Off Limits / Ruled. Anne Marsh

glares at me, then stares ahead until the lift doors open.

      I guess not.

      I stand with my hands on my hips, angrily admonishing him with my look. ‘Nuh-uh. I’m not getting out until you tell me what’s going on.’

      ‘What’s going on?’ His tone shows incredulity.

      He turns back into the elevator and lifts me easily, throwing me over his shoulder in a way I have only ever fantasised about. He carries me into an apartment—a palatial space. I gain a brief impression of glass, steel, white leather furniture and a state-of-the-art kitchen before he’s storming down a tiled hallway and turning into a room.

      A bedroom.

      With an enormous bed in the centre and floor-to-ceiling windows that show a glinting view of London below.

      ‘You are driving me crazy—that’s what’s going on. And I don’t want to want you like this. I’m sick of waking up about to fucking explode because I’ve been dreaming about you. I’m sick of looking at you and imagining you naked every time we’re in the same damned room.’

      He drops me onto the bed but I’m too shocked by his angry confession to care. So he does feel it, too—this burning, all-consuming, unwanted, unwelcome, unasked-for need.

      ‘So, if it’s all the same to you, I want to fuck you properly—right out of my head—so we can go back to working together like damned adults instead of horny teenagers.’

      My breath is burning my lungs, exploding out of me in fierce bursts. ‘You think you can fuck me out of your head?’

      ‘Yes.’ He stares down at me, flicking his shirt open button by button.

      My eyes follow his movement and though I’ve seen him naked before it was never like this. He’s never been naked for me.

      ‘Why? Why now?’

      ‘Because I need you now.’

      Still, my brain is shouting at me and, having ignored it in the past and had it lead me into disastrous temptation, I push up on my elbows and roll off the other side of the bed.

      His eyes stay trained on me even as he continues to undress, and my throat is dry, parched. I feel like I’ve been dropped from a great height; I’m in free fall with nothing to grab. Gravity no longer exists.

      ‘How dare you? You drag me here, to your...your...lair...’ I spit angrily, only to have Jack burst out laughing.

      ‘My lair?’ He throws his head back.

      He’s so sexy. God, this isn’t fair. I know what I should do. I know what I need to do. But he is laughing at me, and my pride is being thumped with each sound he makes.

      I jump back onto the bed, storm across it quickly and step off the other side, surprising him with the force of my body against his, knocking him partway to the floor. He catches his balance, his hands steadying me even as I keep on pushing until we are at the wall.

      ‘I’m not some nuisance you can get rid of. An itch you can scratch and lose.’ I push a fingernail into his chest and glare up at him, my eyes firing at his.

      ‘So what are you?’ he demands roughly, his chest moving with each strained breath. ‘Why are you all I can think of lately? Why do you consume my every damned waking thought? What sort of magic is this?’

      I have needed to hear these words and they fill me with something I don’t understand. There is awe and confusion, and anger, too—because he is just like Mr Darcy, telling me he loves me against his will.

      Only Jack’s not promising love so much as sex, and Mr Darcy would never have made Elizabeth Bennet come pressed hard against a glass window on the forty-second floor of a high-rise in the City of London.

      You know what else Lizzy wouldn’t have done...?

      I drop to my knees in front of him, and before he can guess what I want, or say anything to stop me, I move my mouth over his length, taking him deep—so deep that I feel him connect with the back of my throat.

      ‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he groans, but he doesn’t pull away.

      His hands drop to my hair, tangling in its blond lengths. It is still wild around my face from when he almost fucked me in his office. His fingers pull at it and I glide my mouth over his shaft, rolling my tongue across its tip and tasting just enough of him to make my insides clench with fevered desire. I squeeze my fingers around his length and then take him deep inside my mouth again, my eyes travelling up his honed body to meet his. I see the swirling depths of emotion in them...I see that he is as lost as I am...and it is all that keeps me going.

      If I’m going to feel like I have no clue who I am anymore then he should, too.

      I move my mouth faster, rolling my tongue over his sensitive tip each time I am close to pulling away completely, and then his hands on my hair tighten, slowing me down, holding me still. His breath is rough, and I taste more of him spilling into my mouth.

      I try to take him deeper but his fingers hold me still, the pressure on my scalp almost painful.

      ‘This isn’t going to end that quickly,’ he says darkly, pulling me away completely and staring down at me before reaching beneath my arms and lifting me to stand. He stares into my eyes and there is so much triumph in my face that he must see it.

      ‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he says again after a moment, and pulls me back towards the bed.

      My heart twists achingly in my chest. He pushes me backwards, onto the middle of the mattress, and bends down, grabbing for something off the floor.

      A second later I see what it is: his belt. He’s naked—spectacularly so—and so hard and firm. He runs his hands over my arms, catching my wrists and pinning them over my head.

      ‘Do you trust me?’ he asks—deep, throaty, gravelled.

      I shake my head but my lips are twitching. ‘I trust you to make me come. I don’t know if I trust you with anything else right now.’

      His laugh is soft as he loops the belt in and out of the bedposts, and then grabs my wrists and incorporates them into it, pinning my arms behind me and above my head. It’s not particularly comfortable.

      ‘Then let me make you come again and again and again, Gemma.’

      Gemma. The way he says my name like that—rich with passion and want—makes my body catch fire. Like it’s not already an inferno!

      He pushes at my dress, his hands on my thighs intimate. I still have no underwear on and he smiles to see my nakedness.

      ‘You are beautiful,’ he grunts, almost as though he’s never noticed me before.

      He brings his mouth down against me and I jerk my arms, wanting to touch him.

      He laughs. ‘And you’re mine.’

      Butterflies ravage me angrily. I am his. For this moment...for this night. Is this how it always is with him? When he makes love to those other women does it feel to them as though they are the only woman in the world?

      The idea of being one of them is anathema to me.

      ‘Remember what I told you in the boardroom?’

      He pushes the dress higher, over my breasts, then leaves it bunched under my arms while he turns his attention to the scrap of lace that covers me. He doesn’t bother to unclasp it—just lifts my breasts out of the delicate cups, bringing his mouth close to one of them and breathing warm air over the sensitive, erect nipple.

      I arch my back instinctively and he laughs. ‘Do you want this?’ he murmurs, flicking it with his tongue, then circling the darker flesh slowly, teasing me, taunting me.

      I nod, incoherent with need. ‘I want everything,’ I say seriously.

      ‘Everything?’

      ‘All