LITMIR.BIZ

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good at it.

      Around midnight, she and Jason ended up together at the drinks table. Couples were out on the floor dancing to a lazy, romantic melody.

      “Care to dance?” she asked with a grin.

      He shook his head.

      She wasn’t really surprised. He’d danced with several other women during the evening, including an elderly woman who came to the party alone. But he never danced with Gracie these days, no matter how hard she worked at convincing him to.

      She frowned. “You dance with other people.”

      He glanced down at her. “I’m not dancing with you.”

      She felt unsettled by the refusal. She didn’t understand why he was this way. She might be clumsy, but she did all right on the dance floor. She picked up a champagne flute and filled it.

      “Don’t get your feelings hurt,” he said curtly. “I have reasons. Good ones. I just can’t discuss them.”

      She moved her shoulder. “No problem,” she said, putting on her party smile.

      He turned to face her, his jaw taut. His black eyes were oddly glittery as they met her wounded gray ones. “You look, but you don’t see, Gracie,” he said curtly.

      She stared up at him miserably. “I don’t understand.”

      He sighed. “That’s an understatement,” he said under his breath.

      She sipped champagne. One of his lean, beautiful hands came up and took the flute from her fingers. He lifted it to his mouth, sipping the sparkling amber liquid from the exact spot her lips had touched, and he looked straight into her eyes while he did it.

      The act was deliberate, sensual, provocative. Gracie’s lips parted on a rush of breath while he held her eyes in a bond she couldn’t break. She felt an explosion of sensation so intense that it left her speechless.

      “Shocked, Gracie?” he wondered as he handed the flute back to her.

      “I…don’t know.”

      His fingers came up and traced a line from her flushed cheek to the corner of her lips. He stared at them intently. “You closed the account.”

      “What…account?”

      “The computer account. They’re in, thanks to you. I didn’t even have to introduce them to the soccer players.” His fingers trailed over her soft mouth. “Amazing, that gift you have for putting people at ease, making them feel as if they belong.”

      “A gift,” she whispered, not really hearing him. What he was doing to her mouth was very erotic. She moved closer.

      His head bent, so that what he was saying couldn’t be overheard. Her response to him was electrifying. He was on fire.

      “Gracie,” he whispered, bending closer, “I can hear your heart beating.”

      “Can…you?” Her eyes were on his firm, sensual mouth.

      His lips parted as they hovered just above her own. His tall body corded at the enticement she presented, her hands going to his shirtfront and pressing there. His heart began to race. “What are you going to do if I bend an inch more, and put my mouth right over your lips?” he asked in a rough, sensual tone.

      She wasn’t hearing him. She couldn’t hear anything. She could only see his mouth, filling her mind with images so sensual and sweet that her legs began to wobble under her. Her fingers contracted on his shirt. She felt thick hair and muscle under the crisp, clean fabric.

      “I could bend you back over my arm and hold you so close that you couldn’t breathe unless I did,” he whispered gruffly. “Kiss you so hard that your mouth would be swollen from the intensity of it!”

      She was on tiptoe, feeling the muscles clench even through the fine cloth of his dinner jacket as her small breasts pressed hard into his chest. Her mouth was lifted, pleading. She felt tight, hot, achy all over. She was trembling. She knew that he could see, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except that she wanted him to come closer, to kiss her until she felt on fire, until the sharp ache he was arousing was satisfied, until the backbreaking tension stopped racking her slender body…

      “Jason,” she choked, tightening her grip on his shoulders.

      “Hey, Jason,” came an exuberant voice from behind him, “could you explain to Ted here how that new computer software works? He wants to get in on our deal with those California techies you’re trying to assimilate.”

      Jason stood erect, looking as if he’d been shot. He had to work, to control himself before he turned abruptly away from Gracie, to the businessman standing behind him, nursing a whiskey highball.

      “Let’s find the inventors and get them to tell him,” Jason said, forcing a smile. “Come on.”

      He didn’t look at Gracie. The businessman did, frowning at her odd expression, but he was feeling the liquor and passed off the little tête-à-tête he’d just witnessed as an aberration brought on by whiskey. Jason wasn’t likely to be kissing his stepsister in public, after all!

      Chapter Three

      JASON SEEMED AS RELIEVED as Gracie that they weren’t thrown together again. He didn’t seek her out or even look her way for the rest of the evening. He did say goodnight to her after the guests left, but in a curt and perfunctory way, as if the interlude earlier had embarrassed him. It had seemed like a deliberate attempt at seduction earlier, but it was beginning to feel more like an unwanted loss of control. He’d spoken to her in a way that changed their relationship. Perhaps he’d had one highball too many and was now counting his regrets, she thought.

      But Jason never drank whiskey. He drank white wines or champagne, and precious little even of that. When he’d been close to her, she didn’t recall smelling any liquor on his breath at all. So Gracie didn’t know what to think. She was mortified that she’d given away her helpless attraction to him, something she’d never wanted him to see. It would be like making promises she couldn’t keep. But it was Jason’s behavior that unsettled her.

      She went up to her bedroom and actually locked the door. She was still reeling from the shock Jason had given her before they were interrupted; not from his actions, but from her own response to them.

      She had…wanted him. Actually wanted him. It was the first time in her adult life that she’d felt physical desire. She’d thought for a long time that she was simply undersexed, that she didn’t feel desire at all. Now her body was awake and she was in anguish at the things she’d just learned about herself. She wasn’t impervious to men. Not anymore. She was vulnerable. And Jason knew it.

      Her mother’s warnings echoed in her tired mind as she put on a long cotton gown and climbed into her canopied bed, huddling under the spotless white covers and hand-embroidered sheets. She stared at the canopy fabric over her head in the light of her bedside lamp, trembling from the impact of Jason’s soft teasing. She knew that she’d never be able to forget that hunger in his eyes, in his touch. He was a stranger in this respect, a man she didn’t know at all. Had he meant to go that far? Or had he really lost control of himself? It wasn’t like him to be so forward with any woman in public, least of all Gracie.

      It was becoming clear why beautiful women hung around him like satellites. It wasn’t his money at all. It was the man, the sensuous, tender man, who drew their attention. Gracie was curious about his changed attitude to her. She was also curious about why he’d refused to dance with her. It hadn’t been the first time. For over two years, now, he’d avoided any close physical contact with her. What had happened to change that, in the space of a day?

      No, she thought. No, it wasn’t just today. He’d been different when they went to the cattle auction, too. It was the way he looked at her. It was almost predatory. He was like a big cat straining at the leash. If he broke it, what would he be like? A small part of her ached to find out. But the bigger part was afraid, even

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