Conflict of Interest Read Online Free PDF

the couch, her expensively booted feet making no sound on the carpet Standing beside his sprawled form on the couch, she handed him the glass.
    „Scotch wasn’t the only thing you deprived me of this evening,“
    he reminded her, reaching up to close his hand around the glass.
    Kali’s eyes narrowed at the male speculation she caught behind his lashes. „No,“ she agreed bluntly, „I also deprived you of the opportunity of making a fool out of yourself. Under the circumstances, you ought to be grateful to me, Lang!“
    Before she could remove her fingers from the glass he was in the process of taking from her hand, Lang moved, reaching up to close his other hand around her wrist in a grip of casual strength. The bronze-green eyes fairly glittered at her small gasp of surprise.
    „Allow me to show you just how grateful I am, Vice-President Kali Havelock,“ he grated with such unexpected vehemence that Kali was startled. She thought she’d been managing him quite well but she hadn’t guessed just how close to a boil his temper had been simmering.
    Now she had a very clear, very dramatic glimpse of it as he put the glass of Scotch on the table with great care and tugged her down onto his lap.
    „Lang! What do you think you’re doing? Let go of me, damn it, you’re drunk!“
    Her initial, totally automatic reaction was to struggle and unthinkingly Kali did so for a few angry, startled moments. It was not the right way to handle the situation, she realized almost at once.
    Catching both her wrists in one manacle of a hand, Lang shifted.
    Somehow her body floundered down alongside his, trapped between his hard frame and the back of the couch.
    „Stop squirming,“ he soothed in a gentling tone that threatened to make Kali’s usually docile temper explode. „Let me up, Lang! You don’t know what you’re doing!“
    „I’m doing what I had planned to do on my birthday,“ he contradicted, stilling her kicking legs with a heavy thigh across the flowing black velvet of her long skirts.
    „I’ll admit you’re not the woman I had planned on doing it with, but a man has to be adaptable in this world.“ He brought his mouth down to hers with lazy, almost curious hunger, using the weight of his body and the grip on her wrists to hold her helplessly crushed into the cushions. Angrily Kali turned her head aside but he followed relentlessly, finding her mouth with his own.
    The kiss was startlingly warm, tasting faintly of Scotch. He didn’t rush the intimacy, letting his mouth cling lingeringly to hers as if giving Kali a chance to accept the contact. He made no immediate move to deepen the kiss by thrusting his tongue beyond the rigidly locked barrier of her small, white teeth.
    With his free hand, Lang ran questing fingers down the length of her side to where the black velvet covered her hip. He was waiting expectantly and it took Kali a long moment to come to her senses and analyze exactly what it was he was waiting for.
    Belatedly the rational part of her mind surged to the fore with typical businesslike efficiency. Lang was, of course, simply waiting to see what form her struggles would take. No doubt his frustration and annoyance over the matter of her interference with his evening needed to vent itself.
    Kali had a mental image of the control he’d had to exert over his racing adrenaline when she’d talked him out of following Gwen and Aaron Mather upstairs. Add to that a certain amount of damaged male pride, too much Scotch, and an illogical, somewhat primitive nature and you had a definite time bomb on your hands.
    He wanted a fight from her, she realized grimly. He wanted a chance to exert some control over an evening which had been radically disrupted. It was an understandable, if not particularly commendable, phenomenon. Desperately Kali racked her brains for the best way to handle matters even as the hand on her hip clenched goadingly.
    „Wish me happy birthday, Vice-President Kali,“ he growled against