by Lydia Rowan
That man wasn’t him.
The thought allowed him to rein in his ardor, gave him the measure of control he needed to pull away from her. Hurt, spear-sharp and deep, sprang into her eyes, and the pang in his chest at the sight was like a physical wound. He stroked her cheek, leaned down and placed a soft kiss on her lips, hoping to reassure her without words. The fault lay with him and him alone, and he would make sure she knew it. Resting on his side, he pulled her into a tight embrace, notching her back to his chest, the full, rounded globes of her ass against his still diamond-hard cock, the engorged shaft nestling between her cheeks, the long line of her soft thighs against his, his knees tucked behind hers.
They were a perfect fit.
Her body was tense and not from arousal, not anymore, anyway. The abrupt shift in this encounter had no doubt left her confused, feeling rejected, and he felt more the bastard for it. He swept his hand up her hip, up the valley of her waist, eliciting shivers, before he grabbed her hand and entwined his fingers with hers, and then he waited. Increment by increment, she relaxed against him until there was not a centimeter of space between their bodies.
“I asked a question, Charlotte,” he said, punctuating the statement with a kiss to her shoulder.
She sighed, and he could conjure the expression on her face even though her back was to him.
“You’re infuriating, you know that?”
“Why? Because I’m not living up, or should I say down to your expectations?”
The defensive response emerged without thought, and she stiffened and pulled away. He let her move a few inches but didn’t break his hold on her hand.
“That’s why you’re infuriating. You always assume the worst of me, of everyone. It makes it difficult to”—she paused before continuing—“care about you.”
You shouldn’t care, he wanted to say, but he held his tongue, choosing a different tack.
“I asked a question, Charlotte.”
“Yes,” she finally said. “I am a virgin, not like you didn’t know that already. Why did you insist on hearing me say it out loud? If I were you, I’d say because you wanted to laugh at me, but I’m not you, so I assume there’s some other explanation.”
“I shouldn’t have needed to ask. That’s something you should tell a man well before things get that far. Do you have any idea what I planned to do to you?”
“I can probably guess.”
“Then you can probably guess how uncomfortable it would have been for a virgin. Me slamming my cock inside you with no preparation and no quarter, forcing apart tender flesh that’s never been plundered before.”
If he wasn’t mistaken, and he wasn’t, she pushed back against him, squirmed her hips against his cock. Seemed his words were not having the intended effect.
“I’m serious, Charlotte. That was an important thing to know, and besides, if you’ve waited this long, how much of an ass would I be to take you? You should save yourself for your husband. Your real husband.”
“So I’ve worn out my welcome already?” she said, voice husky and unreadable.
This conversation had become fraught all of a sudden. He couldn’t admit that his words were lies, that he wanted to be her first, but still, she deserved better; he didn’t want something so precious to be a victim of his ploys.
He moved away from her and turned her to face him, needing to see her eyes. They glittered in the soft light of the room and a slight frown furrowed her brow. The desire to smooth it away, to see the unrestrained passion that had filled her face just moments ago had him lifting his hand to stroke her brow and then moving it down across her soft, full lips and down again, across her collarbone before he rested his hand on her upper arm. Her lips opened slightly and her eyes widened, warmth again filling them, and he smiled at the sight.
“You know better. So are you going to explain?”
A faint smile curled her lips. “Tenacious, aren’t you?”
He didn’t respond and her smile brightened. Then she looked beyond him, over his shoulder and into the past.
“There’s no big story.” She shrugged. “I couldn’t possibly date anyone in the city while I was growing up. Wait, that’s not entirely true. I did date, but it was always pretty tame and chaste. My parents, my mother especially, emphasized my role and how I had a responsibility to protect the family name, so I was terrified that something untoward would be exposed or some rumor would start, and I didn’t want to risk it.”
Made sense. Elah knew the tremendous pressure someone like her would have been under, but that was only half the story.
“And later,” he prompted.
“I had grand plans for college. I was going to nail everything not bolted down.”
He raised a brow. “I don’t think it would have exactly worked that way, Charlotte, but I take your point. Continue.”
“That obviously didn’t work out. Old habits die hard, and I was pretty uptight, a bit of an apple-polisher. Shocking, I know.” She smiled. “Anyway, I did eventually loosen up, even dated a couple of nice men. But nothing ever felt quite right. That pattern continued when I came back home, and though the physical desire was always there—boy, was it always there—the emotional connection became more important.”
His heart dropped. She had waited for love, something he, without a doubt, could not give her.
“Why marry me, be here with me like this”—he gestured between their naked bodies—“if you’ve waited so long for love?”
“You know why I married you. And who said anything about love?”
“What is it, then?” he barked, anger spiking in an instant at her insinuation. He had no right to her love, knew it would be better for her if she remembered that such a thing was not possible, but he couldn’t deny that her cavalier insistence that it was something else irked him.
“I’m not sure. Passion? Intrigue? As nuts as it is, I’m attracted to you, feel a pull that I can’t explain or deny. Why not take advantage of that?”
He’d asked and she’d answered, so why was he disappointed?
“You’ll regret it. You’ll look back and wish you’d waited.”
“Maybe. But maybe not. There are no guarantees. And I’d rather regret doing something than not. Why are you trying to talk me out of this? A heartless monster like you shouldn’t care one way or the other.”
That playful tone, which had become so familiar and oddly welcome, underscored the seriousness of her words. And she raised a good point. Why was he trying to talk her out of it?
Her nipples had pebbled in the cool air, so rather than speak, he swiped one with his thumb and then leaned down to take it between his lips. She shivered lightly at the contact and then harder when he drew the bud between his lips and suckled forcefully, taking the nipple and a portion of the fleshy underside of her breast into his mouth. She fell back flat, but he didn’t break the contact, instead continuing to lick and stroke as he moved his body atop hers. He slid his leg between hers, her soft thighs spreading to welcome him, and he lifted until he reached her heated core, the cream pooling onto his thigh. She spread her legs wider and pushed down hard against him, her lower lips spreading and exposing her clit and slick opening.
The grasping flutter of her core as she sought deeper contact reverberated across his thigh, and it was only with the greatest of self-control that he didn’t plunge his cock deep inside her. Instead, he moved his leg back and forth, rasping his hair-covered thigh over her opening and across her clit. A high-pitched moan propelled out of her and she pressed down farther, anchoring her hands on his hips and pushing down to repeat the motion. He released her breast and looked up at her but didn’t move. Instead, he watched her take her pleasure, watched as she heaved great breaths that sent her breasts shaking in the most enticing way. Her eyes slammed shut, and her mouth opened slightly, and as her breathing increased, so did the short panted moans that came out of her. Her pussy got wetter and wetter, and the distended bud of her clit rubbed against his thigh agai
n and again as she changed angles and pushed down against him harder.
She arched and exhaled a long, low moan, the muscles in her arms tight and then going languid as she rode out her release. She went lax against him, her slick lips gripping his thigh and her moisture coating both his leg and the insides of hers. His cock, so hard that it was almost painful, freely leaked precum onto her mound and thighs. He pressed her close, loving the feel of her soft flesh against his hard. Even with his raging hard-on between them, him holding her as she floated in her afterglow was as right as anything he’d ever experienced.
As he pulled away, she released a protesting sigh that he silenced with a kiss. He turned her pliant body so that they spooned again and kissed and stroked her back until her breathing evened and she fell into what seemed a deep sleep. As always when she slept, she looked so young, so innocent, and his mind rebelled at the thought of ever letting her go. He eased out of bed as stealthily as he could with a hammer-hard cock, hating to leave her but knowing that he needed to put space between them.
When he reached the bathroom, he turned the cold water on full blast and stepped in, hoping the frigid water would remind him, and his penis, that Charlotte Trufant—he couldn’t think of her as Charlotte Avakian, not now, when the need to claim her was so strong—was off-limits. But the cold water didn’t help a bit and not able to resist, he closed his fist around his shaft, imagined it was her fist or her lips or—his abdominal muscles clenched at the thought—the sweet, snug walls of her cunt. He was so far gone it only took two hard strokes for him to spill himself all over the white porcelain of the shower. The relief was temporary, a simple physical release that wasn’t even a pale imitation of what he knew he’d find with Charlotte. Images of her beneath him, astride him, of him burying himself inside her, taking pleasure, and hopefully giving it, played in his mind on an endless loop. They continued all the while he dried himself, after he’d left the bathroom, as he paced the floor telling himself he should leave but being too weak to do so. And they only intensified when he stopped fighting and climbed into bed next to her, pulling her warm, soft body close to him. He was too honest a man to pretend. He wanted her.
And, as wrong and as selfish as he knew it was, as much as he knew the type of man that deserved Charlotte’s innocence would resist, he also knew it was only a matter of time before he gave in and took her.
Chapter Eleven
“I’m glad we could do this, baby girl,” Ellen said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “Though helping your mother rearrange furniture is probably not the most exciting way to spend a morning.”
“Me, too. And moving the same plant from one spot to another and then back again is the best possible way to spend a morning if I’m with you.”
Ellen smiled fondly and then took a sip of her orange juice.
“So sweet. Still, I’m sorry to bother you, but you know I can’t decide where something should go until I see it in place.”
“I’ll make sure to remind my back of that.”
Both women laughed this time. Ellen’s penchant for redecorating, and enlisting her friends and relatives to help, was legendary. But Lottie didn’t mind. It was a relief to spend such free, relaxed time with her mother, even if it required her to do physical labor.
“Why isn’t Daddy helping today?”
The question felt natural, she, her mother, and her father having spent countless afternoons moving stuff around, laughing, chatting, and just enjoying being with each other. But she recognized her error the moment the words left her lips. Her mother’s face went flat and her shoulders pulled back.
“I just wasn’t in the mood, baby. To be honest, I’m still mad about everything.”
Lottie reached over and grabbed her mother’s hand, and the other woman’s face brightened and her lips turned up in a smile at the touch.
“You know I don’t want that. I want you two to get along.”
“Oh, it’ll pass. Eventually. But it just burns me up,” Ellen said, the hand Lottie wasn’t holding balling into a fist. She then stared at Lottie, holding her gaze for several long seconds.
“You look good. Happy.”
“I’m all right.”
It wasn’t a confirmation that she was happy, but it wasn’t an outright denial either. But she didn’t know what else to say, wasn’t even sure how she felt, and that was the most confusing thing of all. On the face of it, Elah was an awful man, unyielding, unwilling to even consider that maybe he was wrong about her father, one who’d stoop to incredible lows to get what he wanted. She should hate him. At the very least she should be wary of him. But she didn’t hate him, and she wasn’t wary. The opposite, in fact. Even as she lived the consequences of his stubbornness, she wanted him with a passion the likes of which she’d never experienced. Instead of running from him, or at least keeping her distance as any reasonable person would, she was getting closer, tricking herself into believing that there was more to him than his hatred and his cruelty.
And last night had only made things worse. Over their weeks together, she’d seen hints of the person beneath his facade. And though she had no clear idea why, something, womanly intuition, or maybe just old-fashioned lust, had made her think, even if only in the deepest parts of her mind, that the idea of being with Elah, really being with him, both physically and mentally, might be within the realm of possibility, and the combustible physical chemistry they shared, the heat and then the tenderness with which he’d touched her, had only reinforced the idea. But still, she couldn’t overlook the circumstances that had brought them together any more than she could overlook the attraction that had kept her in his bed night after night, that had her body screaming for his.
She was a confused mess of emotions, tugged from one extreme to the next, which was why she’d decided to come hide out at her parents’, hopeful that being out of his house would help her see things more clearly. She’d had no luck so far.
Ellen patted her hand, bringing her back to the present.
“You always make the best of things. I bet that man couldn’t help but be nice to you.”
Lottie just smiled, and then she and her mother chatted about this and that for a while longer.
“Let me get out of here,” she said later as she stood.
Her mother also stood and leaned over to give her a big hug.
“See you later, sweetheart,” Ellen said as she followed Lottie through the front door. “You have to take me for a ride one day.”
“Bye,” she said, laughing as she got into the car.
As she pulled away, she thought about what to do with the rest of her day, and thoughts of him floated to the front of her mind. Elah had left before she’d awoken this morning, and despite her confused thoughts, the longing she felt for him was as sharp as it was undeniable. Silly of course, because she’d spent all night in his arms, so the need to see him shouldn’t be so acute, but it was. She could try to deny it, pretend she was caught in a haze of lust and nothing more, but that would be a lie. And as much as it shamed her to admit it, as much as she wished it wasn’t the case, she knew the truth.
She missed him.
Grabbing her phone, she thought she’d call him and then realized she didn’t have his number. She’d correct that oversight later, but for the moment, it left her to deal with the pulsing desire to see him, one that she didn’t know how to satiate other than actually seeing him. His office was relatively close, and he hadn’t said she shouldn’t show up. The idea of popping in unannounced made her uncomfortable, was the kind of intimate, familiar act that might be beyond the as-yet-undefined boundaries of their relationship. Last night was proof that they enjoyed one another physically, and she thought they were navigating a burgeoning emotional connection, or at the very least a tentative kind of friendship. The way he’d touched her, sometimes roughly, sometimes tenderly, but always with something that bordered on awe in his eyes, the little parts of himself that he shared, the ease and comfort that seemed to come over him
when they were together had to mean something. But they’d never talked about what to expect or what could be demanded from the other. Still…
Mind made up, she pointed her car toward his office before she could reconsider. The drive was quick, and as she walked from the parking lot, she took in her surroundings, noting the crowd milling about the promenade, taking in the space as she’d been unable to do that first time. She’d have to ask Elah about the location. The building was well maintained but was a part of one of the city’s older developments. Most of the businesses of EAE’s size had moved to the sleek new high-rises, and from what she could see, Elah’s was the largest in this complex, so he must have a reason for staying.
She walked through the revolving doors and to the bank of elevators, again noting the difference between this and the last time she’d been here. The apprehension was there, but different, the nervous edge of a woman meeting a lover and not an adversary. The elevator dinged when she reached her destination, and Amanda the receptionist looked up. There wasn’t even the slightest hint of recognition in her face; she just maintained that cold, detached, professional face.
“Um, hello, Amanda. I’m Charlotte Trufant—Avakian. Is Elah available?” Lottie asked when she reached the desk.
“Do you have an appointment?” she responded, giving no outward acknowledgment of her name.
“No, I just—”
“Mr. Avakian is available by appointment only. Please contact the vice president of public relations to inquire about getting on his schedule,” she said, her polite tone in no way masking the flash of jealousy and self-satisfaction that burned in her eyes before she hid it behind her icily professional facade.