Read Online An Exquisite Challenge by Jennifer Hayward - Free Book Online Page B

taking another step forward until she was backed up against the desk. “You have been deliberately antagonizing me. You don’t like someone to control you, so you decided to bury me in paper. I ask you to do something, you do the opposite. And when all of these things don’t work, you go your own renegade way and do exactly what you like.”
    “I do not do the opposite of what you say.”
    His gaze flashed. “I asked you to wait in the living room and found you in the kitchen.”
    She stared at him. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound? It’s control freak gone crazy.” She shook her head. “Is this how you are in bed, Gabe, because I’m gobsmacked that so many women in this day and age would go for it.”
    “You’d be surprised,” he grated. “Maybe that’s why you were strutting around in that outfit last night? Because you still can’t admit you’d like to try it on for size?”
    She winced at the innuendo. At the hard heat of his body that had her trapped against the desk. “ This is not professional.”
    “This hasn’t been professional since day one.”
    “Still—” Her pulse went into overdrive as he reached up and slid his hand into her hair. “Gabe—”
    “Shut the hell up, Alex.”
    He brought his mouth down on hers in a hard, punishing kiss that held more than its fair share of anger. She should have stopped it, should have immediately pushed him away, but unfortunately intense sexual frustration made her highly susceptible to the command behind it. To the insistence she open her mouth and let him in. She did and he made a sound in the back of his throat and explored her with an erotic thoroughness that made her hot all over. Desperate for more.
    The desk was hard against her back. She moved against him and he picked her up and set her on it. Braced his hands on either side of her and took her mouth in another heated exploration that sent her pulse soaring.
    “Gabe,” she murmured, hoping to inject some sanity into the situation. He dragged his mouth down the line of her neck to the raging pulse at the base of it. “I think we should—”
    His hands moved to the top button of her shirt. The second. His mouth at her most sensitive place between shoulder and neck, teeth scraping across her skin, made her shiver with want. Somehow she couldn’t make herself move or get the rest of the words out. He pushed her shirt aside, his gaze hot on her. “ Dio. You are so beautiful.”
    Alex forgot her name then, squeezing her eyes shut as he ran his thumbs over the hard tips of her breasts. Shaped the weight of them in his hands. It felt good, so exquisitely good to finally have them on her that she let out a low moan.
    He moved his mouth back up to her lips, set them ablaze with another scorching kiss and slid his hands around to the back clasp of her bra.
    She stiffened. He was her client. She could not have sex with him on his desk.
    “Gabe—” She pushed a hand against his chest. His fingers stilled on the clasp. “We—we can’t do this.”
    He pulled back and looked at her, the hazy desire in his eyes sending another wave of heat through her. Strength, she needed strength...
    “We— I—” she stumbled, “whatever is happening here, we need to figure it out and not...do this.”
    His mouth tightened. His hands fell away from her. “Fix your shirt.”
    She moved trembling hands to the buttons. “Gabe—”
    “Fix your shirt.”
    She did the buttons up with unsteady fingers that didn’t seem to want to work. Tucked her shirt back into her skirt. Gabe shoved his hands in his pockets and walked to the window. “You’re right,” he muttered harshly. “That shouldn’t have happened.”
    Only for a million different reasons. She offered up the most convenient excuse. “We’re both stressed.”
    “Yes,” he agreed, sarcasm lacing his tone. “Let’s go with that.”
    She pushed off the desk. He turned around, his face grim and forbidding.
    “I’ll have the catering menu to