Dangerous Magic Read Free Page A

unsubtle propositioning! “I see your own career path is on course, Mr.
    Taggert. There’s no doubt in your own mind that you’ll be the next CEO?
    The next chief executive officer of CompuDesign?” she demanded gratingly, trying to achieve a semblance of cool contempt.
    “If I want it badly enough,” he told her starkly, “I’ll get it.” Quite suddenly Elissa believed him. If this man really went after a goal, he fully expected to get it.
    “It doesn’t make any sense,” she murmured after a second’s tense silence. “Why me? There are far more beautiful women working for you, Mr. Taggert, and you’re not blind. Several of them are even unmarried!”
    she concluded mockingly.
    “I agree you’re not the most beautiful or sophisticated woman I’ve ever met, Elissa Sheldon,” he told her, his mouth twisting slightly. “But there is something about you which attracts me. For the time being, at any rate,”
    he added with casual menace.
    He circled the desk then, moving so quickly that Elissa was only half out of her chair and nowhere near en route for the door by the time he reached her. In two long pantherlike strides he was in front of her, reaching down to pull her up out of her seat. His hands clamped around her arms, and she was held immobile as he brought her very close to him.
    “For a while,” he went on in a voice of distant, grating thunder, “I want to know what it’s like to be included in the warmth of your smile. I want to answer the challenge in your eyes, and I want to join with you in the laughter. I want to argue about the stock market and about politics, and I want to enjoy your enthusiasm, for life. In short, Elissa, I want to be part of your charmed circle. But there’s one stipulation: While I’m circling in your orbit, I will be the only one there. Is that understood?”
    “Let me go!” Elissa cried in astonishment and a hint of genuine fear.
    “Take your hands off me this instant!” Her fingers splayed against the dark material of his jacket as she faced him, wide-eyed and wary.
    Desperately she pushed, trying to put distance between them, but he didn’
    t appear to notice.
    “I asked if you understood my basic requirement for this affair of ours,”
    he countered roughly, giving her a small shake.
    “I heard what you said, damn it!” she flung back, stung. The look on his face and the unshakable strength in him warned her to tread carefully until she was once again free of his grasp. “But we have no affair, so your ‘
    requirements’ don’t matter a whole lot, do they?” That had been unwise, but Elissa was too angry to still her tongue.
    “We will be having one,” he swore softly, “when you’ve had a chance to simmer down and think about what I can do for you. And I’ll throw in something else for your consideration,” he went on, tightening his grasp until she was pressed unwillingly against the length of his tough, hard frame.
    “What’s that?” she taunted bitterly. “A diamond necklace? It was diamond, you know, the one Martin gave me the other evening—”
    “This is what I had in mind,” he interrupted harshly and lowered his head in a swift, unexpected move that caught her vulnerable mouth unprepared.
    Elissa’s small sound of outrage was totally muffled by the impact of Wade’s kiss. It was a marauding, claiming, branding thing that promised fire and male dominance in no uncertain terms. Without any subtlety he forced apart her lips, his tongue sweeping boldly into the dark warmth of her mouth. It was a short, punishing foray designed only to demonstrate her inferior strength, and it succeeded in leaving her trembling with dismay and fury.
    Hating her own helplessness in his arms, Elissa tried the only defense left to her and deliberately went passive in his ironclad embrace.
    “That’s better,” he approved huskily as he sensed her lack of struggle.
    “Things will go much more smoothly if you don’t fight me.” His mouth continued to