by Natasha Tate
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “I have no interest in compromise.” He scowled. “Nor in middle ground.”
“I know you’re angry. I know you want to punish me, and I don’t blame you,” she said. “But there has to be another way. There has to be a way to fix this without resorting to marriage and compromising our child’s happiness.”
His nostrils flared as his icy gaze narrowed on hers. He stared at her in silence for several beats, skimming her torso and face with his eyes before asking, “What are you offering, exactly?”
She swallowed, her entire body trembling with the vulnerability of her position. “Unlimited visitation. My support of you as her father.” She inhaled sharply, the control she needed to feel slipping inexorably from her fingers. “Time with Emma alone.”
“No.” A feral light glinted in his blue eyes, and his expression telegraphed his triumph. “I want more.”
Fear made her mouth go dry. “More?”
“I want you. At my disposal. In my bed. At my beck and call.”
She sucked in a breath, her heart racing wildly within her chest. “You can’t be serious!”
“Oh, but I am, sweet.” His smile mocked her desperate circumstances. “You either marry me, or you become my mistress.”
“I can’t sleep with you again,” she breathed. “You know I can’t.”
His arctic gaze glittered with brittle, dangerous threat. “And here I thought you were willing to do anything to keep Emma safe.”
Stunned, she remained silent.
“You’ve done it before,” he reminded her. “Quite willingly, if I recall.”
Her stomach twisted beneath her ribs. “The situation is hardly the same now.”
“Then you can marry me instead,” came his curt reply.
He stood waiting before her, as immutable and stalwart as stone, while she grappled with a decision that wasn’t a decision at all. She wanted to toss his counteroffer back in his face, to tell him there was nothing that would make her join him in his bed again. But the thought of Emma, a helpless, hurting pawn in this game of his, kept her silent. For Emma, for her sweet, innocent daughter … she’d sleep with the devil himself.
His eyes trapped hers, as impenetrable as granite, while icy fear slugged hard against her chest. “So what’s it going to be? Marriage or my bed?”
“Do I really have a choice?”
He straightened and then rounded the hood of his car. “You have until tomorrow to decide.”
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.