale if he let it... The tortured part of him. The man no one knew.

      A cold layer of perspiration blanketed his skin. Never did he let anyone see his vulnerabilities. His weaknesses. Yet Francesca had walked in here last night and smashed through his defenses with one sexy kiss to his palm. He shuddered to think what she’d witnessed. His was not a darkness he chose to show to anyone. And he’d been darker last night than he had in ages. Completely inside his head.