Becoming The Boss

Crap. ‘No.’ Not at the time. ‘Are you staying?’

‘Possibly.’

Dammit. This was getting too close for comfort. ‘I think you could do with more time off,’ he said. ‘Take a holiday.’

Suspicion narrowed her glare. ‘Is that right?’

‘Sure. How about a nice sojourn round the Caribbean? All that sun, sea and sex would do you good. Loosen you up a little.’

She raised one delicate dark brow. ‘Why, Finn, I didn’t know you cared.’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’

‘Funny, I was just thinking the exact same thing.’

Now he remembered why he couldn’t stand the woman. ‘Anyway, I was saying. A holiday is just what you need.’

‘Are you saying I don’t look so good?’

‘Well, now you come to mention it you are a little on the thin side.’ True, most women would consider that a compliment, but Miss Scott wasn’t like other women.

As predicted, she prickled like a porcupine. But at least she wasn’t musing about funerals and swimming any more.

‘Trading insults, Finn? I wouldn’t advise it. You’ve buried yourself in so much dirt over the years I’ll always come out on top.’

A growl ripped up his throat. ‘Mmm… You on top. Now, that is something I would love to see,’ he said, sending his voice into a silken lazy caress, frankly astonished at how much effort he was expending to keep this up. For the first time in history one of their sparring sessions was stealing great chunks of his sanity.

‘Liar. Furthermore, I’m not one of your fans or bits of fluff, so do me a favour and keep those blues above neck level. If you’re trying to intimidate me you’ll have to do a better job than feigning interest and eying me up.’

‘But it’s so much fun watching you prickle.’

‘Some of us have a deeper meaning in life than having fun, and fickle playboys don’t bring out the best in me.’

‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that.’

Fired up, she was a whole lot of beautiful. Which he supposed was why he’d always tumbled into the thrust and parry of verbal swords with her. Sparks truly did fly when he was duelling with Miss Scott.

Now she was breathing in short, aggravated bursts, her breasts pushing against her rumpled T, and his fingers itched to climb beneath the hem. She’d be sooo lusciously soft, one hundred per cent organic and berry-like delicious against his tongue as he sucked her nipple between his lips…

Heat scrambled up his legs, heading straight for his groin… Until she crossed her arms over her chest, jerking his attention to the red blotches that marred her delicate wrist.

‘What are those marks?’ Closing the gap, he leaned in for a better look. ‘What is that?’

‘That is a gift from your security detail, keeping the hordes at bay.’

Hordes at bay? ‘Let me see.’

‘No!’ Tucking her hands tighter into the creases of her underarms, she regarded him as if he were ten kinds of crazy.

‘Come on. Stop being a girl. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘You know, that’s the first truth you’ve uttered since I got here.’

As he gently tugged her hand free his knuckles brushed over her soft breast. Holy… More heat raced south, pleasure and pain moving through him at full throttle.

Oh, man, the last thing he needed was his first hard-on in almost a year to be for this woman. It was an inconceivable prospect that was swiftly overtaken by the dark bruising marring her wrist, and his insides shook with anger as he remembered the sight and sensation of torn wrists, shredded skin, blood dripping from shackles.

‘Finn?’ she breathed. ‘What are you…?’

With deliberate and infinite care he brushed the backs of his fingers down one side of her forearm and up the other. ‘I…’ I’m sorry he hurt you. I’ll make him pay. I swear it.

‘Finn?’

Tilting her head, she frowned. Cutely. The action softened the often harsh yet no less cataclysmic impact of her beauty.

Seraphina Scott wasn’t pretty in the normal sense of the word. She was no delicate English rose. No, no. She was a wild flower. Tempestuous and striking. Made in technicolour. Hardy, tough. Weathering every storm, only to survive more beautiful than ever before.

And she was clearly waiting for him to expand. Trying to work him out.

Such a small thing, that softening. It made her appear vulnerable. From nowhere more words sped through his brain. I’m sorry…I’m sorry. So very sorry I took Tom away from you. I would do anything. Anything to bring him back.

How he wished he could tell everyone the truth. Let the world know what had truly gone down in Singapore. But with an ongoing investigation and a sense that he’d meet his adversary again one day it was impossible. Business hadn’t been settled. Too many men roamed free. So if there was to be a next time he was going in alone.

As if she knew the direction of his thoughts, she shaped her lips for speech—no doubt to ask more questions he would never answer, couldn’t even bear to hear. Tension throbbed like a living force, so heavy he could taste it, feel the weight of it pressing on his shoulders.

What was it going to take for him to get rid of her? He didn’t want Serena near him. Hell, he felt dangerous at the best of times. Around her he felt positively deadly. The need to charge upstairs and throttle the security guy’s neck roiled inside him, toxic and deadly, and surely he had enough blood on his hands.

Speaking of hands… For some reason he couldn’t let hers go. She was trembling. It couldn’t possibly be him. Finn required a large hit of G-force to feel moved.

Holding her wrist in the cradle of his palm, he reached up with his other hand to touch the wild mass of her hair. Hair the deepest darkest red, reminding him of ripe black cherries.

How long had he resisted the temptation of her? It felt like a thousand years.

Almost there and her eyes caught the movement, flared before she jerked backwards.

‘Finn. Let go of me. Right now.’

Distantly he heard the words, the quiver in her command, and knew they held no heat. Control slipped from his grasp and he fingered the stray lock tumbling over her shoulder.

Pure silk. Hot enough to singe. Fire burning on a dangerous scale.

Ignoring her sharp gasp, he corkscrewed the thick wave and tugged. Hard. Being rough. Too rough. But that was what she did to him. Severed his control. Fed his wildness. Even as the thought of hurting her fisted his heart.

‘Fiiiinn…’ she warned, as her chest rose and fell in rapid, mesmerising waves.

Familiarity rattled her. Always had. After the last time he’d touched her, however innocently, she’d avoided him for four years. Clever girl, she was.

Not once had he seen her embrace her father and he’d never noticed her with a lover. It couldn’t possibly be through lack of interest. Whether they would admit it or not, every guy on every team wanted a piece of her, Jake Morgan in particular carried a huge crush. But they always kept their distance. Prewarned? he wondered. Or did none of them have the courage to take her on?

There was a story there. One he’d pay any price to discover. One he would never know.

And that, he realised, was his answer. Or at least he told himself it was.

The charm he’d been born with, the charismatic beauty he’d wielded like a golden gun since he’d been old enough to deduce the fact that it got him out of many a sticky situation, would be the one thing—the only thing—to drive her away. Back to London. Out of sight. Out of mind. Free from the claws of temptation.

It wasn’t as if he could do any harm. Despite every word that fell from her delectable pout, she felt the same exquisite thrill of attraction he did. Hated it just as much as he did.

Decision made. It was bye-bye, Miss Seraphina Scott.

May the gods forgive him for what he was about to do.

He unleashed his desire and went in for the kill.

Chapter Three

LIKE A RABBIT caught in the headlights, Serena’s heart seized, and her eyes flared as the world’s most beautiful man brushed the back of his knuckles up the curve of her jawline.

Weakness spread through her limbs and she started to shake as if she’d been injected with something deadly. And when he skimmed the super-sensitive skin beneath her ear and sank his fingers into the fall of her hair to anchor her head in place dark spots danced behind her eyes.

‘Don’t you dare,’ she barked. Or at least she intended to. Bizarrely, it came out as more of a panting plea.

‘You should know better than to challenge me, Miss Scott. Especially in that gorgeous husky voice of yours.’

‘Honestly, Finn, will you stop that for just one minute?’

‘What?’

‘The lies.’ She loathed them. Not only did they torment the girl beneath, desperate to believe him, they also whispered of a long-ago web of deceit, a dark betrayal that haunted her soul.

‘I’m not lying, baby,’ he murmured.

The crackle of energy sizzling between them turned sharper—a sense of anticipation much like the coiled silence before the boom of thunder.

Surely he wasn’t going to…? He’d be crazy even to contemplate…

His body came up flush against hers—all hard lines, latent strength and super-hot heat—sending shock waves straight through her. Then his free hand splayed over her waist, swept around the small of her back and tugged her closer still, until every inch of their bodies—her soft curves and his hard-muscled form—were fused together with need and sweat and fire.

Need? No, no, no. Impossible.

‘Wow, you really do have a death wish, don’t you? You’re on a collision course for total bodily destruction here, Finn.’ Bending her knee, she aimed it to jerk upwards into his groin. Or maybe from this angle she could hook her foot around his ankle and send him off balance…

Kiss.

His lips pressed against the corner of her mouth, then brushed across the seam of her lips.

Ohhh, not good—not good at all. Especially when he moaned low in his throat and started to…well, to nuzzle his way over her cheek, then flick the tip of her nose with his to coerce her head back. And whatever had taken over her body answered his every command.

A heated ache bloomed between her legs, and when he nibbled on her lips to prise them apart the electric touch of his tongue was like a shot of high-octane fuel surging through her.

Don’t respond. Don’t you dare kiss him back.

‘No…’ she breathed, hating him. Hating herself even more for wanting. Flailing…

Serena reached up to push him away but ended up grabbing fistfuls of his shirt, holding on for dear life, powerless to sever the warm, moist crush of his mouth against hers as he moved with a consummate and inexorable seductive ease to find the perfect slick fit for their mouths.

Oh, my life. His kiss was slow and lazy, not meant to enflame but to enrapture, and before she knew it she was whirling in the epicentre of the fiercest storm, bringing her own force of nature into play.

She shivered and arched into him. Never had she felt anything like it. That warm, damp place between her legs throbbed together with her heartbeat and she wriggled closer, pushing her breasts into his chest to relieve the heavy, needy ache.

Tender and fiercely intimate, he didn’t take her will, he invited. He didn’t invade her body, he lured. He didn’t punish her for her internal struggle, he tempted and teased with an amorous touch.

The pure sensual pleasure of it all was enthralling, making her feel feminine in a way she’d never dreamed possible. A way no man had made her feel before.

He deepened the kiss—the languorous thrust of his tongue a velvet lash of tormenting pleasure. It poured through her veins, heated her bones and weakened her limbs. It blasted all thought from her head until her most basic sexual instincts screamed for him to be inside her. Instincts she’d never known she possessed…

There were reasons for that, of course. She—

Whether it was the rush of unwanted memories or the gentle touch of his hand deviating on a feral bent to roughly fist and yank at the hem of her T, she wasn’t sure, but—oh, God—he might as well have dunked her in an ice bath.

Emotion was a burning ball at the base of her ribs— embarrassment, humiliation and a heart-rending vulnerability that brought tears to her eyes. No! No tears. But all of it, all at once, was so overpowering that her mind began to shrill.

Flattening her palms, she shoved at his chest. Finn instantly let go and took a large pace backwards, that awesome chest heaving as he held both hands in the air in a show of surrender.

Intelligent guy.

The walls of the hallway began to close in on her as she gulped hot air. ‘What the blazes are you doing?’

Taut silence pulsated off every surface as Finn blinked dazedly and scrubbed his palms down his face, playing the role of slightly rattled, wholly astonished, guiltless gent! He belonged on the stage—he really did.

He gave his head a good shake. ‘Seeing if your lips taste as good as they look.’

‘What?’

He must think her dense. A fool. She was so far removed from his usual entourage she might as well derive from another planet, and for months he’d poked and prodded at her blatant lack of femininity. Now he expected her to believe his impetuous come-on was legitimate?

He was messing with her and she knew it.

And how could she have forgotten Tom? The part this man had played in her brother’s death?

Guilt climbed into her chest and sat behind her ribs like a heavy weight. It crushed her lungs, making her breath shallow, her voice high-pitched. ‘Answer me, Finn! What was that about?’

His lips parting to speak, he faltered yet again.

Why did she feel as if he wanted to tell her something? Something vital. Something she desperately wanted to hear. Nothing but the truth.

Rightly or wrongly—more than the next race, more than his success or the victory of Team Scott Lansing—the promise of that truth was the only thing tempting her to hover in his orbit.

Hold on…

‘Are you trying to get rid of me? Is that your game?’

Wow, it seemed the heights of her humiliation knew no bounds.

Finn blinked several times in rapid succession and with every flutter of those ridiculously gorgeous thick lashes his expression smoothed into unreadable impassivity, until once more she was looking at Lothario.

‘Is it working?’ he drawled.

‘Yes!’

‘Good,’ he said, those legendary dimples winking at her. ‘Then you’ll be pleased to know the door is that way.’

With a swift finger towards said exit, he pushed open a panel to her left. One he strolled through before it closed behind him, leaving her standing there, jaw slack, twitching in temper. The nerve of the man!

Fury grounded her flight instinct.

He wanted rid of her? He could go to the devil! This was her family, her life, and she was staying put. Her team was in trouble because of him and he needed to pay his dues. Not forgetting the fact he was hiding something and she wanted to know exactly what. Maybe then she could start to repair her broken heart and let Tom go. Move on. Find some peace. Remember what it was like to enjoy life—although she often wondered if she ever had.

Two steps forward, she pushed at the panel of what appeared to be a secret doorway. If it hadn’t budged an inch and then rebounded back with a slam she would have thought it locked. Was he leaning on the other side, trying to regulate his breathing like she was? Don’t be a gullible fool, Serena. He’d be grinning like the feckless charmer he was, delighted that he’d got the better of her.

The second time she put all her weight behind the oak, pushed and stumbled into a room, tripping over her feet with as much elegance as a battering ram.

A zillion things hit her at once—mainly gratitude for the fact that her ungainly entrance was witnessed only by Finn’s back as he swaggered towards the bed and the sheer extravagance of the room.

‘Wow.’

Infinite shades of midnight blue, the decor was a pulse-revving epitome of dark sensuality and masculine drama, and about the only thing on this floating bordello that fitted the man himself. As if, after purchasing the mega-yacht, Finn had only stamped ownership on this one room.

‘Did you run out of money before the renovations were complete?’ she asked, tongue in cheek, knowing full well he was one of the highest earning sportsmen in the world.

For a beat he paused at the side of the bed. ‘Let’s just say I decided the yacht didn’t suit. She’s on the market.’

‘Now, that is a shame.’ If he restored the rest of the yacht in the same vein it promised to be spectacular.

‘Do you like my bedroom, Seraphina?’

His voice was a pleasured, suggestive moan as he flung himself atop a gargantuan carved bed covered in black silk sheets and propped his back against a huge mound of textured pillows.

‘I love it,’ she said, unable to hide her awe and trying her hardest to look anywhere but at him. ‘Present company excluded.’

Black wood furniture lined walls of the deepest red, with the spaces in between splashed with priceless evocative art to create a picture of virile potency and sophisticated class. It was visually breathtaking. Until the intimacy of the dim lighting set her right back on edge.

Searching the darkened shadows behind her, she cleared her throat, ‘Lights?’ she said, and hoped she didn’t sound as jittery as she felt.

Bending at the waist, he leaned sideways to press a button on the tall glass nightstand and the opaque ceiling flickered for one, two, three beats of her thundering heart before the night sky shone down upon the room, ablaze with a million twinkling stars.

The sheer magnificence pulled her eyes wide. ‘Seriously?’

He plucked a large red apple from the colourful mound of ripe delicacies toppling from a crystal bowl, then straightened up and raised one of his heart-stopping smiles.

Just like that her unease drifted, melted like a chilled snowflake on a new spring breeze.

Moonlight frosted his body, from the open white linen draping his sides to the wide bronzed strip of naked torso in between, taking his powerful beauty from angelic to supernatural. Otherworldly. Dazzling, magical and utterly surreal.

And she forgot all about not looking at him, suddenly entranced.

He tucked one hand beneath his head, tossed the glistening red fruit up into the air with the other and his honed six-pack flexed and bunched—the sight bringing a mist of perspiration to her skin.

‘So. Come back for more, Miss Scott?’

His sinful rasp shattered the spell he wove so effortlessly and she gave herself a good shake. The man was lethal.

‘I have heard my mouth is highly addictive.’

Serena raised a brow and hoped she looked suitably unimpressed. She had no desire to stroke his ego or any other part of him ever again. ‘Such a…tempting offer, Mr St George, but I think I’ll pass. Your reputation has been highly exaggerated.’

Apple to his lips, he sank his teeth into the crisp flesh with a loud crunch and she dredged the taste of tart flesh from her memory banks, making her mouth water.

‘Ah. Must have been the champagne, then.’

‘What must have been the champagne?’ she murmured, distracted by the rhythmic working of his lean jaw. It truly was not good form to be so sexy even when eating. ‘The champagne, incidentally, that I did not drink.’

‘The weakening of your knees,’ he drawled, with a wicked satisfaction that rolled over her in hot waves before he let loose an irrepressible grin that seared her nerves.

One day… She thought. One day she was going to wipe that smirk off his face once and for all. The thought that today was as good a day as any made her let loose a smile of her very own.

Strangely, he froze mid-bite. As if her smile affected him just as much as his did her. The mere notion that he had the power to make her believe such a thing made her temper spike.

‘Speaking of knees—I’m going to bring you down on yours, pretty boy.’

A curious tension drew the magnificent lines of his body taut, precisely as before, and she racked her brain to figure out the trigger. All she could think was that there was more to this man than met the eye.

In the next instant he relaxed. ‘I do hope that’s a promise, Seraphina. I’d be more than happy to oblige.’

Blowing out a pent-up breath, she deliberated over how long she could ride this roller coaster of emotion with Finn at the helm before she plunged to her doom.

Especially when he licked his lips hungrily and dropped his feral blue eyes to the seam of her jeans, to the zipper leading down to the tight curve of her femininity. From nowhere an image of Finn on his knees before her as she stood bathed in moonlight slammed into her mind’s eye. Oh, God.

Ribbons of heat spun in her veins, moving through her blood in an erotic dance. Her skin was suddenly super-sensitive, and her nipples chafed seductively against the soft fabric of her plain white bra. The shockingly carnal expression on his face made her wonder if he’d visualised the very same.

As if. He’s just trying to distract you again and you’re letting him!

She stiffened her spine and ordered her voice to sweet. ‘Oh, I’m so glad. In that case, let me be the first to tell you the good news.’

Crossing one bare foot over the other, he leaned back with more of the insolence he’d doubtless been born with. ‘Somehow I don’t believe you mean good in the literal sense.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. We could learn a lot from each other, you and I.’

The true meaning of that statement lay between them, gathering momentum with every passing second. It would take time, of course. To get him to talk. To unearth his secrets. To make him crack. Thankfully she had all the time in the world.

Another flash of perfect teeth sinking into white flesh. Another lazy crunch. Another sexy swallow gliding down his throat. ‘I doubt that.’

The lack of innuendo suffused her with pleasure and a heady sense of power. It seemed she was finally getting somewhere.

‘Why don’t you enlighten me, Miss Scott? Your excitement is palpable and I find I can barely stand the suspense.’

She deflected that sarcasm with a breezy flick of her hair off her shoulder. ‘I would love to enlighten you, Mr St. George. Me and you? We’re about to be stuck like glue.’

A shadow of trepidation passed over his face before he cocked an arrogant brow. ‘And the punchline is…?’

Musing that the word babysitter didn’t quite have the right ring to it, she let her impetuous mouth stretch the truth, not really giving a stuff.

‘You’re looking at your new boss.’