Page 28 of The Boss's Baby Affair

“I don’t think so.” His head came closer still. “I must’ve met almost a million women in my life and you’re unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”

It hurt to breathe. “A million women?” she asked skeptically.

The side of his mouth kicked up. “Maybe that’s an exaggeration.”

“What’s so different about me?”

One hand dropped away from the sofa back to cup her cheek, his gaze intense. “I thought it was only Jennie who had skin as velvety as a Queen Anne peach.”

He hadn’t answered her. She didn’t press him. Maybe it was for the best not to know.

“Genetics.” Candace tried to laugh his intensity off. “My mother’s skin is soft, too.”

The back of his hand brushed down the side of her throat to the top button of the fine cotton-knit cardigan she’d donned with jeans after she’d hurriedly gotten out the bath, fearful he might make good on his threat to return.

His index finger rested on the pearly button, above the hollow between her breasts, and her breath quickened.

The button popped loose.

Candace’s heart stopped.

When Nick bent forward her lips parted. There was a moment before his mouth touched hers, a time when she could’ve told him to stop, that she didn’t want this awful complication. Candace didn’t utter a sound.

Instead, her eyelids fluttered down.

His lips were unexpectedly cool as he kissed her. Heat ignited, wild and raging. The hand on her jaw pressed her closer and the angle changed. Nick let out a hiss and his touch gentled, the kiss becoming increasingly intimate. Candace burrowed against him with small, hungry movements of a cat.

The pressure of the kiss deepened for a sharp instant, then eased. Candace opened her eyes.

Nick gazed down at the woman enfolded in his arms, shaken by the emotions that stormed through him.

Beneath his fingertips the cotton of her sweater was fine and delicate. He undid the next pearl button, heard her breath catch, and glanced down. The scalloped edge with its border of embroidered pink roses was almost too feminine against his square-tipped fingers. Her still-damp hair had been pulled back from her face with a hair tie, and from this angle he could see that she wasn’t wearing a smudge of makeup.

Yet she was breathtakingly beautiful—like the angel he’d imagined her to be the first time he’d seen her.

Her eyelashes fell again, shielding the misty eyes from his. The dark lashes lay against the fine-grained skin, a faint flush giving her face a warm glow that caused his breathing to falter. Swallowing, Nick undid a third button. She didn’t object. The sweater fell open, revealing the curves of her breasts.

His arousal was immediate.

Pushing the cotton knit off her shoulders, he watched her face. Her eyes remained shut. When he lowered his gaze to the skin he’d bared, he saw the prickles of arousal that had broken over her rose-flushed skin.

He suppressed a moan.

Nick dropped to his knees in front of the sofa and lowered his head to carefully tongue the dainty pink tip of the breast he’d exposed.

For a split second, time froze. There wasn’t a sound in the room. After a pulse beat in which Nick thought his heart might explode, Candace let out a gasp.

He licked again. Lightly. Insistently. Her head whipped back, and her hands dug into the leather of the sofa on either side of her thighs. Immediately he closed his lips over the tight nub and felt the shock of reaction that went through her. Pulling away, he pursed his lips and blew. The nipple hardened. She made a mewing sound and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him back to her.

Nick’s head rushed down, his mouth wide, and he sucked her in.

This time her spine arched. Her breathing grew rapid, becoming harsh pants in the quiet of the study. Nick’s fingers were clumsy with haste as he opened the remaining buttons. Rising up, he parted the edges of the sweater. His chest seized tight as he gazed at the sleek skin, the full curves of her bare breasts.

“Ah…”

He wasn’t sure who’d broken the silence—him or her. His hands came up. Slowly, reverently, he framed the full ripeness of her breasts, the peaks popping hard. He bent his head toward the breast he hadn’t yet touched and laved it with long sweeps of his tongue.

She convulsed against his mouth, her body superbly responsive, even though her eyes were still screwed shut.

His breathing was harsh and erratic, loud in the cozy intimacy of the study. Releasing her breasts, Nick sat back on his heels and tore his shirt open.

Then, taking both her hands in his, he pressed them against his naked chest under his rumpled shirt.

“Touch me,” he commanded as her eyes shot open. “Feel my heart pounding.”

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