second she was in heaven.
Then the real model walked back in, and the next thing she knew, Dominic was releasing her and turning his focus to the skinny model, holding her just as close, placing his lips on her skin, while Melissa watched from a stool across the room.
She had been to heaven . . . and now she was in hell.
Ripping her eyes away from Dominic and the gorgeous girl in his arms, she buried herself in her BlackBerry, needing to read every email several times before the words made any sense. Her brain— but mostly her body—kept returning to the memory of Dominic's hard heat against her body, his lips branding her skin. When she finally allowed herself to look up, Dominic had changed back into his own clothes and was sexy as sin in an Outlaws T-shirt and blue jeans. Just thinking about the way he'd held her, how good his lips had felt on her neck, his big hands circling her hips, a flush started working up from her chest to her neck. To mask her instant arousal, she focused her attention on slipping her BlackBerry into its pink leather case . . . and missed by a mile. It smashed onto the cement floor and went skidding under a row of chairs.
Dominic bent down to retrieve it, then removed the pink leather protective case from her fingers and slipped her phone into it.
Sportswriters called Dominic's large, tanned, steady hands "magic." Melissa agreed. Lord knew she'd dreamed about them stroking her skin a thousand times.
"You were great up there, Melissa. A natural."
She couldn't help but beam at his compliment. "I was so nervous."
His dark brown eyes captured hers with an intensity that surprised her. "I couldn't tell. You were perfect."
She swallowed hard. "Thank you."
Her PDA beeped in his hand, and he pulled it back out of the case and handed it to her. It was a text message from Angie, her father's executive assistant. Her father wanted to meet with her at the first available opportunity. Excitement fluttered in her chest.
"Must be a pretty great boyfriend for you to look like that," Dominic said.
Melissa nearly dropped the BlackBerry again. "I don't have a boyfriend." She rushed to dehumiliate herself. "I think my father might be giving me a promotion today." She hadn't planned to confide in Dominic, but she couldn't hold in her excitement.
"That's fantastic," he said and picked up her Louis Vuitton bag. The expensive leather purse looked incredibly small in his big hands. "How about I get you there faster by giving you a ride back to the office?"
He opened the heavy metal warehouse door for her, and she concentrated on walking down the stairs that led to the garage in her impossibly high heels. Knowing she was going to attend Dominic's shoot had meant an extra hour in her closet that morning. By the time she'd left, her bedroom looked like a hurricane had hit it. After trying on a dozen pairs of jeans, dresses, and shoes, she'd finally settled on a simple black dress with a pencil skirt, fishnets, and peep-toe heels, along with the cashmere sweater. Black would blend into the background at the photo shoot, but a little sex appeal never hurt. After what she'd been asked to do with Dominic in front of a room full of strangers, she was glad she'd made an extra effort.
She felt the heat of his body behind her as they made their way down to the underground garage. He opened the passenger door of his sports car for her, then got behind the wheel. She was struck by how much space he took up . . . and the sheer bliss of sharing such an intimate space with the star of her late-night fantasies. At six-foot-three and 230, Dominic wasn't the tallest or biggest Outlaw, but as the star receiver he was the quickest and most agile. Still, he was the most beautiful man she'd ever been near, the most incredible man who'd ever held her close.
"Congratulations on earning your MBA," he said unexpectedly as he pulled into traffic. "I'm not surprised your father has tapped you to be the next agent."
"Thank you," she said, pride in her voice. The late nights of studying, followed by ten-hour days working for her father, had been grueling. She hadn't had a clue that Dominic knew about her degree. The fact that he did was incredibly flattering.
He pulled up in front of the McKnight Agency, one