The Inconvenient Bride by Anne McAllister

long.
    Memories of Dominic came back. The desire came back. It slipped into Sierra’s mind in the dark of night. It teased her at odd moments in the light of day. When she was cooking spaghetti and getting a face full of steam, she would find herself remembering the heat of Dominic’s kiss. When she was combing out someone’s hair, she would recall the soft brush of his. When she saw a man in a tux get out of a cab across Broadway, she almost got run over craning her neck to see if it was the man she remembered stripping off his tux and making sweet hot love to her.
    She’d dreamed about him.
    She’d wanted him again at the same time she’d told herself he couldn’t make it happen again. There was no way.
    But once more she’d been wrong.
    He was making it happen right now!
    He turned them around and bore her back onto the futon, his fingers trembling as he fought to unbutton her denim jacket. He muttered when he couldn’t manage it easily, and Sierra touched his hands.
    â€œLet me.”
    He shook his head fiercely. His eyes seemed to glitter and the skin was taut across his cheekbones. “No. I want to.”
    So she let him.
    Though her heart thudded within her chest and she longed to urge him on, she made herself wait, made herself watch, let herself smile at his fervent fumblings, at his mutterings and final sigh of relief when eventually he got the buttons open and peeled the jacket from her shoulders and tossed it aside.
    She thought he’d go after her spandex top with equal gusto, but he paused instead and sat back just gazing at her, a rapt hungry look on his face.
    â€œStop that,” she muttered self-consciously and shetugged at the tie she had still looped against the back of his neck, trying to take back the initiative.
    But he just shook his head. Then, with a finger, he traced the line of her top against the swell of her breasts. He bent his head and did it again with the tip of his tongue. It was deliberate, provocative, erotic.
    It made her shiver and tug again on his tie. “Wolfe!”
    He smiled and slowly peeled her top up, then tugged it over her head and it followed her jacket to the floor. Then with his hands he caressed her breasts. Stroked them. Teased them. Made her wriggle beneath his touch.
    â€œWolfe!”
    â€œMmm?” It was somewhere between a growl and a purr and was the sexiest sound she’d ever heard. She remembered it from that night in Kansas when he’d looked down on her, touched her, teased her, eased himself inside her.
    She’d lain awake some nights trying to reproduce it. She hadn’t come close.
    And now Sierra struggled not to clutch at him as he purred again and bent his head to feather kisses across her breasts.
    She slid the tie in her fingers and pressed her hands against his shoulders as the kisses moved south.
    She felt them lightly on her belly, and at every dip of his head, his soft hair brushed tantalizingly against her sensitive breasts. Her fingers slid up his neck and dug into his hair. It was black as a raven’s wing and soft as silk. She lifted her head to touch her nose to it, reveling in the smell of some very costly, subtly masculine shampoo.
    There was nothing subtle about the rest of Dominic’s masculinity. For all that he had to spend most of his life behind a desk, his body was hard and well-muscled. He made those starched shirts of his look damn good.
    But he looked better without a shirt at all.
    Without anything at all!
    Suddenly she was impatient to see the rest of Dominicagain. She had lived on memories for three months. She wanted the real thing.
    She eased her fingers out of his hair and began to caress the back of his neck. As he kissed her belly, she rubbed the silk of the tie back and forth against his shoulders.
    Then, leaving it there, her hands moved further, sliding down the hot smooth skin of his back until they reached his belt. She traced the line of it around his