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“Gee, do I come off as that inexperienced?” She joked to hide her embarrassment.
“It’s not that. You’re just not the one night stand kind of girl.”
“And that’s what this is,” she said quietly, for her own benefit. He wasn’t making any promises to her.
“Well, a two week stand.” He thought of the mountain of work sitting on his desk back in New York guiltily. “I have to get back to work at some point.”
Of course he did. What had she thought? That they might actually fall in love and get married? She wasn’t after a commitment from him any more than he was from her. She despised men who treated women like property, but that’s not what this was. He was being honest from the start about his intentions. He was leaving it up to her. No lies. No nasty surprises. And she respected him all the more for his raw honesty and dedication to the truth.
“I can’t let this go any further if I think I’m going to hurt you like that bastard ex of yours. If we both know where we stand, then that’s one thing. But I need to know you and I want the same thing from each other.”
“And what is it you want from me? What do you think I want from you?” She must have been a glutton for punishment. She really wanted him to spell it out to her.
“Probably the best sex either of us has ever had, with no expectation of anything else.”
She looked at his chocolate eyes, and his tanned face; his leanly muscled physique and the cleft in his chin. He was so handsome, but there was something about him she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something dangerous and dark that made her shiver a little now.
“So, Katie? What do you think?”
Who was she kidding? There was only one answer. “Yes. I want you to make love to me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Her bedroom was small. She’d given the largest room over to Maxie a couple of years back, so that it would accommodate his toys and growing collection of Max Power spy novels. Little children needed space to be children, and Katie tried to keep the rest of the building free of the clutter that generally attached itself to almost six year olds.
While her own room was just large enough for her double bed, she’d decorated it tastefully, with pure white bed linen and some bright green throw cushions. The view from the dormer window above the bed showed pure ocean, or it did by daylight. The walls she’d hung with black and white photographs she’d taken herself. Some whilst at university, many since then. Maxie as a baby, a toddler, on holidays with Grandma Rose. Others showed landscapes and strangers’ faces, caught at a moment of significance in their own lives. Katie liked those ones best, because that fleeting moment of drama could be caught, and made to last, even when the situation has cleared up, like a storm being blown out to sea.
On the threshold of her room, she felt suddenly nervous. She turned to face the powerful man behind her and when their eyes met, she felt almost as though she’d been sucker-punched. Her stomach rolled with anticipation; all doubts were forgotten. She smiled at him, tentatively, but he didn’t return the gesture. His eyes flashed with pure, red-hot need, and she swallowed convulsively. She knew if he touched her, she’d go up in flames, and so she took a step backwards into her room, gesturing for him to follow.
“It’s small but…” she shrugged uncertainly, “I like it.”
She wasn’t sure he’d even heard. He didn’t acknowledge her words. His dark head was bent, while he concentrated on noiselessly closing the door. In her bedroom, he seemed somehow more imposing. She knew it was a ludicrous notion; a person’s size or shape was not really relative, was it? But he was so powerful and dark, so brooding and warm, that she felt he took total control of the space just by being in it.
She watched, mesmerized, as he crouched down to remove his dark, leather shoes. If she’d known anything about men’s fashion, she would have realized that they were bespoke leather creations, molded to his foot by an Italian craftsman renowned for his leather work, and that those same shoes cost a small fortune. But she didn’t. She only had eyes for him. His body was making her own thrum with need, and he wasn’t touching her. It was the knowledge of what would come. Of what they’d agreed to, that set her aquiver. Moist heat pooled between her legs and she dug her nails into her palms to try to stop the raging appetite.
When he stood again, his feet now bare, his face showed his own answering anticipation. But he didn’t touch her, still. “You’re nervous.” He said, as she darted her tongue out and traced the outline of her mouth.
She shrugged. “I told you, this isn’t something I do often. Well, ever.” She corrected with a self-deprecating smile.
“Then let’s not rush it.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her between the triangle space his legs created. “I have another question for you.”
“More truth or dare?” She asked with a small smile.
He murmured low in his throat.
“What’s your question?” She was curious. She wanted nothing more than to go through with a night of passionate love making with this man, and yet she appreciated that he was slowing things down. She wondered if he was giving her a chance to back out. To make sure this was really what she wanted. She fervently hoped that he wasn’t putting her off because he’d lost the desire to sleep with her.
“Are you lonely?”
It wasn’t what she expected and it made her feel strangely offended. “I… I have a five year old son. I’m rarely alone.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each of her fingertips and then softly biting the pad of her thumb. “I meant romantically. Sexually. Socially.”
Color infused her cheeks, making her look even more like Snow White. She let out a long, slow sigh. “Are you lonely?”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. He was also rarely alone. Since his divorce, he’d surrounded himself by work, and women. Most of them he couldn’t even remember the names of. All of them paled in comparison to Katie Collins. Out of nowhere, he wondered if he’d been waiting his whole life for this moment. He could have laughed out loud at the uncharacteristically indulgent thought. What crap! He didn’t believe in that sort of thing. Fate. Destiny. Love. Forever After. Even when he’d married to Veronica, he’d known it wouldn’t last. Because nothing lasts forever.
“So why do you think I am?” Her words were carefully removed of any hurt. It was stupid to feel belittled by a perfectly natural question. He had apparently become an expert on her in a very short time and he latched his hands behind her back.
