3 Seductions and a Wedding

by Julie Leto

  She’d come to the hotel this morning with seduction as her goal and she’d accomplished that, and more. This wasn’t a big surprise. She’d constructed her whole life around working hard for satisfying rewards. She rarely set her mind to something without achieving it in the end—a fact about herself she’d forgotten in the maelstrom of emotions stirred by her breakup.

  But now that she remembered, she couldn’t help but question her relationship with Carlo. Had she really wanted him? She certainly hadn’t tried very hard to keep him. She’d enjoyed his attention, and she’d liked the lifestyle he’d introduced her to, but she’d never embraced it. She’d preferred to work when he was playing and sleep while he was partying. Surrounded by underlings who took their jobs seriously, Carlo did not have to do much to keep his family’s automotive company running. Mallory, on the other hand, was very hands-on.

  In the warm aftermath of making love to Ajay, a man who wanted nothing from her, she realized that she and the man she’d nearly married had nothing in common.

  Before she finished off the last swallow of her champagne, she lifted the glass to toast the poor woman who was stuck with him now. Mallory had dodged a bullet that would have, slowly and painfully, leaked the last of her life from her soul.

  “I hope you like it hot,” Ajay said after dipping his hand into the tub.

  “Absolutely.” She stood and removed her robe, loving how his eyes darkened as the soft material pooled at her feet.

  Too bad Mallory couldn’t have Ajay in her life beyond this weekend—they seemed much more compatible. Similar work ethics. The same friends. A desire to travel and explore the world, but not at the expense of the companies they’d worked so hard to build.

  But she wasn’t going to fool herself. Ajay wasn’t a man who craved commitment and in the end, Mallory wanted that more than anything else. Her parents had been married for more than thirty-five years. She was certain Bianca and Coop’s union would last just as long, if they didn’t fall off a mountain or drown while scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef first. She would not ruin this weekend by asking Ajay for something he couldn’t give.

  “Ready?” he said. He flipped off his robe and climbed inside, hissing when the hot water met his dark skin.

  “You’re joining me?”

  “A tub this size?” he asked, folding his arms behind his head. Even at his height, he had no trouble stretching out in the tub, leaving plenty of room for her. “Seems a terrible waste of water and foam if we don’t both indulge.”

  His smile was lethal—pearly white against decadent burntumber skin, his jade-green eyes sparkling with a mischievous lust for life that proved both irresistible and infectious. She stepped into the water, her foot instantly registering the searing temperature.

  “Yikes,” she said.

  He took her hand and guided her the rest of the way. Less than two hours ago, he’d seen her from every intimate angle possible and yet, his expression filled with appreciation as if this was the first time. He drank her in, making each movement a mini-seduction. When she finally settled completely beneath the foamy bubbles, the texture of the water slick against her skin, he leaned forward and kissed her until she feared she might drown.

  “Here,” he said, drying his hand on a towel and then reaching for one of the hair ties she kept in her clear cosmetics bag. “Let me.”

  With a modicum of splashing, she turned around and settled between his legs. The feel of his erection nestled against the small of her back was invigorating. She couldn’t resist scooting closer, pressing against him, reminding herself of his length and thickness.

  Though he fumbled a bit, he managed to sweep her thick hair into a ponytail atop her head. “Much better,” he said, lowering his mouth to her neck. “Now I can see the delicious flesh I’m nibbling.”

  The combination of his mouth on her flesh, the sizzling water and the fragrance of lavender made relaxing inevitable. Her entire body surrendered, and her sigh of contentment was utterly honest. Even when his hands drifted across her belly and then up to toy with her breasts, she could hardly move. She was stuck in a state between arousal and peace.

  “This is glorious,” she said.

  He dipped his tongue into the shell of her ear. “You’re glorious. I could make love to you for hours on end. Weeks, maybe.”

  “That would be a first.”

  “For both of us,” he confirmed.

  She expected him to tense up. Be defensive about his fickle tastes. Instead, acknowledging his weakness seemed to amuse him.

  She found a bath sponge in a basket by the tub, which she dunked into the water. “Doesn’t it get tiresome going from woman to woman? I mean, constant change must be exciting, but how can you ever be truly intimate with someone you barely know?”

  “You can’t,” he said, shifting her body so that he could taste the other side of her neck. “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

  She squeezed a dollop of bath gel into the sponge and worked up a lather. “Is it?”

  He took the soapy ball from her and rubbed it over her arms, neck and shoulders. The sensations were amazing. Together with the feel of his hard chest and erection against her back, his free hand on her legs and breasts, and his accented whisper in her ear, she was cocooned in pleasure.

  “What do you know about my family?” he asked.

  The question surprised her. “Just what I’ve read and what Bianca’s told me. Your father is a diplomat from the Punjab province of India. Your mother gave birth to you and your twin brother, Raj, in London. You were Oxford-educated until grad school, when you went to MIT.”

  “I’m a citizen of the world. Indian parents, British upbringing, strong American influences. But though I’ve never lived in India, my culture has always been important to my family—especially when it came to the expectations on a son.”

  “You mean marriage?”

  “Not just any marriage—a Hindu marriage. Which, to this day, are quite often arranged.”

  Mallory nodded. She knew from living abroad that marriages set up by the parents of a bride and groom were not at all unheard of—though modern young adults normally had some say in the matter.

  “They didn’t try to force you to marry anyone, did they?”

  “Force?” he asked casually, now focusing the sponge on her leg, which she lifted so he could reach. “I suppose that depends on your definition of the word. They didn’t broker any pacts that made me honor-bound to marry, no. But my mother spent a great deal of my adolescence ensuring that I met all the right girls from all the right families. When I finished college, I was expected to choose one and make some random mother-in-law very happy.”

  “But you didn’t,” she pointed out.

  He chuckled and the rumble of his chest against her back felt nearly as delicious as how he ran the sponge up and down her legs, around her middle and just underneath her breasts. “No, I opted to make myself so unpalatable to any future in-laws that I was safe from the marriage machine.”

  He chose that moment to rasp the netted ball across her nipples. The soft, yet rough sensation produced an unbidden sigh.

  “You’re trying to distract me,” she said.

  His other hand, pressed flat on her belly, slipped downward. “Is it working?”

  “You know it is.”

  “Good, because I think I’ve reached my limit of personal revelations. Either you tell me something intimate and secret about yourself or turn around and let me kiss you.”

  Mallory chose the latter. They splashed in the tub, slipping, laughing and kissing until she faced him, her knees on either side of his thighs. She suckled his neck and lower on his chest until she was half-submerged in bubbles.

  “Are condoms waterproof?” she asked, reaching across to pluck one from his shaving kit.

  “Oh, yeah, but try these.” He withdrew a different packet, one that promised extra lubrication.

  “I do like a man who is prepared,” she said, removing the prophylact
ic from its pouch. “But I don’t think I can put this on while you’re…submerged.”

  They shifted again and when he stood, Mallory’s ability to breathe was severely hampered. She watched him dry off his groin area, her mouth watering. He was so incredibly beautiful—from his slim, sculpted chest to his tapered waist and muscled thighs. And his sex, strong and curved, enticed her so powerfully, she could not resist sliding her hands up his legs, balancing on her knees in the bubbles and tasting him.

  His skin was sweet and clean and hot from the tub. She licked him, nipped at him, swirled her tongue around the tip of his penis until he tangled his fingers in her hair, his palms cradling her cheeks while she took him into her mouth. The full sensation was invigorating and decadent all at the same time. She sucked him hard, then soft, gauging what he liked best by the sound of his moans and then doing it until she tasted the salty sweet liquid that told her he was close to the edge. She sheathed the condom over him and dragged him back into the water, climbing on top and guiding him inside her.

  Her nerve endings were on alert, registering the soft tickle of the bath bubbles, the heat of the water, the completeness of his body inside hers. With her knees on either side of him, she controlled the rhythm of their lovemaking, which she kept slow and steady.

  He smeared the bath bubbles over her breasts, then pushed the foam away to bite and lave her nipples until electric sensations rocked her from every direction. He murmured sweet compliments about the beauty of her body, about how perfectly they fit.

  “God, Mallory,” he said, his voice raspy and hoarse. “You’re making me crazy. I just want to come inside you over and over.”

  She moved lazily, squeezing the pleasure from his body into hers, wanting this afternoon to never, ever end.

  Her insides quivered. Her muscles contracted and she felt her control slipping. The edge was within her reach, but if she crossed, this fantasy would be over so soon. And yet, she couldn’t resist, especially when he grabbed her hips and forced her down harder and faster. “Yes, Ajay, yes.”

  Water splashed over the side of the tub. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard. The minute their tongues met, her orgasm began. His was soon in sync and by the time they had both come, a tidal wave from the tub had swamped the floor.

  She regained her ability to speak just as Ajay grabbed a towel and wiped his face free of water, then did the same for her.

  “I guess we’re clean,” he said.

  “Inside and out,” she agreed.

  She moved to get out of the tub, but he took her hand, kissed it, then stood and wrapped her in a large, dry towel. He tossed the damp one onto the floor to sop up the puddles.

  “I don’t remember ever making love like this before,” he said.

  She couldn’t control her jaw from dropping in surprise. “All the women you’ve been with and you’ve never done it in a bathtub?”

  “For the record, I did not sleep with every woman I dated.”

  She arched a brow. “You want me to believe you haven’t had a lot of lovers?”

  “No,” he said, climbing out of the tub to retrieve a towel to wrap around his waist. “There have been many—too many. But not lately. And to be honest, most of my affairs were forgettable. I don’t mean to be insulting to the women, but I didn’t want to remember them. Love didn’t fit into my master plan.” Didn’t?

  He’d said didn’t, not don’t. Funny how a verb tense threatened to turn her weekend upside down.

  Mallory shivered, though she assured herself it was just from the cold air and tepid water swirling around her knees. With his assistance, she stepped out of the tub and dried off. When she sat on the tub’s edge to dry her feet, he joined her.

  “I just want you to know…I mean, I think I should explain,” he said, then stopped. For a man who was famous for always saying exactly the most charming and witty thing, he seemed at a loss for words.

  She touched his cheek, and then kissed him softly. “I understand, Ajay,” she said, hoping his obvious turmoil would camouflage her own conflicted emotions. “You’ve made me feel special. I won’t forget this weekend. Ever.”

  With that promise hanging heavily in the air, Mallory forced herself to walk casually out of the room, stopping long enough to throw a saucy look over her shoulder. But once she was out of his sight, she scurried to the bedroom on the other side of the suite and shut the door. Leaning against the cool wood panels, she tried to fight the sudden dizziness that threatened to topple her over.

  What had she done?

  She was being silly. Ajay’s choice of words was accidental. He didn’t mean what he’d implied—that a long-term relationship with her might be a possibility. She had not come to him for that. She’d sought him out not only because she found him incredibly attractive, but because he was safe. Good sex. No expectations.

  And most importantly, no disappointment.

  He’d never had a woman in his life for more than a few nights. He was a world-renowned playboy. A man did not change who he was over the course of one day simply because they were great together in bed—or a bathtub.

  And yet, now that he’d told her the reasons behind his choices, she couldn’t help but wonder—no matter how she tried—if what she’d thought she’d wanted from him was only part of what they could be.

  6

  AJAY RAN HIS HAND through his damp hair and cursed under his breath. He watched Mallory stop and throw a sated and satisfied smile over her shoulder, then disappear into her bedroom. She shut the door with a definitive snap. God, how he wanted to go after her, but he was out of juice. She’d worn him out—not just physically, but emotionally.

  Which should have been impossible. Unfathomable, even.

  Ajay did not get emotionally involved. Ever. Ignoring the sound of the drain sucking down the now cool water, he remained on the edge of the tub, the cold tile biting into his skin as he tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  On the surface, the facts were simple. A beautiful woman he’d known through mutual friends—a woman he’d done business with for years and that he’d never made a play for—had come to the hotel this morning to seduce him. She’d asked for nothing in return. He’d known that making love to Mallory was a risk, but only because she’d be impossible to avoid in the future. She was Bianca’s boss and friend. His company hired hers on a regular basis. But he couldn’t resist her. So he’d plunged in, fulfilled her desires and at the same time, a few of his own.

  That’s where things stopped making sense.

  Uninvited and seemingly accidentally, she’d gotten under his skin. He might have blamed her vulnerability since her breakup, but she seemed resigned to the fact that her former fiancé was now marrying another woman. She hadn’t cried or asked his opinion on why Carlo had left her—nor had she called out her ex’s name in ecstasy.

  It was his name she’d sung out.

  Yes, Ajay, yes.

  Not exactly poetry, but everything she’d said to him—and everything he’d confessed in return—had struck him deeply. He tried to compare her to the women he’d been with in the past, but Mallory somehow erased every other woman he’d screwed out of his mind.

  He couldn’t remember faces. He couldn’t remember first and last names. He wondered if he’d bothered to call them anything beyond “Baby” or “Honey” or “Darling.”

  Such wasted time and energy.

  He should have held out for someone like Mallory—someone who couldn’t imagine having more than a weekend of pleasure with a guy like him, even if he suddenly could imagine nothing less than a lifetime.

  Determined to knock some sense back into himself, he got dressed. It was nearly four o’clock. He considered ordering up an early dinner, but decided that staying in the room was not a good idea, so he rang up his favorite restaurant and secured an early reservation. He checked his text messages, dealt with a few business issues, then grabbed his bag and set up his computer. He was just about to try out t
he prototype flat screen when Mallory emerged from her room.

  She’d brushed out her hair and wrapped it into a loose twist. Her makeup, expertly reapplied, drew his attention to her long-lashed, smoky-shadowed eyes. A barely pink gloss shaded her generous lips, making them look sweet enough to eat. She wore a snug pink T-shirt and plush silver tracksuit pants with the word Juicy embroidered on her backside. As if her perfect bum needed a label?

  “I like your hair that way,” he said, picking the safest compliment he could find.

  She hummed and touched the twist gingerly. “You’re teasing.”

  “No, I’m not. I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

  Her eyes flashed with uncertainty. Maybe even fear. Then she laughed and plopped beside him on the couch. “I wear my hair like this every day, usually secured with a pencil or chopsticks instead of proper hairpins. I think it’s kind of schoolmarmish.”

  A string of sexy comebacks occurred to him, starting with a comment about how it was a time-honored tradition for boys to lust after their teachers, but instead, he returned his gaze to the computer. It wasn’t as if he’d seen any hot-to-trot instructors at Eton.

  Before he could conjure up a fantasy of Mallory wearing nothing underneath black professor robes, she asked, “What’s this?”

  She touched the rectangular device sitting beside his laptop.

  “This,” he said, pressing activation buttons on the corner of his keyboard and the compressed flat screen to sync the devices, “is the newest creation from my R&D department. Coop worked on some of the initial designs. Would you like to see it?”

  She nodded and the anticipatory look in her eyes reminded him of how she’d stared at him in the bathtub while he’d stood up to put on the condom—an act she’d interrupted with the most amazing blow job he’d had in a long time. Sex felt so different with her. Was it because he knew her? Because he cared about her?