IN BED WITH THE BOSS

He pulled open her door for her with more angry strength than the beautifully designed piece of equipment required.

As she carefully maneuvered her high-heeled shoes over the sill of the car, his grim impatience with her transferred to the long fingers he clamped around her arm to help straighten her up. Arriving in front of him with more impulse than was necessary, she ended up almost flattened against him, which shocked her enough into glancing up.

Their eyes clashed-his slightly narrowed and glinting golden warning shots for her to take care what she did or said next, hers sparking with bright defiance which dared him to make one of his cold, cutting comments gauged to knock her back down to size.

But he went for a different kind of attack. He relaxed the corners of his hard, clipped mouth, slid a hand around her exposed nape, then lowered his head and captured her mouth with a hard, hot, plundering kiss!

Astonishment thrilled through Vivian. It was so shockingly unexpected and so shockingly intimate she was unable to do anything but just let him explore the contours of her mouth with a sensual fluency that glued her to the spot.

Knocked completely for speech she staggered dizzily when he lifted his head again. Breathless and shaking and unable to focus on anything, she just stared up at him through a thick misty glaze.

“Different mood, Vivian” he purred down at her like his very own feral cat. “I sincerely hope that Collins is not so adventurous.”

His meaning shocked a gasp from Vivian. As if he felt he deserved her reaction Scott nodded his dark head, then let go of her and turned abruptly to glare at the young man who had approached them without her being aware of it.

“Get the bags out of the boot and give them to my pilot, then take the car back,” he instructed, tossing the keys at the other man.

Still much too stunned to take in the bit about his pilot, Vivian slung a swift glance at whoever it was Scott was talking to, saw it was really Collins and also saw that his eyes were standing out in shock.

Heat poured into her face like a scorching flame. It was bright sunny daylight, and Scott McCall had just kissed her full on her mouth in front of another member of his staff! She couldn’t believe it.

“You-you did that on purpose!” she hissed at him shakenly.

Scott claimed one of her hands and walked her away from the car. “He needed showing where he stands with you.”

“Stands with me?” Vivian gasped out. “I don’t understand this stands with me,” she told him, having to hurry to keep up with his long stride.

“He was the date that stood you up last night.”

“He was not my date!” she lied.

“He was your date,” he insisted. “And I have just made my point.”

“Will you please explain what it is you are talking about?”

Tugging hard on her captured hand she pulled them both to a stubborn standstill in front of a white building with glass entrance doors. Hot, mortified, her kissed lips burning and feeling shockingly pumped up, still she made herself glare up at him.

He looked down at her, as cold and haughty-looking as she had ever seen him. And his lips were not burning! “I saw you talking with him in my foyer the other day at lunch,” Scott confessed. “By the time he comes out of his shock far enough to read the message I’ve just given him, he will understand that you are out of bounds from now on if he wants to keep his job.”

Sent totally, utterly breathless by the ruthless steel trap his mind must be, Vivian could not get another single word out. She twisted her head to look towards the red sports car where, sure enough, Collins was still standing next to it as if in shock.

Her insides shuddered. “You-you set me up for that kiss in front of him,” she whispered, finally beginning to catch on as to why that particular employee of his had been roped in to deal with his car.

“No, Collins did that. Until he put in an appearance I’d decided that merely seeing you going off to spend a weekend with me was going to be enough to put him off thinking he could try coming on to you again. Collins upped the ante.”

Tugging her into motion again he sent the glass doors swinging open and walked them into the building, then kept her anchored to his side as he spoke to a receptionist standing behind the desk. Fizzing with fury Vivian wanted so badly to deny what he’d assumed, but she knew that she could not do that because he had actually guessed right. As for Collins, she had nothing to say to him. He’d stood her up and not even bothered to call and give a damn explanation. He deserved to be ignored.

So she stood simmering beside Scott with her eyes on a level with his wide muscular shoulder, and only began to take notice of her surroundings when she happened to focus through a window and saw the helicopter glinting in the bright sunlight on what looked like a concrete jetty jutting out into the river.

Her fingernails bit tense crescents into Scott’s palm. She had never traveled in a helicopter before, and she was not sure she wanted to travel in one now.

Scott tried not to wince as her fingernails bit into his flesh as he signed the necessary documents and felt alive for the first time in weeks. A fire was burning deep down in his abdomen. He didn’t know how she had managed to do this to him, this black-haired, long-legged, curvy fiery witch, but she did do it to him. If he had been standing in the middle of a wilderness he would be howling now like a mating wolf.

He’d warned Vivian. He’d even warned himself. But it had taken a story about a dog named Dany to set his natural hunting instinct free from the restraints he had placed around them. Turning back to the glass doors he trailed his captive outside again. His new sports car was nowhere to be seen now.

Grimacing at the delight he could imagine its young driver was enjoying-the young fool’s damn consolation prize-Scott turned them towards the jetty on which his helicopter was awaiting them.

Vivian was forced to endure his help as he helped her up the steps into the plush cream leather interior, with the bristling impatience of a man who believed he had the right to hustle her around.

The impression stung like acid through the layers of her skin as she chose a seat on the other side of the cabin and sat down. She refused to look at him as he folded his long frame into the seat farthest away from her. If two people wished to announce they were at war, then their seating choices flagged the battle line.

The door slid shut. Rotor blades began to move. The angry butterflies playing havoc with her insides altered to anxious tingles as she felt the contraption lift off the ground. As her heart dipped alarmingly she watched with wide eyes and, in what felt like only seconds, she found herself staring down at the river which looked like a silver ribbon glinting in the sun.

He did not speak. She did not speak. But she could feel the fierce heat of his mood reaching out towards her across the empty gap. And her lips were still burning so hotly from the kiss she found she just had to try to cool them with the moist tip of her tongue. Her mouth suddenly came alive with the taste of him. Shocked that a kiss could leave such an intimate residue behind, she slammed her tongue against the back of her teeth and refused to let it move again.

“Drink-?”

Vivian forced herself to look at him, only to feel a strange heavy weight descend across her chest. He looked different again-as in dangerously different.

His lounging posture in the corner of the plush leather seat, with his long legs stretched out in front of him, yelled cool, calm arrogance at her, yet his half-narrowed eyes and the glint emitting from them warned of something new lurking around inside him, as if he’d flung on yet another change of mood.

Passion-desire, she named it, without knowing how she recognised either thing. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, his wide sensual mouth. Could he taste her as she could still taste him-?

Vivian shook her head and turned to look at the horizon where the built-up city had begun to thin out and the earth below them was slowly turned into a thousand shades of green as they flew over countryside.

Across the cabin, Scott was talking on his mobile phone. In front of her, hidden behind a bulkhead, some invisible person was flying them to-she knew not where because she had forgotten to ask where they were staying.Belongs to (N)ôvel/Drama.Org.