Too Much Temptation (3 page)

Rainwater squished out of her clothing, then trickled down her body and onto Ben. He put a smacking kiss on the side of her neck, immobilizing Grace with the impulsiveness of it. She could count on one hand the number of times a gorgeous man had kissed her neck.

Heck, she could count with one finger because this time was a first.

Noah continued to study her, scrutinizing her every reaction, which made Ben’s behavior inconsequential. She began to burn, and knew she had to gain control of the situation.

She cast a wary glance at Ben, who, although he released her, continued to grin like a rogue. She looked back at Noah, and way up, to see his expression. His muscled arms were crossed over his chest, his intense blue eyes narrowed, watchful. He looked bemused and something else, perhaps…tender.

“I’d have been here sooner,” Grace told him in a croak, trying to collect herself. “But I was out of town.”

“I remember,” Noah murmured, still holding her fixed in his gaze. “Agatha had you doing some headhunting, didn’t she?”

“Yes, for a new chef she’d heard about. He agreed to her terms and she, ah, hired him. He starts right away.”

“Great.”

Noah sounded more disgusted than enthused. It had been Noah’s job for years now to do all the hiring. Agatha’s interference often resulted in difficulties that Noah had to deal with.

Grace didn’t want him sidetracked with worries about that now. “But that’s not important.”

“No? What
is
important?”

Grace chewed her lip, trying to decipher Noah’s mood. He had the most stony, unreadable expression when he chose, and he’d just gone into full conceal mode. He appeared relaxed, unconcerned, no more than curious.

But oh, those silvery blue eyes of his, shadowed by his long thick lashes, continued to burn. And she felt the heat right down to the core of her being. She glanced at Ben, but he just winked, his own brown eyes alight with mischief.

“It’s important,” Grace said, “that you know everyone doesn’t blame you.”

“But everyone does.”

“Not me.”

Ben again laced his arms around her and propped his chin on her crown. “Why is that, sugar?”

Oh, please, Grace thought in a bit of a panic; Ben didn’t really think she could talk with him lined up behind her and Noah in front of her? She felt surrounded by testosterone, hemmed in by machismo. Impossible.

It was distracting enough that Ben had a body like a steel statue and was sexy to boot. It was doubly bad that he touched her in ways she’d never been touched before. It more than rattled her.

But while Ben could unsettle her with his dynamic presence, he’d never excited her emotions the way Noah did, never made her alternately hot and cold and so physically
aware.

Yet, there Noah stood a mere foot in front of her, bare feet braced apart, dark hair damp from the humidity, eyes as hot as a blue flame. Grace’s heart pattered, and she wondered that Ben didn’t feel it.

Then Noah slanted his brother an amused look. “You’re going to make her faint, Ben.”

“That right?” Ben peeked over her shoulder to see Grace’s face. She could feel his breath on her cheek. “You feelin’ faint, honey?”

“I, uh…”

“Knock it off, Ben.” Noah watched her as if he knew what she felt and even while he smiled at her predicament, he wanted to protect her.

Grace drew a shuddering breath. “I’m, uh, not used to guys touching me.”

Noah’s eyes glittered. “Huh. Now there’s a confession.”

Before Grace could recover from the suggestion in Noah’s tone, Ben saved her by pretending to be shocked. He said, very theatrically, “No! I won’t believe it, Gracie.”

Grace didn’t mind Ben poking fun. Almost every other twenty-five-year-old woman she knew had left virginity far behind.

Without looking at Noah, she said, “Afraid so.” Then, to try to relieve the tension, she added, “At least, not big, gorgeous, sexy guys like yourself.”

“You hittin’ on me?” Ben asked with a teasing grin. He could be such a charming scamp.

“No,” Grace assured him, “because I’d have no idea what to do with you.”

He laughed and shook his head, then touched her cheek before moving away. “She’s all yours, Noah.”

Noah smiled.

Seeing that smile, Grace gulped.

Apparently unaware of Grace’s embarrassment, or at the least not caring, Ben added, “I suggest you get her out of those wet clothes before you continue your interrogation.” He glanced back at Grace over his shoulder and bobbed his eyebrows. “I’d offer to help, you know, but I gotta get going. Hell, I’m so drunk, I hope I make it to my own bed.”

Grace immediately turned and snagged the back waistband of Ben’s jeans. She held on. “You can’t drive in your condition!”

Ben was so unsteady on his feet he almost fell into Grace when she abruptly halted his forward momentum, causing him to stumble back two steps. He caught himself at the last second and laughed. “All I’m gonna do, Gracie, is pick up my shoes, shuffle to the elevator, and then ask Graham to call me a cab, assuming I make it to the lobby in an upright position. Noah here made me drink more than I’m used to.”

“Made you?” asked Noah with one glossy black brow raised. “I seem to remember you’re the one who showed up with the first case of beer.”

First
case of beer? Grace still held on to Ben. “I’ll take you to Graham.”

Ben looked down at her hands, latched tight to his waistband. “Turn me loose, woman. I can manage.”

She gave Noah a questioning look.

“He’ll be fine,” Noah promised. “I’ll call down and tell Graham to watch for him.”

“Well, all right.” Grace loosened her hold and Ben floundered forward. He fetched up against the couch, righted himself, then located his shoes. He didn’t bother to put them on.

“You two kids behave now, okay?”

Noah, who was only slightly steadier than Ben, went to his brother to help him out, then used the intercom to call down to Graham.

While they were both occupied Grace picked up an empty beer case and began stowing bottles inside. She was only half done when Noah returned.

He still had that awesome fire burning in his eyes and it made her very nervous. And very, very aware of him as a man.

“You heard what Ben said,” Noah told her while scrutinizing her every movement.

“Uh, no.” Grace licked her dry lips. “What did he say?”

Noah started forward, faltering a little but with definite purpose. And damn if he didn’t have a small, wicked smile tilting one side of his mouth. “You’re all…” His gaze dipped over her too-round body outlined in the clinging clothes—top to bottom and back again, making her heart leap with embarrassment. His eyes met hers. “…wet.”

Grace’s mouth opened, but not a single word emerged.

Noah kept advancing, closer and closer, despite the way she instinctively backed up. Until he stood directly in front of her, until the power of him, the heat and the deep male scent of him touched her all over.

Her breath caught, her pulse tripped and tumbled.

“Gracie,” he murmured, and he touched her cheek, looking at her in a way he’d never looked at her before, in a way no man had ever looked at her. His smile deepened, his eyes brightened. “You’re going to have to lose the wet clothes.”

Grace closed her eyes and wished like hell he wasn’t drunk. But wishing didn’t work. He
was
drunk—the fact that he’d said such an outrageous thing to her proved it—and that meant she couldn’t take advantage of him, no matter what he said, no matter how badly she wanted to.

Well, damn.

E
ven in his inebriated state, Noah knew that half of what he said and did was out of character. Or rather, it was out of character for the man he’d tried to be, to live up to his grandmother’s specifications.

But for the first time in years, he felt like himself again. He was a free man, allowed to do as he pleased, with whomever he pleased. He owed Kara nothing, and after Agatha’s explosion, he didn’t owe her anything either.

In his typical fashion, he’d carefully considered how to handle things after being disowned. Only then had he reacted. He’d already set his plans into motion, and before long, he’d be completely free of Agatha. If they had a relationship after that, if his grandmother claimed him at all, it’d be because she wanted to, not because she needed to.

Because he lived without illusions, he was prepared for either reaction.

He hadn’t been prepared for Grace. She’d thrown him for an emotional loop, giving him her unquestioning support and loyalty. As an illegitimate and late addition to the Harper family, loyalty meant the world to Noah.

Probably because he’d never had it.

Agatha had recently proven he couldn’t have it from her, no matter how many different ways he bent himself—which was why he wouldn’t bend for her anymore.

And he sure as hell hadn’t ever gotten it from the foster parents who’d grudgingly taken him in. Only his brother—who he hadn’t met until he was nearly grown—had ever given him that kind of unconditional support.

And now Grace.

Agatha had made an excellent choice the day she’d hired Grace Jenkins. Noah remembered sitting in on the interview, watching the too-plump twenty-two-year-old, fresh out of college without a single reference. She was alone in the world; her parents had passed away in an accident years before. At that moment, he’d felt a strange affinity to her. They were both alone, both stubborn and determined.

Grace had lifted her rounded chin, met Agatha’s shrewd gaze squarely and listed what she considered her best qualities.

Hardworking, driven, intelligent, rational…and loyal.

That thought made Noah frown. He caught Grace’s hand and tugged her with him toward his bedroom. “Does Agatha know you’re here?”

Noah practically dragged her, she showed so much resistance. But he didn’t let up. He liked the feel of her soft hand in his, and he especially liked the way she looked at him with those enormous brown eyes. They were sexy, no two ways about it. He’d always liked her eyes as much as her determination and backbone.

Noah especially liked them now.

Of course, he was beyond horny, on the ragged edge, but it was more than that. It was…he didn’t know what the hell to label it, and at the moment he didn’t even care to try. “Gracie?”

He pulled her into his bedroom and turned to face her.

She looked up at him through her lashes. Long wet ropes of twisted brown hair clung to her face and throat. She glanced around his room and licked her lips. “What?”

“Does Agatha know you’re here?” he repeated.

“She knows.”

Noah crossed his arms. “I bet she was none too happy.”

That adorable stubborn chin of hers lifted. “I’m a grown woman, Noah Harper. I make my own decisions.”

Shaking his head, Noah turned away to rummage in a drawer. “Meaning she forbade you to come here, huh?”

Grace started to inch back when he located a white T-shirt and pulled it out. He caught her by the upper arm. She was…very soft. Plump, as he already knew, but also soft and warm and intensely female.

He could smell her wet hair, her damp skin, and his blood burned.

It hadn’t been that long since he’d walked in on Kara, but there’d been much to do, to deal with, and no time to find a woman. Knowing he was now free to indulge his true nature made it doubly hard to wait. He was so frustrated, so sexually primed after the long deprivation of his engagement and the emotional drain of ending it, he felt ready to go nuts.

But he had to remember that this was Grace, his grandmother’s secretary, a gentlewoman, a very respectable and innocent woman.

I’m not used to men touching me.
God, the very idea of being her first made his imagination shoot into overdrive and all his muscles clench.

“Grace,” Noah said, his voice too harsh, “are you going to be in trouble for coming here?”

She lifted one shoulder. “I don’t know. I’ll deal with that later. Not that it matters.” That ferocious, protective glimmer lit her eyes. “None of them had any right to crucify you. I couldn’t stand by and let you think that we all felt the same.”

“Because you don’t?”

“Of course not.”

“Because you know me so well?”

She stammered, then snapped her teeth together. “Noah Harper, I’ve known you for three years. You’re like me in a lot of ways. Hardworking and proud and conscientious. You would never do anything so reprehensible as breaking an engagement without a good solid reason.”

God, her faith in him felt good. It seeped into him, warming him from within, easing some of his roiling tension.

Noah prided himself on his ability to analyze situations, to calmly make sound decisions. He couldn’t analyze Grace or how she made him feel.

Without another thought, Noah bent and kissed her.

Grace leaped back so quickly, she lost her balance and landed on her butt.

Dazed by her reaction, Noah frowned, bent to haul her upright, and lost his balance, too, almost landing on her. She stiffened her arms against him until he’d regained his equilibrium and straightened back up.

“Noah, really!” Grace sputtered from her position at his feet.

Hoping to sound gentle rather than predatory, Noah stared down at her and said, “Out of those wet clothes, babe.”

She lumbered upright in graceless haste and clasped her hands together over her sweater, as if to keep it on her person.

What? Did Grace think he meant to attack her? Hell, he could barely keep from falling on his face. Not that the idea of having her under him didn’t appeal. It did. In a big way. But Noah doubted he was up to the performance. Gracie was the type of woman who deserved to be treated special.

She was not a woman for a quick lay.

Still, he noticed the frantic rise and fall of her magnificent breasts. Unable to stop staring, wondering how she’d look buck naked, Noah asked, “What’s wrong, Grace?”

Noah actually heard her gulp. It had been a long, long time since he’d had to deal with a timid woman. He kind of liked it. Before becoming engaged to Kara—and even a few times after—women had come on to him with blatant confidence in their skills. Even Kara, though reserved in her genteel nature, had never doubted her appeal or her influence.

Grace, however, looked like a bewildered rabbit, ready to bolt if he said boo.

She hadn’t looked like that earlier, when she’d vehemently defended his abused honor.
Noah grinned. Yeah, he liked it; he liked her, a lot.

“There’s no reason for me to change my clothes,” Grace muttered, “because I’ll just get wet again when I leave.”

Noah was drunk, no two ways about it, but he wasn’t dead. Grace felt like a balm, like a ray of warm sunshine in the middle of the storm, and he wanted her.

He waited till she looked up, then snared her gaze. Her dark eyes widened warily. “I don’t want you to leave, Grace.”

“You don’t?”

Noah felt himself sway and squared his shoulders. “Will you stay with me, Gracie?”

Her gaze skipped to the bed behind him. “Here?” she squeaked.

That single word sounded like a suggestion, a seduction. His gut tightened. “Yeah.”

Grace looked scandalized and…maybe full of yearning? Damn, Noah wished his head wasn’t so foggy with drink. He had the feeling that dealing with Grace would prove tricky. Especially since at the moment he wasn’t even sure of his own mind, much less hers. He only knew he wanted, and the wanting was somehow tied to Grace.

For now.

“Why?” Grace asked, still holding herself and still very uncertain.

“I need you.”

He said it without thinking about it, and Grace appeared to melt right before his eyes. Her knees went weak and she leaned on the dresser while devouring him with her deep dark gaze. Her lush mouth relaxed, her face softened, her entire expression became one of tenderness and acceptance and love.

Noah hadn’t known he was starving till he saw everything he wanted so clearly in Grace.

“Oh, Noah,” she whispered.

Metering his pace so she wouldn’t run from him, Noah approached her. He slung the T-shirt onto his shoulder and, still holding her gaze, began unbuttoning her sweater.

With a gasp, Grace looked down, away, everywhere but at him.

“Hey.”

She swallowed and shook her head, quivering—from cold or nervousness?

“We…we should turn out the light.”

“It’s not on.” But the curtains were drawn wide, and despite the rain-dark weather and low purple clouds, there was enough gray light coming through the windows that Noah could see her clearly. A good thing, since he wanted to visually explore her whole body, inch by luscious inch.

He pushed the drenched sweater off her shoulders and inhaled sharply. Her breasts were more than a handful, full and heavy and so sexy his cock strained in his jeans.

Her bra was the sturdy type, white cotton with an underwire, necessary to support a woman of her endowments. But it, too, was wet, making it transparent. Noah could see the outline of her rosy nipples showing through.

He was busy staring and trying to rein in his lust when Grace jerked away, turning her back on him and hunching her shoulders.

Because he’d drowned his anger in drink, his damn reflexes were slow, and Noah stood there a moment trying to decide what had happened. By the time he realized she was actually hiding from him, it was too late. Grace reached behind her and flapped an impatient hand. “Give me the shirt.”

There was a strange quiver to her tone, what sounded far too close to embarrassment to suit Noah.

Somehow, he’d find a way to make her understand her own appeal.

He handed her the tee and said, “Get rid of the bra, too.”
Yeah, all of it.
He cleared his throat, but even to his inebriated ears, he still sounded far too turned on. “You’re soaked down to your skin, Grace, and I don’t want you to catch cold.”

And if she believed that, he’d sell her a bridge.

Grace froze, clutching the T-shirt in her small fists. Then, with a contortionist’s dexterity, she pulled it over her head without losing her fragile grip on the sweater. Beneath the cover of the tee she stripped out of her bra and finally removed the wet sweater—without showing Noah a single speck of additional flesh. She dropped the sweater and her bra over the arm of a bedside chair.

Noah quirked a brow, amused and also disgruntled that he hadn’t gotten to see her. He felt drunker by the moment. And hotter. “Now the skirt.”

Grace peeked at him over her shoulder, and he saw her cheeks were hot with color. But she had guts, his Gracie. She kicked off her shoes, then bent to pick them up and place them neatly by the door. With her bottom lip caught between her teeth, she reached beneath the skirt and peeled out of her panty hose. She folded them and put them with the shoes.

Unknowingly, she provided Noah with a tantalizing strip show that nearly did him in. His testicles tightened, and his blood surged.

Noah locked his knees and said, “Go on.”

Because he was so much taller, his T-shirt hung to mid-thigh on her, half covering the long loose skirt. She’d put it on over her wet clothes and now it was damp, too. It also molded to her breasts, and the second Noah noticed that her nipples were pressed tightly against the cotton, he nearly lost it.

Grace walked to the other side of his bed, where Noah couldn’t see the bottom half of her, and reached back to slide down her zipper. She watched his face while he watched her body. Her movements thrust her breasts forward, made her nipples even more noticeable. He could almost taste her in his mouth, feel the texture of her against his tongue.

In a growl, Noah asked, “Why are you hiding from me, Grace?” He had his suspicions, but he wanted to hear her say it to be sure.

She pursed her mouth and shimmied the skirt down her fleshy thighs.
Soft, silken, fleshy thighs.
Noah wanted to feel those thighs high on his shoulders, or better yet, against his jaw while he tasted her….

“I’m fat.”

His head jerked up, all thoughts of devouring her temporarily scattered.
“What the hell did you say?”

Grace frowned and dropped the skirt over the footboard of the bed. Cheeks warm, her eyes soft, she faced him in nothing more than his white T-shirt and panties. Her wet hair streamed over her shoulders, her feet pressed together, she said, “You’re not blind, Noah. You’ve known me three years.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So you know I’m fat.”

Anger ripped through him. It wasn’t at all like what he’d felt when confronting his grandmother and Kara and her parents. No, this was the real thing, singing through his veins, firing his blood.