Barbara Boswell - Who's The Boss?

Cade Austin would undoubtedly think so. She saw the way he was watching her and blushed. Suddenly, an escape from his probing hazel eyes was essential.

“I’ve taken up enough of your time.” Kylie jumped to her feet and headed toward the door. “I should have called first and made an appointment. I—I’m sure you have things to do and I’m keeping you from them.”

“As president of BrenCo, I always have things to do.” Cade followed her to the door, then moved in front of it. “But I always have time for our major stockholder, of course. You don’t need to make an appointment, you have a standing one with me, Kylie. Whenever you want it.”

His back was against the door, blocking it. “Would you like a tour of the plant? Perhaps an overview of company policy? A look at our financial records and written long-range goals?” While his words were strictly business, his tone and his expression conveyed an entirely different message.

Kylie interpreted the subtext, but not quickly enough. Before she could speak, move or even breathe, Cade’s hands were on her waist, pulling her to him.

No one had ever been so physical with her. The men in her world were talkers who used words, not actions. Kylie could match any man verbally—even best them—but dealing on a tactile level was a very different playing field for her. Just as Cade Austin was very different from the men she knew. He acted first, without explanation or warning or eloquent discourse.

Kylie felt the warmth of his hard frame suffuse her. His big hands slid to her hips and settled her against his masculine strength. Instinctively her legs parted, letting her feel the full burgeoning force of his manhood.

The effect on Kylie was electrifying. The rampant sexuality of their position abruptly short-circuited the rational workings of her brain. Instead of thinking things through and behaving rationally, she ceded to the elemental craving he’d elicited deep within her. For the first time in her careful, well organized life, she impulsively acted on what she was feeling—and that was a powerful, hungry need that demanded to be assuaged.

His mouth came down on hers, taking her lips and parting them in a kiss that was unlike any she’d ever known. This was no idle or tentative getting-to-know-you kiss. Cade kissed her as if he already knew her very well, as if he knew all about her secret yearnings and would fulfill them whenever he chose.

His kiss was hard and deep and intimate, demanding and receiving her body’s most primitive, passionate response. It was a kiss outside the realm of her experience, beyond the constraints her mind persisted in placing on her emotions.

But there were no constraints now, not with Cade. He’d somehow slipped past her usual defenses and circumvented her control.

Her arms were around his neck and she was clinging to him, her anchor in the wild unfamiliar sea of sensuality. She gasped a shuddering breath when he boldly covered her breast with his hand. It was too much too fast, Kylie knew it. She’d spent years fending off unwanted intimacies, usually more bored than angered by such attempts.

But she was neither bored nor angry now. And the too-soon intimacy that Cade was taking was not unwanted. Far from it. Kylie felt the heat of his palm cupping her, felt his long fingers begin a slow massage, and she loved it. A little whimper escaped from her throat and she quivered with sensual pleasure.

Through the soft silk of her blouse, through the lace of her bra, he rubbed her nipple with his thumb. The tight bud was achingly sensitive, and she pressed against his hand, encouraging him, needing more. An erotic barrage of hot little sparks burned in the most secret, feminine part of her.

He was hard and virile and continued to press boldly against her, evoking a syrupy warmth that flowed through her. She felt soft and weak and plant. When his hands cupped her buttocks to lift her higher and harder against him, Kylie clung tighter to him, moist and swollen with desire.

The intensity of her response shocked and excited her. She’d never experienced such fiery sensuality before, she had begun to believe she was one of those strictly analytical types whose passion could only be expressed in her work. A cool, methodical woman whose thrills came from the mental gymnastics required in preparing or presenting a case in a court-room, not from a man’s kisses and caresses.

Cade Austin was proving her very wrong. He wasn’t simply a man, he was the man, and he was shattering all those myths she’d held about herself. In his arms, she’d become a passionate woman. The wild and wanton thoughts tumbling through her mind were as new and as stimulating as the feelings surging through her. And it seemed that Cade could read them all...

He scooped her up in his arms. Another first for her. She couldn’t remember ever being carried, though presumably it was her mode of transport before she’d learned to walk.

She was totally unprepared for and completely defenseless against the tantalizing sensation of being lifted in a man’s arms and held against his chest as he strode across the office.

Kylie—the stable, dependable defender of the less fortunate—suddenly felt seductive and intensely feminine, like a character out of one of those romance novels she never had the time or inclination to read. Cade was so big, so strong. He handled her with ease, laying her down on the charcoal gray leather sofa and then coming down on top of her.

Her head was spinning, her eyelids felt extraordinarily heavy. It took too much energy and effort to keep them open so she allowed them to close, plunging her into a dark world of pure sensation.

He kissed her again, and she wrapped her arms around him, savoring the hard warm weight of him. The taste of him, the feel of him was exactly what she wanted, what she needed. She slipped her hands under the jacket of his suit to knead the muscular length of his back. The cloth barrier of his shirt frustrated her; she wanted to feel his bare skin beneath her fingers. She tugged at the material tucked into the waistband of his trousers, trying to get it out of her way.

Before she could succeed, Cade pushed aside her jacket and opened her blouse. Kylie felt his fingers deftly unfasten the front clasp of her bra. She knew she was exposed to him but instead of trying to cover herself, she arched upward, yielding greater access to him.

The touch of his hands on her bare breasts unleased piercing shards of desire deeply within her, too pleasurable to even consider ending. He fondled her, stroking and caressing, making her desperate for more.

“Cade, please!” She hardly recognized that desperate, husky cry as her own voice.

“I know, sweetie, I know.” His voice was thick and raspy. “Me, too.”

Kylie reached up to touch the hard, shaven skin of his cheek. She was charmed by his inarticulate mutter. She needed no translation, she knew exactly what he was saying. That he was as wonderfully out of control as she was. That he wanted her in the same fierce way that she wanted him.

Then his mouth was on the soft skin of her breast, kissing a sensuous path to its taut center that was tingling with arousal. She held her breath as his lips closed over her nipple to gently suckle her, then moaned as flames of desire licked through her. She hadn’t known that a man’s mouth on her breasts could affect her like this. The sensation was so intense, it was exquisite pleasure bordering on acute need.

His fingers slipped beneath the layers of her panty hose and white cotton panties to caress the soft, bare flesh of her belly. She felt him trace her navel, and she reflexively sucked in her stomach to provide him easier access. He dipped his thumb into the small hollow and kindled a wildfire that streaked directly to the pulsing heart of her femininity.