Barbara Boswell - The Engagement Party

Every erogenous zone in her body was on full alert and conspiring against her. As much as she’d protested his too close, too tight hold, she knew that the real problem was that he wasn’t close enough.

Her thoughts disturbed her. She drew back her head and lifted her eyes to his. “I don’t want to dance anymore,” she said in a low, husky voice she scarcely recognized as her own.

“Tough.” He held her gaze. “If I don’t dance with you, Dr. Smiley will take it upon himself to make me feel welcome again. I can’t cope with any more of his unrelenting good cheer. Even your brattiness is preferable to that. ”

In the shadowy dimness, she could see the amused gleam in his dark eyes. Hannah was totally disarmed. In her sexually charged panic, the last thing she’d expected from him was humor.

Of its own volition, her body suddenly relaxed, the tautness draining from her muscles, leaving her soft and pliable. She melted against him, her soft curves flowing seamlessly into the hard, masculine planes of his body. A giddy excitement coursed through her, making her feel daring and reckless. She wanted to tease him, to bait him. To challenge him and win.

“I was a little surprised to see you deeply engrossed in conversation with Blaine.” Hannah gazed up at him from under her lashes in tried-and-true vamp style. “You two are an unlikely duo. It was kind of like watching Barney, the jolly purple dinosaur, trying to befriend a carnivorous raptor.”

“Is that how you see me? As a ferocious predator?” Matthew smiled, his even white teeth appearing even whiter in the darkness. “Are you afraid of me, little girl?” He lowered his head and took her earlobe between his teeth, biting gently.

Hannah trembled. But not with fear. Excitement ricocheted through her like a piercing bullet. But she tried to halt it, or at least tame it. “Stop calling me little girl,” she ordered firmly, seeking the upper hand. “My name is Hannah, although you seem to have trouble remembering it. In the short time we’ve known each other, you’ve called me everything but my name.”

“You don’t fit my idea of a Hannah.” He was nuzzling her neck now while rubbing his body against hers, his movements slow and subtle and arousing. “I picture a Hannah out on the prairie in her sturdy pioneer clothes, weaving cloth and drawing water from the well and hitching the oxen to the plow. A hardy frontier type.”

“My parents thought Biblical names would be proper and appropriate for us,” Hannah murmured. “My older sisters are Sarah and Deborah and my brother—”

“Must be Noah?” The tip of his tongue tickled the sensitive skin of her throat.

Hannah shifted against him. “Actually he’s Baylor Carleton Farley IV. When it came to their son, Farley tradition was considered even more proper and appropriate than the Bible.”

Her head was spinning. His lips felt cool and firm yet soft against her skin. How would they feel against her mouth? Her eyes drifted shut and she stifled a moan.

“Your name should conjure up an image that is sensuous and exotic,” Matthew said huskily. “Beautiful, like you are.” His caresses were growing bolder. One big hand slid down to audaciously knead the curve of her thigh. The other slipped under the thick curtain of her hair to curl around the nape of her neck. “If you were my creation, I’d call you Vanessa or Jacqueline, maybe Juliet or—”

“What about Alexandra?” Hannah blurted out.

Matthew went still. Then his fingers sank into her hair and he grasped a handful to pull her head back, forcing her to meet his gaze. He was not gentle. Hannah felt the pressure on the roots of her hair, but even more alarming was the hard, angry glitter in his onyx eyes. “What game to you think you’re playing, little girl?”

Hannah berated herself as a prattling fool. The name had just slipped out in an unguarded moment, and no wonder. She was still burning with curiosity about why Alexandra Wyndham’s name happened to be written in Matthew’s copy of The First Families of South Carolina. During the shag contest, she’d moved as if on automatic pilot, her footwork independent of her mind, which was focused on Matthew Granger and his probable reason for being in Clover. Alexandra’s name seemed to be a major clue.

Hannah stared at Matthew, wide-eyed.

Had she given herself away? Did he now know for sure that she’d been snooping in his things? If he was here for nefarious purposes, he wouldn’t want anyone armed with evidence against him. Would he consider her decidedly sketchy knowledge to be evidence? Her pulse raced into overdrive.

“I want an answer from you,” Matthew demanded, tightening his grip.

Hannah was alarmed, but she’d never been a meekly passive type who allowed anyone to bully her. She wasn’t about to turn into one now, either, not even with Matthew the Possible Mobster holding her by the hair.

“You’re the one playing games,” she said with a bravado she was far from feeling. “Consigning my perfectly respectable name to pioneer drudgery and renaming me Jacqueline or Vanessa. Well, I happen to have an opinion in the matter, too, and if I were to be renamed, I’m partial to the name Alexandra.”

She decided she might as well go for broke. To pretend that she knew nothing of his aspirations concerning the Wyndham estate by initiating the subject of the Wyndhams herself. It was a form of reverse psychology, and at this point she had nothing to lose.

“Alexandra is the name of one of the most attractive, elegant women in town. I think the name exudes class and style, just like she does.” Was this working? Hannah wondered nervously. Or was he planning where to stash her body before he pulled the heist. “I think Alexandra Wyndham must be close to fifty years old but she looks years younger,” she chatted on. “She has dark hair, and not even Jeannie Potts knows if she dyes it, but she must at her age, right? And of course, she has the Wyndham blue eyes. All the Wyndhams have these deep, vivid blue eyes. I don’t think there’s every been a brown-eyed Wyndham.”

Her words swirled around Matthew’s head. She was talking about his mother! A maelstrom of emotion surged through him. His body was already charged and throbbing with unslaked desire for this maddening, enticing woman he held so close, and the unexpected information about the stranger who’d given birth to him unleashed the tight reins of his control. Talking wasn’t enough for him. He had to act.

Hannah felt like a wind-up toy that had just wound down. “Well, I guess we’ve exhausted that subject, haven’t we?” She managed a shaky smile.

Her faced burned under his steady stare, and his silence daunted her more than any threats he might have made. She saw sexual intent and something else, something she couldn’t identify, flaming in his eyes.

Still holding her hair, he suddenly, firmly, cupped her chin with his other hand and took her mouth with his.

It was a rough, wild kiss, his lips demanding, his tongue rapacious as it invaded her mouth, taking possession. Hannah was too shocked to protest, and then it was too late. She didn’t want to protest.

A hot swell of excitement crashed through her, and she trembled from the force of the fast-building urgency. She was only vaguely aware that Matthew’s arms folded her deeply in his embrace, that her own arms had wound around his neck as her body surged against his.

The kiss deepened and grew more intimate, more insistent. Pure raw pleasure flooded her. Her senses were filled with Matthew, with the feel and the scent and the taste of him. His hands stroked and caressed, learning the soft, warm curves of her body, smoothing over her back and then gliding around her ribs, where his fingers stopped maddeningly, tantalizingly just below the underside of her aching breasts.