“Using personal insults to get a woman to spread her legs for you.

That’s a unique come-on. I’ve got things to do, Matthew. Good night.”

“You’re not leaving.”

As he loomed over her, oddly she chose that moment to notice how white his shirt was, fresh and pressed. She knew how that would smell, the clean starch of a well- laundered shirt. The smell of him beneath it. His hair was shaved perfectly at the nape and she wondered how that would feel beneath her fingertips, how those big, restless hands would feel on her body, what he could do to her with that unsmiling mouth. She could almost feel her skin prickle in anticipation of the rasp of the five o’clock shadow.

She was a chameleon. He was right about that. Tennyson Rule Four:Never show fear.

She couldn’t go around him, and she had a momentary, dangerously appealing image of a desperate feint to scurry for the elevator. She quelled the ridiculous image and the apprehension that had fueled it, and set her briefcase deliberately back on the table. She faced him, her back straight, hands at her sides.

“Fine, then. You’re right, Matthew.

We’re two adults. We have a sexual attraction. It’s obvious. Let’s relieve it. We’ll have sex, get it out of the way. I’m sure you’ve indulged the itch as often as I have on a boring Friday night.”

Coal became fuel with fire. She was reminded of that by the expression that flared in his dark eyes, even though his voice remained mild.

Dangerously so.

“That’s good, Savannah. Very good.

But I don’t want to scratch an itch.”

He closed that last step and his arm went around her waist, his other to her hair. He yanked out her barrette in a rough motion that sent her hair tumbling down, around her face and over one eye. She would have shaken it back, but he immediately had a fistful of it and yanked it, letting her feel the brute strength that was his to command.

“You won’t make any more references to anyone you’ve ever fucked. You’re mine, Savannah.”

“Go to hell,” she snapped, and gasped as his mouth came down on hers, hard, hot and hungry, his hands still tight on her hair and waist.

At the first touch, she knew she’d lost the edge. He was pure male beast, heat and superior strength. All the images she’d fantasized late at night in her lonely bed, with him as the center feature, now flooded her senses. Fantasy combined with reality to make her weak, out of control. His tongue caressed hers with a skill that let her know what he could do with it elsewhere, but he wasn’t seducing her. He was taking over, demanding unconditional surrender.

But you only surrendered unconditionally if you had no weapons left, and she sure as hell wasn’t there yet.

She bit down on his tongue, got her hands in between them and shoved at his face to break away. When she wrenched away, he tore her blouse open, revealing flesh barely confined in the shelf cups of the lacy bra, as he had described them. Savannah slapped him, used her nails with pleasure to draw blood. He caught her wrist before she could jerk back and, despite her struggles, he brought that hand back to his face, rubbed her fingertips in the welts. Taking three of the fingers into his mouth, he slowly sucked at his blood and her flesh, freezing her in place with the sheer ferocity of the gesture, the flame in his eyes as he did it.

She had known he was fit, toned. She hadn’t realized he was so bloody strong. Catching her other wrist, he swung her around and pinned her against the wall, pressing his body against the full length of hers, lifting her. As he came up against her, he insinuated his knee between hers so her snug skirt rode up at pressure of his leg. With her toes stretched to hold onto the floor, her pussy was her center of gravity, pressed hard against the muscular length of his thigh. She automatically tightened her muscles to hold her balance, and the feel of that, the close relation it had to clamping her thighs around his hips, made her breath leave her. She yanked at her wrists, her legs thrashing, but he simply held her in place. She bent her fingers back into claws, prepared to strike if he gave her the chance.

With his gaze never leaving hers, he brought one set of those sharp fingertips back to his face.

She stopped struggling, realizing she was just wasting energy she might need when he shifted his grip and

gave her another opening. It was senseless to fight him on ground where he had the advantage. She had to wait for the weak moment.

At least that’s what she told herself, to explain why she suddenly went so still, like a frozen rabbit, as the hunter took her hand into his mouth again, stroking the tender crevices between her fingers with tender touches of his tongue, down to the palm. Down to the sensitive pulse point of her wrist. Her hand now curled over his eye and nose, her nails within a lash length of his vulnerable brown iris, and she could not make herself move. Her heart hammering against her ribs, she could only stare at him.

“This is rape,” she managed.

“No, it’s not. You’re not trembling because of that. You’re the type of woman who’d fight a mugger to the death to keep his filthy fingers off your Rolex, and just be pissed off if he pulled a gun.”

He feathered the knuckles of his free hand down her cheek, startling her.

“If there’s one thing about you that scares me, Savannah, it’s that.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Yes, you are. You’re afraid I’ll make you do and feel things you don’t let yourself feel. You’re afraid if you expose your throat, I’ll rip it out. You don’t believe you can trust anyone, especially a lover.”

“We aren’t lovers, Matthew.”

“You are such a liar.” The offensive words were spoken softly, like a caress against her skin, putting her further off balance. Pressing her up against the wall, he rubbed his thigh, slow and strong, against her mound.

Her feet left the floor, his grip on her wrists her only way of staying upright, a precarious position that made her thighs clamp harder around his, increasing the pressure of her clit against lean muscle.

“We’ve been lovers since the moment we met, the first time we sparred at a conference table.” His face and lips had somehow gotten closer, so his cheek was now almost against hers, his five o’clock shadow sliding along her jawline, his breath tickling her ear. “Every offer and counteroffer has been a thrust and withdrawal, a teasing foreplay that you felt as much as I did. You think I didn’t notice when you’d lean back in your chair and cross your legs, like you were listening to me make a point, but I saw the slight tightening of your thighs. You were aroused and indulging the sensation, giving your pussy a sweet, secret squeeze.”

Savannah drew in a shuddering breath as he pressed his lips just beneath her ear, his hair brushing the side of her face. Her hands balled into fists of need rather than anger.

“Or that time you stood at my shoulder, leaning over to point out something in a report. You had your hand on the back of my chair, and your blouse fell open just a bit, like the petals of a flower, showing me that ripe breast. I inhaled the smell of your perfume, imagined you touching yourself there with the wand of your perfume bottle first thing in the morning. When I let out that breath, the heat of it touched you.

Your nipple got tight. When you straightened, I saw it pressing against your blouse, even through your bra.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She jerked her head away from his mouth and swung, knocking him smartly in the temple. Seizing his ear between her teeth, she bit.

He snarled and she twisted, thrashed, threw them both off balance. She managed to scramble off his thigh, but her heel twisted and she went to one knee. He was on her in a second.

Amazingly, she thought she heard him chuckle, but that turned into an oath as she palmed her fist and elbowed him in the chest when he tried to pounce on her. She spun to her feet and had a flash of that clean white shirt she’d admired earlier as he caught her by the hips and lifted her, maneuvering her onto her back on the slick surface of the table.

Keeping himself between her thighs, he locked her wrists down with his hands as he leaned over her, breathing hard.

The position rucked her skirt all the way to her hips and his eyes coursed over the lace thigh-highs, the swatch of white lace panties. “Class and elegance, wrapped in a fuck-me-if- you-got-the-balls package.

So what about it, Savannah?” He moved against her, and his hard cock rubbed the damp crotch of her panties through his trousers. “Have I got the balls to fuck you, make you scream for me? Whether you want to or not?”

He was taunting her, and she wanted to hate him, be repulsed by him. “I’ll scream if I want to scream.

You won’t have anything to do with it.”

She bit back a gasp as he released her wrists and caught her by the back of the neck, one large palm supporting her skull as he lifted her up against his chest, bringing them eye to flashing eye.

“You’ll scream for me, even though you don’t want to. You’ll beg, despite the fact every cell of your stubborn, rebellious mind will be telling you not to do so. Before this evening is over, you’ll belong to me, heart, body and soul, and you’ll be cursing me, even as you accept that you’ll never be free of my claim on you again.”

“Stop it, Matt.”

“No.” But his tone gentled, as if, by her use of the shortened version of his name, she had alerted him to her desperation, the sudden vulnerability that leaked through her armor and made her doubt herself.

“You know what I fantasize about sometimes, Savannah? I’m sitting at the head of that table, listening to my team give me a report on something… Hell, anything. Could be the weather in Shanghai, for all I care.” A light smile touched his lips, simple, startling her with its ease in comparison to the intensity of the past few moments. “I have you sitting on my lap, and you’re completely naked, your arms bound behind your back.

That tight little ass of yours is squirming against my cock because I’m fondling your breasts, just idly stroking the curves, caressing the nipples, pinching them, watching you get more and more aroused.”