Susanne James - Hired For His Pleasure - The Talk of Hollywood / Keeping Her Up All Night / Buttoned-Up Secretary, British Boss

She had taken precisely two lovers in her twenty-nine years. The first had been one of her university lecturers, twenty years her senior, on a single night ten years ago. The second one had been a man on a summer dig in Tunisia four years ago—a man who had a wife and children back home in England. Admittedly that was something Stazy had only learnt after spending the night with him, when his wife had telephoned to inform him that one of his three children was in hospital and he was needed back home immediately!

Neither of those experiences had resulted in Stazy feeling any warmth or pleasure in the act, let alone having an orgasm. They certainly hadn’t prepared her for the seductively lethal charm and good looks of Jaxon Wilder!

She stepped back abruptly. ‘As it happens I’m not involved with anyone at the moment. Nor do I wish to be,’ she added with cold dismissal.

It was a coldness so at odds with the quickened rise and fall of her breasts, the deepening in colour of those sultry green eyes and the soft swelling of poutingly moist lips, that Jaxon wanted nothing more than to take Stazy in his arms and prove her wrong!

That need hovered in the air between them for several long, tense seconds.

Stazy’s chin rose as she deliberately tilted her head back in order to meet his gaze.

Did she have any idea how tempted Jaxon was by that challenge? Of how he wanted nothing more at that moment than to pull her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her?

Stazy was a beautiful woman in her late twenties, and as such she had to be aware of exactly what she was doing. Which begged the question—did she actually want him to kiss the hell out of her …?

STAZY took a step back as she saw the look of sexual interest that had entered Jaxon’s narrowed eyes. ‘Perhaps you would like to concentrate on the papers and I’ll sort out the diaries?’ To her dismay she sounded slightly breathless, and Jaxon was still standing close enough that she was aware of the heat of his body and the tantalising smell of his aftershave.

‘Fine,’ he agreed huskily, that smoky-grey gaze unblinking.

She continued to eye him warily, very aware that something—she wasn’t quite sure what—hung in the balance in these tension filled minutes. Something deep and almost primal. Something so nerve-tinglingly huge that Stazy feared it threatened to tear down the structured life of academia that she had so carefully surrounded herself with these past eleven years!

Jaxon felt as if he could have reached out and touched the sudden and obvious panic that spiked through Stazy as her eyes widened and the slenderness of her body trembled. The very air between them seemed to shimmer with that same emotion.

The question was why? What was so wrong with a man finding Stazy attractive enough to want to kiss her? Maybe even make love to her?

Had she been hurt in the past to the extent that it had made her wary of all men? Or did she only feel that wariness where Jaxon was concerned? She had certainly seemed to imply as much earlier!

Admittedly the newspapers had seemed to take great delight in photographing him with the beautiful actresses he’d been involved with during the past ten years; but in reality they really hadn’t been that numerous—and a lot of the photographs that had appeared had actually been publicity shots, usually for the film he was currently working on.

Even so, he didn’t feel that was any reason for Stazy to look at him in that wary and suspicious way. Almost as if she feared that at any moment he might rip her clothes off before throwing her across the desk and having his wicked way with her!

It was an idea that might merit further investigation, but certainly wasn’t something Jaxon thought was likely to happen in the next few minutes!

He eased the tension from his shoulders. ‘Shall we make a start then …?’

‘Why not?’ Stazy felt as if she were emerging from a dream as she forced herself to reply with the same lightness of tone, before ignoring him completely to concentrate all her attention on the piles of papers.

On the surface, at least. Inwardly, it was a different matter!

What had happened just now?

Had anything happened …?

Maybe she had just imagined the physical tension that had seemed to crackle briefly in the air between Jaxon and herself? Or—worse—maybe that physical awareness had only been on her side?

No, Stazy was sure it hadn’t been. But, as she had assured him earlier, she certainly knew better than to take seriously any emotional or physical games a man as experienced as Jaxon might decide to play. He was only here for a week, and then he would depart to commence making his pirate film, at which time he would probably forget Dr Stazy Bromley even existed.

As long as she kept reminding herself of that fact she should escape from their week’s confinement together unscathed.

‘Geoffrey seemed more than a little … evasive as to his reason for the need for extra security when I spoke to him on the telephone earlier …?’ Jaxon looked across the dinner table at Stazy. The butler had served them their first course of prawns with avocado before once again leaving them alone together in the small and sunlit family dining room.

Stazy looked extremely beautiful this evening, having changed into a knee-length red sheath of a dress that should have clashed with that red-gold hair and yet instead somehow managed to add vibrancy to the unusual colour. Her legs were long and shapely in high-heeled red sandals, and her sun-kissed face was once again bare of make-up except for a red gloss on the fullness of her lips. A light dusting of endearing freckles was visible across the bridge of her tiny nose.

It had only taken one look at her when they’d met up in the drawing room before dinner for Jaxon to once again become aroused, quickly bringing him to the conclusion that suffering a whole week of this torment might just be the death of him.

‘I did try to warn you that until Gramps has something he thinks we should know he’ll play whatever this is pretty close to his chest,’ Stazy answered unsympathetically.

Jaxon arched dark brows as she continued to eat her prawns and avocado. ‘You seem to be taking it all very calmly?’ It ‘all’ included those security guards at the main gates, as well as half a dozen more he had seen patrolling the grounds when he’d looked out of his bedroom window earlier—several of them accompanied by dogs.

She shrugged slender shoulders. ‘I lived here with Granny and Gramps for almost ten years.’

‘And you’ve had other security scares in the past?’

‘Once or twice, yes,’ Stazy said lightly.

‘But—’

‘Jaxon, if you’re that worried about it you always have the option of leaving,’ she reasoned softly.

Great—now she’d managed to make him sound like a complete wuss! ‘I’m happy where I am, thanks,’ he dismissed—or at least he would be if he didn’t feel so on edge about his constant state of arousal whenever he was in Stazy’s company!

Admittedly Stazy was beautiful, but she was nowhere near as beautiful as some of the women Jaxon had been involved with in the past. Nor did she make any attempt to hide her distrust of him. In fact the opposite.

Which was perhaps half the attraction …?

Maybe—although somehow Jaxon doubted it. Stazy was like no other woman he had ever met. For one thing she didn’t even seem aware of her own beauty. Add that to her obvious intelligence and it was a pretty potent mix.

Jaxon had never been attracted to a woman simply on her looks alone, and he liked to be able to talk to a woman out of bed as well as make love with her in it. Stazy Bromley obviously ticked all the boxes as far as his raging libido was concerned.