by July Hall
“Of course Bradley hasn’t said anything,” Charles said in irritation. He reminded himself that she hadn’t had time to learn how Magisters did things. “He needed my approval. Now he has it.”
“Oh.” She looked more and more incredulous. “He has it.”
“There’s no need for that tone,” Charles said, keeping his own tone frosty. “I am the head of this family. I’m the closest thing he has to a father.”
“What? Okay, first, he has a father,” she argued. “He idolizes his father. Second—”
“Good Lord.” Of all the times to bring up that fiasco. Exasperated, Charles rose to his feet and strode to the nearest window. The view was somewhat lacking: just the building across the narrow street, someone else’s shuttered windows. “I know. I am well aware that Bradley idolizes the womanizer who abandoned him.”
“Abandoned?” She looked at him as if he was a lunatic. “Come on. Bradley talks all the time about the stuff they did when he was a kid. I’m not saying he’s as great as Bradley thinks, but—”
Charles snarled, “Robert Cliffe is a drunk who betrayed my sister again and again, and was more than happy to take my money and slink away with his tail between his legs. Robert Cliffe has never done a tenth of what I’ve done for Bradley.” He rounded on her with a scowl. “It’s high time the boy grew out of that delusion. If you could help him see sense, I would appreciate it.”
Instead of snapping back or getting defensive, Miss Dane regarded him for a long, silent moment. It threw him for a loop. She’d packed away all signs of her distress, and she was back to being the marble statue. What would it take to wreck that façade, to see her as she truly was? Was Bradley allowed that privilege?
Then she asked, “Do you love your nephew?”
It didn’t matter how pretty her eyes were. Such insolence must never be tolerated. He opened his mouth to dismiss her immediately. And he said, “Do you?”
They stared at each other. He felt his face going red. For the first time, so did hers.
Oh, hell.
“I don’t know,” she said unsteadily, after much too long a pause. “How much does that really matter to you?”
“More than you might think,” he muttered. His voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. She was blushing. Her pulse raced at her throat. And he knew exactly what she was wearing underneath that dress: midnight-blue satin trimmed with black lace. Exquisite. Tantalizing.
It was lingerie you wore to fuck somebody. It was lingerie meant for another man’s eyes, not his, and the realization struck Charles like a blow. He was unprepared for a sudden, helpless surge of fury, and only then did he remember he was a jealous man. It had been so long.
She swallowed and glanced back into the fire. “Oh,” she said. “Well—that’s good. I mean, that’s something.”
Charles forced back his rage, his throat thick with the injustice of it. He had no right, no right at all. He had no business thinking of the imprint of Bradley’s fingers on her knee, of what it must be like to have her. He ought to be thinking about the family. He ought to be thinking of Eleanor.
“Regardless of whether you do or do not love my nephew…” The words nearly choked him. “I need to know what you want for yourself. What are your ambitions? In six months with Bradley, have you really never thought about carrying the Magister name?”
“I’d be a Cliffe,” she said, still looking into the fire. “Sandra Cliffe. Of course I’ve thought about it. We’d have Cliffe kids. Bradley Cliffe Jr., maybe.”
“So you do want children.” He told himself this was a relief. It would be essential for Bradley to have children, of course. Sandra Cliffe. Fucking hell.
“Someday, yes. I always have.” She glanced up at him, and seemed to struggle before she asked, “Did you and your wife want children?”
Oddly, the question no longer brought the same searing pain he’d known for the last decade. Tonight, he only felt a dull, old ache, the same as any other half-forgotten injury. “Yes,” he told her.
She looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “I’m sorry.” Then she gave him an abashed smile. “I guess I want to know about you, too.”
The ache in his chest intensified to sharpness once more. Charles cleared his throat to ease it. “So, your own firm, and children,” he said. “That’s the pinnacle of your ambition?”
He’d expected another defiant look, perhaps a rejoinder of, Isn’t that plenty? Instead, she knitted her brow and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not enough.”
He raised his eyebrows. “No?”
“No. My boss asked me this once. I told him that I want perfection.” She knotted her hands together in her lap and looked at him almost imploringly. “Don’t laugh.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He never laughed. “What does perfection mean to you?”
“I don’t kno—yes, I do. Everything in its right place. No problems, no messes. Everything just being…fine. What do you think it means?”
It was the least inspiring definition of perfection he’d ever heard. “Possibility,” he said. “Opportunity. Never being stagnant. Never slowing down.”
She shook her head. “That sounds exhausting. I think I’d need to sleep sometimes.”
Charles couldn’t respond, thrown by the notion of exhausting Miss Dane until she fell into a restful slumber. She gave him a tiny smile and rose to her feet. “I should go back downstairs. Bradley will be wondering where I am.”
Charles doubted that, but he could not think of a single good reason to detain her further. Soon enough, Stephen would probably come looking for them. The process of welcoming her into the fold would begin. God only knew when—or if—he’d be alone with her again.
Miss Dane ran a hand over her head. When she did, a single, unruly copper lock escaped from her ponytail. “Wait,” Charles heard himself whisper.
She glanced at him, her blue eyes large with apprehension. As he approached her, he thought she trembled a little.
“You have a hair out of place,” he said. “Hold still.”
He reached out, even as his more rational self was shouting at him to stop, to smooth the lock of hair back into its place. She didn’t move, but he saw her pulse go even more quickly. She stood there, waiting, watching him.
Charles saw his own hand, as if it belonged to someone else, reach past her ear. He bypassed the unruly lock. He found the jeweled hair clip that held her ponytail in place and popped open the clasp. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in the waves he’d seen back in the bedroom.
And then he looked at his handiwork, at Miss Dane with her hair unbound, her cheeks reddened, and her lips softly parted. He began to harden just at the sight of her. Oh God, when was the last time that had happened without a single touch? She was standing so close to him. One step forward and she would be in his arms, pressed up against him, the very definition of perfection.
Not for you, he told himself desperately. Not for you.
“There,” he managed. “Much better.”
“I…” She shivered and closed her eyes. Her voice sounded stronger when she said, “Thanks, but I liked it the other way.”
Charles glanced down at the jeweled clip resting in his palm, trying to will his arousal away. “We’re all entitled to our wrong opinions.”
She gave a low, breathless laugh that didn’t sound amused at all. “Are you like this with everyone?” she asked. “Nobody else gets a say?”
The irony. “I’m not like this with everyone,” he said, “and I don’t always get a say.”
She turned her blue eyes on him again. “I doubt it.”
If he had a say in this. If nobody else’s wishes mattered. Charles imagined sinking his fingers into her hair. He imagined kissing her, thought of how lush her mouth must be. He would unzip her dress and watch it fall from her shoulders, pool around her feet, and then that beautiful creature from the bedroom would belong to him and him alone.
“You shouldn’
t,” he breathed.
Because Sandra Dane wasn’t a creature. She was a woman, and she was not his, and he did not have a say.
She stepped backward, reclaiming her space and squarely meeting his eyes. Her blush was slowly fading away. “Okay. Since you want to talk, let me say this,” she said. “I wasn’t raised in your world. I don’t get your life. Maybe you should think some more about whether or not you want me around your family.”
Well. Charles slowly inhaled and tried to collect himself. She had a point; if her relationship with Bradley existed on his sufferance, then he could nip it in the bud. Perhaps that would be best. He could send her away, out of sight and temptation. He tried to imagine a life in which she married his nephew and was constantly in his orbit, but always out of his reach.
Torture. Save yourself. Send her away and never see her again.
“Because I’m sorry to be rude,” she continued, “but I am not going to walk around in awe of you. I don’t come with my own hedge fund, but I’ve got a life of my own. I have plans. They matter.”
He recognized the note of determination in her voice. He had sounded exactly the same at her age, when he had decided to come into his own.
Damn it. Bradley needed her. The family needed her. At the very least, Charles couldn’t let her go without seeing what she was made of.
“You know what they say about the best-laid plans, Miss Dane,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “You can call me Sandra, Mr. Magister.”
He wondered if he could bear to.
CHAPTER SIX
“What do you want, Miss Dane?”
Mr. Magister shrugged off his tuxedo jacket, his gaze sharp and cold. Sandra stood before him in a black lace babydoll, scarcely daring to breathe. Her heart pounded. His question had seemed easy to answer at the party. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. A leather armchair appeared out of nowhere. He tossed his jacket over the back of the chair before sitting down and patting his knee. “Have a seat.”
She did, wrapping her arms around his neck and wondering why she was here when it was such a terrible idea. The minute she sat down, the babydoll melted away, leaving her naked in his lap. He stroked her thigh. “That’s a good girl.”
“No,” Sandra said, twining her fingers in his dark hair, mesmerized by his green eyes. “No, I’m not good at all.”
“Just as well.” He cupped the back of her head and frowned. “Did I say you could take your hair down?”
Oh, that’s right, she’d lost her hair clip. Wait, no, that’s not what happened— “I didn’t want to,” she protested, looking away in shame.
“But you did.”
“No, you did!” Sandra looked toward the bedroom door. There was a party just on the other side, she remembered, though she couldn’t remember why. “I didn’t want to,” she repeated. “I didn’t want them to see my hair like this. You made me.”
Mr. Magister’s hand tightened in her hair, and she looked back at him to see his scowl. “It was supposed to be just for me,” he said.
“It was. You made me. None of this is my fault,” Sandra pleaded. She grabbed the material of the dress shirt over his chest. “I just wanted things to be perfect.”
He cupped one of her bare breasts, and she gasped, arching into his hand. Then he began to tweak and pinch her nipple. She moaned. Bradley was never so rough. With his other hand, he reached over to a side table, where a china plate of dark chocolate truffles appeared. He popped one into his mouth. “Very sinful.”
Sandra knew, somehow, that he was talking about her and not the candy. She bit her lip, torn between the shame of his words and the pleasure of his touch. Then he tugged at the ends of her hair, urging her to bend down, and kissed her more gently than she was expecting. His hands cradled her face as he kissed her lips apart.
Sandra sighed with delight. She’d been wanting to kiss him so badly. Now the touch of his mouth on hers made her skin tingle with heat all over.
The kiss deepened by degrees until their tongues were stroking each other. She moaned again. She loved kissing like this. Bradley said it was sloppy, but Mr. Magister didn’t seem to mind at all. He seemed to enjoy it as much as she did. He tasted like chocolate.
It wasn’t enough. Sandra whimpered and began to rock her hips, feeling him growing hard beneath her ass. He hissed against her mouth, “Temptress.”
“I—I am?” No man had ever called her that. It was so much better than good girl.
Instead of replying, Mr. Magister slid one arm beneath her knees and rose to his feet. He carried her away from the leather armchair and toward the giant bed in the middle of the room. Pieces of a broken lamp lay on the floor.
Then he put her down on the mattress and loomed over her, slowly unknotting his bow tie.
“Oh, Jesus,” Sandra gasped.
Mr. Magister pulled the tie loose and tossed it into a darkened corner of the room before crawling onto the mattress. He pushed her knees apart, which felt just right, and she reached eagerly up to him. More kisses, please. He kissed so well.
He pinned her hands to the bed, his eyes gleaming. “Not yet,” he said.
Not yet? Why not? She couldn’t bear to wait. “Please,” Sandra said, looking toward the bedroom door, where the party was still going on outside. “Hurry, there’s no time, someone’s going to catch us!”
But Mr. Magister would not be rushed. He let go of her hands and reached down between their bodies, between her legs, where his long fingers found her cleft. Sandra cried out, already clenching in anticipation. His fingers began to tease her lips.
Too soft, too slow. Sandra sobbed in frustration. She needed this fast and rough and now. Why were guys always so careful with her, like she was made of glass? Why was Mr. Magister being so restrained? He was the kind of man who went after something he wanted.
“Maybe I don’t want you,” Mr. Magister said, bending closer.
“No,” Sandra whispered. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his throat. His cologne smelled faint and subtle, just like when they’d been so close to each other in the library. She rolled her hips, seeking more friction against his fingers. “No, you’ve got to, please...”
Then, at last, his clothes melted away too, leaving him just as naked as she was. The hair on his chest was as dark as his beard and his head and the back of his beautiful hands. She gasped and slid her palms up and down his chest, her heart racing with joy.
“And what do you want?” he asked again. “Do you want me?”
Yes. God, yes. More than anything she’d ever seen in her life. But she couldn’t tell him, he mustn’t know… “If you want me, take me,” she begged.
His pupils dilated just like they had at the party, his cheeks reddened like they had in the library. She knew exactly how he looked when he was aroused. He wanted her, he must want her. “Please!” she cried.
He didn’t reply, but began kissing his way down her body, between her breasts and over her stomach. She gasped when she realized what he was doing. “Spread for me,” he said. “Spread wider.”
“I can’t,” Sandra panted, but she shook with desire. He kissed so well. “Guys don’t really like doing this…Bradley said…”
“Then I’ll be your first.”
“Oh. Oh God.”
“Spread wider,” he repeated, and she obeyed, trembling all over. He resumed his journey down her torso, kissing her, rubbing his beard against her sensitive skin. But instead of going where she wanted him the most, he touched her knee. She saw that the ring of fingerprint-shaped bruises was back.
Mr. Magister began laying soft, tender kisses over the bruises, and Sandra shuddered and arched up. “F-fuck—”
He nipped her. “Watch that mouth.” Then, finally, he began kissing his way down the inside of her thigh, slowly, slowly. By the time he reached her slit, she was soaking wet. He smiled to see it. “You are perfection,” he breathed.
; “I’m so close,” Sandra whimpered. “I’m so close, please—do it rough—”
Then her alarm clock buzzed, Mr. Magister was gone, and Monday was off to a really shitty start.
* * *
Thud. Thud. Thud.
She’d had that dream for three nights in a row. Every night since the party. It wouldn’t go away. It was totally ridiculous.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
It was so wrong to find him attractive. How could she? She was in a serious relationship, and besides, she didn’t even like him. He had incredible presence, sure, but he was also a bossy jerk. Way too full of himself. Thought he owned the world. The way he’d talked to her…and he hadn’t even smiled at her all night. She’d fallen for Bradley because of his gorgeous smile.
Do you want me? Oh, please. How pathetic was that?
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Sandra’s sneakered feet hit the pavement in the rhythmic intervals of her crack-of-dawn jog. The frigid air made her lungs feel like they were about to burst. Her breath puffed into clouds in front of her face. Everyone said the cold front was finally on the way. Maybe it would finally cool her blood after three fevered nights, and two days in which she’d been so short-tempered that she couldn’t blame Kristen for calling her a bitch.
And the worst, the worst of it was that she never got off in the dreams. She always hovered right on the edge before she woke up, desperate and aching, so tempted to reach for the vibrator in her nightstand. But she never did. It would be wrong. It would almost be like cheating on Bradley.
Sandra stopped at a corner by a bodega, jogging in place on the tips of her toes while she looked up and down the quiet street. All the stores were still closed. The only other person she saw was a young man smoking a cigarette on a stoop. The crosswalk sign flashed red, but no cars were coming, so she dashed across, unable to keep still.
And he still had her hair clip! She’d been so determined to walk away from him without losing her cool, and she had. It wasn’t until she’d returned to the party and Bradley asked, “What happened to your hair, babe?” that she’d remembered she’d left Mr. Magister holding her hair clip, and she couldn’t bear to go to him and ask for it. She’d avoided him for the rest of the evening, in fact, and had nearly kissed the ground in gratitude when she’d been able to retrieve her work clothes from the bedroom without running into anyone again.