by Lucy Monroe
She laughed hollowly. “He didn’t want me and I was convinced that was my problem. I tried everything to seduce him, but it didn’t work. Looking back, I don’t know why I bothered. It wasn’t as if I enjoyed being intimate with him. He was an extremely selfish, perverse lover.” She shivered at her memories. “The last year we were married, we didn’t have sex at all and, other than feeling like a total failure as a woman, I didn’t care.”
“You thought I didn’t want you either.”
Remembering the pain of Simon’s rejection, she nodded.
“Why?”
“That day we had the sparring session, I thought you were going to kiss me. I leaned into you and you backed away. I was humiliated. It felt like Lance all over again. Only this time I really wanted to kiss, not just to prove that I could attract you as a woman, but because I wanted you.”
“I wanted you too, but our relationship is complicated.”
She turned her head and met the silvered gray of his gaze. “It’s still complicated.”
He didn’t deny it. “But I can’t keep my hands off you regardless.”
She smiled a little. “Making love with you is so different.”
“From the sounds of things, sex with your husband was less about intimacy than it was about control. He used his supposed lack of desire for you to make you do the things he wanted.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He controlled what you ate, how much you exercised. I’m damn glad he didn’t talk you into that surgery. I find your breasts so sexy, just looking at them makes me want to come.”
She threw herself in his arms and kissed him all over his face. “You make me feel good, Simon. Thank you.”
He hugged her to him, settling her into his lap where she could feel the rigid proof of his words against her hip.
“Jacob found your pajamas in the guest room’s bathroom garbage yesterday.”
She tensed. “Did he?”
“I thought they must have landed there by accident, but Jacob didn’t agree.”
Jacob was too astute for his own good, she thought wrathfully.
Simon’s hand rubbed against her back in a soothing motion. “Tell me why you threw away your pajamas.”
She nestled against his chest. “I’d rather not. It was just a misunderstanding and it’s over now.”
“Does it have something to do with you thinking I didn’t want you?” He sounded really disturbed by the prospect and she wished she could lie to him and say no, but she didn’t want to lie to Simon. Ever.
“When Jacob told me you wanted to meet me in my room, I thought that was your unique way of setting up an assignation. You’ve got to admit your mind doesn’t work like other people’s,” she said by way of an explanation for her folly.
“And when I came downstairs expecting you to tell me about the proposal, you were embarrassed.”
“Humiliated. I’d got it wrong again.”
“You didn’t have it wrong. I had erotic dreams all night long about you in those sexy things. When I came down to breakfast and found out you were gone, I was ready to howl at the moon in frustration.”
“The moon isn’t out in the morning.”
“Details.”
“When I went into the bathroom, I stripped off the lingerie and tossed it away in a fit of angry despair. Lance had once told me how ridiculous I looked in sexy nightwear and I couldn’t stand the thought you believed the same thing.”
Suddenly she was being held away from him. The compassionate, understanding Simon had been replaced by a furious man. He shook her shoulders. “How could you think that? I told you I wanted you! It was all I could do to keep myself from ripping those silky things off your even silkier body.”
“How was I supposed to know that, with you rabbiting on about the proposal?”
“You moved in to my house for the express purpose of presenting that information to me, damn it.” He sounded even angrier by that fact. “And the only reason you agreed to stay was so you could keep trying to convince me.”
An incredible thought struck her all at once. It hurt Simon that she had stayed for business. “But you never let me know there could be anything between us but the merger.”
“I told you I wanted you.”
It was the second time he’d reminded her of that and this time she laughed. “Lance told me he loved me, but he showed me he didn’t.”
“Are you saying I showed you I didn’t want you?” Simon’s voice was dangerously controlled.
But she wasn’t going to deny the truth. “Yes.”
“Because I didn’t put my desires for you above the business that is so all-important to you?” Each biting word came out with the power of a bullet.
And she knew, absolutely knew, in a blinding flash of clarity, that what he said was exactly right. She wanted Simon’s feelings for her to come before everything else in his life and that was not going to happen. Not ever.
If she kept pushing, she could very well lose what they did have.
She did something she had vowed she’d never do again. She tried a bit of seduction. Rubbing the breasts he said he liked so much against him, she said, “I know you want me now.”
It worked.
With a growl, she found herself lying full length on the sofa under Simon with his mouth devouring hers.
“You’re sleeping with him?” Jillian’s incredulous shriek blasted Amanda from the mobile phone’s earpiece.
“You told me I should,” she reminded her friend, who was taking the news of Amanda’s affair with Simon in a completely unexpected way.
“I told you to go out with my friend, Dave, too, but you didn’t do that!”
“I didn’t want to go out with Dave.” Or any of the other numerous men Jillian had tried to fix Amanda up with since the divorce.
“But you wanted to go to bed with Simon? I don’t believe it. According to you, sex is God’s joke on unsuspecting women.”
“I was wrong about that.” Remembered pleasure had Amanda’s eyes flicking toward the closed lab door.
He’d said he would answer the door if she knocked. It was tempting, but she couldn’t interrupt his work just because at the age of twenty-six she had finally discovered her female libido. Besides, she wasn’t ready to risk the possibility of his rejection. She’d initiated that kiss on the sofa the other night, but Simon had already been aroused. She wasn’t sure she’d ever have the confidence to approach him cold with seduction on her mind.
“Amanda?”
“Huh?” Indistinguishable words echoed in her mind telling her that Jillian had been talking the entire time she had been caught up in her thoughts of Simon.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?”
“That is a really surprising question coming from you.” Jillian had been pushing her to start dating since before the divorce was final.
“I know.” She could almost hear her friend doing that thing she did with her hair while she was thinking. “It’s just that you’re not into casual amore.”
No, she wasn’t. Casual love, sex, whatever you wanted to call it, wasn’t something in her makeup. “It’s not casual,” she bit the bullet and admitted, “but it is love.”
She’d called Jillian because she had to talk to someone about the overwhelming feelings Simon engendered in her, but saying the words out loud had been harder than she expected. It had also left her feeling stripped naked emotionally. She didn’t even want to think how much worse it would be if she told Simon the truth about her feelings for him.
“You’re in love with him?” Jillian was back to shrieking.
“Yes.” No use prevaricating or trying to take the words back. They were true and Jillian would not be fooled by an attempt at retreat. “Do you really think I could have risked making love with him otherwise?”
“No. That’s what has me worried.” Her friend’s voice dropped an octave with concern. “Sweetie, you pretend to be so tough, but you’re not. You
’re one of the most fragile people I know and I’m scared to death this guy is going to hurt you.”
“I’m a little nervous about it myself, but I don’t seem to have a choice.” She started doodling on a piece of paper. She needed Jill to see how potentially devastating, but equally inescapable this relationship with Simon had become for her. However, she didn’t know if she had the words to make her friend understand.
“I never knew how powerful love could be. It’s pretty much unstoppable.” She could hear the lingering disbelief in her own voice. “Even though I know I’m going to end up hurting, I can’t hold back from whatever Simon is willing to give me.”
“His body.”
“It’s a great body, Jillian.”
Her friend snorted laughter. “Amanda!”
“He cares about me, too. Maybe it’s not love, but it’s more than I ever got from Lance. Simon wants me to be happy while I’m with him.” He did all sorts of little things to show her, like setting up this office area for her and gaining Jacob’s agreement to let her watch Jillian’s show every day on his television. “And he never criticizes me. He’s sort of blind and tells me all the time how beautiful I am.”
“Aw, honey.”
“Jill, it’s so amazing, but when I’m with him, I feel like I’m not just Amanda Zachary, junior executive and failure in the marriage stakes.”
“You’re not the failure,” Jillian said fiercely.
“That’s what Simon says too. He can’t understand how Lance didn’t want me. He said my ex must have been the most inept lover alive not to be able to please a responsive woman like me. Can you imagine?”
“I tried to tell you that not all men were like that jerk you married.”
“Maybe not, but I don’t think I would respond to other men the way I do to Simon. I want him, Jill, and I’ve never wanted another man, not like that.”
Jillian, who had had an active love life since she was sixteen, would probably have a hard time understanding that. She wouldn’t make fun of Amanda, though. She never had, no matter how far apart their perception of something was.
“So, tell me more about this guy. I’ve got that he’s hell on wheels in bed, but I want more info on what he’s like out of it.”
Jillian grilled Amanda about Simon for another twenty minutes, before letting her change the subject. Not that Amanda minded talking about the man she’d fallen in love with. She didn’t, but the more she talked about him the more unlikely it seemed that a man like that would fall in love with her. However, when she flipped her cell phone closed forty minutes later, she was smiling.
Jill’s initial reaction had surprised her, but the other woman had ended the call by saying, “Go for it.”
The next morning, Amanda woke up to the feel of Simon’s hand gently caressing her stomach. Her eyes fluttered open to his steel-gray gaze.
She smiled. “Hi.”
He kissed her, tenderly, sweetly and oh so slowly. “Hi.”
“You know what today is?” she asked.
His brows drew together then his expression cleared. “The five day anniversary since the first time we made love. What do you want to do to celebrate?”
She felt her heart constrict. He could be so romantic, even if he did tend to forget everyone else in the room when his mind started chewing on one of his projects.
“That too, but I was thinking that it’s Saturday. I don’t have to work today. How about you?”
She didn’t think he kept regular hours, but maybe he could take a break today.
His forefinger drew a circle around her right nipple, causing the flesh to swell and stiffen immediately. “The only thing I want to work on today is us.”
The breath stilled in her chest for a full five seconds and then it came whooshing out on a rush of air. Had he really said that? That he wanted to work on them . . . that there was a real them to work on, not just two people who were extremely compatible in bed?
Her thoughts short-circuited as he went about once again proving that compatibility.
Simon carried Amanda into the shower. She was right. When he was around her he had some major caveman tendencies, but she liked it. She might haughtily protest his habit of picking her up and carrying her around, but she always curled into him with a trusting sensuality that he found addictive.
Hell, everything about Amanda was addictive. From the way her breath hitched when he first probed the entrance to her body to the way she teased Jacob about having a crush on one of the female leads in Jillian’s show. The warm sunshine that seemed such a natural part of her personality dispelled every lingering shadow in his soul but one. He could not dispel the knowledge that one day soon, she would be gone.
It made him determined to enjoy her to the fullest while he had her. His libido complied with an enthusiasm he hadn’t known since his teens. Their recent lovemaking had been quick and fierce, the perfect beginning to a day spent entirely in her company.
He let her slide down his body, before reaching in to turn on the taps. She liked her shower hotter than he did, so he set the temperature on the two showerheads on the left higher than the overhead nozzle of the two on the right.
He felt a featherlight touch on his back and turned around to face her. She had an odd expression on her face.
“What is it?”
“I was just touching you to see if you’re real.” Her eyes reflected an inexplicable wonder.
His knees about buckled and his recently satisfied male member surged with renewed arousal. “I’m real.” Not only did he act like a caveman, he sounded like one, practically growling his response to her.
“Yes.” Satisfaction laced her voice. Then she smiled and reached past him to test the water. “It’s hot.”
He nodded, still a little stunned by the awe he’d seen on her face for that brief moment.
They stepped into the oversize shower stall.
He’d had it built this way because he liked space around him. The five showerheads had been a luxury he’d decided to indulge in, which had turned out to be doubly decadent when he and Amanda washed beneath them. He had discovered some very interesting uses for the directed jets of water when making love with her, uses that made her blush and come apart with pleasure at the same time.
But today he wanted more than to make love with this beautiful woman full of stimulating contradictions. He wanted her to make love to him. It had taken him a while, but he’d finally realized that she almost never initiated their touching and that she was reticent about touching his body. He’d caught on right away that it wasn’t because she didn’t want to. She looked at him with a hunger that stirred his baser instincts, but she never acted on that hunger.
At first, he’d been glad. He’d been careful not to overwhelm her with his size, but she didn’t show the slightest indication that she found his overt masculinity overwhelming. In fact, she went crazy when he touched her so deeply inside with his aroused flesh that he couldn’t go any farther. She was tiny compared to him, but her passion made them the perfect fit.
Except, she didn’t touch him and he was going hungry for the feel of her sweet little hands on his sex.
He handed the soap to her. “Wash me?”
Her head jerked up and she stared at him with those drown-in-me brown eyes. “All over?” she asked as if she needed his permission.
Oh, yeah. “Please.”
Her eyes lit with anticipation. “I’ve been wanting to, but I wasn’t sure . . .” her voice trailed off and she caressed him tentatively with the soap across his chest. “You’ll tell me if I do it wrong, won’t you?”
Damn that bastard she’d been married to.
Simon reached out and framed her face with his hands, making her look at him. “Any way you touch me is the right way. I’m dying for the feel of your hands on my skin. Amanda, don’t you know you’re the best lover I’ve ever had? Please, baby, don’t let that bastard stop you from giving me what he was too stupid to want.”
Her s
mile was misty, but brilliant. “Okay.” She put the soap aside. “I want to feel you with my hands, both of them, alright?”
He supposed it would take time for those little hesitations to be completely dispelled. “It’s more than all right. It’s perfect.”
He couldn’t talk after that because her hands were doing things to him he’d dreamed of since the moment he met her. She started with his head, massaging his scalp, playing with the shoulder-length strands of his hair before moving on to touch his face with butterfly caresses. His eyelids slid shut as she brushed his cheekbones.
She outlined his lips with a fingertip. “I love your mouth, Simon.”
He nipped at her finger. “My mouth loves your body, baby.”
She laughed softly, sensually.
Then her hands were on his neck, lightly tracing his pulse. “Your heartbeat is a little fast, darling. Maybe you should have your blood pressure checked.”
“It wouldn’t do any good. It’s always high when you’re around.”
A feathery kiss pressed against his pulse point. Her fingers trailed down his chest, zeroing in on the small brown disks of his male nipples. “They’re just like mine. They like being touched too.”
He couldn’t make his mouth form a response. All he could do was groan with the teasing pleasure she was subjecting him to.
“Do they like other things, I wonder?”
She knew damn well they did. She’d sucked on him last night until he’d taken her in such frenzy that he’d been terrified he had hurt her until she screamed her release in his ear.
She suckled him, first one and then the other. She didn’t linger and he didn’t beg her to because he didn’t want anything to delay her reaching the ultimate goal. A delicate bite on each nipple ended her torment of those erogenous zones.
Her mouth and hands moved downward, caressing a stomach that had gone rock hard with excitement. She outlined each one of his defined abdominal muscles. “You’ve got an amazing body.” Her voice was husky and so sexy it was like a caress on his sensitized skin.
Then she went lower.