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  “Where do you want me?” Emma asked softly when the awkward silence had gone on for nearly a full minute.

  “Where do I want you?” He looked at her from beneath heavy lidded eyes, wondering how the hell he was supposed to answer that question without sending her running.

  “For the shot,” she clarified.

  “Ah. For the shot.”

  “You do need it, right?”

  “Sure. But why isn’t Amber here, Emma?”

  “She’s…busy.”

  “Really? Because I know she’s back in the country. She called Stone. She could have come, but she didn’t. I find that fascinating.”

  “I…” She let out a pent-up breath, and that, of course, drew his eyes to her breasts, which were nearly popping out of the crop top.

  His body twitched. Damn it.

  “I thought I should come,” she whispered, and tugged at the short, short skirt.

  “More research today? For your work?”

  “I wanted…to thank you for dinner that night in Tahoe.”

  “Thank me.” He laughed. “You wanted to thank me for feeling you up at the table?”

  She crossed her arms, which only plumped up those mouthwatering breasts all the more. “You’re still mad at me.”

  “Mad?” He shook his head. “No.”

  “Then, why are you pouting?”

  “Pouting?”

  “Sulking, then.”

  “I’m doing no such thing.”

  “Look, maybe we should just do this.”

  He knew what he wanted to do. Her. “Fine. Get up against the lockers, lean in close like you’re going to kiss ’em, stick your ass out and look back at me over your shoulder.”

  “All business?” she asked softly.

  It was that or grab her. “All business.”

  But he hadn’t counted on having to put his camera down and walk up to her, leaning so enticingly on the lockers, so he could drape her hair over her bare shoulder—bare because the white shirt had slipped off one side. She gleamed and sparkled from whatever lotion they’d put on her. He’d been wrong about the skirt—it just covered her ass and was slightly crooked. He put his hands on her hips and adjusted it, ignoring her quickened breathing. That didn’t work so he had to tug on the hem, which had his fingers brushing the very bottom of her sweet cheeks.

  She let out a sound that had him jerking his gaze to hers, but she didn’t look at him. She just stared at the lockers, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she could barely stand it.

  Join the club, baby, he thought grimly. Without a word, he went back to his camera and starting shooting, talking to her only when necessary. She never loosened up, not as he’d been able to coax her to do on the other shoots, but today he just didn’t have it in him.

  Some professional.

  “Turn toward me,” he instructed. “Hands flat on the lockers at your side. Tilt your head down, eyes up at me.”

  Without a word, she did, and he took those shots, too. Her slight stiffness actually worked in his favor—she was the slightly shy, slightly reticent, outrageously sexy schoolgirl. It was wrong, but he wanted her, wanted so damn much. By the time he put the camera down, his fingers were shaking.

  “Is that it?” she asked, still against the lockers.

  “That’s it.”

  She pushed away and walked toward him, every sway of her hips a slam to his gut.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, and backed up a step.

  She didn’t stop until their toes touched. “I didn’t like that.”

  “I didn’t, either.”

  She cocked a hip and looked at him from carefully made-up eyes. “I don’t like you, either.”

  “Ditto,” he said tightly.

  “But I’ve never wanted you more,” she said in a frustrated voice.

  Thank God. They lunged at each other.

  14

  THEY COULDN’T GET AT EACH OTHER fast enough. Rafe slammed his mouth down on Emma’s, open and hot and hungry. Given the sexy little growl that came from her throat, she felt the same way he did. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist, just as he cupped a sweet, warm, rounded cheek in each hand and ground her against him.

  Baby, oh baby, it was just what the doctor had ordered.

  His head was still spinning. Just a moment before, he’d been furious with her, furious and desperate with the excitement she always stirred within him just beneath the surface, and now here she was, arching against him, opening her legs up even wider, which had her short skirt hiked up around her waist, leaving nothing but his jeans and her thin panties as barriers. When she rocked against him, he staggered, and might have dropped them both to the floor if he hadn’t backed to the wall to use it as support.

  Her fingers tangled in his hair and held his head for her mouth. Her legs were stronger than he could have imagined, gripping around him so that he couldn’t leave.

  As if he wanted to.

  When she arched into him again releasing a helpless whimper into his mouth, he nearly whimpered back because he couldn’t touch her, holding her up as he was; he couldn’t get to her the way he wanted to. Instead he staggered away from the wall and carried her into the open prop room. Kicking the door closed with his foot, he reversed their positions, turning them so that she was the one with her back to the wall. Now he could thrust against her in mindless abandon. With her skirt bunched up around her waist and his fingers inside the back of her panties, the apex of her legs cradling his sex like a hot glove, he could hardly stand it.

  Bracing her against the wall, he tugged the white button-down shirt off her shoulders, then slid the twin thin straps of her crop down as well. Since she didn’t have on a bra, her breasts spilled free, her nipples already tight and puckered. Even that wasn’t enough, so he reached down and dragged her panties aside. Wrenching his mouth free from hers, he looked at her glorious body. The erotic way he’d exposed her made him groan.

  “You are so beautiful.”

  She was writhing against him, making those sexy little noises in her throat, her lush breasts against his chest, gripping him for all she was worth.

  “Rafe. God, Rafe, how do you do this to me every time?”

  Just the way she said his name made him want to come, but he managed a low laugh. “What I’m doing to you…? Baby, it’s the other way around. You’re killing me, just killing me.”

  Now she was nibbling at his throat, taking hot bites out of him, each one making his hard-on twitch. He was pressed between her legs as they moved their hips, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing in slow circles that were going to drive him right out of his mind.

  “More,” she panted, and pulled his T-shirt up so that her breasts brushed against his bare chest.

  His knees went a little wobbly—more so when she tried to work open the buttons on his Levi’s.

  “You want to come again, Emma? With me?”

  “Yes!” Her fingers fumbled ineffectively on his jeans.

  Reaching in, he helped her, their fingers tangling together until the jeans were open, a huge relief as they’d been cutting off his circulation since the moment she’d walked into the studio. His penis jutted out from his shorts hopefully while she continued to move those hips, driving them both closer to the brink.

  “Rafe—” She pushed at his jeans, tugged at his shorts. “In me,” she gasped. “Inside me now.”

  He wrapped a fist around himself and poised at her slick entrance before he remembered and went still.

  “Rafe?”

  “No condom,” he said roughly.

  Her eyes opened and she looked at him in trembly dismay. “No.”

  He could only shake his head.

  “I’m going to cry,” she whispered.

  Slowly he released her legs. Then, holding her gaze, he dropped to his knees. He put his hands beneath her skirt and pushed it up. Kissed one thigh, then the other.

  Then between.

  Her head thunked back again