chapter EIGHT
WHEN Colette entered the elevator to Stephen’s office the following morning, she’d reached a decision. She wasn’t convinced it was the right one, but given her options it was the best she could do.
The elevator doors slid open on his private floor and she approached his office with dread in her heart. She found him awaiting her arrival, looking well-rested and refreshed in a custom-made black suit. It was wretchedly unfair, especially since she felt like she’d spent the night inside a bread mixer set to high.
“You’ve reached your decision, I trust?” he asked, ushering her into his office and then closing the door behind them.
She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, refusing to be cowed despite that fact that he’d backed her into a corner from which there was no escape. “You act as if there is a decision to be made. As if I have any choice in the matter.”
“You do.”
“Not really.” She wouldn’t show her fear, wouldn’t reveal how scared she was to open herself up to the intimacy of his bed. But marriage wasn’t an option. She would do anything to protect her sweet, innocent daughter from the anger and resentment of a loveless union. “You know I can’t marry you,” she said in a thin, defiant voice.
His grim smile held a veneer of triumph. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Anguished impotence, combined with her inability to avoid the coming pain, made her break out in a cold sweat. Her palms grew damp against her black tank dress, but she forced herself to maintain eye contact. The least she could do was hang on to her last shred of dignity. “No, you’re not,” she told him. “You’re gloating.”
“Do you blame me?”
She forced herself to breathe past the tightness in her chest. “No. I’ve lost. You’ve won. It’s a heady feeling, I’m sure.”
His triumphant eyes glimmered. “It is.”
A wave of second thoughts she couldn’t entertain clubbed within her veins. “Don’t celebrate your victory just yet,” she said in a reedy voice. “It’s doubtful I’ll make as good a mistress this time around.”
“You underestimate your abilities, sweet.” His blue eyes flashed with fiery heat as she swallowed back the retraction filling her throat. “Here. I have a gift for you,” he said, withdrawing long enough to retrieve a package from the bottom drawer of his desk. Wrapped in distinctive white and silver paper, the gift bore the seal of New York’s premier lingerie store.
“No.” Panic clawed at her throat. She shook her head, her hands knotted against her waist as she backed away from him.
“Open it.”
“No,” she whispered. She stared at the package in mutinous fury, her stomach quivering in silent protest. “I don’t want it.”
He arched a brow. “Is this really how you intend to fulfill your mistress role? By defying me at every turn?”
“I don’t want to be your mistress,” she gasped. “I don’t want your gifts. I don’t want anything from you!”
The warmth in his eyes transformed to brittle ice. “You knew your choices,” he said in a flat, commanding tone. “You chose this.” His voice lowered ominously, overruling her arguments as he slid the package toward the edge of the desk. “Are you reneging already?”
Her voice wouldn’t work. Her mouth felt dry as dust. So she shook her head jerkily and walked toward the package with shaking legs.
“Good girl,” he said with a grim half-smile.
Swallowing, she slipped her trembling fingers beneath the tape as if approaching her own execution. By the time she’d finished opening the gift, her careful ministration leaving the paper completely unmarred, he’d moved to watch her from his chair behind the desk. Her hands stalled, hovering uncertainly above the delicate puddle of pale apricot silk and transparent lace.
“I bought it to match your freckles,” he told her. “And your skin after I’ve pleasured you, when it’s all flushed and pink.”
Heat burned a path from her toes to her scalp.
“Come here.” He beckoned her forward, between his chair and the edge of his desk.
She inched closer, her nervousness mounting with every step.
“That’s right,” he said as soon as she stood mere inches from his spread knees. “Now show it to me.” “I don’t—” “Show me.”
She slowly twisted to withdraw the slippery film of silk, so thin and transparent she could have threaded the entire thing through a buttonhole. The doubled-up bodice was sheer enough to reveal the pattern of her fingerprints, and the thought of her breasts beneath the fine web of lace, exposed to his gaze, made a fine tremor claim her limbs.
“I can’t wear this,” she told him as she turned back to face him, her throat too tight to breathe.
“Of course you can.”
“No.” She shook her head, her mouth twisted into a distressed knot while pain cinched her lungs. “I agreed to be your mistress, to join you in your bed. But I never agreed to pretend I wanted to be there. Don’t ask me to play the role of seductress when we both know it will be a lie.”
“I’m willing to overlook a bit of acting.”
“Stop it!” Desperate now, she flung the lingerie at his chest. It fluttered harmlessly to his lap, a smear of apricot trailing over the black silk of his suit pants.
“In case you’ve forgotten,” he said, in voice of velvet overlaid with steel, “you’ve already played multiple roles for my pleasure. Roles we invented together. I’ve held and kissed your breasts, tasted your bare skin, and been close enough to smell the heat of your arousal.” His eyes darkened. Flared as they trailed over her body. “Surely you recall when we—?”
“That was different,” she interrupted while a torrent of unwanted memories raged through her. “I wanted to be there. I wanted to please you. It was my choice to be with you, and I always had the option to leave. I was in control.”
“You were, weren’t you?” he asked, rising from his seat while the apricot silk drifted down to puddle on the floor between them. He braced his palms beside her hips and leaned over her tipped face. “You set the boundaries. You chose the rules. While I, fool that I was, allowed it.”
“We had a relationship of equals,” she protested, terrified of this new shift in power.
“Did we?” A cool, mocking smile tugged against his mouth as he lifted his knuckles to stroke her jaw. “I seem to remember it differently. And, oddly enough, I suspect I’ll like it more this time around.”
“Well, I won’t.” Colette yanked free of his touch and tried to will the quaking from her limbs while her throat worked with her words. “And I won’t pretend otherwise.”
“We’ll see,” he said softly, leaning toward her until she had to arch her neck to keep his mouth from touching hers. “We’ll see if I can change your mind, now that I’m the one in charge.”
“You’re not in charge,” she challenged, and her eyes flashed with defiance. “You may direct my body, but you’ll never direct me.”
Stephen stared down at Colette’s mutinous face, wondering how in the hell he’d gotten into this situation. Yes, he’d been angry at her and, yes, he’d wanted to hurt her for keeping Emma from him. He’d wanted to make her pay. But somehow, between their argument yesterday and their vows this morning, desire for her had diluted his desire for revenge.
“Shall I try to convince you otherwise?” he murmured. Giving in to the desire that had been tugging against his groin since he’d left her yesterday, he pressed up against the seam of Colette’s gorgeous legs and brought his hands to her hips. “You might find that you can relinquish a bit of control and actually like it.”
Her face flushed to the same delectable color of the lingerie he’d bought her and her gaze dipped to his lips. “I won’t.”
“Really?” His palms moved to cup the tight curve of her buttocks.
Her long, narrow hands pressed against his chest while she arched away from him, her mouth parting on an inhale. “I can’t do this,” she said, twisting within the confines of his hands. “I can’t be your mistress. We have to come up with another compromise.”
“Like what?” He stared at her mouth, that lush, kissable mouth, while one hand moved inexorably up along the silk spine of her dress and to the back of her arched neck. He wanted to taste every centimeter of her defiant, trembling softness, to explore the fine, delicate curve of her upper lip, to nip at the lush, petal-smooth swell of it until she moaned beneath him.
Just thinking of how she’d respond, he felt the hairs along his arms lift, priming him for the battle he fully intended to win.
She stared at him, her hazel eyes huge and alarmed within her flushed face, while her hands shoved blindly at his shoulders. “Stephen—”
He caught her protest with his mouth, every last sense focused on the exquisite fit of her lips beneath his. For a moment neither of them moved. He allowed the feeling to wash over him, warm and heavy and so damned arousing he didn’t know how his skin contained the desire swelling within.
He lingered at her lower lip for a moment, plying its softness with gentle, moist tugs before moving to her upper lip. When she softened beneath him, he touched his tongue to the delicate seam between them, urging her to open to him. To meet him with the same passion they’d shared once before. Stubborn minx that she was, she resisted. So he dragged his mouth from hers, tracking wet, raw kisses along the side of her neck until a haze of lust had him bending her backward within his arms.
God help him, he wanted to take her now, to spread her out before him on the virgin surface of his polished desk. He wanted to taste every glorious inch of her freckled skin, to chart the secrets of her intimate flesh until she came apart beneath his mouth and hands. Her body wanted it, too. She responded to him as he’d known she would, her fingers clinging helplessly to his shoulders, her thighs opening, welcoming, cradling his raging heat.
But then she was gone, his splayed hands gripping only air while a battering ram clamored for release between his legs. He lifted his head, staring at her with hooded eyes across the wide expanse of his desk. He felt drunk on Colette’s drugging softness, and his chest caught on a shallow inhale. He could still taste her. Still hear her soft pants of desire, swift and urgent against his ear.
“You want this as much as I do.”
“No,” she lied, her gaze skittering away from his while her flushed cheeks and breasts and thighs told the truth. “I don’t.”
His expression was intense as he walked around the desk and then held her against the back of one of his armchairs. His hands, pressed tight against the base of her spine, were steely against her softness, the iron muscles of his thighs pressing heated awareness along her flesh despite the layers of clothing between them.
Low against her pelvis, she felt the hot, insistent pressure of his arousal, undeniable in its masculine quest for satisfaction. “Stephen,” she gasped.
“Kiss me,” he growled, his hips grinding against hers while a treacherous dampness gathered between her legs. “Kiss me and I’ll consider a compromise.”
“I already did.” She closed her eyes, her own flesh joining in the challenge.
“No, sweet, I kissed you.”
She remained silent as she turned her head to the side.
“If you’re going to renege on your agreement, the least you can do is give me a decent parting kiss. A real kiss.” He nudged his hips forward again and her insides clenched in helpless, desperate need. “Kiss me,” he repeated in a rough voice, “and I’ll agree to renegotiate without complaint.”
“How do I know you aren’t lying?” she heard herself say. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried to eliminate the husky note of arousal that had claimed her voice.
His thighs hardened to iron and she could see his nostrils flare as his gaze plundered hers. “You don’t,” he said in a silky, dangerous hum.
“But I should just kiss you anyway?”
Stephen abandoned her hands to tilt her face up to his perusal. “Yes.”
“No,” she said, feigning resolve despite her rising desire.
He simply stared at her, his breath stalling as he leaned forward and the tips of her breasts brushed the tight, flexed muscles of his chest. “Scared of how you’ll respond?”
“Hardly.” Slowly, she bit her lower lip, while his eyelids drifted lower and her breasts grew heavy with weighted anticipation. She caught the scent of his skin, the warm combination of spice and salt she still smelled in her dreams.
“You’re bluffing.” he said with a degree of cockiness she should have hated, but didn’t. “Shall I show you how I know?”
Trying to corral her own raging attraction to him, she regarded him with as much haughty dismissal as possible. “We’re in your office.”
“Never stopped you before,” he reminded her.
She felt her face flush crimson. “In daylight. With your secretary just on the other side of that door.”
Rather than reply, he shifted his hands to the zipper that started between her shoulderblades and traveled the length of her spine. Her breath caught in her throat as he lowered its slider with startling dexterity and speed. The tips of his fingers barely skimmed her quivering flesh, moving with swift, efficient concentration as he exposed her back in less time than it took for her to draw a protesting breath. She lifted her hands to her chest, keeping the bodice from falling forward and exposing her black demi-bra. But that left her back unprotected, and he took advantage of her lapse to drift his fingertips over the bare transition from waist to rib to bra, from spine to vulnerable neck.
She shivered while his fingers conspired with sunlight to flood her exposed flesh with heat. Goosebumps of awareness collected in all the places he continued to leave untouched. Unnerved, she squared her shoulders and held on to her bodice as if it were the last remaining protection she possessed. “This doesn’t prove anything.”
He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken, his fingers reaching up to withdraw the multiple pins from her upswept hair. Colette locked her knees and concentrated on drawing breath.
“I mean it,” she said in a shaky voice, but he continued the silent, slow release of each pin until her hair finally listed and fell, its heavy weight settling against her back.
He reached for her hands next, prying them apart until she stood before him, her bodice listing forward and moving with her agitated breaths. He dipped his head until his mouth hovered over hers, so close she could feel the heated waft of his breath.
Awareness prickled along her skin, making the fine hairs on her arms and neck rise, and she swallowed against the moan that gathered in her throat. Closing her eyes, she willed herself to remain still. To win.
But how could she, when he’d stripped her of all her defenses? His hands trailed along the fragile wings of her collarbones. The soft brush of his fingers against her skin left her trembling, and she shuddered as his fingers drifted reverently over the tops of her breasts and then down and around her ribs to the open seam at the base of her spine. Knowing what he intended to do, knowing that soon she’d be fully exposed to his heated gaze, made her nipples constrict into near-painful points.
“Ready to kiss me yet?” he asked into the silence punctuated by their mingled breaths.
She wanted to shake her head, to force the denial through her parted lips, but her ability to speak had vanished along with her will. Paralyzed with desire, she simply stood without moving as he threaded his fingers beneath the opened vee at her back and pressed the black silk sheath down over her hips. Her dress crumpled to the floor about her ankles, leaving her clad only in her demi-bra, black heels, and transparent slip.
She shivered, and he lifted his hands back up to the sides of her neck, his thumbs trailing along the line of her jaw. He pressed against the thin ridge of bone, his touch demanding and soothing at the same time. Strong fingers tunneled through her hair, dragging a low moan up to her throat as he massaged her scalp. She wanted to arch up against him, to give in to the temptation to fling her arms around his wide shoulders and haul him close.
He stroked lower, his thumbs manipulating the tight muscles at the sides of her neck and the twin aches at the joint between neck and shoulder. Pain and delight merged, drowning her in sensation and a heavy desire for more. More. His mouth dropped to her ear to whisper, the hum of breath and sound eliciting a shiver that collected in a poignant ache at the tips of her breasts.
“Tell me you want this, Colette.”
She bit her lip and closed her eyes, words still out of reach.
A low huff of laughter caressed the side of her neck. “Still stubborn as ever, I see.”
He stood close enough that she could feel his erection, thick and insistent, against her belly. Knowing that she aroused him left her feeling slightly drunk, more than a little dizzy, and scared. Scared that she’d lose her heart to him all over again. His fingertips had drifted from her neck to graze soft circles around the tight knot of her straining nipple.
Colette sucked her lips between her teeth and tried to keep from crying out. She wanted to snatch his wrist and pull his palm hard against her aching breast. Embarrassed by how easily he’d dismantled her defenses, she closed her eyes and willed her traitorous body into submission. Until a few seconds later, her held breath was expelled in a rush when he dipped his fingers beneath the cup of her bra, lifting her breast within his warm, waiting hand.
“Colette,” he breathed, and her heart stuttered to a standstill as he bent his head to press his hot mouth against her puckered flesh. Trembles claimed her legs, stealing her balance and forcing her to sway against him for support. Beneath her shaking fingers, his shoulders felt like boulders.
His other hand shoved at the silky hem of her slip, revealing her bare thighs her to his fingers. She heard his fractured breathing change tempo, felt the tremor in his hand as he delved between lace and silk and skin to cup her heat for one dizzying moment. Then he withdrew his hand and reached for her knee, spreading and lifting and positioning her with mind-numbing ease.
A belated sense of modesty compelled her to press against his chest, to close her legs and cross an arm over her exposed breasts as he efficiently lifted her, carried her, and then deposited her on the soft, supple seat of the chair. Panic tinged with excitement arrowed through her—did he plan to seduce her here? Now?
Struggling to sit upright, she adjusted her flimsy slip and clamped her knees together.
Squatting before her, he drew her hands aside with surprising gentleness and then redirected them back to the supple armrests of his chair. “Don’t,” he said. “I want to see you.”
She swallowed, not fighting him as he removed her shoes and then slid the black silk of her slip back up her thighs. Flames of desire suffused every inch of her skin. She could taste her longing and the awful awareness of how much she’d missed him, how much she’d missed this.
Balanced on the balls of his feet, his powerful legs bent at the knee, he stared at her, and she could do little but stare back. Sunlight gilded the tips of his black hair and cool air conditioning filtered over her torso. Subtle sounds layered beneath the quietness of their joint solitude … the persistent drone of Manhattan traffic, the muffled ebb and flow of hotel elevators, the distant blare of horns and emergency sirens. But here, cloaked in nothing but air and sunlight and silk, it felt like the world had constricted to contain just the two of them. Alone.
Light-headed and confused, Colette remained pliant and unresisting as he touched her, his hands sliding up from her knees in a slow, deliberate ascent. A tremor gained ground, making her thighs tremble as he reached the transition from flesh to elastic and damp black satin. His fingers brushed the silky panel between her legs and a small whimper of longing lodged in her throat. And then his hands continued north, until he threaded his fingers beneath the waistband of her underwear, lifted her, and then skillfully peeled the scrap of satin down over the rounded curve of her buttocks.
He sank back onto his heels and watched her face as he continued to remove her panties. Warm fingers skimmed the outside of her thighs, the backs of her knees and her trembling calves, until he’d disrobed her of every stitch of clothing but her bra and her slip. Her toes curled against the plush carpeting and he reached to wrap his fingers around her vulnerable ankle. Slowly, he drew her feet wide, planting them beside his spread thighs. He moved to her knees next, his warm hands pressing them open beneath his intense gaze. His nostrils flared and his eyes darkened with arousal as his attention dipped.
Exposed, open, and flooded with a damp, yearning heat, she swallowed against the searing touch of his gaze upon her shadowed flesh. A sweet, shocked tremor of embarrassment and desire leaked through her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She knotted her hands against the supple leather of his chair, gripping the edge of the armrests while he stared at her. She remembered how he’d looked at her every time they’d made love, as if there were no one in his world but her. She could read his arousal in the huge, hard bulge between his legs, in the darkened crests of his cheeks and glittering eyes. And for the first time in over five years she felt beautiful. Wanted.
The tip of his index finger trailed northward from her knee, creating a path of heat as he moved up her pale, twitching thigh. “You’re so soft,” he told her in a low voice.
“It’s my lotion,” she said inanely.
A small smile tugged at one side of his mouth and the rest of his fingers joined the first. She sucked in a breath as he gently transcribed circles upon her flesh. “You smell good, too.”
She bit her lip as his long, tanned hands moved over her skin, inching higher and higher with every pass. When he brushed the juncture of her thighs, her breath stopped altogether. She wanted to press up against his fingers, to relieve the building tension that had her squirming and panting and wanting. Needing. And with the realization of her need she knew, as surely as she knew her own dreams, that if he made love to her now she’d lose herself entirely. Permanently. Only this time, she wouldn’t be strong enough to survive his rejection when it came.
“Stop,” she said with her last vestige of self-preservation. Gripping his wrists, she pressed his fingers away from the ache that clamored for release, from the silvery surge of heat that begged her to reconsider. “Stop,” she repeated in a shaky voice.
Her words didn’t penetrate at first. His taut focus was so centered on the shadowed evidence of her arousal that her meaning didn’t register for a long, interminable second. When it did, he felt like he’d swallowed broken glass.
She said stop. Stephen bit down against his back teeth, his fingers pressing hard against her thighs.
Stop.
She meant it this time. He could hear the panicked conviction in her tone. So he would stop. Even if it killed him, he would do the impossible. He sucked in a ragged inhale and closed his eyes, the sight of the long, freckled thighs spread before him begging him to forget civility and ravage her despite her protests. The sweet scent of her desire, the flush of arousal that turned her skin pink beneath the sunlight, the small whimpering sounds she made when he touched her … All of it fired a burn of need so desperate he didn’t know how he managed to contain the beast within. Every cell burned to devour her, to bite and suck and taste and consume until the flavors and textures of Colette were branded into his brain.
His breath hissed between his teeth as he slowly forced his fingers from her flesh. One more moment of touching her, of smelling her and watching her, and he’d explode.
Slowly, painfully, he stood and turned, his focus so blurred he had to grope for balance against the edge of his desk. Bracing his hands against its polished surface, he dropped his head between his hunched shoulders and concentrated on collecting what remained of his self-control. “Get dressed,” he told her between clenched teeth. “Or I won’t be responsible for what happens.”
He heard her rustling behind him, fumbling for her discarded clothing. He closed his eyes while he focused on his breathing. In. Out. He could still smell her, the salty, musky aroma of her flesh. He wanted to bury his face between her rosy breasts, to inhale her heat until she moaned and arched up beneath him.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a few torturous minutes. Her voice sounded small. “I didn’t—”
“Don’t!” he interrupted harshly. “Don’t apologize.”
Figuring it was safe, he turned to find her hair mussed and her skin flushed that lovely, kissable pink. He knotted his hands against the urge to haul her close again, to finish what they’d started.
No. Though he knew he could overrule her wishes and seduce her body into compliance, he found he wanted more than control, more than being in charge. He wanted her. Willing, pliant, and beneath him because she wanted to be there of her own volition. Suddenly the obligation he’d forced upon her tasted like ash in his mouth, and he had no appetite for it anymore.
His own arousal aside, he had to take her home, out of arms’ reach. Away from him. “Don’t think this is over.” She exhaled unsteadily. “I won’t.”
Swallowing back the desire that still clubbed within his chest and made his suit feel ten sizes too small, he adjusted his jacket and then collected his keys from his desk. He snagged the negligee from the floor as well, stuffing it deep into his pocket.
“Is Emma at home?” he asked, making his uncomfortable way to the open door.
“Why?”
“We’re going to tell her I’m her father.”
“Now?” she asked in a high, panicked voice.
“Yes. Now. She’s my daughter. It’s time she knew it.”