“And, like your offer, it’s still deficient and unnecessary. And the reason behind both your honesty and your offer is even worse.”
He’d thought she’d hit him with all she had, that he could now begin to negotiate. Seemed she was far from done.
He cocked one eyebrow at her, genuinely interested, even impatient, to find out what else she would hit him with. “So what terrible motive have you come up with for me?”
“It seems that even you haven’t escaped the social conditioning that stipulates that men must take responsibility for their progeny or forfeit their right to manhood and its pride and privileges.” She swung her chair back to her desk, swept him a sidelong glance that had the heat percolating beneath his ribs spreading to his head before flooding the rest of his body. “So I’m judging your motives are a cocktail of pride, honor and responsibility.”
He stared at her. That was what she’d thought so bad?
He barked a guffaw of incredulity. “You say it as if those are the most reprehensible of motives.”
She inclined her head, making his hands itch when the movement sent a swath of midnight silk swishing over one turquoise-clad shoulder. “They’re up there with the worst kind of motives in my opinion. You don’t marry someone, or become someone’s father, because your unreasoning male pride is prodding you, a reluctant sense of honor is harassing you or a hated responsibility is breathing down your neck.”
Just yesterday, if they’d had that same conversation, he would have said the same things, in as harsh or harsher terms. He’d always believed if something was wrong, it was wrong no matter the circumstances. But maybe he’d been wrong.
He exhaled his deepening uncertainties. “Maybe a lot of men don’t start out in a marriage having those motives, but most stay because of that glue of pride and honor and responsibility.”
She took her gaze away completely now, busied herself with arranging some papers on her desk. “Maybe. And maybe other women have to accept that, because alternatives are far worse. That is not true in my case. Appeasing your sense of duty and male pride isn’t good enough for me, or for Alex. Your name, money and status are all you’re offering because they are all you have to offer. And since they don’t feature as reasons for me to marry, they don’t count for me. As for you, in case you’re trying to contain a situation you fear will one day take a far bigger bite out of you than the price you’re willing to forfeit to deal with said situation in its…infancy, so to speak, I again assure you…” She suddenly looked up, slammed him with a solemn stare. “Neither I nor Alex will ever need a thing from you. I can guarantee you that in a binding contract.”
She was making this hurdle course harder with every look, every word. He hadn’t come prepared to engage her in a grueling character dissection. Grappling with his own doubts and deficiencies had commandeered most of his resources. He’d expended the rest in making the offer at all. Now he was down to his reserves, and she was depleting those fast.
Her cell phone rang. She lunged for it as if for a raft in a stormy sea.
He watched the metamorphosis of her expression as she took what was evidently an unwelcome business call. So that was how she looked when she was dispassionate, formal, as he’d thought she’d been as she’d confronted him. But seeing the real thing now made him realize she’d actually been seething with emotions. Mostly negative, granted, but they were fierce and specific to him, and he was their instigator and their target.
How had he been fool enough not to include that intensely personal factor in his negotiation?
He waited for her to end her call then closed the two steps he’d kept between them, bent and clamped both her wrists in his hands. Her gaze jerked up to his, her face an unguarded display of surprise and vulnerability as he tugged her out of her seat and against the body that clamored to feel her against it.
He held eyes that had emptied of all but instant response, savored her instinctive surrender before she snapped back into antagonist mode. “There is one more thing I can offer,” he groaned. “One thing you know only I can offer. This…”
He swooped down and stilled the tremor invading the fullness of her lower lip in a bite that made her cry out, arch into him, all lushness and urgency. The taste and feel and scent of her flooded his senses, eddied in his arteries, pounded through his system. She spilled gasps into his mouth, her tongue sliding against his, tangling, her teeth matching him nip for nip, until he felt himself expanding, as if he’d unfold around her, devour her whole. And he’d only intended to kiss her, make his point. He should have known he’d lose his mind at her reciprocation.
He gathered her pants-clad thighs, opened her around his hips, pinned her to the wall behind her desk with the force of his hunger. She clung to him, arms and legs, opening for his tongue, for the thrust of his arousal against her heat through their barriers.
He felt his brain overheating, his body hurtling beyond his volition. Only one thing would stop him from taking her against that wall. Her. He wouldn’t stop otherwise. Which he should, before the point he’d intended to make in his favor became more proof against him.
Suddenly, as if she’d heard his feverish thoughts, she was writhing against him in a different kind of desperation, to get away.
He stilled, snatched his lips from hers, raised his head to roam unseeing eyes through the black-and-blue blankness of frustration, only to drop his forehead against hers, sharing the upheaval of aborted passion.
When he could finally make a move that didn’t drive his body against hers, he unclamped her from his spastic grasp and let her down on her feet.
He still couldn’t move away. It was she who did, stumbled around him on unsteady legs without meeting his eyes. His body roared anew as she brushed past him, as he realized he’d undone her blouse, had her breasts almost spilling from her bra. Before he could send everything to hell and pounce on her, drag her to the ground, give them both what they were in agony for, she put the width of her desk between them, began to speak.
For a moment he saw nothing but those lips that had just been suckling coherence right out of him, glistening and swollen from his possession. He could imagine nothing but them moving like that, all over him.
It was only when he heard her say “…I want you…” that his mind screeched its stalled wheels to process her words.
Then he realized the context of her words, and that was a far more efficient libido douser than a plunge in freezing waters.