Five's A Crowd by Kasey Michaels

beneath her ear all the way to the collar of her soft cotton shirt. Her breath became audible as she blew it out in a long, ragged sigh that did wonders for his ego.
    When she spoke again, it was rapidly, as if she was trying to say the words as quickly as she could, while they both still believed them. “I’m your therapist. You’re my client. We have a strictly professional relationship that can’t be forgotten just because we have this…this mutual physical attraction. There’s…there’s ethics…and there’s…there’s…oh, the hell with it!”
    She turned in his arms and grabbed his face between her hands, yanking his head down so that his mouth crashed against hers.
    He needed no further encouragement, pulling her hard against the length of his body as her fingers tangled in his hair, urging her lips open so that he could deepen their kiss. He felt like an animal, like they were both animals, set to devour each other to satisfy appetites too long denied.
    His hands stroked the length of her back, cupped her buttocks as he pulled her even closer, then eased her slightly away from him, their mouths still locked together as he bent forward slightly so his hands could skim the flatness of her stomach, cup the fullness of her breasts—all as her hands were working on the front button of his shorts and as he began maneuvering her toward the bed.
    “Holden! Who is that woman?”
    Holden froze in the act of unbuttoning the top button of Taylor’s shirt, his eyes popping open at the sound of a very distinctive, husky female voice. “Somebody has put a curse on me,” he mumbled in disbelief, his lips still mostly clinging to Taylor’s.
    He put his hands on Taylor’s shoulders and disengaged himself reluctantly—oh, so reluctantly—then carefully placed her behind him protectively as he turned to smile at the latest in a long line of beautiful, supposedly disposable women who stood just inside the door that should have been closed.
    “Why, hello, Amanda. What brings you to Ocean City?” he asked brightly, knowing he was a dead man.
    I T HAD BEEN OVER two hours since Amanda Price had made her entrance. Taylor had spent the time sitting on a towel she’d laid on the nearly deserted beach, silently calling herself every kind of fool she could imagine and then some she couldn’t.
    How could she have been so stupid? So irresponsible? So horribly unprofessional?
    Why had she gone to the man’s room in the first place, knowing how attracted she was to him?
    How could she have allowed him to tear down all the barriers she had been carefully building against him these past two weeks?
    How could she have been so careless as to not close the door behind her!
    No. No, she’d skip that last part. She couldn’t think like that. It was good that she had left the door open. Good. Fortunate. Lucky, even. Why, she should consider Amanda’s interruption to have saved her from making the second biggest mistake in her life—Geoff, the playboy golf pro, having been the first four years ago. She certainly didn’t need to have her second love affair be with Holden, the playboy quarterback. Some lessons shouldn’t have to be learned twice!
    However, if Amanda Price hadn’t come along, then surely Thelma would have, or Woody. That would have been a lot worse than having supermodel Amanda Price and her expensive clothes, beautiful yet strangely expressionless face and choking perfumestumble over her and Holden as they were about to do something she’d simply rather not think about right now.
    “She’s gone finally, back to her hotel,” Holden said from above and behind her, then sat down beside her on the sand, his long, bare legs stretched out in front of him. He had the straightest legs she’d ever seen, tanned now, and covered with rapidly blonding hair, even though the hair on his head was dark as night.
    How she longed to touch him!
    Taylor closed her eyes. “What did you say to her?” she asked, not really wanting