“Yes. I’m sort of a ghost writer. I listen to what people tell me and then create their stories in my own words.” Whew! That was pretty close to the truth! She’d better change the subject, she thought silently. “So what do you do?” she asked.
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. “Don’t you know?” He took her drink and placed it on the nearest table since her hand was shaking too much.
She smiled and shook her head. “I know you’re some sort of financier. Obviously, I’ve heard your name a few times.” Wow! That was a whopper! Everyone in the newsroom was speaking his name. Along with some irritating sheik’s visit to meet with the president, Rocco Antoniv’s name was practically the only thing people were talking about lately. “But what you actually do on a day to day basis, I can’t even imagine.”
He reached up and touched her neck where her pulse was beating rapidly. “Well, I find a person who is interested in another person,” his finger slid down her skin erotically, “or people who will work well together,” his finger slid across her collar bone, “and I mesh everything so that it works out perfectly.”
Brianna didn’t miss his double meaning. She swallowed painfully, her eyes moving down to his lips. “That sounds…too simplistic…” she was going to ask another question, or maybe she was going to challenge him. She wasn’t completely sure since his other hand moved up her back, causing her to gasp as heat traveled quickly through her body.
“Some things don’t need to get complicated,” he suggested. His hand moved along her waist, smoothing against the material of her stomach. “For instance, some things just need the basic instruments to work out perfectly. Adding anything complicated into the mix,” he commented as his eyes dropped to her mouth, “only adds confusion and chaos.”
She tried to take a breath, but everything inside of her was waiting breathlessly for him to kiss her. A part of her mind reminded her that she’d only met this man…a half hour ago? She was not here to be seduced. She was the one who was doing the tricking.
But nothing in her could have moved her body away from his touch. The man who’d accosted her when she’d first entered the nightclub had been good looking. The man she’d dated a few times last month had been handsome. But Rocco Antoniv, she was finding, was both of those things and neither. He wasn’t traditionally handsome but the dangerous aura around him, the magnetic pull that drew her closer and wouldn’t relinquish its hold, was shockingly powerful. There was something about him that pulled her closer, shutting off her mind. Dangerous for a reporter, but unavoidable nonetheless.
“I have to leave,” she told him in a whisper, but she didn’t even shift on her aching feet.
“You have to kiss me,” he countered.
She gasped, her eyes moving from his lips to his eyes. “That would be dangerous,” she whispered up at him. It seemed like they should be screaming at each other over the din of the music and other conversations, but she didn’t hear anything other than his words, his breathing. Her mind focused only on this man and the way he was touching her.
“Kissing would be…” whatever she was going to say was gone as his lips touched hers. This was not a kiss. She’d been kissed before. Kissing was a mild, tender touching of lips, a pleasing greeting or goodnight. This was neither of those.
This was possession!
Brianna didn’t have the experience with men to deal with this kiss. She couldn’t counter the feelings his lips, and then his tongue, demanded of her and she shivered, but couldn’t hold back. She was this man’s captive, reacting to his mouth, whimpering with equal need as his hands pulled her closer, pressing her hips against his. She felt the hardness of his body, moved, shifted and struggled to get closer. She couldn’t handle this, so she simply reacted as his mouth devoured hers in a demanding kiss that she felt all the way down to her toes.
She had no idea how long the kiss lasted. It could have been moments or hours. She’d completely lost the ability to gauge time, or even to think logically. All she knew was that this man, his touch and the hard body under her fingers, was her universe at the moment and she never wanted this feeling to stop.
He lifted his head and looked down at her, his eyes heating her up more than the bodies surrounding her. “Let’s dance,” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer, simply took her hand and led her right back down the spiral staircase. When they reached the dance floor, there was yet another pulsing song but Rocco simply pulled her into his arms. The song that had originally felt like a rock/techno beat turned into a love song with his arms around her. He didn’t give her an inch of space but instead, pulled her body against his, moving to the beat of the music, but there seemed to be a different song in her head. Her arms lifted languidly, wrapping around his neck while her body shifted and moved against his. Her mouth fell open slightly when his leg pressed between hers but, for some reason, she wasn’t able to stop him. In fact, as the song progressed, she needed that leg, his strong thigh, those muscles….
She could barely breathe as his hands held her waist, inching ever so slightly higher until his thumbs were resting just below her breasts, his fingers on her waist. But she didn’t want his hands there! She wanted, needed, his hands…higher. Her eyes looked up into his and she didn’t even feel the crick in her neck from staring up at him. She was begging him for something she didn’t really understand.
Gone was her mission for the evening. She was his to control and she loved his raw power, relinquished her own control to him, giving him whatever he wanted because it was what she wanted as well. She wanted to demand more, but wasn’t sure how. She wanted to curl up into his lap and beg him to move to the next step, but her lips wouldn’t move unless he’d commanded them to move.
And she was thrilled with all of it. Never had she felt so soft and feminine. Never had she wanted any man like she wanted Rocco Antoniv. She might not know him intellectually, but there was something about him that captured her, held her as his prisoner while he tenderly controlled her movements with his hands, his hips and his eyes.
“We need to get out of here,” he growled. Taking her hand, he started pulling her along behind him. Brianna didn’t want to leave with him, knowing exactly what he wanted from her. She’d never done that before, and yet, she’d never wanted it so powerfully.