Transgressions by Carolyn Faulkner (the reading list txt) 📕

her to a little alcove off the living room that faced the lake, which was dimly lit by the occasional scattered camp along its shores.

"It's off season," he whispered. "Those are security lights, not house lights. And the marina's too far away. No one can see us."

It was a gorgeous, almost secret place with a floor to ceiling bow window where every other square of what should have been glass was actually a mirror, so when his hand reached up to begin to march down the line of tiny pearl buttons on her blouse, she could watch him do it. The image of those strong brown fingers manipulating those delicate nibs had her thinking of what they would look like if it wasn't buttons he was playing with, and she found herself so entranced by both the images in the mirrors and the ones in her head that blended so well with them that she couldn't look away.

She was so far gone that she barely noticed that her blouse was hanging completely open until she felt cool air on breasts he'd just released from captivity, then surprisingly gentle, callused fingertips on her collarbone.

His eyes were on her, watching his own hands as they explored the creamy skin he'd uncovered. "You were always so beautiful, Ally," he whispered absently, almost as if she wasn't there.

She could feel herself suffuse with the heat of a tremendous blush, and knowing the truth of it as she stood here in front of the one man in the world she wanted most but couldn't have, she was even harder on herself than usual. She had no delusions about her own looks. She wasn't a troll, but she was no Angelina Jolie, either. She was, at best, pleasant looking, with her naturally curly chestnut hair being her best feature. She took after her Irish mother in complexion, her skin a delicate pale that required vats of sunscreen in the summer if she was going to be out in the sun. Her eyes were green, but her brows and lashes leaned towards sandy, so she had both tinted. But that was about as far as she was willing to go in regard to changing herself. She flatly refused to have the plastic surgery that would have straightened the nose that had been broken when she failed to catch a football the neighbor boy had thrown to her during her tomboy phase. There would be no Botox or collagen or chin implants—something she had been very surprised to hear that her male counterparts were all doing for themselves. Her makeup was conservative and businesslike, just like her taste in clothes.

Boring.

But then, she wasn't a model, and her chosen profession could be quite chauvinistic, still, in many ways. She had found that it was best if she was always professional and above board, completely business like, so that no one got any ideas that she was after anything else. And she thought her slightly off kilter nose gave her a badge of honor, of sorts, that many of the other bosses had, although no doubt they had earned theirs in an entirely different way than she had.

Enzo—her greatest rival—had somehow managed, by the deceptively simple act of spanking her, to cause all of the feelings she had so carefully tucked away to bubble to the surface, and now he was all she could think about, especially with his fingers touching her with such reverence and yet avoiding all of the spots that cried out for his attention.

They roamed her shoulders and down the outsides of her arms, tickled the middle of her palms, then glided upwards, along the ultra-sensitive insides of her arms and across the very top of her back, feathering along her neck and landing, somehow, on her lips just before he claimed them again, crushing her against him and holding her there, her spiked nipples buried in, then rubbed tantalizingly against the expensive silk of his shirt as the ache surged powerfully in each of them and their hunger pushed them past the point of reservation.

He took an incongruous step back from her and Ally nearly fell over as she felt the keen loss of his lips and the gorgeous lines of his body against hers. She was naked to the waist, and he held her eyes with his as he reached out to tuck his fingers into the waistband of her skirt, turning it expertly around to the back so that he could dispense with its button and zipper.

He already knew what was beneath them, and for a long moment, he indulged himself, looking at her but also at her reflection in the window, remembering how often he had thought about having her in exactly this position, only to ruthlessly dismiss the image from his mind. She wasn't for the likes of him.

Yet here she was, pink tipped breasts rising with each ragged breath, curls falling almost but not quite onto slender shoulders, a bottom lip that was swollen from his own attentions, still slightly moist from his tongue.

The only physical secrets she still had from him were covered by his least favorite kind of women's underwear, which he dispensed with in seconds, pulling the waistband out and ripping the material away from her body with his bare hands.

She was exquisitely nude, but obviously self-conscious about it, her creamy skin suffusing a delicious shade of pink all over. He refused to resist the impulse to walk around behind her, gently patting a bottom that still looked atrociously sore, and she confirmed that thought by trying to arch away from his hand.

That same hand splayed itself between her hips, fingertips millimeters away from very intimate territory, holding her in position for his other hand to apply five crisp smacks to those lusciously rounded cheeks.

He was of a mind to rub the sting away, but instead, remained behind her and pulled her back against him, her bottom settling just below the rampant evidence of his desire. "Don't