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Ruled By The Boss
“HI,” ANNE HATHAWAY SAID.
Roxie recognized her as Lucy Kenyon, the woman who’d passed out the questionnaires in the lobby when they’d first arrived. She gulped and realized everyone at the table was watching her. Who was she kidding? Everyone in the room was watching her, even Dougal. For crying out loud, there was a spotlight on her. “Um…hi.”
Lucy leaned in closer. “I saw on our survey that you enjoy acting.”
“Yes,” she replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Would you like to have some fun?”
They were magic words. Roxie knew that she should say no, but in that moment, all the joy of being onstage rushed through her. She recalled the fun she used to have performing at her parents’ dinner theater, and remembered her role as the lead in her high school’s production of Romeo and Juliet. In the school’s history, no freshman had ever been given the lead role before her.
Roxie couldn’t help smiling even as she said, “I don’t know the lines.”
“That’s what we want, off-the-cuff improv. Come on,” Lucy coaxed. “It’ll be fun.”
“Go on.” Sam nudged her.
“You get to be onstage with Shakespeare,” Jess pointed out. “Go for it, woman.”
Roxie hesitated, but only for a moment. The ham in her took over and she nodded.
“Wonderful.” Lucy held out her hand to Roxie and led her to the stage.
Her heart was pounding, but the minute she was facing the audience, exuberance embraced her. It had been so long since she’d done something solely for herself and she felt liberated.
“Lie down on this bed, fair maiden,” Anne instructed, patting the mattress with a naughty gleam in her eyes. “And pray tell us your impression of my husband’s best bed.”
Giddily Roxie slid onto the bed and lay back against the pillows. The silky material of the pink, flower-print Renaissance frock she’d picked out from the costume room rubbed erotically against her skin. The tight bodice pulled across her nipples, causing them to bead beneath her camisole. Belatedly she realized she should have worn a bra instead.
“Wife,” Shakespeare aka Dougal said, “you have chosen a comely lass.”
“I did so for the benefit of my eyes, sir, not thine own.” Anne gave Roxie a seductive look.
“However, wife, I am enjoying your feast.” Dougal was looking at Roxie as if she were dipped in chocolate. He angled his head, licked his lips.
The crowd chuckled.
“So, maiden—” Anne swept across the stage “—what is thy opinion of the master’s bed?”
Relishing her role, Roxie bounced up and down. The bedsprings creaked loudly. “’Tis a bit loud, milady. Might it wake the children?”
“Ah,” said Dougal. “Shouldn’t children learn that squeaky bedsprings are simply a part of grown-up life?”
“It’s a bit too hard, as well,” Roxie observed, flopping about on the mattress for effect.
“I told him it was too hard.” Anne looked pointedly at Shakespeare’s crotch, inducing catcalls from the audience.
Shakespeare and Anne bickered back and forth over the prone Roxie, each line of dialogue filled with ribald statements and sexy innuendo. Roxie rolled her eyes and heaved exaggerated sighs over their squabbling. “Married couples,” she said as an aside to the audience.
The more she hammed it up, the louder the laughter grew. She was aware of—and exalting in—the fact that she was stealing the show.
Anne Hathaway said something to Shakespeare, but he didn’t answer. A momentary silence fell over the crowd. Roxie turned her head to see Dougal staring at her as if they were the only two people in the room.
The expression on his face stole her breath. Her pulse skittered, and she felt twin dots of heat rise to her cheeks. She pursed her lips and crossed her arms chastely over her chest. It was as if he’d stripped her stark naked with his inscrutable gaze.
Lucy repeated her line, nudging him in the side with her elbow.
“Um…er…” Dougal sputtered.
“I can see the fetching vixen has stolen your tongue, husband,” Anne said.
“No vixen, she,” Dougal said, finally finding his voice. “But she is the very muse that moves my soul.”
As Dougal stared into her eyes, Roxie felt as if the words were suddenly, oddly, illogically true. Her body grew heavy with sexual awareness and she felt herself go slick between her thighs. She gulped, disoriented.
Shake it off. What are you doing?
A corporate spy should fly under the radar. Getting up onstage was not the way to keep a low profile. But while her professional side berated her for this dumb move, her personal side was secretly reveling, having fun, doing the unexpected.
That is, until Dougal walked across the stage and plunked down on the bed, never breaking eye contact with her. He was beside her again as if he belonged there, turning her on.
She’d had daydreams like this, midnight reveries. Imaging herself a throwback to the Renaissance era. Such a romantic epoch filled with great art and music and the concept of chivalry. Dougal was the embodiment of her sexual fantasies.
Oh, dear. She couldn’t tear her gaze off him. What to do? What to do? And here she’d thought falling into his lap on the plane had been erotic. But this was a hundred times more intense. They were side by side.
On a mattress.
Lying mere inches apart.
With a roomful of people watching their every move.
She could feel the power of his muscular body underneath his costume. She appreciated the natural mahogany highlights in his neatly trimmed beard. Surely no man in history had ever looked so manly in snug, black leather pants, a billowy white poet’s shirt and knee-length black boots.
Eat your heart out, William Shakespeare.
The shadow falling over his face lent his expression a darkly dangerous air that was so damned sexy the hairs on her forearm lifted in response. One close-up glance at his angular mouth and all she could think about was kissing him. Her breathing quickened and her heart tripped over itself.
The collective laughed in response to something Anne Hathaway had said as she tromped in mock fury away from the bed, reminding Roxie where she was. Why had she agreed to come up onstage? Ego? The opportunity to live out her childhood fantasy of becoming an actress? To recapture her past? A chance to be near Dougal again?
Roxie feared the third option was the most accurate. What was it about the man that made her want to live out a very X-rated adult fantasy?
“Forsooth,” Anne called out to the audience, hand clasped to her bosom. “You are all my witnesses. Look upon my husband and see how he stares at the temptress. Has she not cast such a spell on him that he is left both speechless and brainless?”
Dougal looked stunned, as if he, too, had forgotten where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. Immediately he leaped from the bed, hair tousled and shirt askew. He placed a hand at the nape of his neck and stared down at Roxie, then quickly shifted his attention to Lucy.
“You are right, wife, I have been bewitched,” he exclaimed.
“Trollop.” Anne pointed an accusing finger at Roxie. “You have stolen the bed that should have been rightfully mine.”
Okay. This wasn’t fair. Roxie didn’t have any lines and she had no way to know what was expected of her.
Improvise.
“Perhaps, milady,” Roxie dared, going up on her knees in the middle of the bed, “if you had but satisfied your husband in this very bed, then he would not seek solace within my arms.”
Both Shakespeare and his wife turned to stare at her, while the audience hooted with glee.
Roxie grinned at Dougal.
He grinned back, clearly enjoy her improvisational skills. “She has a point, good wife.”
Anne looked a bit confused as what to say next. Roxie’s input had knocked the skit off its trajectory. “All I want,” Anne said at last, “is what’s rightfully mine.”
“Your husband?” Dougal said, stepping across the stage toward Anne with his arms outstretched.
“My bed,” Anne cried, made a comical face and hopped onto the mattress beside Roxie.
The crowd dissolved into guffaws.
Dougal shrugged, raised his palms to the audience as if to say, “Easy come, easy go,” and then held his hand out to Roxie. “Take the bed, wife, and I will take my muse.”
Roxie didn’t take his hand.
Dougal repeated his line, wriggled his eyebrows at her and added, “Come along, Muse.”
Swept away by the thrill of performance, feeling decidedly impish, Roxie collapsed against the pillows. “My lord,” she said. “This mattress is too desirable to leave.”
“I thought it was too hard.”
“Perhaps I was hasty in my judgment. For now it feels just right.”
“Muse!” he bellowed and strode toward the bed, hand still outstretched. “Come here at once.”
Excitement welled up, pushed against Roxie’s chest, sent tingles shooting out through her nerve endings.
“Go get her, Shakespeare,” a woman in the crowd yelled out.
“Shoot for the ménage à trois, Willie,” countered a man.
Anne flashed a suggestive look at the audience that said she was intrigued by the prospect.
Shakespeare stopped, pivoted on his heel and peered out at the gathered guests. “Some men are foolish enough to think they can handle more than one woman at a time. I, however, am smart enough to know it’s best to be a one-muse man.”
“What about me?” Anne lamented.
“You, milady, have not been so much muse as nag,” Shakespeare answered.
That brought fresh laughter.
Shakespeare turned his attention back to Roxie. “Now, Muse, come along, I have a sonnet in want of being written.”
“What?” Roxie crossed her arms over her chest. “I do all the work and you get all the credit? The deal does not sound so fetching to me. How about this? I write my own sonnet.”
“He gets bossy like this,” Anne interjected. “Is his best bed really worth putting up with his high-handedness?”
“I need you, Muse.” Dougal’s words sounded so heartfelt that Roxie’s pulse quickened. He extended his hand. “Pray, do not abandon me.”
“He’ll abandon you,” Anne warned, studying her nails with a nonchalant expression. “Next thing you know, it’ll be a younger, prettier muse booting you out of bed.”
“Don’t listen to her,” he said. “She’s jealous.”
Just like that, Roxie’s improvisational skills evaporated. She whipped her head around to look at Anne, searching for a clue as to what to say next. Anne shrugged. Her expression said, You’re on your own. Roxie was suddenly aware that every eye in the ballroom was on her, waiting to see what she’d do next. The urge to flee smacked her hard.
“Come.” Dougal reached out; his hand barely grazed her knuckles and yet she felt blindsided.
Helpless to deny him, she rested her palm in his hand and he tugged her to her feet. His eyes hooked on hers, and she could not look away no matter how much she might desire to do so. Then, in his spine-tingling, baritone voice, Dougal began to recite a Shakespearean sonnet.
She knew the verse. She’d been forced to memorize it as part of a high school English assignment. Sonnet number twenty-one: “So is it not with me as with that Muse.”
Kismet.
Dougal said a line, and then Roxie jumped in with the next one. His eyes lit up. They went back and forth with perfect timing as if they’d practiced this duet for weeks. He was holding her hands and they were staring deeply into each other’s eyes and it was pure magic. This shared verbal intermingling was simply the most erotic thing she’d ever done with her clothes on.
The audience went wild for it.
“Woot!” she heard Jess holler. “Rock on, Roxie.”
“Shake it, Willie!” Sam shouted.
Roxie recited the last line in a throaty whisper.
Dougal’s jaw tightened. His chest muscles—readily visible through the deep V of the undone buttons on his shirt—flexed. The pulse at the hollow of his throat strengthened, slowed. He drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled it as if by controlling his breathing he could control other responses.
Her body reacted to his physical clues. A warm gush of awareness oozed through her skin already heated by the overhead spotlights. She hadn’t realized it until now, but the entire time they’d been reciting the sonnet, they’d been inching closer and closer to each other. Mostly unconscious of what she was doing, Roxie ran her tongue over her lips, tasting the poetic beauty of the sonnet.
His fingers were interlaced with hers. When had that happened? The tips of his leather boots were touching her sandals. Barely an inch of space existed between them. Their hip bones were almost touching, his chest so close she fancied she could hear his beating heart, and then realized it was her own heart she heard pounding with alarming power.
He glanced down. Her gaze followed his and she saw the tightness across the front fly of his pants.
This was insanity. They were total strangers. Not to mention that they were onstage in front of dozens of people with spotlights trained on them. Yet all Roxie could think about was throwing her arms around Dougal’s neck to see if his mouth tasted as good as it looked.
Before she had a chance to do something rash, though, he took the reins. He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her tightly against him. She saw his eyes darken with desire, and she wondered if her own were undergoing the same changes.
The next thing she knew, they were kissing.
DOUGAL HAD FOUND HIMSELF lost in a fairy tale—the audience disappeared, Anne vanished, the spotlight no longer existed, the stage faded away. The only thing left in his world was her.
It was hard to say who made the first move. It was simultaneous really. When Roxie pulled his head down to meet her lips, Dougal breathed in the taste of her and tightened his grip around her waist. He’d been aching to kiss her from the moment he’d seen her in the plane, and damn if he didn’t just let it happen.
She tasted as good as she looked. Better even. Her flavor was fresh and lemony and sensational. Initially, kissing her made him think of his mother’s kitchen—warm and safe and comfortable. But underneath that soft comfort roused a stronger, more primal instinct.
Lust. Hot and heavy and intense.
And in spite of the wide-eyed innocent image she projected, what she was doing to him with her mouth was anything but innocent. He could get seriously addicted to this.
Dougal swallowed back a groan of pleasure at the feel of her thigh against his. She curled her fingers into his scalp, pressed her body into him, crushing her soft breasts against the silky Shakespeare shirt. His entire body caught fire. Without meaning to do so, he raised his hand to cup her buttocks.
She gasped.
It was only then he realized he’d closed his eyes, gotten washed away on a dream. Startled by the thought, his eyes flew open. Roxie’s eyes were open, as well, and she was looking at him with a mixture of curiosity, amazement, excitement and mortification.
Dougal pulled his lips away.
She stared at him with those incredible blue eyes, her pupils dark and wide. She touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip as if still thirsty for his taste.
He felt it, too, this thirst.
The audience members were on their feet, clapping wildly. “Bravo!”
“Encore.”
“Make use of that bed!”
Roxie blushed, and Dougal recognized that everyone thought the kiss was part of the skit. She turned toward the crowd and took a bow.
Suddenly Dougal was confused. Had she been playing a part? Had Roxie been a plant in the audience? She’d been so quick on her feet with the ad libs. Perhaps it hadn’t been improv after all. What was going on? Was Lucy in on this?
“You were great,” he said.
She beamed. “Thank you. Not too shabby yourself.”
He couldn’t tear his gaze off her, and then overhead, he heard an ominous creaking noise.
“Look out!” someone in the audience shouted.
Dougal glanced up just in time to see that a spotlight had come loose from its mounting. It dangled precariously by an electrical cord, swaying directly over their heads.
The crowd gasped.
Dougal reacted out of pure instinct, pushing Roxie aside just as the heavy spotlight came crashing to the stage.
6
ROXIE LAY SPRAWLED on the floor, Dougal’s big body pressed down on hers, his chest squashing her breasts, his warm breath heating her cheek. His pelvis was flush against hers, and he’d brought his arms up around her head to protect her.
Her heart thundered—from danger, from fear, from this man’s proximity. Her ears rang. Her head spun. Her womb tightened reflexively. Disoriented both by lack of oxygen and his compelling, masculine scent, she simply stared up into his mesmerizing dark eyes.
What had just happened?
Why had Dougal knocked her to the stage?
She was vaguely aware of people converging on them, talking, letting out exclamations of surprise and asking questions, but all her focus was on him.
“Roxie,” he whispered huskily, “are you okay?”
Lines of concern etched his forehead, pulled his angular mouth downward. Bits of broken glass glinted in his hair, clung to his beard. She frowned, still trying to piece together what had happened, still trying to make sense of the raging sexual awareness heightening her senses.
He rolled off her then, and air rushed into her lungs. He reached down to help her up. Once on her feet, Roxie’s gaze shifted from Dougal to the twisted metal and shattered glass that was once the overhead spotlight. Reality hit her all at once.
“We could have been…ki-killed,” she stammered.
“We weren’t.”
“You saved my life.”
“Saved mine, too.” He grinned humbly and shook his head to dislodge the glass. The simple action shouldn’t have been sensual, but the way he raked his fingers through the chocolaty strands, mussing it with his thick fingers, captivated her.
And the way his shirt gaped open, revealing his honed chest muscles and a sprinkling of dark chest hairs, sent a sharp spike of pure physical longing jettisoning straight to her sex.
Roxie blinked. What was wrong with her? She’d almost been obliterated by a falling spotlight and all she could think about was how utterly delicious Dougal looked. She didn’t have much time to consider her question because security and maintenance personnel appeared to assess the situation, while Lucy Kenyon and other staff members rounded up the guests and ushered them out of the dining room.
“You’re trembling,” Dougal said.
“Am I?” Surprised, Roxie realized her hands were quivering.
“Shock,” he said. “Spent adrenaline.”
Ah, maybe that could explain her inappropriately sexual thoughts. Chemistry, a hormonal response to stress.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk you back to your cottage.”
The moonlit walk across the cobblestone path deepened the odd spell she seemed to be under. The air was damp but sweet with the smell of springtime flowers, and a tinkling of flute music flowed through speakers placed strategically about the grounds. Dougal held her hand the entire way, only letting go when they reached the bungalow where she was staying.
“Here we are,” he said.
“Here we are,” she echoed.
“That was fun tonight,” he said. “The skit I mean, not almost getting beaned by the spotlight.”
“That was pretty amazing, how we got a rhythm going.”
“Like great sex.”
Why had he said that? Now all she could think was sex, sex, sex. Inhaling sharply, she met his gaze and got totally sucked in by those fascinating brown orbs. As she watched, his mercurial eyes changed from sweet milk chocolate to pure smoldering cocoa, the color a tantalizing complement to his ebony lashes and rich, dark brows.
His full lips quirked up at the corners as he shot her what she was quickly starting to recognize as a “come sin” grin. He might appear cool and controlled, but beneath that detached exterior she detected a current of something hot and taut and wild. The man was pure energy, raw and alive.
She was seriously screwed. With a sinking sensation she realized just how much she wanted him to kiss her.
He stood there, his hand at her waist, wearing the sexiest damn smile she had ever seen. How easy it would be to drag him into her cottage and make love to him. How easy and yet how utterly scary. She shouldn’t. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
Dougal moistened his mouth.
Roxie flicked out the tip of her tongue to wet her own lips.
He lowered his head.
Her heart jumped into her throat. His face was so close she could almost feel the brush of his beard against her cheek. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
He pressed his mouth to her ear. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. Her body tensed…waiting, wanting, willing.
Dougal sucked in an audible breath. She tipped up her head. The look on his face was so feral, so hungry, as if it was all he could do to control his sexual urges. Her hands started quivering all over again. Did she really hold that much sexual power over him?
“Shakespeare,” she whispered.
“Muse,” he said, playing into her fantasy.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he pulled her close, nestling her into the curve of his body. She felt the determined poke of his penis through his leather breeches, but he made no move to take things further. He was long, thick and hard, no secrets on that score. She thought of them both naked, imagined him inside her, filling her up. They stood on the stoop, swaying together in the breeze.
She tried to deny the desire pushing up through her, closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on something other than the need knotting her entire body, but it was impossible.
They breathed in tandem, but Dougal did not make a move on her.
What in the hell was wrong with the man? How was he staying so controlled? And the more restraint he showed, the more desperately she wanted him.
She thought about all she’d missed out on in life. Fun, a good time, casual dating, casual sex. Suddenly she wanted to experience it all. Now. With Dougal. She was in England, at a hot, sexy, romantic resort. There was nothing stopping her from just enjoying good sex for good sex’s sake.
Do it. Sleep with this man. You know you want to. It doesn’t have to mean happily ever after, just happily right now.
She felt a racy sense of exuberance, of glorious feminine power. Like a moth on the wind, carried by the swell of pheromones, she let herself be swept away and did something she’d never done before.
She pulled out her best acting skills, pretending to be a saucy serving wench from the sixteenth century.
Roxie kissed him.
DOUGAL SHOULD HAVE BROKEN the kiss, pushed her away, fought his Neanderthal impulses, which were urging him to kick down the door and drag her into the cottage and have his way with her. He’d come here to make sure she was okay and he was trying to sort out in his mind whether the falling spotlight had been accidental or intentional.
But the fact that she—little Miss Innocence—had kissed him destroyed his capacity to think straight.
He took the kiss to a whole new level, dragged her tight against him, plundering her mouth with his, drinking her in. His head spun, his heart pounded. Some security expert he was turning out to be. He didn’t even remember where he was, much less why he was here. All he knew was that he had to have more of Roxie.
His hand had a mind of its own, slipping down to cup her tight, round bottom. His cock strained against his fly. Flexing, he curled his fingers into the soft, willing flesh of her buttocks. He heard her quick intake of breath, and he couldn’t believe what he was doing, squeezing her so possessively.
You’re out of line.