Goosebumps flooded down my arms as he leaned over me, bringing the tip of his nose so close to my skin it nearly grazed me. His parted lips hovered, and he moved from one breast to the other, caressing me with only his warm breath. I didn’t want it to, but my skin sensitized at his almost-touch.
Even though I wasn’t trapped, the clothes halfway off my body felt like restraints, holding me under his magnetic power.
“I’m a man who finds it difficult to admit when I’ve taken a misstep.” He bent onto a knee before me, bringing his gaze level with the hard points of my nipples, and my pulse climbed higher still. “Royce knew if he made a play for Ascension, I’d go after it, and I’m embarrassed at how easily I fell for his ploy.” His words hadn’t sunk in before he hooked a finger at the front of my pulled-down bra and jerked it toward him, making me stumble forward and almost into his hands. “This and your dress come off.”
My muscles were rigid, but somehow, I found a way to undo the clasp of my bra and push the dress over my hips. They both cascaded down to a pile at my feet, leaving me clad only in a scrap of black lace and the heels I wore.
It was strange how my power grew as I shed my clothes. It helped that Macalister was on his knees, and the wanton desire dripping off his face made me feel like I was the one better in control of myself.
I didn’t want to tip Royce’s hand, but I had to know if his father had figured out the plan, which I feared he had. “Why aren’t you happy with Ascension now?”
It took Macalister’s slow-moving gaze eons to travel the length of my body before it reached my eyes. There’d been a lingering pause on Medusa. Had he been counting her snakes, or admiring the beautiful artwork?
“I despise your tattoo,” he said, “and how you marred such a beautiful body. If I had my way, you’d start the removal process tomorrow.”
A sinful grin burned across my lips as I stared down into his frosty eyes, wordlessly reminding him he didn’t have that kind of control over me anymore. Of course, he hated my tattoo. It wasn’t the design that offended him, it was the visual reminder of what he’d lost.
The power I felt flagged, though, when he motioned toward one side of my panties. “Lift.”
I slipped my fingers beneath the edge and stretched the fabric away from my hip, only for him to fist it, holding it away from me like a rubber band he wanted to release and snap against my skin.
His expression broke, turning dark and resentful as he spoke. “The level of fraud happening at that company is staggering.”
He drew the panties down my legs at an angle, which made the lace dig in and scrape over my skin as it went. As if that company’s actions were somehow my fault and he was punishing me.
Maybe he was. I’d denied him so many times, his enormous ego couldn’t handle it.
My hands hung awkwardly at my sides. “When did you find out?”
“May.”
May? How could that be?
I stared down the slope of my body. I watched him as he studied my nakedness, and I tried to disconnect from what was happening. It was infinitely harder when he bent and leaned into the cradle of my lap, his lips only a breath away from the delta of my thighs.
“Look in the mirror,” he ordered.
I didn’t want to, dreading what I’d see, but I obeyed.
As my gaze struck the glass, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, causing an unstoppable shudder in me. In some other life, I might have found the image erotic. I would have thought it was sexy to see a man in an expensive suit on his knees in front of a naked woman and how it looked like he was going down on her. It would have turned me on to watch her chest rise and fall dramatically as she struggled not to pant, or how her eyes were wild, and her pupils dilated to black holes.
I hated what he did to me.
“That is what we could be,” he said.
No.
This wasn’t some other life. I was Marist Hale, and he was my father-in-law, not to mention I was in love with someone else. Plus, there were no myths of Medusa and Zeus being lovers, only Zeus’s son who’d slain her. And that was what Royce had done, wasn’t it? Slayed me?
I ignored what Macalister had said and refocused. The tremble crept into my voice, but only a little. “I don’t understand. The takeover didn’t happen until June. You had time to—”
Macalister abruptly came to his feet, towering over me. “No. I would have looked weak.”