Wear My Ring: The Secret Wedding Dress / The Millionaire's Marriage Claim. Элли Блейк

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СКАЧАТЬ crazy and clumped together. ‘You’re the first guy I’ve seen since it happened.’

      The emphasis on the word ‘seen’ brought a flare of heat to his groin. When he shifted on the chair Paige noticed, and her mouth flickered into the first smile of the day.

      ‘Mae had a theory about why I bought the dress,’ she went on, ‘and it was easier to believe that than to believe the truth. That I was jealous of her. Not the marriage bit, the happiness bit. So I kind of wished for you. And then a minute later you stuck your fingers through the lift door.’

      ‘I’m sorry … You wished for me?’

      Sass put some sinew into her slump as she flicked her fringe off her face, and lifted one saucy shoulder. The flare of heat spread till it roared through his blood with the speed and intent of a bush fire.

      ‘Well, not you in particular,’ she said. ‘A man who … Well, a man. Mae’s theory for why I bought the dress was that I needed to get some.’

      Gabe’s mouth turned dry at the thought … for about half a second. Then saliva pooled beneath his tongue and he had to physically press himself back into the chair so as not to go right ahead and give her what Mae thought she needed.

      Paige slowly eased herself upright, leaned back in her chair, and looked him dead in the eye, and he realised she hadn’t been kidding. If any other man had walked into the lift at that precise moment she would have been sitting at her kitchen table sending some other guy hard with desire with those burning baby blues of hers.

      No way. It wouldn’t have been the same. The way they fitted was chemical. One in a million. Thus worth pursuing to the edges of his limits. Clearly, or he wouldn’t still be sitting there while she wore a wedding dress.

      He leaned forward, keeping her gaze connected to his. ‘And now that you have … got some, how are you doing?’

      Paige tilted an eyebrow, before wafting a hand past her lace-covered curves. ‘How do you think I’m doing?’

      ‘Fair enough.’ Gabe rubbed his fingers into his eyes to clear the image that was making it hard for him to see straight. ‘And do you try it on every morning—? ‘

      ‘Good God, no! This was the first time ever. Don’t think I ever had any intention of you finding me like this. This is my worst nightmare. And I can’t fathom why you’re still sitting here and not halfway to anywhere else but here!’

      She had him there. He’d help her get the dress off then vamoose. Go home. Go to work. Put some space between them so that he could think.

      He shoved back the chair so hard it squeaked on the pale floorboards. He motioned to her with a flick of his fingers. ‘Come on.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You said that thing was stuck.’

      She nodded. ‘The zip. It’s caught on something. I tried tugging, and shimmying it over my head, but it fits like a glove.’

      It did that. ‘Then let’s get you free of it, shall we?’

      Paige stood, and turned her back to him.

      Swallowing down the bile rising in his throat at the connotations of ridding a beautiful woman of a wedding dress, Gabe forced his eyes to move to the dress to find a paper clip had been bent through the eye of the zip.

      His tension melted a little. At least now he could be certain she’d had a go at taking the thing off. As for the rest? Everyone had weaknesses, and if hers was for a combination of lace and pearly-looking things, then it beat smoking. Just.

      ‘Do you need me to move at all?’ she asked, lifting her hair away from her neck, the scent of her shampoo wafting past his nose for the first time in days. The interplay of muscle across her back made his fingers feel fat and useless as blood left his extremities to pour into his groin.

      He reached for the zip, the backs of his fingers brushing across her warm skin. Her muscles twitched at even his slightest touch. A few strands of hair fell to slide against the back of his hand and, God help him, delicate shocks prickled down his arms landing with a rock-hard thud in his pants.

      ‘You want this thing off or not?’ he asked, his voice gruff.

      ‘I do.’

      ‘Then stop wriggling.’

      She stilled. And there were a few long moments in which the only sound was the shuffle of satin on her skin as the hopeless zipper refused to budge.

      ‘I had an outfit,’ she said. ‘For tonight.’

      ‘Another one?’

      Her laughter was husky, telling him he wasn’t the only one affected by the fact that he was, to all intents and purposes, trying to get her naked. The sound vibrated through him, morphing into a whump whump whump that pulsed through his veins.

      ‘Quite something, this outfit of mine. Red, sleek, no zip in sight.’

      He swallowed down the lust rising from the bottoms of his feet all the way to the back of his throat. The phenomenal pull of desire he felt for her, despite the wedding attire, gave him one last pause.

      Did he want her too much? To the detriment of his own sense? His own self-interest? He listened to his gut, and listened hard. But even his deeply scarred conscience couldn’t go there. She was habit-forming, but the hold she had over him was unintentional. And all the more dangerous because of it? Not so long as they both knew the score. He’d just have to make sure she never forgot it. Him either.

      ‘Careful,’ she cried out suddenly when the sound of over-stretched fabric rent the silence. Then like the collapse of a dam, the zip gave way. The dress tipped over her shoulders and she scooped it to her chest, but not before he’d caught a glimpse of a strapless black lace bra and a hint of matching G-string.

      ‘Oh, come on!’ she said, turning and staring down at the dress so that her breasts pressed together. ‘I’d been working on that damn thing for half an hour! It clearly hates me. Well, I hate it right on back. It’s so going straight to Good Will after this.’

      ‘Nah,’ he said, his voice rough as sand, ‘I have the touch.’

      She glanced up at him, her chest pinking as she realised the direction of his gaze. And he was more than half hard. When their eyes met, her bottom lip was tucked between her teeth, and her naked toes curled over one another under the pool of material at her feet.

      And Gabe knew he wasn’t going anywhere.

      A half-second after he moved for her, she let the dress go and was in his arms. Clinging to him as he devoured her with his mouth. Tasting her neck, his tongue tracing the line of her jaw, teeth nipping at her ear. When he slid his hands to cup her backside it was to find the dress was thankfully gone, leaving him with her hot bare skin and a strip of lace.

      When he lay her back on the table, atop his jacket and scarf, she was pink all over. A pulse beating fast in her neck. Her lips moist from his kiss. Her eyes so hot he could barely make out a thin circle of blue. She grabbed him by the belt-line, tugging him between her legs, wrapping her thighs about him as she whipped his button fly open with one rough yank.

      With СКАЧАТЬ