Her Irresistible Guardian Read online

  Their bodies didn’t touch, except for his hands on her wrists. But they were close, so close. She could smell him, male and after-shave lotion. His body emanated heat and chase.

  Mark registered she had taken off her hair-pin and her silky cinnamon ringlets fell down her shoulders, which were covered in thin fabric chemise. He felt her warmness on his skin, the flowery perfume mixed with her female scent. His body reacted, ready for her. She was so deliciously small; it made him wish to wrap her with his body, cover her. All he wanted was to lean his full body on hers, lower his head and taste the soft skin of her nape. He envisioned himself possessing her wildly, which brought him to a boiling condition.

  Her body wanted him closer, much closer than that. It wanted to feel him, all of him. Inside. She tried hard to keep still, tensing all her muscles. Something went wrong, though. Her body tensed, yes, but in an arch. Her instincts arched her spine to get to feel him and now her head was falling back shamelessly.

  This was the last straw for him. He sighed slowly and relaxed his body, leaning on her, pressing her to the wall, his nose diving in the mass of her hair, inhaling its perfume, arm circling her. His more-than-hard member encased automatically in between them. And when her head reached his tough-muscled chest, all he had to do was to graze his thin sensuous lips on her fine skin along the neck. He heard the air escaping her lips, her eye-lashes closing. If it wasn’t a response, then he didn’t know what it was.

  Amy felt her body melting, she was fast losing control. Her breasts were heavy and sensitive and a leakage took place in her middle. Her mind was foggy. His devilish lips dipped her in overwhelming sensations. In the back of her mind a hedge of resistance clamoured. She couldn’t just give in like that. She mustn’t. In an utter effort to keep her sanity, she pushed away from him suddenly and walked to the other side of her room.

  “How dare you accuse me of playing with your sponsorship, when I worked so hard as to have a brilliant passage through the course?” She asked in between ragged breaths and stared in stone anger at him. Didn’t he see the reports she had sent him?

  Mark was taken by surprise. He was so wrapped in the haze of mad desire that she brought him into that he had lost contact with reality around. This came as a cold shower on him. He tried to get himself together and appease his irregular breath. “Good to know it. Never too much to ask, though.” He muttered only too hoarse, then rose to his feet and left.

  Amy shut her door firmly and fell on her bed sighing exhausted.

  That night Mark’s erotic dreams were more indiscrete than ever. In the last few years, every time Amy set foot in the Georgian mansion, he had these dreams. They came spurting out of his unconsciousness, where he repressed his illicit desire for her. This night, his dreams showed him taking her in every possible way. This time the dreams meant release. And he understood why when he awoke feeling sticky all over, swimming in sweat. He had to go take a cold shower.

  He remembered that she would start at MBS next day. So he had to be well slept. He went back to sleep.

  Chapter IV

  Amy Holt had become the best professional at the HR department, only after three months. She was enjoying her job as if she had done this all her life. And now the HR manager was going on childbirth leave and the department was supposed to elect a substitute. She naturally volunteered as candidate. Mark would have to approve of it in the end.

  After what happened in her room the day she arrived from Oxford, Mark and she were keeping careful distance from each other. They got down to strictly professional relationship and it felt comfortable to her. As things fell into a routine, they had little time left for anything else. A fast growing company as MBS was not lacking work overload. Every effort of hers was being directed to her job. The nights weren’t so peaceful though. Her body claimed for him and the waves of sensation that tightened her womb when he touched her came back at its memory.

  Mark watched as Amy and her colleagues interacted in the coffee lounge. She was doing very well in the company and he was proud of her. He concluded it was a wise decision to sponsor her degree. But keeping a distance from her was proving to be a deadly painful task. Working and sleeping under the same roof meant the whole day under needy strain. He felt as if he was sleeping on a bed of nails. If he could call that sleep. The only way he had to channel this energy was by training or... Well, his present mistress wasn’t very happy with him. He didn’t give her as much attention as he had before, if any at all. And before meant three months ago. Besides he had yet to clarify Amy’s father issue, which he could never bring himself to, day in, day out. He’d have to focus on it sooner or later. Better, sooner then.

  As predictable, Amy was elected to substitute the HR manager. She was exultant. It’d be the perfect opportunity to put in practice what she had learned about leadership. After their president’s approval, Travis McDougal, her direct colleague came to wish her luck. He was a very warm person and seemed to be rather fond of her, as a friend.

  “Amy, I am very happy for you! We all are, I believe.” He said smiling. Everybody in the department knew that Mark Benton had been her guardian, but nobody appeared to care too much about it.

  “Thank you so much, Travis!” She saw him coming close and he held her hand lengthily in a congratulation gesture.

  The HR manager occupied a glass-walled room. Mark was passing by and watched the scene. His piercing eyes narrowed as he felt the now familiar cold, evil claws squeeze his heart as it was a rotten orange. This Travis guy was going about her a trifle too much, he deemed. Mark could hardly breath, but he struggled to keep his composure. As calmly as he could manage, he strode to the room, put his head through the door and addressed her in low, velvety voice: “A word in my room?” And walked away, expecting her to follow.

  As she came in his top-luxury office and closed the door, she saw him leaning at the edge of his desk, long legs stretched and crossed at his ankles. He looked at her, his stare eyes impenetrable. His powerfully muscled arms were folded over his hard-muscled chest. He looked like a panther ready to jump at its prey.

  She observed him and her body responded shamefully against her will.

  “I don’t think that flirting in the office is a very ethical attitude.” His deep male voice low and with a menacing ring. He distanced from the table and went to the ample window overlooking the fancy London district, hands in his pockets.

  A slow far-reaching annoyance dominated her. She was fed up of his will to control her. She wouldn’t spare him, not this time. “Do you think I am still an innocent girl out of school?” She spat icy.

  He turned to her in one economic movement and frowned. He never dared think what could have been her love life away from London. The boy-friends she might have met at the college. He had asked her, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  She grinned and it came dripping with contempt. “I was nearly engaged to Andrew. He attended Oxford too.” She crossed her arms and watched him coldly.

  The information threw him in a red boiling sea of rage and he was drowning, falling deeper and deeper. His face went ghost-white, his guts froze. He prowled quickly to her, trapping her between the desk and him. He laced her firmly by her narrow waist and pulled her roughly to his muscled body. “Then maybe I can have a taste of you as well!” And his mouth fell on hers.

  As soon as he laced her waist, a hot shot of fire reaped through her and she had to hold his trained biceps to avoid losing balance. She had looked up at him in shock as her lips parted. It was when he invaded her mouth ruthlessly. His tongue searched and touched her sensitive spots, melting her, giving her no choice but to open to him, lick his tongue in response.

  He went wild with her kissing him back. All the desire he had repressed through these years surfaced in one ball of fire. One of his hands shoved the table’s contents, spreading it in disarray on the floor. His body pressed her to lie on the table and he insinuated his middle in between her thighs.

  Instantly he
r arms surrounded his neck and her feet, his hips. Any thought she might have had, vanished from her mind. Only pheromones and sensation remained. He provoked a massive attack in her nerves, her guts, her brain. Even her wildest fantasies couldn’t have prepared her for that mind-blowing reality.

  He entangled his fingers in her silky cinnamon ringlets and kissed her deeper, making her mouth open wider. Her body arched to feel more of his as her tongue circled his in an erotic dance. He reacted holding her tighter. His hand left her hair to open her chemise, where it found her full breast, under the bra. He rolled her pebbled nipple between his thumb and forefinger, leading her to total madness. The faint timid voice telling him that he was not supposed to be doing this was crushed under the passion which ran like lave through him.

  An urge to taste what his hand touched drove him from her rich sweet mouth, grazing her neck on its wake, to her breast, where he feasted freely. She gasped, a mass of excitement, her hand merged in his smooth dark hair to lengthen the caress. Her head fell back in pleasure.

  His remarkably hard erection tempted her as he pressed it between her thighs. And she wanted it, all of it. She moved her hips in a plea.

  As if remembering where they were, he raised his head, dishevelled hair, ragged breath and dived his green stare in her enormous stare. They were both in a complete disordered state. Red-hot passion emanating from them both.

  “So much for flirting in the office, right?” She assembled her sarcasm with difficulty.

  With nothing to answer, he went away from her, turning to the window once more. She buttoned herself up in rapid clumsy movements and left his office in quick strides.

  Match. This was his key-word. They matched. She matched him in passion. Her body matched his: To the borders of perfection. For these last three months he had been cooking. Cooking in slow fire. Not even his mistress, or must he say ex-mistress now, could appease the flames that burned inside him for Amy. Sleeping next door to her had been feeling like purgatory. And sleep was too far-fetched a word, actually. Bits of sleep, bits of dreams, bits of fantasies, tossing and turning. He had to get out of this before it became an obsession.

  Amy stomped to her office. Damn! Damn! Damn! A thousand times damn! How could she be so weak? All he had to do was look at her with those panther-like eyes for her to melt like butter on a pan! And, God help her, she was burning. It had been going on for a long, long time now. She could deny, or rather try to deny, her feelings to him, but not to herself. She was afraid she’d become obsessed soon enough.

  That evening, at dinner, Mrs Smith served them oblivious to the charged atmosphere in the dining room. A silence made of wiring energy hovered around the table. Neither Amy nor Mark made any effort to break it. As soon as the meal was over, Amy excused herself and retired to her room, to try a book of which she didn’t remember a single word.

  First thing Amy did as the temporary HR manager was to subsidise healthy food in the company canteen. She had gone through reports, data and spread-sheets and concluded that it was perfectly feasible. So she prepared the project to send to Mark for approval.

  In the corporate messenger he questioned the usefulness of this and she answered that it would help the staff to be healthier and there would be less people on sick-leave. He acquiesced.

  The following week, she opened a bidding for a gym chain to use one of the vacant floors in the company building, where staff would have a discount, covered by MBS. Mark inquired about this too, but she questioned how he felt about working out. At his optimistic answer, she said that staff would probably feel the same way. Then gym it was.

  The feedback she was getting from employees was very positive and it worked as motivation for her. She kept up to it.

  But, two weeks later, when she formulated a project to send the management level staff on a seminar in Mallorca, he came in the corporate messenger and called her to his room.

  She walked to his room, apprehension running through her. They hadn’t been seeing much of each other. He had been working late and arrived home when she was in bed already and she left home while he was still at his gym.

  His secretary announced her and led her to his room. As she entered, she saw him sitting carelessly on his high-back chair, with the view of London through the ample window behind him. One arm on the chair arm-rest, the other hand toyed with a pen.

  “Excuse me.” She said.

  His feline eyes observed every detail of her: her silk chemise falling over her full breasts as a caress, her business skirt wrapping her round hips and shapely thighs down to her knees and her elegant stilettos. The shinny cinnamon hair in silky curls around her face. Her skin burned at every spot he focused his panther-like eyes at.

  “Have a seat.” He motioned to her.

  She looked at him dressed in a top-brand tailored greenish grey suit covering his broad muscled shoulders and heavily worked out chest. The rest was left to her imagination as the table hid his six-packed belly and long trained legs.

  “You’re doing a very good job,” he begun in his deep male voice, “and I understand you want to put to practice what’s fresh from college.” His eyes were intent on her huge honey ones.

  His direct intent look stirred countless and unspeakable sensations in her and it got stony difficult to concentrate.

  “But preparing a seminar requires a little more than a project, as I am sure you know.” He continued.

  “Yes, of course.” She stared him in the eyes. “And I’ll do everything that’s necessary if it comes to happen.”

  “I do think this is a very timely idea.” Now his upper-body came to lean on the table. “MBS is growing fast and we need to keep up with team building.”

  “My concept exactly, as I explained in the project.” She kept a professional voice, even though there were a hundred lines of communication going on between them.

  “Therefore, we must travel to Mallorca and check the hotel location and facilities before we book it.”

  She heard this with a stunned surprise. She hadn’t expected him to take care of things personally. She felt as if she was walking straight into a trap.

  “We? But I have already designated Travis to come with me to check it out.” She made an attempt to evade from the trap.

  Mark narrowed his piercing eyes in barely controlled fury. This damn Travis guy again! He stood abruptly from his chair, surrounded the table and came to stand right in front of her chair, muscled arms folded, strong long legs apart.

  She glanced up at his six-feet-five of magnetic power, her beautiful look wide. She felt in utter disadvantage, remaining seated, but she wouldn’t give him the pleasure to know it.

  “You’re going nowhere with no one if I don’t approve of the trip, do you understand?” His deep male voice acquired a threatening edge.

  Mentioning Travis was a stupid mistake, she realized too late. As he stared down at her with his intensely furious eyes and her own anger ignited. “Alright then. One of us is enough to go. And cheaper. If you’re going, so I’ll stay and take care of the details.”

  At this he took her by her arm and raised her to meet his stony stare. “As far as I know, I am the boss here and it’s up to me to decide!” Why his body hardened as a rock every time he was near her was a mystery he would never solve.

  Her huge eyes looked up at him, her neck needing to bend several degrees back, so near they were to each other. Of course he was the boss, and a very bossy one, by the way.

  By now both were breathing with a difficulty they were trying desperately to disguise it. He stared at her with such intensity that her honey eyes dilated shamelessly. His tall body bent slightly towards her making her bend backwards to keep a minimum vital distance.

  His implacable hand pulled her arm and they got closer, dangerously closer. He smelled her flowery perfume mixed with her womanly scent; it fogged his mind. He panted as he fought for control, but there was a certain traitorous part of him which only craved relief. And it was going to act on it.r />
  She was breathing hard and her breath caught his musky after-shave and his male scent. They were doing unconfessable things to her body. The sensations running through her were making her body lax and malleable. There were barely a couple of inches between them and the whole thing could end up tragically bad.

  She convoked every drop of mind-clearness she had left in her. “Let me go! You’re going to hurt me.” She made every effort to sound cold.

  He looked at her a couple of seconds and let her go. She walked away quickly, putting the maximum distance possible between them. But she didn’t fool him for a single second. He had sensed her reaction to him, not only today. They may have an age difference, but she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  “Be ready Friday evening. We’ll fly to Mallorca in my private jet. It’s an order.” His voice a quiet iceberg.

  She stared at him icily for a moment then rose to her feet and left the room in irritated strides. As she walked along the corridors to her room she fumed. If he thought he’d get things his way he was oh, so mistaken.

  Chapter V

  He wanted that kiss again. Doubled; tripled; multiplied, thousand fold. With all of what came along, thought Mark as he sat comfortably in his jet. He wanted her so badly that it hurt. His groins. A weekend away seemed the perfect opportunity. He was just going to bide his time. It was not as if he was the only one who wanted it. He saw it in her eyes too.

  “I instructed the pilot to be prepared to fly us back on Sunday evening.” He informed her trying not to hint at his tortuous thoughts.

  Amy was infuriated by his prepotent and bossy way of conducting that trip. And spending the weekend with him was the absolutely last jumpy thing she wanted. She was afraid. Not of him, naturally, of herself and the oversized reactions she had when he was around. She’d have to be creative to find ways of keeping her distance. And creativity was something she didn’t lack. Not, if it meant her sanity.