Hired: A Bride for the Boss: The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride / The Corporate Marriage Campaign / The Boss's Urgent Proposal

Her stomach felt weirdly hollow as her eyes skated down his magnificent, male physique and fastened on the sexual equipment which was certainly primed for action. With her this time. Forget the women he’d had in the past, she fiercely told herself. She had put him in this high state of arousal and despite common sense cautioning her to keep everything light, a primitive sense of possessiveness was clawing through her, wanting to take and hold and forge an inseparable connection with Jake Devila.

Her man.

For tonight, anyway.

Though maybe it would stretch into months.

And what then?

Stop thinking about that.

Just take what you can…what’s on offer right now… reach out and take it…

‘Merlina…?’

He was asking her to. She could hear it in his voice, asking why she wasn’t touching, wasn’t tasting. But she couldn’t make herself do it. Her hands were clenching and unclenching at her sides instead of moving forward. It wasn’t a game. Not for her, it wasn’t. She couldn’t play it as though it was.

‘Don’t be frightened of me.’

His voice was soft, serious, tapping at the truth. Before she could find wits enough to answer, to brush the idea of fear aside, he moved, sliding her dress from her shoulders. It slithered down her arms and dropped to the floor, pooling around her feet. Then his arms were around her again, drawing her into a terribly intimate embrace and she knew she’d gone past the point of no return, and everything within her quivered an acceptance of it.

He rested his forehead against hers and gruffly murmured, ‘It will be all right. I promise you.’

Then her bra was gone and her bare breasts were making contact with his naked chest—a smooth hairless chest that heaved with a swift intake of air, making her acutely aware of its muscled strength and the enticing heat of his taut flesh. He tilted her head back and kissed her slowly, sensuously, not so much seeking to excite but transmitting an assurance that he could and would go gently with her.

The caring implicit in the kiss sent a rush of soothing warmth to her torn heart. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing closer, revelling in the wildly erotic freedom of feeling of her skin against his, the exhilarating vibrancy that shot through her whole body in anticipation of feeling more and more.

His hands glided down the curve of her back and under her pantihose and knickers, his thumbs hooking over their waist-bands, smoothly drawing the flimsy garments past her hips, lower, lower, his fingers curling under her bottom, lifting her into a more flagrant, sexually charged fit with him.

Chaotic excitement broke loose. Her mouth sucked his tongue in hard, instinctively pursuing the blind need to have him deep inside her. He instantly reciprocated, propelling a driving urgency that he suddenly cut off, retreating to tantalising nibbles on her lips.

‘Not yet, not yet,’ he breathed raggedly. ‘Let’s get these off.’

He bent quickly, peeling the last of her clothes down her quivering thighs. His head dropped through the loop of her arms, leaving her hands grabbing onto his shoulders, needing the support as he lifted her feet, one after another, removing her shoes, stripping her completely naked like him. Her body shivered at the sudden loss of his heat. She was light-headed, dizzy.

It was sheer blissful relief when he simply picked her up, cradling her tightly against his chest as he straightened to his full height again, one arm hooked around her thighs, the other supporting her back. Her head nestled happily on his shoulder while he trailed soft kisses over her hair, his mouth moving down to her ear, blowing an erotic waft of warm air into it, making her heart leap and race with excitement.

‘Your bedroom, Merlina…where is it?’ he murmured.

‘Last door at the end of the hall,’ she answered without the slightest hesitation, wanting him to take her there, wanting everything to happen with this man.

Her hands glided over his strongly muscled back as he carried her down the hall. He was so gorgeously male—all of him—and somehow that made her feel more intensely female, stirring the primal instincts no amount of civilisation could retrain. They had broken loose and were zinging through her, exulting in the promise of what was to come.

He opened the door to her bedroom, switched on the light. Yes, she thought wildly, let there be light. She wanted the visual pleasure of seeing him, watching him—Jake Devila, pumped up with desire for her and acting on it, intent on sweeping her along with him.

He laid her on the scarlet silk doona she had brought back from China—a tourist trip she had taken after leaving her last job. Buying the doona had been total self-indulgence but she’d loved it on sight, the brilliant scarlet printed so exotically with graceful sprays of flowers and pagodas and Chinese ladies in traditional dress, carrying pretty shade umbrellas and walking over curved bridges which invariably featured in the Chinese gardens the tour group had visited. She’d bought the matching pillow slips, as well, unable to resist the complete set.

Having it—using it—had been a private pleasure, yet now as Jake stood back, his gaze travelling slowly over the vision she made with the scarlet silk spread underneath her, she was glad to have surprised him with something extraordinary, elated that he looked at her as though she was the perfect centrepiece for such sensuous splendour. But she didn’t want him standing apart from her.

Acting instinctively to draw him to her, she slithered her body over the silk, stretching out invitingly, seductively, taking a feline satisfaction in feeling it against her skin, though it was Jake’s skin she wanted to feel most, moving against hers. Her eyes passionately burned their own message at him—Come to me…me…

* * *

Jake was momentarily stunned. The sight of a woman on a bed had never before checked the need which was still rampaging through him, but Merlina…the glorious beauty of her had made him pause. The soft, voluptuous curves were all woman. As a woman was meant to be, he thought, the images of art masterpieces running through his mind, wonderful nudes posed in opulent settings. Her lovely smooth skin gleamed like satin. Satin against silk. Red silk. So incredibly sexy. Like a fantasy. Though the marvellous female mystique would have been heightened if only…

‘Mad…stupid…’ he muttered, shaking his head over the blind error in judgement he’d made. ‘Why didn’t I see?’

The compulsive yearning in Merlina’s heart skipped into panicky bewilderment. ‘See what?’ spilled straight off her tongue, the need to know how he was thinking jerking through her mind.

‘I was so wrong. Long hair was right for you. It should be cascading all over these pillows.’ He stretched out on the bed beside her, propping himself up on one elbow as he softly raked the shorter spill of her layered hair back behind her ear. ‘Forgive me for being an arrogant fool.’

A tidal wave of relief.

Plus the unexpected burst of humility from Jake shook the playboy wall she had built around him. It made him more human, more accessible as a person. ‘You didn’t know me, Jake,’ she said, hoping, fiercely willing him to take that step, making her different—uniquely different—to all the other women he’d taken to bed. She so desperately wanted to be the special one…the one he’d love…the one he’d marry…

His eyes searched hers with deeply probing intensity, feeding the hope, making it swell until it bubbled through her mind like champagne. ‘Who is this woman I see now?’ he murmured, his voice gruff with emotions he wasn’t expressing but they certainly suggested more than a passing lust for her. ‘What else have you kept hidden from me, Merlina?’

Happiness gushed through her like a fountain bursting into brilliant play. She lifted one arm up around his neck and ran her hand into his hair, revelling in touching him, feeling him, wanting to wind her fingers through the thick waves and into his mind, touch him there, as well, touch him deeply.

‘Nothing that wasn’t there for you to find if you’d been truly interested in looking,’ she said softly, her eyes—the windows to her soul—wide-open to him. ‘You put the image you wanted between us, Jake.’

‘I don’t want that image back,’ he declared emphatically. ‘I want the real you.’

Did he see the joy erupting in her soul—the joy she couldn’t contain? ‘I’m here,’ she said simply, offering herself up to be loved.

A smile of sheer devilment broke across his face and his eyes were suddenly steaming with plans he intended to execute with maximum impact in mind. ‘Yes,’ he said with relish. ‘Here with me. Let’s make that in every sense there is.’

Did he really mean every sense or was he only talking in the sexual sense? For a moment Merlina felt a little flicker of disappointment. She’d opened a door to him and it seemed he was side-stepping, but she had no time to think about it. He kissed her, instantly drawing her back into a world of vibrant sensation, bombarding her with such intense excitement it was impossible not to give herself up to it.

He kissed the pulse at the base of her throat, heating her entire bloodstream. He kissed her breasts, his tongue swirling around her nipples, lashing them into peaks of hard need, then sucking them into his mouth, making a wildly erotic feast of taste and titillation that drove her into offering them up for more of it, her own hands sliding under and lifting the soft flesh, wantonly aiding and abetting the exquisite ravishment, totally enthralled by it.

But he didn’t stay there. He moved lower, sweeping kisses over her stomach, teasing her navel with his tongue, grazing his mouth over the erogenous zones under her hip-bones, causing her skin to twitch with pleasure, his hands caressing her legs apart, long, shiver-inducing, purposeful caresses on her inner thighs, and the tension of becoming more and more intimately exposed to him had every nerve and muscle in her body poised on a very fine edge in anticipation of being touched there, and taken to even more extremes of feeling.

Her stomach was contracting. Her heart was drumming in her ears. Her breathing was reduced to quick panting, her mind seized with the waiting, the knowing it would come, focussed totally on how it would be, her eyes shut tight, instinctively closing out everything else so that her entire being was tuned to this inner world of Jake’s making.

She felt his fingers slide slowly between the folds of her sex, seeking the source of the moist heat that surely told him how wildly aroused she was. They circled the highly sensitive opening while his thumb laid bare her clitoris, caressing it into a stiff pulsing peak, which he then covered with his mouth, licking, sucking, making her body arch with almost torturous tension.

She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t…

Her hands scrambled into his hair, tugging, begging an end to it. Her inner muscles were convulsing, her nerves screaming, yet she cried out at the loss of the strangely sweet torment as he released her from it, lifting himself up to position himself for the plunge into ultimate intimacy.

Her hands kneaded his back muscles in desperate wanting. Her legs curled around his taut buttocks, her feet urging him to a fast entry. The need was so compelling, nothing else existed for her. She hated the enforced pause for him to slide on a condom, savagely wished there’d been no need for it. But it was sheer bliss when he came into her, filling the aching void. The relief of it sent ripples of pleasure through her entire body. She felt herself pulsing around him, melting, and the glorious heavenliness of it put an ecstatic smile on her face.

‘Don’t hide from me, Merlina. Open your eyes.’

He was deep inside her, beautifully wonderfully deep. It was difficult to tear her concentration away from how it felt, yet Jake was giving her this pleasure. It wasn’t fair to keep it to herself. She opened her eyes, not even thinking of what she might see in his.

‘You’re smiling,’ he said, smiling right back at her, happy that she was happy with him.

‘Feels good,’ she said, only just stopping herself from blurting out that she loved the sense of having him like this.

‘Only good?’ he quizzed, his smile tilting into a teasing quirk.

‘Great?’ she offered, wishing he wasn’t asking for a rating of his performance. It smacked of playboy games and this was no game to her. She wanted to think this was more than just sex for him—an important connection that was being heightened, deepened by the physical union.

‘Great is good but—’ the joyous twinkles in his eyes fused into a look of burning purpose ‘—I aim to improve on that.’

His mouth claimed hers in a kiss of driving passion, his tongue invading strongly, then matching the plunging rhythm of his body, reinforcing his possession, doubling the intense intimacy. Merlina was swamped with wave after wave of incredible sensation, taking her to the crest of climax and spilling her into it, over and over again.

Her arms and legs were suffused with a weird weakness. She couldn’t hold on. Jake slid an arm under her to keep her with him, keep the momentum going. It was awesome, fantastic, the constant chaotic roll to pinnacles of creamy pleasure. If this was just sex she didn’t care. She’d take this blissful ride with Jake wherever it went.

She couldn’t imagine anything more exciting, but there was. His body tension seemed to explode into a much faster pumping, and she knew his control had been stretched to the limit. Somehow the sense that he was losing it—in her—was wildly exhilarating, and when she felt the spasms of his release, a huge swell of satisfaction triggered a very primal possessiveness. Jake…hers…and her own inner muscles suddenly leapt into squeezing tightly, holding him there.

He carried her with him as he rolled onto his side, still maintaining their union with a gentle rocking, one of her legs lying between his, the other loosely hooked over his thigh. Breath whooshed out of his lungs and he scooped in more before moving his mouth over hers in sensual little kisses.

‘Tell me it was right for you,’ he murmured against her lips.

Right? The question rolled around her dazed mind. It didn’t matter any more whether it was right or not. ‘Yes,’ she said on a contented sigh. It was the truth, no problem at all for her to say it and if Jake wanted to hear it…right at this moment she wanted whatever Jake wanted.

He moved his head back onto the pillow and smiled at her, his dimples deepening, warm pleasure dancing in his eyes. ‘You see? You had to be with me, Merlina.’

‘Yes,’ she said, not even caring if this was only about winning for Jake.

‘Stay right here!’ He dropped a kiss on her forehead as he slowly disentangled himself. ‘Got to go to the bathroom. Where is it?’

‘First door along the hall.’

‘Be back in a minute.’

Getting rid of the condom. He’d kept his promise about protection. Even so, she would feel safer taking a contraceptive pill if they were to have an ongoing relationship.

The back view of Jake as he strode away was just as awesome as the rest of him—a perfectly proportioned male physique. Surely every woman he’d ever been with had wanted to hold on to him. She was no different. She could only hope she was different in Jake’s mind—a woman he wanted to hold on to.

He moved into the hall, out of sight. She heard the bathroom door being opened. A few moments later the sound of another door being opened made her wonder why he was checking out the guest bedroom.

‘Merlina?’

She jack-knifed up from the pillows, shock pumping through her heart.

That was not Jake’s voice calling out her name.

It was her father’s!

CHAPTER TEN

MERLINA bolted out of bed. She was stark naked. And so was Jake in the bathroom! Their clothes were on the living-room floor. Any second now her father would see them and…a string of loud Italian curses told her he had.

‘Merlina, get out here this minute!’ came the thunderous command.

‘Coming, Papa!’ she yelled back, frantically hoping Jake would hear and understand the warning to stay in the bathroom and let her handle her father.

Almost sick with panic, she raced to her clothes cupboard, grabbed her silk dressing-gown off its hanger and put it on as fast as she could. Her hairbrush was in one of the bags Jake had carried in so the best she could do was a finger-comb. It was impossible to make herself look respectable, anyway. Her father was probably still staring at the evidence that she wasn’t.

Why, oh, why hadn’t he rung the doorbell instead of appropriating the spare key and letting himself in? She would have had time to hide the discarded clothes, time to…but there was no time!

On the dubious principle that attack was the best form of defence, she fronted up to him in the living-room and asked, ‘What are you doing here, Papa?’

‘What am I doing here?’ he repeated incredulously. He threw his hands up in the air in his usual histrionic fashion. His thick, wavy, grey hair was tossed back. The black eyebrows rose, mocking the question. His hawkish nose sniffed the air in battle-readiness. His barrel chest was all puffed out and his teeth—very white against a face darkly weathered by working outside in the vineyard—gnashed before biting out the words again. ‘What am I doing here?’

He was starting to sound like a Greek chorus but Merlina knew this was venting in the Italian style, building up to the storm where hail stones would rain on her head.

‘You don’t usually drop in without warning,’ she slid in quickly.

‘How can I warn you when you do not answer your telephone?’ His dark eyes flashed furious accusation as he wildly gesticulated to punctuate every point he made. ‘Not on Saturday. Not on Sunday. Not today. And when we ring your workplace we are told you are not employed there any more. Told by a stranger. No news of this from our daughter.’

‘I would have got around to telling you,’ she excused, shrugging off the necessity for instant communication about everything—her family’s favourite pastime. ‘Why were you calling me? Is something wrong at home?’

‘And look where this precious independence of yours has got you!’ he lashed out with a sweeping gesture of disgust at the clothes on the floor.

Merlina unclenched her jaw, took a deep breath and persisted with her question. ‘What’s happened? What’s brought you here? Is Mamma okay?’

‘No, your mother is not okay,’ he retorted fiercely. ‘She is worried sick about you. All day she is saying, something bad has happened to Merlina. I feel it here.’ He slammed his hand over his heart, play-acting her mother’s distress. ‘I cannot bear it, Angelo, she says. You must fly to Sydney, find her. And what do I find? What do I find?’ His arms flew up in outrage again. ‘My daughter—’ his eyes raked down her red silk dressing-gown ‘—a scarlet woman!’

Merlina couldn’t help rolling her eyes. He’d have her painted as a prostitute next. Banned from his household forever. The modern world and her father had no meeting ground. The big problem was…she didn’t want to lose her family. Somehow she had to fight this, but how?

‘You’ve got that wrong, Mr Rossi,’ came the calm statement from behind her.

Jake!

She spun around.

He was coming down the hall, a white bath-towel tucked around his waist, but the rest of him still flagrantly naked. Didn’t he realise that his appearance would enflame her father’s rage? Her heart pitter-pattered in a frenzy of fear over what might happen next.

‘So! You’ve come out of hiding,’ her father jeered contemptuously, drawing himself up to match Jake’s height and look down his Roman nose at him.

‘I wasn’t hiding,’ Jake corrected him. ‘I’d gone to the bathroom and I couldn’t help overhearing what was going on out here. Seemed to me I should step in.’ He curved his arm around her shoulders in a protective hug. ‘I won’t have Merlina abused, Mr Rossi.’

Her father glared at him. ‘It is you who has abused my daughter, stripping her of her virtue.’

‘Papa, please—’

Her plea for some temperance was cut off, her attempt only serving to bring her father’s wrath down on her again. ‘Who is this man? Did I not teach you to save your virginity for your husband?’

‘My name is Jake Devila…’

‘Devila?’ Enlightenment struck. ‘Is that not the name of your employer, Merlina?’

‘I don’t work for him any more, Papa.’

‘What? He sacked you from your job because you let him seduce you into going to bed with him?’

‘No, Papa…’

He ignored her denial, attacking Jake again. ‘You are a man without honour. Using your position of power over my daughter to turn her mind.’

‘He didn’t,’ Merlina cried. She’d simply given her mind a rest and followed her heart for once.

Her father’s finger went up in victorious argument. ‘He forced you to have your hair cut. And Sylvana told us he insisted you wear immodest clothes to work.’

‘There were good reasons for that,’ Merlina almost shouted in her urgent need to be heard. Sylvana’s big mouth should have been zippered at birth!

‘No. Your father is right,’ Jake chimed in. ‘I was flexing my power.’

Merlina closed her eyes in despair. What was Jake playing at now? He had no idea what her father was like and he was ruining any chance of smoothing over the situation. If, indeed, there was any chance.

‘At that point in time, I didn’t appreciate that Merlina was perfect the way she was,’ he ran on in a quietly diplomatic tone. ‘I wanted to fit her into an image that suited my business. I’m sorry that you found my influence so offensive. It wasn’t meant to be.’

‘You’re sorry?’ her father squawked. ‘Does that give me back the daughter you have ruined for any good husband?’

The arm around her shoulders tightened its hug as Jake picked up her left hand and startled her by holding it out for her father to see the ring that Byron had put on her third finger and which was still there, sparkling its solitaire diamond brilliance. She’d forgotten about it. Byron had dropped right out of her mind. And for Jake to bring up her engagement to his grandfather now seemed utter madness.

‘I was hoping you would accept me as her husband, Mr Rossi.’

What?

Merlina’s body froze into suspended animation while her mind spun in wild circles. She feverishly wished Jake had just spoken the truth. But he might not mean it. He was trying to get her out of trouble. Trouble that he’d made for her. Though not entirely. She had been a willing party. But if he hadn’t come after her, brought her home, she’d still be the good girl her father wished her to be, and which she had been on the whole, within her own sense of right and wrong.

No doubt Jake was thinking they could break the pseudo-engagement at a later date. It was Byron’s ring, not his, but her father didn’t know that. His eyes were goggling at the diamond. Hopefully its magnificence was blinding him to her fall from grace.

‘You are engaged to be married?’ His wrath had been considerably appeased by the ring but a frown of disapproval was still aimed at Merlina. ‘Why did you not tell him he should ask me for your hand first? Why have you not brought him to meet the family?’

Her mind boggled over the thought of Jake with her family. They’d eat him alive. He could put on a fine act for her father tonight but her family en masse was another kettle of fish. ‘I, er, this has all been very sudden, Papa.’

‘Please accept my apology, Mr Rossi,’ Jake smoothly appealed. ‘With my own parents divorced when I was a child, I didn’t appreciate that traditional courtesies would be expected. I surprised Merlina with the ring tonight. We hadn’t talked about marriage before. Of course, we know each other very well from having worked closely together for almost two years, but it was only after Merlina resigned, that I’ve pursued her in a personal sense.’