Natural Blond Instincts Read online

  Wes nearly jerked out of his seat.

  Casually, ignoring his shock, Serena lifted her wine to her mouth and whispered behind it to Kenna. “I just put my toes on his thigh. I was going for his lap but you’re in the better spot for that.” She slid down another inch. “There, now I can— Oh my, someone’s built impressively.”

  Wes jerked again and glared at…Kenna.

  Horrified, Kenna stared at her cousin. “Stop it. He thinks it’s me.”

  “Christ, men are so stupid.” Serena tried to catch Wes’s eyes, but he was busy staring in shock at Kenna.

  Kenna busied herself with her plate of food, even though the wait staff appeared to clear the dishes. Around her, everyone headed toward the dance floor, but she grabbed her plate and held on to it to keep it from being whisked away.

  “I’d like a word with you.”

  Wes, of course. He’d come around the table. “Um…” She looked at her plate full of delicious food.

  He wrapped his fingers around her arm and started to pull.

  “I’m pretty hungry, Wes.”

  “Now.”

  Kenna started shoveling garlic mashed potatoes into her mouth. Maybe the garlic would protect her. “I’m eating right now, but—”

  “Now, Kenna.”

  Since he’d already turned and stalked toward the door of the ballroom, she sighed. “Thanks a lot,” she hissed to Serena on her way out.

  Serena watched Wes leave. “Oh, shut up.”

  “Wait a minute.” Kenna laughed. “You’re mad at me because he thought the toe thing was me? And I thought I needed therapy.” With that, she followed Wes out of the ballroom, intending to tell him exactly what she thought of his interrupting her dinner when it was Serena who’d done the toe thing, only to be roughly grabbed by the wrist and pulled into…a storage room?

  The place was dark, made darker still when the furious Wes—at least she hoped to God it was Wes—slammed the door, pressed her back against the wall, holding her there in the complete dark with his warm, rugged, hard body.

  “What the hell was that?” he demanded.

  Definitely Wes.

  “You’re driving me crazy, Kenna.” Hands cupped her face. “Looking at me as if you want to gobble me up, making me so hot I can’t see straight. Touching me—”

  “Yeah, about that touching part—”

  But that was all she got out before his mouth swooped down and took hers.

  14

  WES WANTED to devour her, and since her mouth was soft and sweet, and…and opening for his, he was well on his way.

  He paused only to rip off his glasses, then resumed the hot, wet kiss. With her tongue tangling with his, thinking became impossible, and not just because of the blood loss from his brain for parts south. It was the taste of her, the feel of her arms banded around his neck, her hands holding his head captive as if she was afraid he’d change his mind and pull away.

  Fat chance. She was in his arms, practically climbing up his body, warm and pliant and receptive, this woman he refused to fall for. He pulled her closer, ran his hands down her slim spine, up her legs…and oh man, found the bare flesh above her thigh-high stockings. “Kenna—” He skimmed his fingers over the backs of her bare thighs, and kissed her again. Kissed her until they had to come up for air or suffocate.

  Slowly, she opened her eyes. “What…what was that?”

  He set his forehead to hers. Against his chest he could feel her heart pounding. Her nipples, hard and pebbled, bored holes into his flesh.

  “You know what? Never mind,” she said, lifting his head by the fistfuls of hair she gripped. “Let’s just do it again.” And she pulled his mouth to hers.

  Yes. Again. And again… Somehow in the wild kiss—wild kisses—his hands became full of her soft, round breasts. The thin straps of her dress slipped down, then so did the bodice, and he bent, filling his mouth with her.

  He heard a thunk. Her head hitting the wall. “Oh my…” she whispered, then her nimble fingers unzipped his pants and wrapped around the biggest erection he’d ever had. “Wes?” She teased him with her fingers, stroking, until he actually thought he might humiliate himself right then—

  “It wasn’t my toes,” she said, and rimmed his ear with her tongue.

  When her words sank in, he froze. “What?”

  “I tried to tell you.”

  He gripped her wrist and pulled back. “Not your toes. I hauled you in here, and it wasn’t you—”

  “Are you saying you’d have hauled Serena in here if you’d known?”

  “Christ, no. Kenna…are you sure it wasn’t you, because—”

  She sighed and straightened her dress. “Trust me, I’d never start something I couldn’t finish.”

  “And…now?”

  “I didn’t start this.”

  Right. He had. He’d say he was sorry, but other than not being able to walk, he wasn’t. The only thing he was sorry about was that the mood had been broken. Kenna—”

  “They’d better not have cleared my plate.” She turned away. “Give me a few minutes before you follow, okay?”

  A few minutes. No problem.

  For much longer than that Wes stood in the absolute dark, still fully aroused, unable to stop thinking about how she’d felt in his hands, his mouth. How he’d felt in her hands.

  How much more he wanted.

  BY THE TIME Kenna made her way back into the ballroom, she’d missed dinner and dessert, and she placed the blame firmly on Serena.

  Or she would have, if she’d been looking for someone to blame. The truth was, she didn’t regret the closet incident.

  In fact, she wanted another.

  Wes eventually came back into the ballroom, looking subdued and bearing a plate of strawberry cheesecake, which he handed to her.

  If they’d been alone, she’d have kissed him again.

  She ate every bite. By the time she was done and looked around, he was gone.

  She left shortly afterward as well, heading for her room. Surprisingly enough, she slept.

  The next morning, Saturday, she lay in bed and stared at her fancy ceiling.

  She hadn’t thought about what had brought her here in a while, that being the little matter of proving her worth to the family while remaining one hundred percent true to herself. She still wanted that, but she was afraid that there were some places she would just never fit in, that maybe there were places she just didn’t want to fit in. The job was fine, but fine just wasn’t enough anymore. People didn’t think liberally here, they weren’t open to trying different things, to accepting something outside the box.

  And maybe she was getting tired of beating her head against the proverbial wall of their resistance.

  Maybe she needed to find something for her, something that would stir her soul and keep her going every day, and maybe that something wasn’t the hotel business.

  But for now she had a whole weekend, and she needed out, needed to revitalize. After three weeks of paychecks, she could have gone anywhere, but armed with a check equal to one of those weeks, she drove to the Teen Zone.

  There weren’t kids in the yard this time, but two men on ladders painting the house, one of them Josh from work.

  The other…she blinked in the early sunlight, sure that she was hallucinating.

  Or fantasizing.

  Because high on the second ladder, alongside Josh, stood Wes.

  At the sound of her sandals on the concrete, the two dark, handsome heads turned to look at her.

  Josh smiled his reception.

  Wes did not.

  Shading her eyes with her hand, Kenna tilted her head back and studied them both in jeans and T-shirts, thinking it was a shame they didn’t allow such dress at work because they certainly looked mighty fine in faded, soft denim. “What are you doing?”

  “Painting.” Josh had a streak across one cheek and his shirt, and for a guy she knew only as the Mallory Enterprises resident computer geek, he looked to be having