Page 19 of Boss With Benefits

‘Then come closer.’

Helpless to resist, Ella put down her cup and did so. Adam was as good as his word, his level of detail as impressive as it was mind-blowing, and by the time they arrived at the island mid-afternoon, she could barely stand. Her limbs were liquid. Her heart was beating so hard she was surprised she hadn’t cracked a rib.

She’d never experienced anything like the intensity of his focus, she thought as she disembarked from the seaplane they’d transferred to in Aruba and he’d piloted himself. For as long as she could remember, she’d been her number one priority. Now she appeared to be someone else’s, albeit temporarily, and it was a bit bewildering.

However, she must not let it overwhelm her. She must not allow herself to be swept up in the attention. It would do her no good at all to get carried away by the fairy-tale romance of it all. She was an auditor with a fondness for spreadsheets. Practicality and realism were in her DNA. For all she knew, Adam treated all the women he slept with like this. And what they were doing was about getting him out of her system, not allowing him to work his way even further into it.

While he removed their luggage from the seaplane, Ella stood on the jetty and surveyed the landscape. To her left, the rocky coastline disappeared around a curve. To her right stretched a band of dazzling pristine white sand upon which lapped tiny crystal-clear waves. Beyond the idyllic beach, nestled among the palm trees, stood the house, a sprawling white two-storeybuilding with a wraparound veranda on the ground floor and balconies on the second supported by elegant white columns.

It was stunning, classy, everything she’d expect from a luxury goods magnate and nothing like what she was used to, and suddenly an unexpected flurry of nerves swooped into her stomach, because what was she doing? This wasn’t her world. She wasn’t a private-jet-private-island-billionaire’s-plaything sort of a person. She ought to be back in New York, man-free, drycleaning her suits and clearing her inbox. This was reckless, rash and—

‘Are you all right?’

His voice cut through the rising panic, and she blinked and blew out a breath as her pulse began to slow. There was no need to overthink this. It was a fling. That was all. And hadn’t she just told herself not to get carried away? She had to ease up. Focus on the facts. Chill out, as they said, even though she couldn’t recall the last time she’d actually done that. ‘I’m just taking a moment.’

‘Having second thoughts?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then stop dawdling.’

He slung his bag over his shoulder and picked up her case. With his free hand he took her elbow, then led her along the jetty and up some steps. He propelled her along a wide sandy path that led to the house and in through the front door. He dropped the case and the bag and kicked the door shut.

But she didn’t get a chance to check out the light airy space, because in the blink of an eye he’d pushed her up against the wall and slammed his mouth down on hers, instantly wiping her head of the doubts and the nerves, becausethiswas what they were about. Chemistry. Sex. Nothing else.

So it didn’t matter what he was or what she was. All that mattered was that this was a kiss she’d waited over week for, a kiss that had kept her awake at night, twisting and turning in torment, and it was everything she’d been anticipating. More. It was hot. Wild. Electric. Days of pent-up desire exploding in a clash of teeth and a tangle of tongues.

Dizzy with longing, as tiny bombs of excitement detonating inside her, Ella lifted her hands to his shoulders, tracing the contours of his muscles that bunched and flexed beneath the black cotton of his polo shirt. She dug her fingers in his hair. He held her hips and pulled her pelvis to his so she could feel exactly how badly he wanted her.

His erection pressed hard against her and liquid heat pooled between her legs. Fire rushed through her veins. He tasted and felt better than she remembered and her entire world shrank to him, this dominating, punishing, utterly magnificent kiss and the ferocious need that pulsated between them.

He eventually tore his mouth from hers and she dragged in a much-needed breath, only to lose it again when he turned his attention to her jaw, her earlobe, her neck and the pulse that throbbed wildly at the base of it. When he slid a hand up her side to her breast, cupping it and brushing a thumb over her tight, aching nipple, she gasped in response to the lightning bolt of ecstasy that shot through her. Her knees buckled, and if he hadn’t been pinning her to the wall, she’d have collapsed to the floor.

Desperate to arouse the same sensations in him, she disentangled her fingers from his hair and ran them over his hard, muscled chest, down, down, down to the waistband of his jeans—at which point he stilled, lifted his head from her neck and jerked back.

She opened her eyes, suddenly wracked with confusion. ‘Why are you stopping?’ she panted, gazing helplessly into his darkly glittering eyes.

‘I promised you a bed.’

He scooped her up, and before she could protest that she wasn’t some faint-hearted damsel in distress, he was carrying her across the hall and up the stairs. He barged into a room and dropped her onto the vast bed. Thinking that, actually, she would play the damsel in distress any day of the week if it meant being enveloped in all that heat and strength, Ella took the opportunity to whip off her sundress and tossed it aside.

Adam came straight down on top of her, and within moments, her bra had joined her dress on the floor. His mouth landed first on one breast, then the other, and as he began to lavish attention on her, she lost all track of time and place. Her head spun and her breath stuck in her lungs. The sensations sizzling through her were so devastatingly powerful, she had to bite her lip to stop herself from crying out.

‘There’s no one to hear you but me,’ he muttered, his hot breath tickling her feverish skin as he began to inch his way down her body. ‘Make as much noise as you want.’

When he reached the juncture of her thighs, he deftly removed her underwear. Then he put his mouth on her and she did as he suggested. She couldn’t help it. She was beyond reason and he was just too good at this. Gasping, groaning, parting her legs even further, she clutched at the sheet with one hand and kept his head in place with the other. She tried to writhe to alleviate the throbbing ache, but he held her still. He removed her hand from his head, trapping her wrist on the bed, and took full command, dictating the pace, ignoring her pleas and increasing the torment until she was sobbing and begging for release.

She’d never felt desperation like it, never wanted something so badly, and when her orgasm finally hit, it struck with the force of tsunami, drenching her in such pleasure so intense she felt as though she might drown in it.

With stars still exploding in her head, her breathing still ragged and shallow, Adam reared up. He stripped off his clothes and rolled on a condom, and then he was back between her legs, angling her hips and sliding his gloriously thick length into her. And although it did not seem possible—surely her body couldn’t recover from something so exceptional so quicky—a fresh wave of desire surged through her.

He kissed her deeply, fiercely, the taste of her on him scattering what few wits she’d managed to gather. When he began to move, she clung to his broad shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist. His skin was hot and slick. The friction of his hair-roughened chest against hers was sensational. With every slow, controlled thrust, she lost a little bit more of her mind.

And she could tell that he was losing his too. He’d wrenched his mouth from hers and buried his head in her neck. His thrusts were becoming less measured and increasingly frantic. Astonishingly, the exquisite pressure was building inside her again, like a bonfire that had merely been doused, not wholly put out.

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