Off Limits / Ruled - Anne Marsh Mills & Boon Dare

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gritted teeth, sweat sheening my brow.

      My eyes are shut, so I don’t see him dip his head forward. It is a surprise when his mouth clamps over my breast, his teeth biting down on my nipple through the silky fabric of my dress.

      My stomach lurches as he drags his teeth along my nipple, pulling, making me throb with pleasure. And his finger pushes deeper, then draws out. My own wetness glides across my clit as he thumbs my nerves, and I am lost. Exploded. Gone.

      Heat shoots through me, bursting me apart, and I am panting loud and hard as he moves his head to the other breast.

      Shit. It’s too much. My muscles are clenching and my legs are hardly able to hold me up. I have had amazing sex, but something about this has blown all my experiences out of the water. Is it the illicitness of being with my boss?

      My boss.

      Jack Grant.

      I groan in awareness of a moment I will undoubtedly regret, and then I groan at my weakness because I can’t stop. There is a compulsion—no. An awakening. It is an acceptance of a truth I have fought too hard and for too long.

      Two years of looks, laughs, infuriating arguments and differences of opinion have been leading to this. Two years of finding him in bed and fantasising about climbing in with him. I have resisted because he is my boss and I love my job—and because he’s Jack-bloody-Grant. I have resisted acting on my deepest desires, but now I find it is impossible not to welcome his.

      His hand drops to my side. His fingers dig into my flesh just enough to make me arch my back forward, but his hips rock me against the wall, crushing me with strength and passion. Hell, he’s good at this. So, so good. So much better than I imagined.

      And I’ve imagined a lot.

      I whimper—a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made in my life—as he brings his mouth back to mine, but the ghost of his kiss lingers on my breasts, making them painfully sensitised.

      ‘Now do you think women complain after they leave me?’ he asks, and he is stepping away, backwards, his eyes glinting in his handsome face as he stares at me with a confusing lack of passion.

      There is colour in his cheeks and his chest is shifting hard, as is mine, with the pain of laboured breath. But his voice is steady and his eyes are cold.

      His question doesn’t make sense. I lift a finger to my breasts. They’re tingling and swollen. I stare at him, unusually slow on the uptake.

      ‘I give them what they want. What you want.’

      And he turns sharply, stalking across the room and grabbing another drink. His back is to me as he throws back the glass and swallows, but I hardly register the movement. Shock is seeping into me. Shock at what we’ve just done.

      Holy hell!

      Was he proving a point? I am trembling, moistness slicks my underwear, my dress bears the marks of his kiss, my mind is tumbled—and he is nothing?

      Feminine pique stirs in my gut. I fantasise about slipping the dress from my body and storming across the room. About pushing him to the floor and straddling him, making him admit he wants me.

      I know he does. I felt the proof of his desire hard against my stomach. But sanity is returning, and with it the realisation that we have done something very, very stupid. There is no turning back. No unwinding time. I need to salvage my pride and get the hell out of his office before I do something really stupid. Like ask him to finish the job he started.

      ‘I’ll email you a full report on the server’s feasibility tomorrow.’ My words are pleasingly stiff.

      He grunts. ‘There she is. My cold-as-ice assistant.’

      I straighten my back. I have never been his assistant and he knows it. He’s goading me. Spoiling for another fight?

      I narrow my eyes. ‘Oh, I’m not cold,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’m very, very turned on.’

      Perhaps my honesty surprises him. He turns his face, angling it towards me without actually looking in my direction.

      ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and...blow off some steam.’

      I walk out of there calmly, even though I am awash with doubt. Let him make of that what he will. If he imagines me going to Wolf... So what? If he imagines me going home to masturbate, looking at a picture of him, then let him.

      I don’t know if I give a shit.

      It is cold when I emerge from The Mansion, and drizzling with rain.

      One of the decisions I made within six months of coming to work for Jack was to move to Hampstead, where he lives. The hours I work, I don’t want to lose any more to a lengthy commute.

      The Mansion is at the end of a long lane that comes out near the Heath, and just around the corner from a happy little school is my townhouse. A Dickensian brick with a shining red door and window boxes that have been sorely neglected over the summer. I should have planted them with pansies and strawberries, as they were when I first moved in, but I’ve never got around to it.

      I shoulder the door inwards and slam it closed behind me with true relief.

      But then I make the mistake of shutting my eyes and there he is. Jack Grant...head bent forward...mouth moving over my breast. I curse darkly—a string of angry words that would have knocked my mother sideways if she thought I even knew such language—and stride to the mirror in my entrance way.

      My breasts are covered by two dark, wet marks. I lift my fingers to them and trace their outline, shuddering at remembered sensations, desperate for more. More of him. More of this.

      I groan loudly and stomp through to the kitchen.

      What the hell just happened? He’s my boss. My boss! And I know what he’s like. I know how messed up he is. For two years I have kept all this swirling desire at bay. Why couldn’t I control it tonight?

      I pour myself a glass of wine in the hope that it will somehow reach back through time and wipe the experience not only from my memory but also from existence. It doesn’t. Each sip reminds me of him, and the faint overtone of alcohol hits the back of my throat, making me crave him.

      This is not good.

      I walk more slowly through the house, up the narrow stairs—two flights. The house is tall and skinny, with one or two rooms on each of its five storeys. My office is on the first floor; my bedroom and bathroom are on the next. There are three bedrooms on the next few levels, and a roof terrace right at the top. I love it, but I am not here nearly enough.

      I kick my shoes off, then flick the light on with the base of my wineglass, narrowly avoiding spilling Pinot Noir on the beige carpet. I pad over the carpet and strip off the dress as I go. I’ll give it to charity as soon as I can.

      In just my still-damp underpants, I climb into bed and pull the duvet up to my chin. Wineglass in hand, I stare at the wall.

      It’s not that bad, is it?

      People must do this kind of thing all the time. We work together. Hell, we practically live together. Something like this was kind of inevitable.

      I cringe.

      It’s so not okay. Wasn’t I just congratulating myself a few days ago on the Very Important Lessons I’ve learned from watching female bosses get derided and demoted over the years? Surely the cardinal sin for any woman in the workplace is to get involved with a colleague? And definitely not a senior, super-rich, super-yummy, fuck-around kind of colleague.

      Ugh!

      There are only a handful of us that work at The Mansion. Jack’s two assistants, his driver, a bodyguard and me. We are all bound by a strict notion of confidentiality, and I think most of his staff are too afraid of me to get on my bad side anyway. So it’s not gossip I fear.

      It’s Jack. And it’s me. It’s the respect I suspect I have sacrificed by letting this happen.

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