Beyond Breathless. Kathleen O'Reilly

began to speak, trying not to look her way. She took her own cell out of her briefcase and dialed, holding it up to her ear.

      She wasn’t overtly pretty, no argument there, but there was something so controlled inside her, a pressurized spring, tightly wound. Andrew’s brother and baby sister always said he was too tightly wound. That he needed to relax and get a life. One way to relax would be to pry apart those tightly wound thighs and bury himself inside her.

      “Andrew?”

      He jerked back into the conversation. “Repeat that, please?”

      And so the boring meeting went on. He had a life. A successful, fulfilling, organized life. But it was another kind of fulfillment, sexual fulfillment, or lack thereof, that was currently tenting his pants. He took a pad of paper from his briefcase and laid it strategically across his lap.

      Just in case she noticed.

      She hung up on her call, putting her cell away, and pulled out a notepad of her own.

      Tinny voices buzzed his ear, the words making less and less sense.

      All he could think about was the one white pearl button that was three inches below her throat. Such a small, sensible button.

      Andrew had the oddest desire to take the white pearl button between his teeth and pull. Just like Everest—because it was there.

      THE CAR WAS STARTING to heat up. Not from the warmth in the air, but the tension. He was having a normal, mundane conversation that Jamie had heard many times before. An assortment of numbers, buzz words, and run-on sentences that permeated corporate buildings across America, yet every time she heard that voice, it was like a shot of tequila straight to the brain. The car was going to her head. Jamie didn’t even like tequila.

      She tried to concentrate on the paper in front of her, but his eyes were feasting on her throat, making him impossible to ignore. After a futile struggle to remain calm, she finally put the notebook away. She crossed her legs, uncrossed her legs, before settling herself with both feet planted firmly on the floor.

      There was no reason to be nervous. She’d graduated Summa Cum Laude with all of three dates. She scared men off, mainly because take no prisoners ran in her family. A genetic trait that appeared when an army general mated with a dentist.

      But this one…

      Andrew.

      There was something about him that called to her. Something besides the immaculate Italian wool suit. Something, well…earthy.

      It was new and exciting, and to be fair, new and exciting didn’t happen to Jamie very often. Nothing happened to Jamie very often, which was probably her own fault, but this feeling inside her, this tiny bubble of passion, was better than chocolate.

      Much better than chocolate.

      Her hand moved to her throat, and his gaze sharpened.

      With one tiny flutter of her hand, his eyes had narrowed, and she heard the quiet, indrawn breath. A primitive thrill pumped through her system, a feeling usually reserved for corporate IPOs and the year-end bonus. Quickly, her hand dropped to her lap.

      Just as quickly, the hunger faded from his eyes, and she watched as he scribbled efficient notes on the yellow lined legal pad in front of him.

      She crossed her legs, trapping a thrill between her thighs.

      A moment gained, a moment lost.

      Her fingers drummed impatiently on her tightly crossed legs and his gaze locked on her hand. Realizing what she was doing, she stopped.

      The tension in his face relaxed and he shot her a smile of gratitude.

      And he had lots of reasons for gratitude. He hadn’t been chewed out by Newhouse’s warden of a secretary, only moments ago, saying that “A cut power line is no excuse for tardiness.”

      Being a woman in the financial industry wasn’t easy. A lot of men either wanted her to be a secretary or a willing vassal for their penis, never an equal.

      A man like Andrew wouldn’t need to prepare like she had for one of the most ambitious deals in the history of Bond-Worthington Financial. No, he had looked happy as a clam while chatting away about margins and puts. Probably because he had a blond secretary with plasticized implants. Probably named Amber.

      A tiny sigh escaped from her lips.

      He was attractive, he was successful, he was a man, she reminded herself, even though parts of her were already tantalizingly aware of that fact. But what did that matter? Because of today, she was probably going to lose her deal, and she never lost a deal. She would face the walk of shame back at the office, having to explain to Walter why she couldn’t leap over tall buildings in a single bound, why she couldn’t start an electrical-powered locomotive, and God only knows that she couldn’t stop bullets with her chest, much less traffic.

      But Jamie liked being the star performer in the office. More importantly, she couldn’t live without it.

      It was all she had.

      No, life was definitely unfair. Her eyes looked at his. Deliberately, her hand rose to her throat.

      Tossing caution to the wind, she unfastened the tiny button. It was a small, insignificant gesture, nothing overt or slutty, but for one slow second in time, she wanted to disrupt his manly existence, to explore this new feeling inside her, and right some of the injustices in the world.

      He stopped talking.

      Blinked twice.

      Swallowed.

      Mission accomplished.

      2

      IT WAS A SMALL HALF-INCH of flesh. Not golden tan, more like pale peach. Andrew valiantly attempted to keep up with the back and forth of the conference call, but failed. Instead he was mesmerized by the lure of naked skin.

      It wasn’t cleavage or thigh. It was nothing but an uncovered throat.

      God, he was losing it.

      He dragged his eyes away from the sight of temptation and studied the lined paper in his lap, but the words blurred together. The voices in his ear buzzed like a mosquito on a summer’s day and he struggled to make out the words: “a marketing strategy to focus on old-fashioned honesty in our financial dealings.”

      Okay, that made sense.

      “Dave, do you think traders will really buy into that?” he asked, rather proud of himself for coming up with a halfway lucid contribution.

      Even better, he could ignore her. He could ignore the raging hard-on that had blood streaming down from his brain to his cock. He could ignore the fact that he hadn’t gotten laid in eight months.

      Okay, that one he couldn’t ignore.

      It explained much of his current situation.

      He’d never been a New York playboy like his younger brother, Jeff, who chased after supermodels and party girls. Most of the women who Andrew dated were classy, but not clingy. Never clingy. The idiosyncrasies of a relationship took too much time, so by default the ones who lasted were the ones who made few demands.

      Whatever worked.

      His gaze traveled upward, leaving the relative security of the legal pad to skim over nicely turned breasts, past the lurid throat, and finally coming to rest on her face.

      Jamie of No Last Name looked to be hell on wheels. A woman who threw you down on the bed, and…

      No, no, no…

      He’d seen guys in the office succumb to the lure of the velvet power of the p-whip, but not Andrew. Too many people were counting on him.

      That thought helped gird the loins that were currently raging with lust.

      But she was cute, although he suspected she’d kill him if he said it aloud. Certainly not cute