Bedded By The Boss: The Boss's Demand / Something about the Boss... / Beguiling the Boss

After only a few minutes he stopped the car and climbed out. Sara gingerly opened the door and lowered a foot onto the sandy ground of the dark desert. A match flared and she followed its glow to Elan. He’d opened the trunk and now lit a small fire a few yards from the car.

“What are you using for kindling?”

“Mesquite wood. I keep some in the trunk. The fire will keep animals from joining us for dinner.”

Okay.

He spread a blanket on the ground while Sara retrieved their food and drinks from the car. The night was pleasantly warm and the fresh mountain air invigorated her tired body. The city lights twinkled below them in the wide valley like a carpet of jewels. Sara sighed with pleasure as she kicked off her shoes and settled on the blanket.

She unpacked their food and handed him his soda.

“Do you come here often?”

Oh, like that didn’t sound stupid!

He chuckled. “I do.”

“By yourself?”

Sara! Shove some food in your mouth to stop it flapping!

“Sometimes.” His dark eyes flashed at her in the flickering firelight. The suggestion she read in them made her gut kick like a gun recoil.

It’s all in your imagination!

Quickly she unwrapped her fajita and took a bite. Elan sat cross-legged on the blanket. The glint of gold from his watch caught her eye as he unwrapped his own food. The strangeness of the situation struck her. She was seated by a fire in the midst of an empty desert, with a filthy-rich tycoon she had a massive and embarrassing crush on.

If my friends could see me now.

She sneaked a glance at him. He regarded her with a curious expression. Was he laughing at her? He hadn’t started eating yet, and she hesitated before taking her next bite.

“After many years in England I like to begin a meal with a toast,” he said. The fire flared, illuminating his face, where she read nothing but goodwill. “To you surviving your first plane flight.” He lifted his soda cup and held it in the air. “Cheers.”

She bumped her cup gently against his. “Cheers.” She took a sip of her soda. The cool bubbles tickled her throat. “And my second plane flight. Though I only barely survived that one, didn’t I?”

“Your response to the plane’s descent was rather unexpected.” His eyes twinkled with humor.

“Thank you for taking care of me.” Her face heated as she realized she had no idea how she’d gone from being strapped in her seat to awakening in Elan’s arms.

His dark eyes remained fixed on hers. “It was my pleasure.” His husky voice and challenging stare sent her thoughts tripping over each other as they ran in a number of unseemly directions.

She took another bite of her fajita, trying hard not to think about him bending over her, lips poised mere inches from her own, his hands unbuckling her seat belt, loosening her clothing…

No, her clothing had not been loosened. Earth to Sara!

Elan did not seem the least bit preoccupied with thoughts of their rather eventful journey as he ploughed through three entrées with impressive gusto. She nibbled at her food and sipped her soda while she watched with amazement.

At last he looked up at her and wiped his mouth with his napkin.

“What?” A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth.

“Nothing.”

“Rubbish. Your eyes are smiling. What’s so amusing?”

“I’ve never seen anyone eat so much.”

“I’m a man of prodigious appetites.” He looked at her steadily, his head cocked.

I can imagine.

His lips twitched slightly, as if anticipating something other than eating. Sara suppressed a little shiver as her imagination started to work overtime.

“And we missed lunch today.” His mouth creased into a smile. The flickering firelight danced over his proud features and made Sara’s insides churn in a most disturbing way.

“Oh, yes, you’re right. No lunch.” She hadn’t even noticed. Food was the last thing on her mind when Elan was around.

“I’ve been starving for hours.”

Me, too.

He leaned back, braced himself on one powerful arm, and rested a hand on his belly. A belly as firm and flat as the desert floor, hidden by his white shirt. She knew exactly how hard it was since she’d been crushed against it only half an hour ago.

His hand was silhouetted against the pale cloth of his shirt, long fingers splayed. It was a hand that looked as though it could cradle the world in its palm. She could still feel his fingers on her flesh as if the heat of them had seared through her clothing and left a smoking imprint on her skin.

The fire sputtered and dimmed. Elan lifted himself and leaned across the blanket, reached past her to rearrange the mesquite strips. He knelt and rested his weight on one powerful arm—like a tiger ready to pounce—as he tended the blaze with one hand.

She struggled to keep her breathing inaudible as his torso almost brushed against her.

He blew on the flames and they flared. He pulled back and knelt beside her.

“This mesquite does not burn as steadily as camel dung.” A wry smile curved his lips as he surveyed her with hooded eyes. She let out a laugh, glad of an excuse for a release.

“I guess it’s not easy to find things to burn in the desert.”

“You learn to make the most of what’s at hand.”

“Did you actually grow up in the desert?”

“Yes.” He looked back into the fire. “We had a home in Muscat, the capital city, but my father usually went there on business alone.”

“Do you miss your country?”

“Sometimes.” He looked at her and an odd expression crossed his face. “It’s a strange confession for me to admit that.”

“Why?”

“I’ve lived here for many years. I left Oman at age twenty-one under circumstances that made me wish never to return.” Hooded eyes gazed at the fire as his quiet, controlled voice mingled with the crackling flames. “I’m accustomed to a life of exile.”

“Don’t you miss your family?”

“My parents are dead.” A flicker of emotion passed over his features and Sara battled the urge to ask more about them. It wasn’t her place.

“Do you have siblings?” She couldn’t imagine growing up without the companionship of her brothers and sisters. While her parents sniped at each other and tore each other down, her siblings had carried her through. She was the youngest and they’d brought her up to be the woman she was today.

Each of them had given up opportunities to help support the family and raise her after their dad had died. While they all wanted to help, she and her brother Derek were the only ones with enough income to make a serious dent in the debts from their mom’s cancer treatments, and Derek had given up so much for Sara already. It was her turn to give back, and she’d better remember that when she was tempted away from the path of reason.

“I have two brothers.” Elan glanced up from the fire, his eyes black, unreadable in the darkness. “I barely know them now.”

The sadness in his voice clutched at her. He turned his head to look back at the fire and the flames danced over the hard edges of his profile.

“What are their names? Do they still live in Oman?” She wanted to draw him out, to learn more about him. But as his eyes met hers in surprise, her simple questions sounded like unseemly prying. Her stomach tightened. Once again she’d overstepped her bounds.

He looked at her for a moment, an oddly vulnerable expression in his eyes.

“My younger brother Quasar is a financier in New York. He’s wild, the baby of the family. He was always getting into scrapes as a kid—challenging me to races on our father’s priceless camels, hiding insects in the women’s robes to make them scream.” A smile flickered across his mouth. “He’s still up to his crazy tricks, though now I read about them in the papers.” His expression turned wistful, then serious as he leaned forward to tend the fire. “I’d like to see more of him, but we’re both busy.”

He brushed against her as he reached across the blanket and she sucked in a breath as a shiver of awareness fired her nerves. Sparks leapt as he blew softly on the wood. Sara struggled to pour sand on the sparks that crackled inside her as the tang of his alluringly male scent assaulted her in the night air, an exotic blend of soap, clean sweat, horses and expensive wool.

She wrenched her eyes from the powerful forearm revealed by his rolled-up shirtsleeve. Elan seemed mercifully unaware of the thrall he held her in as he settled back on the blanket.

“My older brother Salim took over from my father when he died.”

“In the family business?”

“Yes.” He wiped a hand across his mouth and looked out into the darkness. “I suspect he would rather have remained in America.” He glanced at her. “He came here for college—we all did. But he has a strong sense of duty and is not one to shirk his responsibilities. He’s a good man, and again, a busy one. I grew used to being away from my family while I was in boarding school.”

“Your brothers weren’t sent to the same school?”

“No. Quasar went to school in Europe, Salim had a private tutor at home.” Once again he leaned forward and blew on the fire, his angular features silhouetted against the halo of orange sparks that pierced the darkness.

As he rested the weight of his body on his strong arms she couldn’t help a stray wish that he’d take her and hold her tightly, as he’d done when she fainted.

Get hold of yourself, Sara. You’re just lonely—and your boss’s arms are not the place to seek comfort.

“Does it take long to get used to being away from your family? I miss mine so much.” Her voice cracked. “It’s only been a month, I know, but…” She bit her lip, not wanting to cry. She was tired, emotionally overwrought after the long day.

“You’ve never been away from home before?”

She shook her head. She knew tears shone in her eyes as she looked at him.

The tender look in his eyes almost undid her completely. “I cried every night for a long time,” he said softly. “I felt like a page ripped from a favorite story. A jumble of words and images that no longer made sense without its companions. In my country family is everything. We live very close, eat together, sleep together. To be separated from the people I spent all my days and nights with—I don’t exaggerate when I say it nearly killed me.”

“Oh, gosh.” Tears pricked at her eyes and she shook her head, braced against a surge of emotions threatening to engulf her. “I can’t even imagine how hard that must have been for you. At least for me it was a choice. I left because I wanted to make my own life.”

“I understand.” His low voice curled around her like smoke from the fire, warming her. “I made that choice myself when I left my homeland again as an adult, to settle in America. In some ways it hurts more—you can blame no one but yourself for your isolation.”

He shifted slightly, turned his head to gaze again at the flames. The flickering tongues of light danced over his features, obscuring them. “In time, a scab grows over even a self-inflicted wound.”

But the haunted expression in his eyes belied his words. And in that moment she could see Elan’s loneliness was a torment that would likely never leave him.

On instinct she reached out and touched his forearm. He jerked as if stung and she pulled her hand back but he deftly grabbed it and held it firm.

His eyes burned dark fire as he looked into hers. “Loneliness is the curse of man. Once he leaves his mother’s womb he’s doomed to wander the earth, seeking that comfort he once enjoyed.”

He raised his fingers to her face and she gasped as he cupped her cheek with his hand.

“There is no comfort to be found, only solace.” He said it slowly, his voice hushed.

She parted her lips to reply but no words formed on them. Her thoughts tangled and scattered to the desert wind as Elan’s hot, urgent mouth closed over hers.

Her head tipped back as he leaned into her and seized her in his arms. Her moan escaped into his mouth as her hands flew to his neck.

His arms circled her torso, strong and hard as steel, vibrating with dangerous urgency. She shuddered with the intensity of her own longing, and with fear—of wanting too much, wanting more than could ever be given.

But fear evaporated in the desert air as Elan’s arms embraced her. In his fierce kiss she lost herself and claimed the primal closeness her body and soul ached for.

Her skin hummed beneath her clothes as his hand burrowed under the jacket of her suit, fingertips pressing into the muscle of her back through her thin blouse.

She arched her back, bending like a willow under the force of his touch. They inched closer on the blanket, their bodies drawing together, meeting in new places as the distance between them diminished to nothing. Shoulders met, hips bumped, knees shuffled into each other as they wound their arms around each other, banishing any space that separated them.

Her fingers groped up into his thick hair, pulled him to her as their kiss deepened. He licked the inside of her lips. His hunger echoed through her and she gasped as he sucked her tongue.

His hand beneath her jacket tugged her shirt free from her skirt and slid underneath it. As his fingers touched her nipple through her flimsy bra, she shuddered at the stinging intensity of the sensation. Every nerve in her body sang a high-pitched note of quivering arousal.

Elan eased back on his haunches and pulled her over him until she sat with her legs wrapped around him, hugging him. His tongue teased her lips, licked and sucked, parted them gently, then pulled back. He eased her skirt up over her hips, roved over the fullness of her thighs with broad palms.

His fingers slipped inside her panties and played over her backside, squeezing and testing. Her body opened up to him, soft and warm and wet, wanting him. She pushed her breasts against his chest, her nipples straining for contact with the hard muscle.

And, oh, how she wanted him. Her skin smoked under his touch, her blood heated, her whole body burned to be consumed in his fire.

He jerked his head back and licked the outside of her lips with exquisite gentleness. Then he shoved his tongue deep into her mouth with deft and daring ease. Her body bucked at the suggestion and a soft groan escaped her.

She buried her face in his neck, inhaled the intoxicating feral scent of his skin. She cupped his face with her hands, let her fingers explore the hard edges of his jaw, enjoy the cut of his cheekbones, rove into the softness of his hair.

Elan.

Elan!

What on earth was she doing?

She yanked her head back and forced her eyes open, her body literally shuddering with desire as she struggled to regain control.

His eyes opened slowly and the flickering firelight danced in their black depths.

“I want you, Sara. And I know our need for each other is mutual.” The low rumble of his voice was a distant earthquake that shook her and crumbled any remnants of reason.

“Yes.”

Five

She pulled him closer, settling her mouth over his as she surrendered to forces far stronger than good sense. Crackling bursts of electrical energy shot through her as their tongues touched.

She showered his face with kisses. His closed eyelids flickered under her lips as she dusted his skin with their caress. Her lips tingled as she relished the roughness of his cheeks.

Elan’s hands were not idle while she tasted the salt of his skin and grazed the hard line of his jaw with her teeth. He tugged down the zipper on her skirt, sucked in a sharp breath as she gently bit his earlobe.

Her breasts quivered under her blouse as he pushed her gently away from him and undid the buttons of her jacket. He eased it off over her shoulders then tackled the buttons of her blouse with the same careful concentration.

The pause gave Sara time to think about what she was doing. Or what she wasn’t doing. Shouldn’t she be clutching her blouse, leaping to her feet and running for the sanctuary of the car? What good could come of sleeping with my boss?

But at that moment she could no longer see Elan as the boss. The long, powerful fingers carefully tugging at her tiny pearl buttons were those of a man—just a man—who wanted to hold her as much as she wanted to be held by him, and who wasn’t afraid to say it.

The moon emerged from behind a bank of clouds, and anticipation shone in his dark eyes, reflecting her own.

His breathing hitched as he parted her silk shirt to reveal her breasts. Her cream lace bra lifted and offered them like fruits ripe for plucking.

She watched as he slowly raised his hands to touch them. The soft curves of flesh thrilled as his fingertips neared them. Her nipples tickled under the scratchy lace, begging to be touched. As if her tortured flesh communicated directly with him, Elan softly tugged at the lace edging the cups until her breasts spilled into his hands.

Sara released a sigh as those broad hands settled over her breasts, kneading them gently as he claimed her mouth with a kiss.

Heat flooded her limbs and she pressed herself against him, rubbed her hips against his hard belly, enjoyed the strength of his arousal through his clothes.

She wanted him inside her.

The ache of loneliness that followed her everywhere had transformed into a raging inferno of longing to connect with this man. Knowing that he, too, felt alone, needing someone—needing her—she knew they would fit together like two parts of a broken whole.

She fumbled with his belt, struggling to free the stiff leather from its loops, as his muted groans filled her ear. His tongue teased her earlobe and sent shivers of sensation sizzling up and down her neck as she tugged at the zipper on his pants and pushed them down over his hips. She pulled at the buttons on his shirt in her urgency to bare his chest. His skin shone dark bronze in the flickering firelight, but unlike hard metal it felt hot and responsive to her touch.

She trailed her fingers over the ridges of muscle as she pushed his shirt back over his shoulders and he shrugged it off.

“I must get protection,” he whispered.

Her eyes widened. The idea of protection had not even crossed her mind.

She gasped as he pulled back. It literally hurt to part from him even for a few seconds. He stepped out of his remaining clothes before he headed back to the car. Naked.

His body was magnificent. The full moon bathed the land in pale silver light. Elan looked like a god walking the earth as he strolled barefoot, dusted with moonbeams, over the rough desert soil.

He opened the passenger door and reached into the glove compartment, then slammed the door and strolled back to her. His easy, rolling gait belied his massive build. Every part of him was big. Big hands, strong arms, thickly muscled torso and powerful legs that carried him back to her in a few long strides.

His arousal was undiminished and hers only intensified by the agonizing separation from his blood-heating presence. She welcomed him back into her arms, gripped him too hard, not wanting to be parted from him again.

She lay back on the blanket and pulled him over her almost roughly. She craved his strength, his steadiness, the raw masculinity of him. Sandwiched between the hard ground of the desert and Elan’s hard body, she writhed at the blissful torture. And she wanted to feel his hardness inside her.

He rolled back to rip open the packet and sheath himself. With careful fingers he touched and probed her moist folds and parted them. He eased himself into position over her, teased her painfully aroused flesh with the tip of his penis. Then he entered her.

He sank in, but so slowly she thought she’d go out of her mind with the agonizing pleasure of it. He lowered his body into hers and their skin met as they came together, inside and out, circling each other with arms and legs, mouths meeting and breath mingling in the moment of glorious unity.

Elan sighed softly in her ear as his body settled into hers. A perfect fit.

She could feel him quickening inside her. The sensation made her gasp and laugh and her eyes sprang open and met his steady gaze. His eyes sparkled with joy and a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. His lips parted as if to speak or shout or moan, but he lowered his head and buried his face in her neck, clutching her with his hands.

“I’ve never felt such desire for a woman,” he breathed hot in her ear. She gasped as again she felt him move inside her. “I’ve never wanted…never needed…” His words were lost in a grunt of pleasure as he moved and shifted, deepening and strengthening the bond between them.

They worked together, hips lifting, bellies rolling over each other, legs and arms hugging and gripping as they moved together toward the ecstasy they craved.

They writhed on the blanket, the solid earth supporting them as she gave herself over to an intensity of sensation, a sheer, wringing pleasure she could never have imagined.

Elan’s lovemaking was exquisite. Tender and loving, harsh and demanding, he rode her and fought her, caressed and comforted her, kissed and licked and teased and tormented her. Every inch of her skin, every cell in her body, sang with the clear, mad beauty of love.

Love?

Yes. Surely only love could upend the universe and shake it until stars rained down on them. And that love filled her now until she brimmed with explosive wonder, sheer joy that threatened to burst and shatter her into a thousand pieces.

His hot breath tickled her ear. “Sara, I… I…” She never knew what he struggled to say because at that moment he exploded inside her, shuddering and quaking with the force of his release as her own climax seized her and swept her into a vortex of agonizing bliss.

Elan’s hand rested gently on her cheek as they lay side by side. They were both spent, exhausted, and Sara’s body hummed with calm joy in the aftermath of their lovemaking.

He shifted closer, until his belly pressed against hers. He stroked her hair softly and placed a gentle kiss on her cheek. When his stomach tensed, she expected him to say something, but he didn’t. Perhaps he wanted to but couldn’t find the words. She certainly had no words for what had happened between them.

She could tell he didn’t want to let her go. He didn’t want to break the delicate bond that held them together. Maybe he, too, felt whole, warm, safe, blissfully free of rational thoughts and tiresome practicalities. Out there on top of a bluff, with nothing between them and the pale moon, they were the only people on earth.

But the fire had gone completely out and her skin tingled at the thought of all the wild creatures moving around them. Coyotes, bobcats, lizards…rattlesnakes. A rustling in the sand close by made her flinch. They might be the only humans, but they most definitely were not alone.

“We’d better go before something comes and bites us,” she said reluctantly.

He nibbled her ear playfully. “You’re in great danger of being bitten by me. Anything else that tries to taste your loveliness will have me to answer to.”

She wriggled against him. It was easy to imagine Elan taking on any earthly creature. He radiated strength and self-confidence that surely even the most determined scorpion would shrink from.

“But you’re right, my beauty. We must go.”

They exchanged a last gentle kiss before tearing themselves away from each other to gather up their scattered clothes.

As they climbed back into the car, Sara knew they were leaving the magical world they’d inhabited. The click of the seat belt seemed symbolic of the return to a world of rules and regulations.

Elan’s shirt hung unbuttoned over his pants, and she longed to reach over and touch his chest as he drove. But she knew better. The time for carefree touches and playful intimacy was over. Her gut tightened as a surge of apprehension replaced the carefree ease she’d enjoyed only minutes ago.