INTO MY ARMS by Lia Riley
"You're here because I want to touch you."
Beth Jacobs spends her days slogging away in a corporate "fish bowl," as the hard-working assistant for one of North America's youngest dot-com billionaires. Aleksander "Z" Zavtra is the definition of dark and dangerous with a sexy Eastern European snarl. He's also ruthless. Curt. Exacting. An infuriating man she loves to hate. While Beth hardly sees him, it's as if he's always watching her . . .
Z doesn't do romance. But he never expected to be captivated by a whip-smart, fiery assistant who just so happens to share an uncanny resemblance to the beautiful face that haunts his dreams. He craves Beth. He wants to stroke her skin, to feel her heat beneath him. And what Z wants, he gets. And for one weekend, the lines between employer and employee are blurred as Z and Beth give themselves completely to the dark pleasures they've both been dreaming about.
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Excerpt:
“Kiss me,” I challenge him. He
twists around words and dances from truths. But he can’t evade body language.
He gazes at me as if I’m something
he’s never seen. “I tell you how I did a terrible thing, and you offer a kiss.”
“There is much you aren’t saying,
so maybe we need to streamline the conversation. Your lips touching mine. What
could be simpler.”
For once, I have taken him by total
surprise.
“Or more destructive,” he says.
“You kiss me with your eyes every
time you look at me.”
“Ah.” He goes utterly still then.
“Very well, then. Yes. I think I understand.”
“I want you to do it,” I say
softly, reaching out my hand. “Please. What can I call you? Aleksander?”
“No, that’s what he used to call me, the bastard who was
my father. At boarding school, I was Sander, and that, too, never felt right,
not exactly.”
“So what do you prefer?”
“Call me whatever you like. You are the exception to my rule. The exception to all my rules.”
“Call me whatever you like. You are the exception to my rule. The exception to all my rules.”
“Why?” My voice is breathless, more
than a little unsteady.
“If I knew that, I’d be a wiser man
than I am now.” His eyes close and his next breath is long, slow, and
shuddering. “If I kiss you, will you hold still?”
Hold still if he actually kisses
me? The idea of his full lips slanting on mine, his hard chest pushing
insistent against my breasts is enough to make me writhe all on its own. “No.”
His gaze snaps to mine.
“How can I promise such a thing?
After all, a kiss isn’t one-sided, at least not a good kiss.”
He stands, wiping his hands on his
suit pants, his shirt a little wrinkled.
He walks to the window and looks
out at nothing but night, seeing only his own ghost face reflection, and my own
behind him. He places a hand on the glass and the heat from his skin heats the
pane. When he turns, it remains, a foggy imprint.
I move to the end of the bed, hang
my feet off, the robe slipping off one shoulder.
He is there then. I don’t even have
time to register movement. He braces his hands on either side of the mattress,
on the outside of my thighs, and there is no more oxygen in the room. The flame
in his expression has sucked it all out.
His lips crush mine as if time has
run out. We don’t have the night, or the hours left to the weekend. There is
only and ever this moment. No play-acting or showing off. No coy moves. It’s
need, pure and raw, urgent and fierce. His lips are cooler than I imagined. A
distant place in me registers that thought. Cool expect there is his tongue,
easing against mine, and the contrast makes me sigh.
The moments when I realize I exist are
infrequent. Flashes of realization that I am alive, and this is an actual life
that I am living and for those few precious moments I’m on the outside, looking
at my whole world and seeing it not for what it normally feels like, an
all-consuming crushing adventure rather than a spider’s web tangling me.
And that’s
what this. His lips. My lips. Nothing else is touching. Not hands or bodies.
Not even our faces. Only our hungry mouths.
~About the Author~
After studying at the University of Montana-Missoula, Lia Riley scoured the world armed only with a backpack, overconfidence and a terrible sense of direction. When not torturing heroes (because c'mon, who doesn't love a good tortured hero?), Lia herds unruly chickens, camps, beach combs, daydreams about as-of-yet unwritten books, wades through a mile-high TBR pile and schemes yet another trip. She and her family live mostly in Northern California.
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WITH EVERY BREATH by Lia Riley (December 29, 2015; Forever Trade Paperback)
BREATHE DEEP . . . AND JUMP IN
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