She looked at his mouth and licked her lips, sexual yearning swirling into her middle as she anticipated his kiss. “Yes, please,” she heard herself whisper, and cringed inwardly at how blatant and needy that sounded.
He reacted with a look of aching hunger and lowered his head, covering her mouth with the hot mastery of his own. Where she expected to be crushed, he caressed, then gradually deepened the kiss into the sort of seductive coaxing he was so devastatingly good at delivering.
Her breath shuddered out in a warm hiss against his cheek and she leaned into him, increasing the pressure of their kiss, encouraging him to gently and thoroughly ravage her. Relearning all the hard muscles of his back and shoulders beneath his open jacket.
He made a growled, grateful noise in his throat that the staff must have heard, because the elevator had opened just then. She didn’t care any more than he seemed to. He delicately plundered for every last dreg of her response and she gave it to him, recognizing that she’d been aching for this since four-fifteen outside the hotel two days ago. Since about five minutes after he’d walked out of the room they’d been sharing in Switzerland.
The doors started to close, and they reluctantly eased back, loosening the death grip they’d taken on each other. He stopped the door, but kept his gaze locked to hers. Her blood continued to sizzle in her arteries and she had to consciously lock her trembling knees. No way could she look at anyone as they exited, fingers linked, breaths hot enough to cloud the winter air as they climbed into the limo.
“Are you spending the night with me?” she asked in the safety of the darkened car. She refused to ask—beg—will you?
“I want to,” he said, head turning toward her as he spoke.
She heard the unspoken but, and her heart went into free fall. This was why she had accepted their casual relationship in Paris. The minute she expected more from him, she risked being grossly disappointed.
“But?” she prompted, trying to pull her hand away from his warm grip.
He tightened his hold. “But if I spend the night, I spend the weekend. And next weekend, you come to New York and Adara’s party with me.”
She’d already told him Zoey was away until Sunday night, but “Next weekend I have Zoey. I can’t go away.” This was precisely what she’d been trying to warn him about. She wasn’t footloose and fancy—
“She can come. You have a passport for her, don’t you?”
“I...” She did, and she was saving up to take her to the amusement parks in Florida, but “That’s not the point.”
“It’s not any kind of point. We don’t have to sleep together in New York if you think it would confuse her. Share the spare room in my apartment with her or I’ll get you a hotel room if you prefer. And I’ll pay for the flights. You won’t be out of pocket.”
“Demitri, I can’t,” she protested, forced to bring up the real issue. “There’s no way I could throw myself, us, in your family’s faces like that.”
“What does that mean? You’re embarrassed to be seen with me?”
“No! But our affair created a huge headache both at work and in their family life. The last person they want to see is the woman who caused it all.”
“You didn’t. I did. And I assure you, they’ll be far more welcoming to you than they will be to me,” he predicted in a rancorous mutter.
“They think I want to sue them for sexual harassment,” she reminded, vehemently getting down to brass tacks.
“Exactly. And your turning up will reassure them that you’re not holding a grudge.”
She hadn’t thought about it that way, but “It would still be awkward.”
“Natalie,” he said from between clenched teeth. “If I show up alone, Gideon will have me kicked out before I reach the elevator. If I have a date, someone he respects, he’ll show some manners and give me a chance to apologize to my sister. You can rest assured that I will be bearing the brunt of the awkward.”
“Still—”
“Damn it, Natalie. I don’t like them thinking I was only seeing you to hurt them. They were the last thing on my mind. I want them to see we’re a serious couple.”
Was that what they were?
Because she strongly suspected that was what she was really shying away from, she acknowledged darkly to herself. It was one thing to invite him in for the night, relive the fantasy and feel desired for a few hours. It was quite another to let a man occupy a more permanent space in her life. She might start to depend on him. Want stuff. Yearn for love and completion and other things that she secretly feared were never meant to be hers.
They didn’t speak again until the car parked in her driveway. Demitri climbed out to walk her to her door, where he lightly cupped her face and said, “I can tell you want time—”
“No,” she interrupted, grasping at his arm where he lightly touched her jaw. “If there’s one thing Gareth taught me, it’s that time is finite. Tomorrow might not come. You have to live today as best you can. I want you to stay. I do.”
“Yeah?” His touch on her gentled and he drew her forward so he could press his lips to her forehead.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the simple gesture for a moment before drawing away with a smile and opening her front door. She stepped through and held it, inviting him in.
He hung back, making her frown in confusion.
“I’ll just get my bag,” he said.
* * *
“Of course you have a bag,” Natalie snarked when he returned. She had the box of chocolates open and was unwrapping a truffle. She glared at him as she bit into it.
He stopped in his tracks, recognizing that perhaps there was something distasteful in the fact that he’d thrown it into the car without really thinking about it, packing it as routinely as he had a thousand times when leaving for an evening with a woman he desired. But her condemnation caught him off guard, making him shoot back, “It’s called being prepared. Do you want me to get you pregnant?”
She paled and choked, covering her mouth before chewing and swallowing audibly. Closing the foil on the truffle, she placed it back in the box and said a firm “No.”
For some reason that stung, even though it hadn’t been a real question. He’d meant tonight, not someday, but her answer seemed to encompass both. It was a painful rejection.
He cursed and ran a hand over his hair, knowing what the real problem was here.
“I’ve slept with other women,” he said flatly, continuing despite the injured glance she flashed at him. “But I’ve never slept with anyone who knows anything about me. If you think this is something I do all the time, it’s not. Getting naked with someone is easy when you feel like the smartest, strongest, least-invested person in the room. I don’t right now. Not with you.” He glared at her, resenting how much guilt accosted him over those easy, meaningless hook-ups when he realized what he wanted from her. “I don’t want sex from you, Natalie. I want to feel you and smell you and be inside you. I want to know you’re mine.”
* * *
He looked like a pirate. A sultan. A marauder bent on stealing her from her home. Or, at the very least, stealing her heart from her body.
“I’m scared,” she admitted. “I don’t want to start believing you’ll be here and then find out the hard way that you won’t.” He hadn’t even met Zoey. How could he be so sure they were a serious couple when he hadn’t really seen her as a mom?
He opened his hands, coming forward to take her elbows as she draped her fingers on his biceps, surrounding her in his masculine scent and aura of command. “I don’t know how to reassure you except to be here when you wake up.”
Of their own accord, her fingertips moved restlessly on the stiff fabric of his jacket, wanting the man beneath.
He read her receptiveness in the betraying little motion.
He slid his hand down her forearm, linking their fingers as he canted his head toward the stairs. “Take me up with you.”
This was how he did it, she thought as she led him to her room. He made her think she was in control when he was the one guiding the whole thing. Except, as they started to undress each other, he watched her closely, not rushing her, seeing if his caress against the side of her breast was welcome, stealing a kiss, but a soft, sweet one.
And when they were almost naked, he gathered her against his hard chest with arms that trembled and said, “I’ve missed you, Natalie.”
“I can tell,” she teased, trying to lighten the mood because she was so moved. She shifted a hand between them so she could caress the fierce muscle straining between them.
He closed his hand over hers, stilling her with a firm crush of his grip over hers. Then he caught her other hand and drew both her arms behind her so he could manacle her wrists. “My turn,” he warned, fingertips playing against the lace triangle at the front of her panties, making her flinch with sensitivity. “Uh-uh,” he scolded. “Stand still.”