The Sarantos Secret Baby
The tone in which she said that, that she said it at all, confused him. It seemed as if she had a…grievance? Whatever for?
All he could do now was to negate her insinuation. “I’ve never whiled away an hour in my life. Our weekend together was incredible, incendiary. And I want more.”
He could feel the same tightness that primed his every muscle for passion gripping her as she scoffed, “We’ve been perfectly fine not having more for the past eighteen months.”
“I wasn’t fine with it,” he hissed with all the pent-up hunger he’d been trying to suppress. “I thought it was better not to, that I shouldn’t, but I never stopped craving more.”
Her gaze wavered, before she gave him a wry smile. “Welcome to the real world, Sarantos. As you so astutely worked out, you’d better not, and shouldn’t, have everything you crave.”
“Again, give me one good reason not to.”
“Not to what? Spend another weekend together? I already said I’d pass.” Her gaze shifted in a restless arc, seeking escape from his cornering one. “I don’t have to give you reasons.”
“But I don’t want another weekend. I want all we can have together. Whenever it’s convenient for both of us.”
That yanked her gaze back to his with an openmouthed gape.
After a protracted moment, she cleared her throat. “You’re proposing—for lack of a tasteful modern designation—an affair?”
He moved closer, until his thighs whispered against hers. “It’s what we both need.”
“But if I get you right, you’re not proposing just any affair. You’re negotiating an intermittent, purely sexual and no doubt secret liaison?”
He reached for her again, both hands clasping the arms she had propped against the desk. She went still in his loose hold, emotions fast-forwarding in her eyes with such volume and speed, they made his own tumble, tangle, made him dizzy with desire.
He stroked her arms, trying to transmit his urgency, his conviction. “It’s all we can afford. To separate our arrangement from business, to keep the world, starting with your family, from tainting the intensity we share. And our careers are too demanding, with schedules that keep us on opposite sides of the globe. But I’ll do whatever it takes so that mine allows me as many opportunities as possible to be with you. I should have proposed this a year and a half ago, shouldn’t have let anything stop me from seeking the pleasures that our weekend proved only we can provide each other.”
Selene’s lashes swept downward, veiling her expression, making him seethe with the need to lure her gaze back to his. “You assume I want the same things.”
“You need them. But you evidently believe you have to sacrifice your pleasures to serve your career and your family. It’s how you rose so high so young. You’re like me.”
That had her gaze slamming back to his. The antagonism there perplexed him, yet maddened him with the need to tame it, and her. “I’m nothing like you.” Her voice was as hard as her glare. “And I don’t take kindly to anyone deciding what I want then telling me what I need and how I need it.”
She wanted a fight. A rough tussle. A demonstration of what he’d be willing to do to get her back.
He’d oblige her.
“You want and need me.” Aris suddenly obliterated the gap between them, hauled her from the edge of the desk she’d been gripping harder by the second, slammed her against the body begging for her feel. “As for how you need me, if you need your memory revived, want fresh proof, I’ll give it to you.”
He reached behind her and swept the desk clean, sending everything crashing to the floor.
His violence jolted through her, the jumble of reactions gripping her face and body all his to decipher now. Alarm, outrage, consternation—and raging arousal.
“That’s my father’s stuff, you jerk…” she gasped.
He pushed her down until he had her plastered on her back against the cool mahogany, snapped open the button holding her jacket closed, spread her legs, pressed his hips between them and leaned over her. “Nothing there to be broken, and I will put them back in their exact arrangement…afterward. Now, for that proof…”
He gazed into eyes that were now like dark, stormy oceans as his hand slid down her thigh, brought it up to hook over his hip, the other diving into the silk curtain splayed around her head.
“Tell me this…” He bunched her hair around his aching fingers, wrung a moan from those full, rose-petal lips. “And this…” He lowered his head, buried his face in her breasts, inhaled the scent that had been haunting him, then opened stinging lips over one nipple after the other, nipping through her blouse and bra. He slid up to catch the gasps she rewarded him with, his tongue thrusting inside her, devouring her confession of pleasure. When her hips started undulating beneath him, he straightened, growled, “And this…” He thrust his agonizing hardness against the inferno at the junction of her thighs, wringing more and more urgency from her. “Tell me all this wasn’t what you saw, what you burned for each time you closed your eyes, awake or asleep.”
She looked up at him, feverish arousal, steely defiance and something akin to…disappointment?…warring on her face.
With obvious effort, she pushed herself up on the arms she’d thrown over her head at his onslaught. Her thighs hugged his hips tighter, making his arousal jerk harder against her core.
Before he could push her back and take her then and there, she rasped, “So I have a healthy sexual appetite and you’re every woman’s fantasy sex partner. Too obvious to need proof.”
He held her eyes for another long moment. Then, with the last iota of restraint he had, he stepped away from their intimate tangle. “I’m your fantasy sex partner. And you don’t go around randomly satisfying your healthy sexual appetite. I bet another man would have gotten his eyes clawed out by now.”
She straightened her clothes with unsteady hands. “I was thinking of the ensuing legal catastrophes that giving in to the temptation would have involved in your case.”
“The only temptation you resisted was tearing my clothes off my back and clawing my flesh as you begged me to take you.”
She lowered her gaze as she circumvented him on legs he knew were trembling with need. “Maybe. And maybe if you’d made this proposition after that weekend, I would have taken you up on it. It’s too late now. I have someone in my life.”