Legally Addicted - By Lena Dowling Page 0,35

up in the literature for centres similar to what she was recommending. Not that she would be telling him that. Not yet anyway. Now wasn’t the time to try to approach him to donate the impossibly huge sum of money she was going to have to secure for her proposal to fly.

‘It’s not the same,’ she said, trying to change the subject and divert the conversation away from her pet project. It would be far better to raise the issue in another environment more conducive to him opening his big fat wallet than a time like right now, when things were so…

Charged.

‘Really? Money spent on something you believe in, whether it’s a person or a cause, isn’t the same?

He believed in her? The statement was a ball flying out of the blindside.

No-one had ever said that before. Schoolteachers and professors had put her forward for scholarships, praised her for her academic successes, but no-one had ever outright said they had faith in her. He stared at her, his gaze intensifying until her stomach reacted, going all screwy inside. What was Brad doing? Why was he making this so damned hard? Making her feel, feel…she searched for the word.

Only one was forthcoming — barely a word even, but it fitted the feeling exactly.

Icky.

‘You believe in me?’ Before she could stop herself, the words came out incredulous, almost childlike.

Weak, Georgia, real weak.

She cringed at the sound of her own voice.

‘No, Georgia, I believe in us.’

Us.

She had never been part of a relationship significant enough that it warranted the application of a pronoun in the first person plural. No family, no relationships that could truly be classified that way; just a mother who was physically present, but emotionally absent.

There was something about that word, and the way Brad said it, that touched her soul.

She tried to come up with some smart response, but she had forgotten he still had her by the hand. He slid his fingers up over her shoulder until they caught the back of her neck. Suddenly his lips were on hers, and once she felt his body pressed against her, all sensible thought fled her brain.

As Brad’s tongue teased the inside of her mouth, Georgia let go, allowing him to guide her backwards until the top of the boardroom table made contact with the back of her legs. She let her weight fall onto the edge of the table, shimmying backwards until her legs were free to wind around him. As he leaned in towards her, one hand enmeshed in her hair, the other caressing her back, she responded, pulling him closer until she felt him hard against her. She shivered as he ran the back of his hand down her abdomen as low as it would go, teasing her there until she wriggled up out of her skirt to give him better access. He grasped her thong, ripping it down her legs and below her knees and she flicked it off, along with her shoes.

She closed her eyes, wanting to stay in this delicious fuzzy zone they had created. But Brad released her and the sound of a chair scraping across the floor forced her eyes back open. She felt the back of the chair nudge the table and she lifted her head as he straddled the seat of the chair, pulling her legs over his shoulders and dipping his head between her thighs. In response, she collapsed down onto the tabletop. She closed her eyes again as his tongue sent a cascade of sparks rising up through her centre. The sparks caught hold, building up to an inferno that set her perilously close to coming. She shivered, raking her fingernails over the surface of the table.

‘Wait, I’m going to — ’

‘Shush.’

Brad gently let her legs down and she heard the chair scrape away again, the whirr of a zipper releasing and the rip of foil. He grasped her thighs, pulling her to him and even though she was expecting it, when he entered her, she took a sharp intake of breath. He paused for a moment and she whispered sweet curses of encouragement. Somewhere at the back of her mind she was vaguely aware of pressure points where the hard wood surface connected with her shoulder, her back, and her butt, but the pleasure of every thrust was an anaesthetic taking her to a place higher than any illicit substance could.

She and Brad were an ‘us’. Her mind repeated the word until it became a mantra. For