Sometimes you just can’t resist playing with fire…

By day, Aaron Clarkson suits up, shakes hands, and acts the perfect gentleman. But at night, behind bedroom doors, the tie comes off and the real Aaron comes out to play. Mixing business with pleasure got him fired, so Aaron knows that if he wants to work for the country’s most powerful senator, he’ll have to keep his eye on the prize. That’s easier said than done when he meets the senator’s daughter, who’s wild, gorgeous, and 100 percent trouble.

Grace Pendleton is the black sheep of her conservative family. Yet while Aaron’s presence reminds her of a past she’d rather forget, something in his eyes keeps drawing her in. Maybe it’s the way his voice turns her molten. Or maybe it’s because deep down inside, the ultra-smooth, polished Aaron Clarkson might be more than even Grace can handle…

His progress toward the door halted when Grace shot to her feet, arms stiff at her sides, those green eyes like glowing jade moons. “I…that isn’t what I was asking for. I just meant, let me help you, in general. I—I didn’t think…”

Aaron’s neck heated. “If you don’t like the idea, we can change it—”

She jumped. She actually jumped straight up in the air, hands flying to her cheeks. “I love it. Oh, please don’t change anything. I was just so surprised.”

He inclined his head, mentally cursing the way his heart decided to make its presence known at such an inconvenient time, walloping his rib cage with thick booms, courtesy of Grace’s pleasure. How juvenile. “I’m kind of surprised myself,” he admitted, then wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

At least until Grace floated toward him. All shining eyes and rosy excitement, she spurred a lust storm in his stomach. “It’s so much better when you say what you’re thinking, Aaron.”

“You mentioned that.”

And of course, it made him want to say more. Say whatever it would take to get her legs wrapped around his hips. To rock between her thighs until her wetness drenched the fly of his pants. “Get away from me, Grace,” he rasped. “It would be just like me to take advantage of you after having to tell that story.”

Silence deepened around them. “How can you say that after you just found a way for me to rebuild the camp?” It seemed as if her entire body lifted and fell on a harsh sob. “Last night, you asked me if I still saw some good in you…and I didn’t answer. How could I not have answered you?” She shook her gorgeous head. “I didn’t mean to—”

Aaron shot forward, capturing her unspoken words with his own mouth. Guilt. There had been even more guilt in her eyes. Aaron’s response was pure denial. Not because of me. Not over me. But as soon as their lips joined, his mind wiped clean of anything but Grace’s one-of-a-kind taste. She was juicy, sweet, refreshing, intoxicating madness. He let it pull him down into its depths—her depths—gathering up her taste greedily so he could live with the effect as long as possible, even though surely a man couldn’t withstand this type of arousal for an extended length of time. He’d want to fuck her again as soon as he came. It was a certainty his body was all too eager to confirm. Yet protectiveness held him in a state of limbo. Wanting—needing—to mate with her delicious body while determined to protect her from himself.

Couldn’t she sense the past meaningless encounters he wore like gloves, cheapening everything he touched? Couldn’t she sense his inability to be meaningful to her? Grace should have someone with substance, not someone who couldn’t even garner the love of his own family. Someone who considered the ramifications of his actions and how they would serve as betrayal. This is how you repay me?

The voice from his not-so-distant past had Aaron tearing his mouth away with a guttural growl, clasping Grace by the shoulders. Too hard. Ease up. “Get away.”

“If you really want that, let me go,” she whispered.

God, he couldn’t do it. Not with her face tipped back, lips swollen and shined up, those eyelids halfway fallen. He’d never in his life had trouble resisting sex. It was always a logical decision based on his needs. This? There was nothing cut and dried about it. His attraction to Grace was messy and wild and untapped. Made his chest expand with the effort to contain the expanding of something unfamiliar. Crazy and blinding. His dick needed a good, rough handling from one woman only. Grace. And she wasn’t pushing him away. Seemed like she wanted the job, too, her tits sliding up and down his abs with every breath. Give her one more chance. Show her what she’s in for with a bastard like you. With a muttered epithet, Aaron raked his hand up the back of Grace’s thigh, sliding it down the back of her tights, and settling his middle finger in the valley of her ass. “Get away from me,” he managed, wedging his straying digit a little more securely, earning him a closed-lipped noise.

“No,” she gasped after a few seconds.

Aaron’s tether broke. Recapturing Grace’s mouth with an obscene amount of tongue, he backed them toward the bed, satisfaction rippling in his middle when she went down beneath him, her legs falling open in welcome. He draped his body over Grace’s slighter one, eager grunts leaving his mouth as he positioned himself over her pussy and bore down with his erection. Their groans were pain-filled, reaching every corner of the cabin, breaking off when Aaron got back to kissing that addictive mouth, yanking the oversized sweater up, up to her belly, so he could rock against her sex with only his pants and her tights as obstructions.

“Aaron.”

“You were warned,” he reminded her with a strangled shout, delivered into the space above her head. “Three times, Grace. That’s three times more than I’d give anyone else.” He slid up and back in the cradle of her legs, groaning over the rasping friction her tights delivered to his stiff, fuck-hungry dick. “Make it four times. I gave you an out back at the house. You should have taken it.”

When Grace should have been trembling or alarmed by the cut steel in his voice, she only stretched out beneath him like a cat, opening up for him. Almost preening beneath his rough ministrations. “Maybe I should have. But we’re here now, so stop trying to scare me.” Her fingertips moved down Aaron’s chest to the seat of his pants, where she smoothed her palm over the curve of his cock, which started him panting like a marathon runner. “You don’t really want to scare me, do you, Aaron?”

Christ, her soft words, the sight of her, were choking him up. Her hair was a haphazard display framing her face, those crooked front teeth somehow making him twice as eager to seal their mouths together again. He was a hunter who’d discovered a sprite dancing in the woods and dragged her home, intending to use her body for vigorous relief, but got forgiveness in return. “No, I don’t. I don’t want to scare you.”

“I know,” she breathed, unfastening his belt buckle. “I just know.”

Tessa Bailey is originally from Carlsbad, California. The day after high school graduation, she packed her yearbook, ripped jeans, and laptop, and drove cross-country to New York City in under four days. Her most valuable life experiences were learned thereafter while waitressing at K-Dees, a Manhattan pub owned by her uncle. Inside those four walls, she met her husband, best friend, and discovered the magic of classic rock, managing to put herself through Kingsborough Community College and the English program at Pace University at the same time. Several stunted attempts to enter the work force as a journalist followed, but romance writing continued to demand her attention.

She now lives in Long Island, New York with her husband and daughter. Although she is severely sleep-deprived, she is incredibly happy to be living her dream of writing about people falling in love.

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