“I want you to listen to me very carefully,” he said, trapping and holding her gaze with his. “Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re just a pretty face. You’re much, much more than that, and if you don’t know it, I’d be happy to tell you until there isn’t an ounce of doubt left in your mind.”

  Kennedy blinked at him as her stomach did that whooshing, dipping thing. She didn’t know what to say. No one had ever said that to her, and certainly not with such heartfelt sincerity. At least, no male who wasn’t related to her by blood.

  “I don’t need you to do that. I know I’m more than a pretty face.” Her job had always been to convince other people of that, which was too often easier said than done.

  Okay, he really, really needed to stop touching her. She would stop him if not for the fact that it felt so good and she was embarrassingly weak, something she’d pay for later when she couldn’t look herself in the mirror.

  Oh, give it a rest. It’s your feet, an inner voice chided.

  It’s my feet that I just discovered is one of my erogenous zones, thank you very much.

  Having put the naysayer properly in her place, Kennedy continued, “Look, I probably made too big a deal about what happened with Aidan. He started it by needling you, and you gave as good as you got. It isn’t as if you were jealous or anything like that.”

  Why did the latter sound as if she was asking a question and not stating an unequivocal fact?

  The smallest of smiles ghosted his lips. “We know that, do we?” he murmured, quietly holding her gaze. Then he shifted his attention to the foot he held cupped in his palm. “You have such pretty feet. Pretty toes.” He paused, his eyes heavy-lidded when they met hers again, and he whispered in a throaty voice, “Pretty all over.”

  Kennedy stared at him, eyes wide on a swift intake of breath. “Are you flirting with me again?”

  On a scale of one to ten of stupid questions, that came in at a solid eleven. He’d left flirting behind five minutes ago. He was deep in seduce her off her feet mode, and currently halfway there.

  In response, he pressed gently but firmly into the arch of her foot, startling a whimper from her throat.

  “Tense?” Nate asked innocently. He slid his hand ever so slowly up her leg, his palm traversing her ankle, calf, until it hit her knee, where he briefly halted.

  Tense? Turned on? Who could tell the difference anymore? “It has been a long night,” she said, doing her level best to stave off the choppy breathlessness creeping into her voice. “And either you’re trying to get me in bed or...”

  “Or what?” he prompted, his fingers drawing circles on her knee, setting off sparks of pleasure.

  Kennedy swallowed with difficulty. “That’s when you’re supposed to cut me off and tell me I’m mistaken and that you’re not trying to seduce me,” she admitted. Even if he didn’t mean it, he should have said it so she wasn’t the only one keeping up the pretense that this—his hands on her and her doing nothing to stop him—wasn’t happening between them when it most definitely was.

  That smile again, and it landed where it had the first time he’d turned it on her: right between her legs. He peered at her from beneath a thick veil of dark blond lashes. “If I were, how am I doing so far?”

  “As if I’m going to tell you.” It was good she still had a sense of humor about it.

  As if to make a point—and torture her into willing submission—his hand resumed its journey, this time up her thigh, momentarily skirting the hem of her dress.

  Kennedy instinctively clamped her legs together—tight—trapping his hand between them. For a second, neither of them moved, as if both had been startled by the action. The sight of his hand between her legs was both intimate and scorching hot.

  When he turned his hand sideways, she involuntarily performed a few seconds of Kegel exercises. His desire-roughened voice indicated she wasn’t the only one affected. “Just say the word if you want me to stop.”

  And Kennedy knew she could take the monstrous bastard at his word. How dare he put the onus on her. Yet how diabolically clever of him.

  “What word?” she whispered.

  Nate laughed then, the sound a throaty rumble. “Stop...but you have to say it in French.”

  “How do I say stop in French?” she asked, ever conscious of her legs relaxing and drifting apart and his hand moving under her dress. The long length of her legs afforded her an additional second or two before it reached its destination, if what was under her now-damp thong was his ultimate goal.

  “Arrête,” he purred, never once removing his gaze from hers.

  The low, sexy cadence of his voice, the touch of his hands, and the expression on his face—those slumberous blue eyes—all did a number on her. It was like she was whisked back in time to that day at her and Aurora’s apartment.

  With Aurora in California with her high school boyfriend before she moved to New York permanently, Nate had come by the apartment to make sure she was settling in okay. They’d met the year before when Aurora had invited her out to New York for the summer. After an hour of small talk and flirting, he’d made his move and she’d been with him every step of the way.

  “How do you say don’t stop?”

  Why don’t you cut to the chase and tell him to fuck you?

  His eyes flared as his hand contracted against her slim upper thigh. “N’arrête pas,” he growled.

  Where she found the fortitude to play coy, she had no idea, but she did. “What about kiss me?”

  His eyes darkened and dropped to her lips. “Embrasse-moi.”

  To an English-only-speaking person, his French sounded sexy good. In the future, she’d demand he speak it to her more often. Especially on occasions like this.

  Kennedy knew she wasn’t so much playing with fire as she was tossing igniter fluid on it. “What about do me?” she whisper-laughed, husky and taunting.

  Nate made an inarticulate sound in his throat, but she got his meaning all too well. And it was the last thing she heard before his mouth was on hers and she was flat on her back.

  Kennedy let out a startled moan that ended in satisfaction as she willingly gave herself up to longing, pleasure, and lust. She hadn’t felt like this in a long time. She wouldn’t go as far as to say Nate had spoiled her for other men, but he’d done something that made the taste of him on her tongue and weight of him on her, over her, between her legs, an experience she’d never forgotten and had wanted to repeat over and over again.

  “God, you feel good,” he mumbled against her lips, kissing the corners, and then her chin and the slope of her neck.

  Ditto. Kennedy plowed her fingers through his hair and palmed the back of his head. She didn’t know if that was to keep his mouth close or for her own support. Her mind was a dizzying mix of emotions, of wants and needs. She needed his mouth back on hers, and on her breasts, her stomach, and between her thighs. On all the needy parts clamoring for his attention.

  Taking matters into her own hands, panting, she urged his mouth back to hers, welcoming the thrust and parry of his tongue, the kiss as ardent and ravenous as she could ever wish for.

  A riptide of sensation engulfed her, every erogenous zone in her body under siege and overwhelmed. And they were both still fully clothed.

  It had been a long time, but she wasn’t sure she was mentally or physically prepared for how her body would react without a stitch between them.

  She didn’t have to wait long to find out. With a mumbled, “Bed,” Kennedy was soon off the couch and in his arms in a move so deft and smooth, one would have thought it was choreographed. With his mouth still on hers, he carried her up the stairs to his bedroom. There he placed her on the mattress, only then breaking the kiss, something he appeared reluctant to do, if the way his mouth lingered on her neck and collarbone was anything to go by.

  When he finally lifted his head and stood at the side of the bed, Kennedy cast a look around the spacious room, vaguely noting the king-sized bed and the navy blue comforter beneath her.

  “If you don’t want to go any further, this would be a good time to tell me,” Nate said, his erection prominent against the fly of his pants.

  A smile crept across her face. “If you’re going to talk, you can explain to me why you’re still dressed.”

  Her words seemed to act as the starting gunshot of a race as to how quickly he could get them naked. If there was a record to be broken, he appeared determined to shatter it. His shirt came off first. His dress pants and briefs, pooled at his feet, soon followed. When he started in on hers, he made it clear he didn’t need or want her help, because what started as a show of quick efficiency slowed significantly when it came to removing the matching bra-and-thong set.

  Kennedy couldn’t keep her eyes off his body, the thrum of desire at her core growing stronger with each new rush of moisture. He looked the same as she remembered him but different. He’d filled out from the twenty-three-year-old who’d relieved her of her virginity and shown her how unbelievably pleasurable sex could be when had with the right person. Broader in the shoulders, more muscled throughout, his body beautifully proportioned and firm.

  Reaching out, she ran her palms down his rippled chest and abs. In the same moment, he pushed the flimsy cups of her bra aside, exposing her breasts.

  Gaze riveted, he drew in a breath. “God, you’re beautiful.” His voice was hoarse.

  Kennedy let out a whimper. “So are you.”

  He swiftly covered her nipple with his mouth and had her gasping. She didn’t remember much beyond that. The way he touched her, the way he kissed her, had her desperately moaning and panting beneath him. She closed her eyes at the intensity of what he made her feel, eagerly parting her legs and tilting her hips as he sheathed his erection and entered her.

  She cried out, a breathless sound of pleasure that ricocheted off the walls and elicited an “oh fuck” from him that sounded as if it were expelled through gritted teeth.

  “Fuck, that feels good,” he groaned as he pulled out and drove into her once again, his hands pinning hers above her head on the mattress.

  Her legs circled his hips. She wanted him closer. And closer still.

  He laved her other nipple, her inner walls clamping down hard on his cock. Nate released a string of curses, his breathing quickly becoming labored.

  As he drove into her, his pace hard and unrelenting, her body raced headlong toward a climax she sensed—no, knew—would level her.

  “Open your eyes,” he rasped, his mouth next to her ear.

  Kennedy heard him but couldn’t make sense of his words and responded by arching her hips in tandem to the downward plunge of his.

  “Kennedy, open your eyes.” Though still choppy and breathless, there was no mistaking the firmness of his tone.

  “I can’t,” she gasped. She wanted to touch him, but her hands were still secured by his.

  Nate slowed his thrusts. “Yes, you can. C’mon, baby. Open those pretty eyes of yours.”

  How could she when her lids felt as if they weighed one hundred pounds?

  “Open your eyes, beautiful, or I’ll stop,” he said, his tone more playful than threatening, but he slowed his thrusts even more.

  Kennedy let out a moan of dismay but did as he demanded, her mouth pushed out in a pout. She opened her eyes to find Nate’s blue ones slitted and positively devouring her.

  “Good. I want to look into them when you come.”

  That grumbled remark alone would have been enough to set her off, but added to that was, with her acquiescence, he resumed the pace of his thrusts, sending her body hurtling into a paroxysm of pleasure. Nate followed seconds later, his grip on her hands tightening as his body shuddered in completion.

  Boneless and sated, Kennedy felt more alive than she’d been in a long time, her skin flushed and damp from all their delicious exertions. She’d read somewhere that orgasms had a restorative effect. Hers had been earth-shattering, so the benefits had to be exponentially greater.

  Nothing beats sex like this.

  It took another minute for their breathing to even out, and Kennedy barely moved when Nate pulled out of her and rolled onto his back. Seconds later, he got out of bed, and she couldn’t take her eyes off his firm, tight ass as he walked, in all his naked glory, to the bathroom to take care of business.

  He was back before she could miss him. This time she was able to admire the front view, which was just as impressive as the back. Gaze hooded and without saying a word, he slid in beside her and snuggled her into his arms, spooning against her.

  “Give me fifteen minutes and we’ll do it again,” he grumbled into the tousled dampness of her hair.

  The hangover she had from fantastic sex caused a lethargy that made it almost impossible for her to lift her head off the pillow of his arm. She purred contentedly.

  Her lethargy was all but forgotten fifteen minutes later. Just as he’d promised.

  17

  “Working hard or hardly working?”

  Nate lifted his gaze to find Jack framed in the doorway. Smiling lazily—nothing like great sex to start the week off right—he sat back in his chair and gestured at his friend. “This is what I get for having an open-door policy. It encourages the riffraff to drop by anytime for specious reasons.”

  “Specious?” Jack asked with a grin as he sauntered in. “When have I ever needed a good reason to stop by your office? But I would argue that shooting the shit is good reason enough. And who the hell are you calling riffraff? My car costs more than most people make in a year.”

  Nate snorted. “I wouldn’t brag about spending that kind of money on a depreciating asset.” Last summer, Jack had dropped almost two hundred grand on a Porsche 911 Turbo. He swore his friend would marry the damn thing if he could. After over a year, it still had that “new” car smell.

  “Look who’s talking. How much did you spend on your mansion in the sky?” Jack smirked.

  “A lot. And I’ll sell it for a lot more,” Nate cheerfully shot back.

  “Yeah, but can it go from zero to 199 miles per hour in 2.6 seconds?”

  Nate shook his head, chuckling. “What’s up?”

  Jack peered down at him, his stance wide. “Nothing yet. What’d you do this weekend? I called you Saturday. Thought you might want to hit the new club near Madison Square Park. A bunch of us went.”

  “I went to a launch party.”

  “Oh yeah? With the woman from the press conference? Aurora’s friend?” he asked, his expression intrigued.

  “Yeah. Aurora was there too.”

  “I thought you hated that shit.”

  Nate shrugged. “Kennedy asked me to go.”

  For a beat Jack simply stared at him, his gaze assessing. “You must really like her. Kennedy.”

  “Yeah, what’s not to like?”

  Beautiful. Check.

  Smart. Check.

  Kind and caring. Check.

  Body. Smoking.

  Sex. Hot.

  So hot. He hadn’t wanted her to leave when she’d stretched out naked on his bed and told him she had to go home. It had been two in the afternoon the following day. They’d spent the morning in bed, their hunger for each other indefatigable. An entire day in bed with her wouldn’t have been enough. Sadly, he hadn’t gotten that, and had reluctantly driven her back to her apartment late that afternoon. But this time he’d left her limp and dewy-eyed at her door after a searing goodbye kiss. Things were definitely looking up.

  “Not much. She sure isn’t afraid to speak her mind. But I got the impression you and her were for show. You know, because of the lawsuit. I mean, you just got back, and the day after the press conference—” Jack snapped his finger “—bam! You’re going out, and you did say she was doing you a favor.”

  “She was. But it’s more than that now.”

  “Obviously. You sleeping with her?”

  Nate narrowed his eyes at him. “What’s with the third degree?”

  Who he dated, the women he slept with, had never been a secret between them, but whatever was going on between him and Kennedy was...theirs. He didn’t want to open it up to critical scrutiny, and those were the vibes Jack was putting out. The operative word being critical.

  “Hey, you know me. I’m good with whatever you want. I’m curious, that’s all.” When his cell phone began to ring, he paused and silenced it. “So when am I going to get an introduction?”

  “I thought you met her.” Nate had seen him standing next to her during the press conference.

  “She said she was a friend of your family. I sure as shit didn’t know you were going to start seeing her.”

  “What does that matter?”

  “What, you don’t want to introduce her to me?” Jack sounded irked.

  Nate tried to remember when his friend had ever been this interested in one of his girlfriends. Oh, he remembered now. Never. “Okay, spit it out. If you have something to say, just say it.”

  “I’m just looking out for you. Looking out for the company.”

  “What does the company have to do with Kennedy?”

  Jack met his gaze. “Trevor Markham.”

  “Who? The lawyer? What about him?” Nate wished he’d hurry up and get to the point.

  “I told you I was looking into him since he seems to be the sticking point when it comes to arbitration. Just wanted to know what I could find out about him. What makes him tick and so on...and that’s when I discovered his connection to your—to Kennedy.”

  Nate shook his head because none of what his friend was saying made sense. “What do you mean his connection to Kennedy?”

  Jack absently scratched the back of his neck. “From what I was able to find out, it looks like they dated. I’m not sure how long, but it was before he started working for Goldberg & Johnson.”