“Gabriel, I’m warning you, don’t you dare touch me!” She
backed another step, sliding toward the hall entrance.
Gabriel read and understood the confusion, astonishment, and
anger in her expression. She was spoiling for a fight, and he was going to give
her something else entirely. “Do you know the easiest way for a man to regain a
feeling of being in control of a woman, Samantha?”
“Don’t you threaten me with those caveman tactics!” she
slung back defiantly, edging one step closer to the door.
“I’m not going to call it that. You, naturally, are free to
call it anything you choose. One way or another, though, I’m going to restore a
little of the natural order around here.”
“We’re supposed to be partners, for God’s sake!”
There was something enormously satisfying about that look in
her eyes, Gabriel decided as he slowly closed the distance between them. The
wide tortoiseshell gaze reflected the beginnings of feminine wariness, perhaps even
genuine fear, and he knew damn well it wasn’t because she was actually afraid
of him. That anxious expression reflected another kind of wariness, the kind that
told him that what she really feared was her own response when he took her in
his arms.
Very satisfying, Gabriel told himself again. He’d never had
a woman watch him in quite that way. It fed the primitive side of his nature as
nothing else could have done.
Only Samantha had the power to make him forget anyone could
ever call him methodical and uninspired. When she looked at him as if she knew
damn well she would find herself melting in his arms in a few more minutes, he
felt as if he could handle anything, including her.
“Partners, Samantha? Your idea of a partnership is a bit
vague, I’m afraid. Partners don’t keep important information from each other.
Partners don’t start delicate negotiations on their own, tossing out an
entirely different price tag than the one on which said partners had already
agreed. Partners don’t try playing dangerous little games of revenge without
warning each other.”
“I’ve explained all that. Gabriel, listen to me. I haven’t tried
to cheat you in any way.”
“I know that. But you also haven’t tried to be a real partner
in this little endeavor, either, and you know it. You had all your private
schemes going on the side, and I was just supposed to quietly finance the whole
production without asking too many questions. That’s not a partnership,
Samantha. That’s you trying to use me.”
Guilt flashed into her eyes, and she bit down hard on her
lower lip. “Oh, Gabriel, I’m sorry. I’ve already told you I’m sorry. But, damn
it, we’ve been through all of this before. Be honest—if I had laid it all
straight out in the open from the start, wouldn’t you have backed away from the
deal entirely? I even had to threaten to go to William Oakes. That’s what it
took to make you decide to back me. You couldn’t bear the thought of losing out
to Oakes!”
He reached her then, dosing his hands around her shoulders
just as she made one last futile dive for the doorway. Gabriel held her still,
staring intently down into her anxious, upturned face.
“You little idiot,” he rasped, his body already reacting strongly
to the feel of her as she stood captive, “do you really believe I’m going
through all this just to keep from losing a deal to Oakes? You must be crazier
than I thought if you think that’s why I’ve let myself get taken through the
mill on this wild scheme of yours.”
She stood rigidly beneath his hands, her head tilted with
pride and defiance. “You’ve already said that sleeping with a woman isn’t
reason enough to do business with her either! So why are you here, Gabriel?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Charity work, I guess. For some
asinine reason, the logic of which escapes me at the moment, I had this crazy
notion that you needed a little protection from people like Oakes and Buchanan.”
“Protection!” The word seemed to inflame her. “I don’t need
any man’s protection! I can damn well take care of myself. Do you think I could
have built up this business of mine so fast and so successfully if I was incapable
of taking care of myself? Do you think I could devise a plan like that Phoenix
deal if I was incompetent? Do you think I could have lured you into backing me
if I was really unable to handle my own business affairs?
Protection
!”
He saw the slap coming but stoically stood his ground, not
making any attempt to block the short, hard blow. As his face reddened beneath
the imprint of her fingers, he tightened his hands on her shoulders. “Is it
really such an insult to say I felt protective toward you?” he whispered
harshly.
Already the remorse was filling her eyes. He saw her lips
tremble slightly as she lifted her hand again to his face, this time to soothe
the place she had struck. “Oh, Gabriel, damn it, I’m sorry. I always seem to be
saying that to you, don’t I? But it is an insult, you know!” she went on more
firmly.
“Samantha, can’t you admit that you need me in some way?”
Her face stilled, only the wide, searching gaze showing any
sign of expression. And Gabriel couldn’t read the one he did see there. A sense
of rising frustration made him dig his fingers roughly into her shoulders.
“I would,” Samantha said very carefully and with absolute precision
as if she was just in the process of formulating the realization, “admit I
needed a man in some way if he could admit he needed me… “ She let the sentence
trail off into nothingness as they continued to face each other.
She meant, Gabriel knew, that she would admit to her sexual
need of him if he pushed her and if he was willing to give her the same
assurance. It should have been enough. But it wasn’t. He already knew he could make
her want him with a passion that reached out to inflame them both. But it wasn’t
enough!
“You’re so damn cautious, aren’t you? For a woman who thinks
nothing of jumping headlong into everything else, you’re one hell of a coward
about taking a risk on me,” he said bitterly.
Before the words were completely out of his mouth, she was
impulsively crowding close, her hands sliding up his chest and around his neck.
He felt the urgent, warm pliancy in her body and saw the sudden tenderness invade
her eyes.
“You’re the idiot in this partnership if that’s what you believe,”
she murmured. “I’ve been taking risks on you since the day your name came up in
my computer! It was a risk choosing you over William Oakes in the first place.
With all the information about Oakes available, he was a much safer bet as a
business partner than an unknown man in California who seemed to have become quite
successful without making any of the usual waves!”
“Samantha,” he began huskily, only to be silenced once more.
“And I took one hell of a chance letting you seduce me that
first night. I know men don’t see it that way, but I certainly do! Most women
do. Furthermore, there was that ultimatum the following morning. You could so easily
have ignored it, and I knew that. Then there was the risk of continuing to have
an affair with the man who’s supposed to be only my financial partner. A man who
makes a very tricky partner in the first place because he keeps trying to be
the one in charge. He does crazy things like saving my brother’s neck, and then
he demands vague midnight promises which aren’t very dear in meaning until the
chips are down and it’s too late to back out of them. Oh, Gabriel, talk about
putting everything on the line for a person!”
He drew a long, uneven breath, his hands sliding up to curve
around her throat. She could probably feel the way his fingers were shaking, he
thought fleetingly. “I seem to have gotten a rather one-sided view of this whole
thing,” he admitted throatily. “I hadn’t looked at it from your viewpoint,
honey. I guess we’ve both been taking some risks lately.” It was a novel idea,
he realized, this notion that Samantha had taken a chance on him. Women didn’t
behave that way about Gabriel Sinclair. There was nothing particularly risky
about him. But Samantha didn’t seem to know that.
That thought was almost as satisfying as the realization that
she knew she would surrender in his arms. Gabriel groaned, shaping her face
with his hard hands and crushing her mouth beneath his.
“Damn it to hell, sweetheart, the only time I feel as if I’m
in control is when I have you lying underneath me and your legs are wrapped
around mine!”
“That’s a very chauvinistic attitude,” she chided gently, but
her fingers were gliding through his hair, and her mouth was soft and parted
and only half an inch from his.
“I’m only a man.” He was compelled to confide that as an
excuse for the elemental way he felt about her. Carefully he reached up and
removed her glasses, leaving her eyes wide and strangely vulnerable.
“Your halo does tend to slip now and then,” she whispered as
he nuzzled the soft skin behind her ear.
“Lord knows you provide enough provocation to keep it
permanently out of alignment!” He began a pattern of increasingly warm kisses
down the length of her throat. It wasn’t hard to sense that Samantha wanted to
resist further, perhaps talk out some of the tensions which still hung between
them. He felt her try to stiffen and pull herself back. But that was the last
thing he could tolerate. Not now. Not when his body was already heavy with
arousal and the desire was beginning to run like fire in his veins.
“Gabriel? Gabriel, we should talk a little more. What happened
this morning was very serious.”
“Yes.” He didn’t try to deny it, but he didn’t cease his
assault either. Let her talk. It would keep her busy while he was going about
more important things such as undressing her. His hands found the buttons of
the jonquil-yellow shirt she was wearing, and he began undoing them with great
care.
“I… I don’t want
you to get the idea that all of our problems can be solved in bed,” Samantha
was saying urgently as he finished the last button and pushed it off her
shoulders.
“No,” he agreed absently. Hell, she wasn’t wearing a bra.
And she’d known he would be here this morning. She almost always wore a bra. A
slow smile of raw pleasure touched his eyes. He flattened his palms above her
small breasts and slowly moved them downward until the budding nipples were
pressing into the centers of his hands.
“Gabriel, are you listening to me?” Her voice had a breathless
quality to it, and he sensed she was having a hard time focusing on what she
wanted to say. A shiver coursed through her as he slowly rotated his palms across
the hardening berries which tipped her softness.
“I’m listening, sweetheart.” And he was, to the sound of her
quickening breath, to the edge of desire underlining her words, and to his own
instincts which told him that in a few minutes she would be moaning her need of
him.
“It’s important that we understand each other. We’ve both
made some serious mistakes in this partnership of ours.”
“Yes.” She sounded so intense, so anxious to get her point
across. He slid his hands down the warm side of her ribs and then around to
find the fastening of her jeans. Her fingertips fell to his shoulders, and she
let them sink into the fabric of his shirt. It was an unconscious, kneading
gesture which reminded him of a cat, and it fueled the growing heat in him.
“Gabriel,” she whispered huskily, her lashes lowering as her
passion mounted, “about what you said to Drew… “
“
Ummm
? He had the jeans unzipped
now and was pushing them slowly down her hips, loving the shape of her buttocks
beneath his hands. As the denims fell to the floor at her feet, he followed,
kneeling in front of her to taste the warm silk of her stomach. The rising scent
of her desire told him all he needed to know. Deliberately he pushed his hand
against the dampening heat between her legs. Above him she sucked in her breath,
and suddenly she was bracing herself with her hands on his shoulders as her
thighs trembled.
“You shouldn’t have made it sound the way you did,” she
tried to say. He could hear her struggling to get the words out properly. “You
shouldn’t have… Oh, Gabriel!”
His name was a sigh as she tumbled to her knees in front of
him, unable to stay on her feet any longer. He groaned as he caught her mouth
with his own and pulled her naked form close to his own, opening his thighs to
drag her between them.
“Don’t you understand, Samantha?” he grated fiercely, cupping
her buttocks and straining her into the aching hardness of him. “You belong to
me now.”
She didn’t argue. She was beyond arguing, and he took
advantage of the fact to push her gently down on the frayed Oriental carpet.
With one hand he traced rough patterns on her breasts and stomach while he freed
himself from his clothing. She writhed beneath his touch, reaching upward to
pull him to her as soon as his slacks were off
Still wearing his shirt, which he’d only managed to get
unbuttoned, Gabriel came down on top of her. He knew a savage pleasure in the
way she parted her legs for him, and then he felt the touch of her fingers on
his manhood as she guided him to the heart of her desire.
His last coherent thought before the waves of sensual need
engulfed them both was to wonder who was surrendering to whom.
***
Drew Buchanan gave the assignment to Jeff Ingram as soon as
he walked in the door of the Buchanan building.
“I want to know everything you can find out on Gabriel
Sinclair. Venture capitalist working on the West Coast. And I need it
yesterday.”
But the information he needed didn’t come from Ingram; it
came from Carol Galloway that night as she and Buchanan faced each other across
a snowy tablecloth in an elegant, intimate restaurant that overlooked the
harbor. Drew had only mentioned the name in passing as he gave her a brief,
severely edited version of his trip to Seattle.