Authors Sarina Bowen and Sarah Mayberry are bringing us their first collaboration together—an enemies-to-lovers romance featuring a sexy Aussie hero, releasing on 12 Sep 2017—and I am so excited to share with you a sneak peek.
Excerpt
“You’ve left a lot of messages,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, I know. We’ll get there.”
It was stupid, but I felt a warm wash of pleasure at his use of the plural pronoun.
He sat back in his chair, one leg stretched out in front of him. “You give good phone, O’Malley,” he said, his gaze warm on me.
“Me? You’re the LeBron of phone. I swear, the way you work that thing…” I shook my head slowly. “Your mouth should be registered as a dangerous weapon.”
A slow smile curved his lips. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I said, rolling my eyes. It was too late, though—I was already remembering the way he’d worshipped my breasts with his dangerous mouth. Among other things.
“Neither did I,” he said, eyes wide with faux-innocence.
Refusing to be drawn into flirtation, I asked the question that had been burning in the back of my brain for the last two hours.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
He shrugged a shoulder negligently. “Not on this scale. But I help out occasionally, if I can.”
I knew him well enough by now to guess he was bullshitting me again. “I thought you were supposed to be a party-loving playboy?”
“So?”
“One of these things is not like the other,” I pointed out.
He shrugged again, then glanced down at the desk. It took me a moment to recognize the expression on his face as shyness.
Callan Walker was embarrassed because I was recognizing his philanthropy.
That was when I realized I was in big, big trouble.
“How many charities have you ‘helped out’?” I asked, acting on a hunch.
“I don’t know. Jack has hooked me up with a few. I stumbled over a couple of causes on my own…” He looked genuinely uncomfortable now.
“Let me guess how this works,” I said, putting the pieces together. “You go to parties with your rich friends, and you shoot the shit with them, then you charm them into digging into their deep pockets and supporting a good cause.”
He shrugged again. “It’s not as calculated as that.”
“You’re a fraud,” I said.
He looked startled.
“You walk around in your designer clothes with your perfect tan. You act as though you don’t have a care in the world. You call yourself the black sheep of the family. You let your mother and sister think you spend your days lying around on yachts. And it’s all a front, isn’t it?”
He frowned. “I spend plenty of time on yachts, O’Malley. Don’t go turning me into Mother Teresa because I made a few phone calls.”
Jesus, now he was being modest and humble. How on earth was I supposed to resist that? It had been bad enough when I thought he was feckless and too charming for his own good, but now I knew there was substance beneath all that
masculine beauty…
I’d just watched this man—this beautiful, sexy, humble man—pace and cajole and charm hundreds of thousands of dollars from his peers for a great cause. Two hours of watching his big, hard body walk back and forth. Two hours of hearing his laughter and clever wit.
Two hours of truly torturous foreplay.
I was officially done.
I stood and reached for the button on my suit jacket. Callan’s eyes followed the movement as I flicked it open. Holding his gaze, I slipped it off my shoulders.
Dropping it onto the chair behind me, I reached for the top button on my shirt and pushed it free. Callan’s gaze sharpened as I went after the next button.
“What’s going on, Grace?”
“What do you think is going on?”
“I’m really, really hoping you’re taking your blouse off for me,” he said.
My shirt parted as I loosened the last button, and I let the silk slide down my arms.
“Good guess,” I said, reaching for the zip at the small of my back.
The lining hissed against my stay-up stockings as my skirt slid to the floor, leaving me in nothing but my peep-toe heels, stockings, and underwear.
“Fuck me,” Callan breathed as I walked around the desk toward him.
“I don’t see any other men here,” I said.
The way he was looking at me gave me the confidence to place a hand on his shoulder for balance before straddling his lap. I could feel his cock beneath my backside, hard and hot, and everything inside me tightened with anticipation as I wriggled closer.
“If I’d known philanthropy turned you on this much, I would have told you about it a long time ago,” he murmured, his hands sliding up my thighs to my waist.
His pupils were dilated with desire, and a pulse was visible at his neck.
“No, you wouldn’t,” I said.
That was why I was sitting in his lap, breaking my own rules where he was concerned. He’d just shattered my last protection against him. He was a good man, and I was old enough and wise enough to know how rare and valuable that was. This wasn’t going to last—he was going to leave—but suddenly that didn’t seem as important as it should.
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