y saying dawned. With it came a flush of incendiary heat.
“You’re getting married anyway.” He was instantly and inexplicably furious.
She stilled, asking cautiously, “How do you know about that?”
“I know a lot of things.” He didn’t have a clue what was happening, not to himself or her. He moved forward on reflex until his knuckles were on the hard desktop on either side of her hips, the tip of his nose a hair’s breadth from hers. “I’m not letting a stranger raise my baby.”
“I can’t help the state of our relationship, can I?” She set a hand on his chest, but didn’t push him away. Her hand lifted slightly from his shirt, as if she found him too hot to touch. She wasn’t as unaffected as she was trying to appear. Her breasts rose and fell unsteadily. Her eyes were huge, her pupils big enough to eclipse her golden irises.
“You know what I mean. I want my child, Pia. Full access, every single day.”
It was fascinating to watch the burst of emotion behind her eyes, the light flush of pink beneath her skin while she fought to maintain her unaffected expression.
“Until July, I’m the only one with access. I suggest you take that time to reflect on whatever reasons you had for not wanting it known you were at my brother’s that night. When you can react less emotionally, we can resume this discussion.”
He was starting to see how she used fifty-dollar words to put distance between herself and others, but he didn’t back off one iota.
“You’re carrying my heir. My blood. I will not walk away. Not now, not ever.”
His words had an effect. He was close enough to see how deep they struck, causing both a spark of something that might have been gladness, but it was swallowed by her flinch of anguish.
“Angelo.” It was the voice he’d heard on a darkened rooftop, ringing with want-but-can’t-have. Her fingers curled into his shirt. “I told you that night I have obligations. They’re due sooner than this baby.”
From the moment he’d seen her in the conference room, he had itched to get her like this, close enough to feel the heat beneath the frost that encased her.
“You have obligations to me now.”
She shook her head, but her pleading eyes slid to his mouth.
As he recognized the craving in her gaze, he experienced a rush of pure, carnal lust. Exactly the same spell that had gripped him that night. Her lips were right there, parted and shiny. Her breath moved across his own in shaken pants.
He wasn’t the martyr she seemed determined to be. He gave them what they both wanted, cupped the side of her neck and took her mouth with his, reveling in the blast of heat and hunger. Lightning and craving hit him like whiskey. Her unique flavor and satin textures were all he would ever need in this lifetime.
She softened with surrender, exactly as she had that night, feeding his swell of powerful greed.
He held back nothing as he ravaged her mouth, slaking weeks of thirst. Her mouth moved under his, melting and clinging. Her arm went around his neck, pulling him down even as he firmed his arms around her, pulling her off the desk to stand against him.
She was on tiptoe, her body long and taut against his, exactly as he wanted her. This was what he had been looking for in his online searches. This tactile sensation of silk shifting against heat, a slender back and the small, firm lobe of her butt cheek in his hand; the crush of her breasts to his chest and her thick hair in his fist, the citrus scent and the tentative greeting of her tongue when he claimed her mouth with a sweep of his.
A sudden thump against the window had him jerking his head up, his arms shifting to form a protective shelter around her.
Outside, a young man stooped to pick up a yellow disk and laughed as he walked away, thumbing toward the window as he called out, “People are making out in there.”
Pia made a noise of anguish and slid out of his arms, took two steps away and kept her back to the window. She hung her face in her hands. “Did he recognize me?”
“What if he did? We were only kissing.”
She shot him a stark look and he had to agree. Given the pace of their last kiss, they would have been making love very soon. His body was starving to have her beneath him. He was tense and aching, restless as an animal on the hunt. Twitching like a creature with the scent of his mate in his nostrils.
“We can’t do this.” She plucked a fawn-colored overcoat off a hook.
“Not here,” he agreed, taking the coat.
She hesitated, then let him hold it for her. She shrugged into it as though pulling on her composure, the sensual woman of moments ago gone.
What the hell?
She gathered her purse and started to shoulder a laptop bag. He lifted the cushioned strap off her shoulder and dragged it free of her arm, partly out of chivalry, partly to catch the shift of awareness that flickered in her eyes before she lowered her lashes and stepped away.