miserably.

“She’s very special.” His voice softened to a purr. “Don’t frighten her. Show her what it is to be desired and loved by more than one man, gentlemen. Take her beyond her wildest notions of desire. She’s waited a long time, and she deserves to have it done right.”

Something within her trembled hard at the words, especially when his hand tightened on her hair, reminding her that he was convinced she belonged to him, then the grip loosened and he stroked his knuckles down the inside of her shoulder blade, a sensation she hadn’t thought could be so incredibly intimate.

“She’s never felt a man’s all- consuming passion, so strong he’d kill just to be inside of her. This is the deal of a lifetime, gentlemen.” He paused for a significant moment.

“Don’t let me down.”

Then his touch left her and he walked away. She heard him, strained her ears to figure out where he was going, suddenly panicked at the idea that he was leaving the room altogether. Instead, she heard him move to the head of the table, take out his chair. A moment later, another man’s hands touched her.

It made sense it would be Lucas, his CFO. Every breath in this room was like taking in the primal odor of a wolf’s den, and in a pack, dinner was served in pecking order.

Savannah could barely breathe around the gag in her mouth. She had gone from active trembling to a vibration that kept her shivering as if from a flu, and it grew even more intense as Lucas touched her.

It wasn’t that any of these men were strangers. It was just that Matt had always dominated her fantasies.

In this situation, Lucas was an unknown quantity, the equivalent to a stranger emotionally.

She knew it was Lucas, for several reasons. One was that scent. Lucas wore a light cologne fragrance that reminded her fantastically enough of Egyptian pharaohs. The heat of the desert, the power of kings.

The kohl used to outline piercing eyes, aristocratic brows. Bodies inviting touch in their light robes, cuffs of beaten gold emphasizing powerful wrists and muscular biceps.

She could visual him in reality well enough, but the image that came to mind was not of him in this conference room, in office clothing.

Lucas was as tall as Matt, with a lean, athletic build developed from his primary extracurricular activity, cross-country bicycling. The pale gold of his hair spoke of the many hours out in the sun. He biked to work, a ten-mile trek, and one hot summer day she’d pulled into the parking deck for an early morning meeting at Kensington in time to see him parking the bike. He’d removed the helmet, and the hair that was a little long, just past his ears, had been casually pushed back, blond mixed with dark streaks from perspiration.

He stripped off the short-sleeved skin-tight cycling shirt and started toweling off. She knew from casual inferences that he kept his change of office clothes in the building, but she had not known he performed this drying ritual first.

She’d sat in the front seat of her car, two rows away in the shadows, ready to duck her head as if searching through her briefcase if he looked up and caught her watching, because she could not keep herself from her inexcusable ogling. Something about watching all the sculpted muscles of that body move in the simple act of removing sweat held her motionless, her body pulsing with a rhythm that she wanted to ignore. The rhythm of wanting.

Two ladies from his office had passed by, one whistling and both engaging in some flirtatious banter with him. He’d grinned, held his shirt in front of him in mock horror as if protecting his modesty. She’d heard the other wunderkind ribbing him about the fact he shaved all his body hair. She liked the dark hair that curled at the base of Matt’s throat, intimating a nice pelt beneath his ironed shirts. However, watching Lucas towel off that smooth golden skin made her realize that women didn’t have to have just one

preference. Just like chocolate, there were many favorites to appreciate.

Savannah had wished she’d been settled enough to get out of her car, walk past him, make some friendly remark as they did, but all she’d thought of was how warm that skin would feel under her touch, what it would be like to be touched by those hands…

Well, she was about to find out.

Those strong, gentle hands were stroking her ass, lingering touches that told her he was examining her in detail from that angle. The pulse that had been jerking in her throat from trepidation settled uneasily back into the rapid cadence of arousal, the conflicting emotions keeping her body vacillating between need and nerves.

“She smells exquisite,” Lucas observed. His finger traced up the back of her thigh, to the inside, and her muscles clenched, straining against the cuffs that made closing her legs impossible. “You’ve already made her pussy wet, Matt.” Male amusement entered his voice, teasing his boss. “Or maybe we’re responsible for that. I think I’d like a taste.”

She felt his body shift, his warm breath slide down her spine. It filtered between the clench of her buttocks, the moist heat of his mouth coming closer, closer. A moment later, his warm, firm lips closed over her clit, his hair tickling the inside of her thighs. Her head jerked against the restraint, her eyes widening at the sensation. A moan came around the ball gag, and she’d not told her vocal cords to make any such noise.

“Lick her slow and easy, Lucas.

She’s never had a man do this to her.

Let her find out how hard she’ll come under a lover’s slow touch.” Matt’s voice.

“Screw the five percent,” Lucas murmured against her skin, making her shudder. “I’d rather eat this pussy as long as I want. She’s sweet, like honey.”

His mouth lifted away and she could almost sense how his nostrils flared as he took a deeper breath, for she felt the shift of the rhythm of breath inside her thighs. She made a quiet whimper, a plea. Though she didn’t know for what.

“Do you know how much my men care for you, Savannah?” Matt asked, his voice a calming stroke of reassurance. “After the negotiations we’ve had, the long hours we’ve spent here, sometimes until the morning sun struck the office windows? We know you’ve felt the synergy among all of us.”

“It was something you did one night that made us start thinking of this.”

Lucas picked up the thread from Matt. “At about two in the morning, long after we’d all shed our coats, loosened our ties, you got up, unbuttoned the one button of the pale green jacket you were wearing, and slipped out of it. Laid it with perfect precision over the chair. Every movement elegant, ladylike. But then, you put your hand to the small of your back, kneaded it, stretched it. You raised your other hand and let down your hair. Not a calculated move at all. You just pulled the clip free, ran your fingers through it to ease the pull on your scalp, kept up that kneading on your back. You rolled your shoulders, turned and came back to the table. You had no clue how riveted we all were, as aroused as if you’d just stripped. The human woman inside the inhuman armor revealed. An armor you’ve created solely from the core of strength inside yourself.”

Stop it, she wanted to say, though she knew he wouldn’t listen, would never obey her commands the way her body was obeying the stimulation of his words.

“On our playing field, you’re a knight who obeys the same code of honor we do.” Matt spoke now.

“We’ve worked together five years, our two companies, and in the past two years, since your father died, we’ve worked even more closely together. Every man has grown to care for you, desires to protect you.

Desires you, period. When we were talking about it early that morning, Lucas made the comment that, somewhere along the way, we’d decided you were ours.”

“Like a sister, but definitely not.”

Now there was a smile in Lucas’s voice, and she heard a chuckle from the others, those who’d yet to approach her, but if Matt’s words were heeded, would be doing so soon.

“This is hard to explain, complicated,” Matt said. “But we suspect you don’t really have to hear the words, because your body already knows the truth, and your heart is close behind.”

It was as if they knew she had a desperate need for a rational explanation of what was happening to her, but the explanation they were giving her was not the one she needed to keep her insides from breaking up into pieces.

“You always come alone to us.” Matt observed softly. “You don’t want to share us. We think you consider us yours as well.”

Lucas’s breath hovered just above her hips, making her lower belly clench with need. “That may be true, but there’s only one of us she’ll let all the way into her soul. There’s only one of us she’s in love with.

And we all know it.”

His thumb followed the valley of her spine, and he wouldn’t stop telling her things her mind couldn’t digest, a combination of disorienting sensations. “I wanted to lay you down on the sofa that night,” Lucas said, his voice a rumbling purr. “Rub your back, your shoulders, until the tension went out of them, until my touch put you to sleep. I imagined you’d look like a princess lying there, your fist tucked up under your chin, your golden curls falling around your face. When you finally slept, your legs would draw up, and you’d turn on your side. There would be a gleam of dim light on your stockings, and I’d reach up under the skirt…”

His hand slid down her flank, over her buttock, to the top of the thigh- high. “…and ease them off, for your comfort.”

His hands did just that, his fingers insinuating themselves under the lace top of the left stocking, taking it down the contours of her thigh, the back of her knee, working it gently past the hold of the cuffs at thigh and ankle.

The nylon whispered over the sole of her foot. He removed the other the same way, with painstaking, breathtaking slowness. Then, barrier gone, Lucas set his lips to her calf.

She had brashly told Matt she’d have sex with him. But this wasn’t sex.

This was seduction. Matt had locked her into some strange dream. She was beyond wondering whether he really would release her if she asked him to do so. All she knew was the slow rub and heat of Lucas’s mouth on her calf. Oh God, the back of her knee.