Fierce Read Online Free Page A

shirt that must have been custom-made, the way it stretched across that expanse of chest and still managed to be so form-fitting all the way down to his waist, showing off his absolutely flat abs. Dark trousers covered his powerful thighs—and everything else I was not looking at. 
    Wait. It wasn’t just that he was so tall. It was that my shoes were off. Oh, God. 
    “Umm…” I glanced wildly down to where my shoes were scattered under my desk. “I’m sorry. I’ll just…” 
    His hand was still on my arm, and I could smell the hint of his aftershave, faint and spicy. He was so close, I could see the dark stubble of five o’clock shadow along his bronzed jaw. He had a heavy beard. Of course he did.
    “What?” he asked, a faint smile lifting one corner of that mouth. “You’re sorry about what?”
    “I’m…barefoot,” I whispered.
    He looked down. “So you are.” The smile was a little more in evidence now. “And very nice it looks, too. I like your pink nail varnish.”
    I sat down again without all that much grace and scrabbled with my feet for my shoes, but one of them was so far under there that I was going to have to crawl to get it. And I wasn’t crawling in front of him. Not again. 
    “Well, this is embarrassing,” I said, trying to laugh it off.
    He laughed himself, the sound sudden and rich. “Is it? Let’s scoot you back, then, so I can get them.”
    He had his hand on the back of my chair, so close to my shoulder, and was shoving me gently out of the way, and then, yes, Hemi Te Mana was under my desk, pulling out my pumps. Swiveling around on his powerful haunches, taking an ankle in his hand and slipping on one shoe, then doing the same with the other.
    When he touched my skin, I jumped, because it was as if a current had leaped straight up my leg. I could feel my heart pounding, my cheeks were heating, and surely his hand was around my ankle now. It couldn’t be, though. Could it?
    I sneaked a peek. It was. He was holding it, and then he’d reached for the other one. He was kneeling in front of me with an ankle in each hand. 
    Oh, help. What was he going to do? More to the point, what was I going to do?
    I should tell him to stop. I should make a joke. The problem was, it felt good. His hands were so big and my ankles so small that his hands wrapped all the way around them with room to spare. And just like that, everything in me was pulsing, my breasts were tingling, and I was…liquid.
    He let go and stood up in one fluid motion, and the moment was over, and I swallowed. 
    “You need new shoes,” he said, and the smile was there again. Small, but real. 
    “I need lots of things,” I managed to say. “Needing isn’t getting.”
    “Oh,” he said softly, “I find it is. So often. If you need it badly enough.” 
    I caught my breath, the sound audible in the silent space, and he wasn’t smiling now. His gaze was dark. Fierce. 
    “Um…” I managed to say. “Can I…do something for you?”
    He looked like he was going to answer, and then caught himself. “Came by to have a word,” he said after a moment, glancing at Martine’s door. “Gone?”
    “Um…yes. To the opera,” I added lamely.
    “Ah.” The faint hint of a smile again. “The opera. But then, it’s late. Isn’t it? It must be. There’s nobody here.”
    I looked at him in surprise. “Well, yes. It happens to be night. It happens to be…” I looked at my computer. “Eight.”
    “Does it?” He rubbed the back of his dark, close-cropped head, and I noticed again how perfectly cut his hair was, the sharpness of the line of it against the planes of his face, the back of his strong neck. “Time flies, I reckon.” He looked at me more sharply. “So why are you still here?”
    “I have a lot of work. I’m new.”
    “Yes. You are. Hard work?”
    “Just a lot of work. But, of course, I’m happy to do it,” I hastened to say. 
    “Mm. You’ll be with us in Paris soon, eh. May be as much work,