His mouth replaced his hands and she felt a tug on her nipple that made her knees go weak. Desire pulsed like a drumbeat in her core.
Reese gently kissed her. “We don’t have to do this now,” he repeated, cupping her face between his palms and looking deep into her eyes. “I don’t want to rush you. I want to make this good for you. I want to make it right for both of us.”
She thought of the problems they would be facing when they got back to Dallas, the helicopter crash, the accidents that had been plaguing the Poseidon. She thought of Griff and the custody battle she would be fighting in the days to come.
She thought of Reese returning to his office, resuming his duties as CEO. Would he still want her? Or would he come to his senses and realize what a mistake it would be to get involved with one of his employees? Would he simply replace her with someone else?
She couldn’t continue the way she had been. She needed to get on with her life, and ending her obsession with Reese was the key.
“Do you want me, Reese?”
His eyes found hers. He took her hand and pressed it against the fly of his slacks. He was big and hard. A little thrill shot through her at the power she held. “I want you, Kenzie. So much.”
Desire curled like smoke through her veins. Leaning toward him, she pressed her mouth against his chest over his heart, and Reese hissed in a breath. When she looked up at him, his expression darkened. In a heartbeat, his careful control vanished. One of his hands slid into her hair to hold her in place as his mouth crushed down over hers.
Hot, wet kisses followed, his hands on her breasts, his body hard against hers. Kenzie clung to his neck as he walked her backward till her shoulders came up against the wall, and his mouth claimed hers. Long fingers moved over her body, touching, stroking, setting her on fire.
“Stop me, Kenzie,” he whispered, his teeth grazing the side of her neck. “At least tell me to slow down.”
“Don’t stop,” she said. “Please don’t slow down.” She was burning for him. She wanted everything, all he could give her. “I need you, Reese. I need you so much.”
Reese didn’t wait for more, just stripped off her stretch pants and the tiny white thong she wore underneath. His belt buckle jangled. She heard the buzz of his zipper. He paused for a moment to dig out his wallet, then he was lifting her up, wrapping her legs around his waist.
“I need you, too,” he said. His hands gripped her bottom to hold her in place as he buried himself deep inside.
The heat of his body engulfed her and a whimper escaped her throat. Dear God, nothing had ever felt so good. She clung to his neck as he drove into her, out and then in, pushing her toward the brink. She could feel his pulse thrumming beneath her fingers, the hot dampness of his skin.
Faster, deeper, harder, driving into her, taking her until her womb tightened around him and everything inside her broke apart. She was flying, repeating his name over and over like the chorus of a song. Pleasure tore through her, seemed to go on forever.
Reese didn’t stop. Just kept kissing her and moving inside her, driving her up again, then once more over the edge before he gave in to his own powerful release.
Long seconds passed. Little by little, her pulse began to slow and awareness returned.
Reese softly kissed her. “Kenzie? Honey, are you okay?”
She wanted to laugh. She wanted to sing. She wanted to weep. She knew the consequences of what she had done and yet she couldn’t regret it. She looked up at Reese and managed to smile.
“I’m fine. Better than fine.” Reese set her back on her feet and left to deal with the condom she had barely noticed him putting on. He returned as she was picking up her clothes, preparing to dress and return to her own apartment.
Reese snagged the clothes out of her hand and tossed them up onto the sofa. “You won’t be needing those,” he said with the sweetest smile she had ever seen. “At least not until morning.” Then he scooped her up in his arms, carried her into his bedroom, and firmly closed the door.
They made love twice more, once with hungry abandon, then tenderly. Exhausted, she finally fell asleep hoping he would wake her one last time before morning. She would have stayed awake all night if she could have. She didn’t want to face the dawn, face the consequences of what she had done.
In the end, she’d woken to warm rays of sunlight filtering through the window curtains. But as she had feared, when her hand went to the other side of the bed, she found it empty. Reese was already gone.
THIRTEEN
Friday was still muggy and damp in Houston. Reese parked the Land Rover in a space in front of the Harris County Jail. He had pulled some strings and managed to get in on a special visitor’s pass to see Rico Alvarez, who had consented to the visit. Apparently Rico preferred conversation to sitting in his cell.
As he got out of the vehicle, his mind strayed to the hours he’d spent last night with Kenzie and a smile softened his lips. The sex had been better than any of the fantasies he had worked so hard to keep out of his head.
Kenzie had been married before and she had been outspoken in her desire for him. Yet there was a sweetness, a naivety he hadn’t expected. He’d decided to take things slowly, let her get used to him. He didn’t want to frighten her away.
For months, he’d spent at least five days a week with her, had grown to admire her business savvy and work ethic, to say nothing of the physical beauty that appealed to him on every level.
In the beginning, he’d been able to ignore her feminine attributes and focus on her job skills, her value to the company and to him personally as CEO. But little by little, the way she always seemed to be there when he needed her, her insight into helping him solve the problems he occasionally ran past her, combined with the love and devotion she felt for her family, forced him to see her as a woman and not just an employee.
Never once had he considered the attraction might be mutual. Apparently, Kenzie was as good at hiding her emotions as he was.
As he crossed the sidewalk toward the double front doors of the nine-story redbrick building on San Jacinto, his smile slowly faded. All hell was going to break loose when his relationship with Kenzie came to light. It wasn’t PC to date your executive assistant, to say the least.
Hypothetically, it could lead to all sorts of accusations and legal hassles that could cost him, personally, or Garrett Resources a whole lot of money. Not to mention the bad publicity.
Reese was willing to take the chance. He hadn’t felt such a strong attraction to a woman in years, maybe ever. His bitter divorce had made him even more wary. If things didn’t work out, he would face the problem then.
In the meantime, he wasn’t going to deny he was seeing her. And he wasn’t giving her up.
As he pushed through the front door, Reese forced his mind back to the puzzle he was trying to solve. Following the instructions he had been given, he checked in with a prison guard in black uniform pants and a short-sleeved white shirt with an embroidered patch on the sleeve. The guard led him down a hall and passed him to another guard, a Black woman with cornrows and a smile that put him a little more at ease.