"Stop that now, Ella!" Javier growled next to her ear, his expression thunderous and left no room for argument. 

Ella was well aware of the close proximity between their bodies. She was nearly breathless when she queried back, "Stop what?" 

"Resisting me." He glowered furiously. "I saw you just now. I saw how you danced with that guy—"

"Damon?" prompted Ella, trying to be helpful.

"Him. Whatever his name is," he said with a gruff. "So stop pretending like you can not dance properly."

"I am used to dancing with Damon, he is my friend," protested Ella then glanced at her surrounding, hoping none of the partygoers noticed their little argument. "I am comfortable with him."

There was a pause. 

"Are you saying you are not comfortable with me?" 

"You are my boss," answered Ella diplomatically. She did not want to offend him, after all, she still needed him to give her a recommendation letter so she could find her next job. She still needed money to help her pay her father's debt and losing her source of income would be troublesome. 

"This is not the office," he argued. 

"But you are still my boss," Ella insisted.

Anger flashed in his blue ocean eyes and for a moment, Ella held her breath. Then before she knew it, he caught her totally off-guard by grabbing her and hauling her to him. His arms snaked their ways around her back, holding her intimately and pinning her against his muscled front. Her arms had nowhere to go but to slide their way up to his shoulders and then clung around his neck. 

"For a moment, think of me as someone else. Someone other than your boss," Javier commanded gruffly. His voice was intoxicatingly low and damn sexy. 

Her breasts were glued to the heat of his chest and her stomach quivered with the awareness of what it was pressed against. No wonder he had been called a ruthless playboy and wild CEO amongst other names. 

Still, she fought for self-control and lifted her eyes to meet his. "As in who?"

"Think of me as," he paused and dipped his head to whisper the next word in her ear, "your lover."

Ella kept her mouth shut. She had no idea what to answer him. Javier Summers had her clamped in the kind of embrace that she could only dream of — something made out of fantasy. The way he had whispered the words to her ear as if he was making a promise of what would follow after the party was over. There was nothing the least platonic about the way he was dancing with her. 

It was no doubt an exhilarating taste of the sexual power he exerted and he was not entirely unmoved by her either. She could definitely feel his arousal. Yet he did not seem to be concerned at all about removing himself to a discreet distance. Was he reveling in feeling or perhaps imagining what it might feel like to move what was currently outside her inside? 

And as if having a party of its own, Ella's treacherous body just kept on responding to wherever he led, circling in the dance floor with physical friction between their bodies that nearly drove her to the verge of climax. 

* * *