Her Perfect Stranger Read online

  “Okay,” she whispered. “Now.”

  Ziiip. He spread the sweater open, pushing the material from her shoulders to hang from her elbows. Looking down at her, he found even his ragged breathing went still. Everything went still, except his heart, which chose this moment to ache like hell. “You take my breath away, Corrine.”

  She put a hand over the one he’d pressed to his heart. “Mike—”

  “No, I mean it. Look at you.” Reverently, he reached out and touched the tip of one beaded nipple. She let out a sexy, helpless little sound that nearly did him in. “I want to drop to my knees and worship you for…” The rest of my life.

  “Kiss me, Mike.”

  “But…” He wanted to think about this, discuss it.

  “Kiss.” As if she’d read his thoughts and had been equally terrified, she hauled him close. “Just shut up and kiss me.” Making sure he complied, she glued her mouth to his, making love to it with her tongue, sliding in and out in a motion he didn’t even try to resist, and within moments they were clinging to each other. He couldn’t touch enough of her, and when he tried harder, she lifted a leg to his hip, pressing the heat of her to him, gliding over him until his eyes crossed.

  “Okay, we’ve got to get horizontal,” he decided breathlessly. “Before we kill each other.” Tipping her to the bed, he crawled up her body, spreading her legs to make a place for himself between them.

  Corrine pushed her hips up, meeting his erection more than halfway. Somehow her skirt had gotten shoved up to her waist, leaving only the silky barrier of her panties between them, but the friction of that, along with the helpless but insistent thrust of her hips, nearly did him in.

  Nearly. Because while she took his breath, she’d also somehow taken his heart. He wanted to talk, wanted to know what was happening, wanted to know why he suddenly felt as though maybe it was far more than simple, unquenchable heat they were generating right here on this bed. Only she grabbed his ears and pulled his mouth back to hers, keeping it busy while she pumped and rocked her hips against the biggest hard-on he’d ever sported.

  “Now,” she demanded, panting. If she could have heard herself, she’d have been horrified, but she couldn’t hear, couldn’t do anything but feel. Sensation after sensation rocked through her, and she found herself holding on by a thread as his greedy, talented mouth ravaged hers. When they broke apart for air, he slid down her body, opening his lips wide around her nipple, using his tongue and his teeth to exact more dark, needy sounds from her. She watched helplessly as he drove her further toward the edge with just that tongue. Then his big, rough hand worked its way down her belly, beneath the edging of her panties. Lifting his head, he gauged her reaction closely as his finger unerringly located the exact spot designed to drive her to the brink.

  She made some unintelligible sound, which turned into a moan when he lightly feathered it with the pad of his thumb. Her every nerve ending throbbed and pulsed and begged for more, but the fact was, she was out of her league. She had no clue, no road map and no guidance. She was parachuting without a damn parachute. “Wait!”

  “I don’t think so, not now.” He touched and stroked and mastered her, whipping her into a desperate frenzy. Staring down at her, his eyes were dark with desire. “You wanted this.” With the finger that had become the center of her universe, he circled her opening, once, twice, making her cry out and move convulsively against his hand. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she gasped, thrashing on the bed. “Yes, I wanted this!”

  Galvanized into action, he stripped off his jeans, then made her clothes vanish as well. He ripped open a condom, his gaze devouring her as he put it on. Shamelessly needy, she pulled her knees back, opening herself to him in a way that was utterly foreign to her, but felt so right at the moment.

  His eyes all but gobbled her up. “You are so beautiful. And so mine.” He pushed into her, just a little, just an inch, dragging a whimper of need out of her.

  “More.” She thrust up to meet him.

  “Oh, yeah. More.” He pulled his hips back slightly, and another little whimper shuddered in her throat, but then he thrust again, deeper this time. And then deeper still. And again, until he was so far seated inside her that she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.

  He held himself still, then, looking down at her as a parade of emotions crossed his face: dazed wonder, harsh need.

  “Mike,” she whispered, feeling all those emotions right back, and he thrust into her harder, deeper, over and over again. Her head fell back. She arched up into him. She was dying. “Mike.”

  “Right here, baby. Come.” He delved a thumb into the wet tangle of curls above where they were joined, stroking as she writhed beneath him. “Come for me.”

  He was watching her. Waiting. Egging on all that sensation inside her until it came to a roaring explosion. She’d never been watched before. It should have stopped her cold, should have left her unable to fall apart, screaming, panting, making an unholy fool of herself as she shuddered and jerked under the assault of ecstasy, but it didn’t.

  And when she could breathe again, she realized she hadn’t been the only one to completely lose herself. He’d collapsed against her, having banded his arms tight around her, holding her to him in a bone-crushing grip.

  Amazingly enough, they fell asleep like that.

  MIKE WOKE with a wide, canary-eating grin and yet another erection. Turning toward Corrine, already thinking about exactly what he intended to do to her, he stopped, shocked into immobility.

  She was gone.

  Again.

  Damn her! And damn him for allowing it. He should have handcuffed her to the headboard. Should have never fallen asleep.

  Should have…should have…should have. The truth was, there was nothing he could do to keep her, nothing at all.

  Unless she wanted to be kept.

  Which she didn’t.

  9

  MIKE WALKED INTO the conference room and Corrine’s heart took off like a rocket. “Good morning,” she said coolly. No one had to know she was on the verge of death by mortification, or that her palms were damp with nerves, just from seeing him again.

  She’d left him blissfully, gloriously naked, fully sated and fast asleep. He’d accuse her of being a chicken, but it hadn’t been fear that made her run; it had simply been time to put aside all personal stuff and get to work.

  Here at work, she couldn’t afford to be thinking of someone else, grieving over what could never be. Concentration was required. Time to put everything else aside and get on with her scheduled team meeting.

  No problem. Putting everything else aside had always come easy for Corrine.

  Until now.

  Mike didn’t answer or return her greeting, didn’t even acknowledge it. He looked tall, dark and royally pissed off, not to mention so beautiful he took her breath away.

  “Um…coffee?” she asked, gesturing toward the pot. The few sips she’d already taken were making her jittery.

  Or maybe that was Mike.

  “No, thanks.”

  She busied herself adding sugar and cream to her coffee, though she preferred it black. But she needed in the worst way to not look at him.

  “Corrine.”

  He was going to want to talk about it. She should have known.

  “Corrine.” His eyes glittered with attitude and knowledge, knowledge that she’d run from him. Which really was proof positive that he could never understand her. His dark hair was still wet from what must have been a very recent shower, one in which he hadn’t shaved, as witnessed by the dark, day-old stubble on his jaw.

  She knew that stubble, knew it intimately, knew how it felt gliding over her skin, the raspy sound it made when he lingered, and the citrusy scent of it.

  “Don’t,” he said in a gruff, almost harsh voice, and she was thankful they were the only ones in the room, because that voice made her blood start singing.

  “Don’t what?” she asked as lightly as she