Anxious.
Angry.
I know of one thing that will give me relief.
You, Miss Steele.
My panacea.
“Well, right now I’d like to drink this, and then, if you’re not too tired, take you to bed and lose myself in you.” I’m really chancing my luck. She must be exhausted.
“I think that can be arranged, Mr. Taylor,” she says, and rewards me with a shy smile.
Oh, Ana. You’re my heroine.
I slip out of my shoes and socks. “Mrs. Taylor, stop biting your lip,” I murmur. She takes a sip of her Armagnac and closes her eyes. She hums her appreciation for her drink. The sound soft and mellow and oh so sexy.
I feel it in my groin.
She really is something else.
“You never cease to amaze me, Anastasia. After a day like today, or yesterday, rather, you’re not whining or running off into the hills screaming. I am in awe of you. You’re very strong.”
“You’re a very good reason to stay,” she whispers.
That strange feeling swells in my chest. Scarier than the darkness. Bigger. More potent. It has the power to wound.
“I told you, Christian, I’m not going anywhere, no matter what you’ve done. You know how I feel about you.”
Oh, baby, you’d run if you knew the truth.
“Where are you going to hang José’s portraits of me?” she asks, throwing me for a loop.
“That depends,” I respond, bemused that she can change tack so quickly.
“On what?”
“Circumstances.” It’ll depend on whether she stays. I don’t think I could bear to look at them when she’s no longer mine.
If. If she’s no longer mine.
“His show’s not over yet, so I don’t have to decide straightaway.” I still don’t know when the gallery will deliver them, in spite of my request.
She narrows her eyes, studying me, as if I’m hiding something.
Yeah. My fear. That’s what I’m hiding.
“You can look as sternly as you like, Mrs. Taylor. I’m saying nothing,” I tease.
“I may torture the truth from you.”
“Really, Anastasia, I don’t think you should make promises you can’t fulfill.”
She narrows her eyes once more, but this time, she’s amused. She places her glass on the mantelpiece, then takes mine and sets it beside hers. “We’ll just have to see about that,” she says with cool determination in her voice. Grasping my hand, she guides me into the bedroom.
Ana is taking the lead.
This hasn’t happened since that time in my study when she jumped me.
Go with it, Grey.
At the foot of the bed, she stops.
“Now that you have me in here, Anastasia, what are you going to do with me?”
She looks up at me, eyes shining, full of love, and I swallow, awed at the sight of her. “I’m going to start by undressing you. I want to finish what I started earlier.”
All the breath leaves my body.
She grasps the lapels of my jacket and gently eases it off my shoulders. She turns and places it on the ottoman and I catch a trace of her fragrance.
Ana.
“Now your T-shirt,” she says. I feel bolder. I know she won’t touch me. Her road-map idea was a good one, and I still have the smudged remains of the lipstick on my chest and back. I raise my arms and take a step back as she tugs my T-shirt over my head.
Her lips part as she surveys my torso, and I itch to touch her, but I’m loving her slow, sweet seduction.
We’re doing it her way.
“Now what?” I murmur.
“I want to kiss you here.” She runs a fingernail across my belly from hipbone to hipbone.
Fuck.
I tense everywhere as all the blood in my body heads south. “I’m not stopping you,” I whisper.
Grabbing my hand, she instructs me to lie down.
With my pants on?
Okay.
I remove the covers on the bed and sit down, my eyes on Ana, waiting to see what she’ll do next. She shrugs out of my denim jacket and lets it fall to the floor; my sweatpants follow, and it takes all my self-control not to grab her and toss her onto the bed.
Squaring her shoulders, her gaze fixed on mine, she grips the hem of my T-shirt and tugs it over her head, wiggling to get it free.
Naked before me, she’s beautiful. “You are Aphrodite, Anastasia.”
She cradles my face in her hands and stoops to kiss me, and I can resist her no more. When her lips touch mine, I reach for her hips and pull her onto the bed so that she’s beneath me. As we kiss, I push her legs apart so I’m resting at the junction of her thighs: my favorite place. She kisses me back with a ferocity that fires my blood, her mouth voracious, her tongue wrestling with mine. She tastes of Armagnac and Ana. My hands are on her. With one, I cup her head and I trail the other up her body, kneading and squeezing as I go. Palming her breast, I tweak her nipple and marvel as it hardens between my fingers.