The Replacement Wife

by Caitlin Crews

  “Typical,” she managed to say, despite the heat and the ache and the riot in her head, deep in her blood and between her legs. “You’ve barely kissed me and yet you demand that I decide whether or not I want to sleep with you right here and right now? Is this how you negotiate your business affairs, Theo? All or nothing, based on the faintest and least illuminating of examples?”

  “Let’s see if you find this more illuminating,” he said, with the faintest hint of a smile his eyes glinting, and then he bent his head and took her mouth with his.

  Theo did not merely kiss. Theo … possessed.

  His mouth opened over hers, hungry and demanding, and he angled himself closer, his hands spearing into her hair to hold her and guide her as he took his time with her mouth, tasting her, teaching her, making dark, sensual promises with every touch of his tongue, his lips.

  And Becca went wild.

  Her arms were around him, testing his wide shoulders and anchoring behind his neck. He bent into her, making her arch toward him, finally pressing her swollen breasts against the hard wall of his chest. He angled his mouth for a better, hotter fit, making her groan against him, and then he undid her completely by pulling her hips flush against his.

  He was hard and big, and she felt herself melt all around him.

  She could not get close enough. She could not break away. She had the frenzied notion that her whole life had been leading right here, to this kiss. To him.

  “Theo.” she murmured, and he shifted, lifting her high against his chest. With a touch, he encouraged her to wrap her legs around his lean waist, bringing her hips tight against his. She felt his hardness against her softness, and moved against him, making them both shudder. He dug his fingers into her hair, pulling out the ponytail holder and tossing it carelessly aside. Freed, her hair fell around them, shielding them in the scent of musk and flowers. And again he took her mouth, with such devastating skill, such resolute mastery, that she felt herself shuddering against him. So much want. So much need.

  He made her mindless.

  “So tell me,” he said against her mouth, his maleness hard and proud against her, making her want to move, to be as wild as she felt, to writhe and scream and find herself in this hot, bright fire. “Have you seen the light?”

  “You know I have,” she whispered, her voice broken, her lips slightly swollen from his. “It turns out you are a very illuminating man, after all.”

  Theo only smiled. Hard. Satisfied. Male.

  And then he shifted her in his arms, and carried her up the spiral staircase to his bedroom.

  Becca barely noticed the details of the room, all masculine colors and shades, everything dwarfed beside the sweeping floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the far wall. She only had the faintest sense of the city beyond them, and then she was on her back in the middle of the wide, platform bed, and Theo was beside her.

  Any teasing had fled somewhere on the walk from the floor below, and Becca could feel the silence all around them, making the fire inside of her burn brighter, hotter. Making the way he looked at her, the way his hands traced patterns along her body, feel something very close to sacred.

  He pulled her boots from her legs and let them clatter at the side of the bed. He stripped off his coat and the light, cashmere sweater he wore beneath. And then he came over her, resting in the V of her thighs, making her sigh in some mixture of desire and satisfaction.

  He did not speak. He kissed her face, moving from her forehead to her jaw, then down along her neck. His hands tested the weight of her breasts through the silky material of her dress, dragging thumbs over her painfully hard nipples until she arched up from the bed against him.

  She felt as if she’d been waiting forever to touch him, to trace his long, lean muscles with her palms, her fingers, her mouth. He was hot to the touch, and smooth, his skin against hers making the world seem to spin around them.

  Theo sat back, and looked down at her, his face almost harsh with passion. He pulled her to sitting position and with little ceremony, pulled her dress off and over her head. He let out a small sound when she sat before him in nothing but her bra and panties, and then he reached over and took her face in his hands, guiding her mouth to his.

  He kissed her again and again, passion and promise, and this time when his mouth moved from hers he found her breasts, tasting one and then the other through the sheer silk and lace, making her head drop back and her eyes drift closed. His hands smoothed down her abdomen, then around to her back, and she hardly noticed when he pulled the bra from her body. But a jolt of fierce pleasure rocked through her when his lips closed over a hard nipple, pulling the hard peak insistently into the hot, wet depths of his mouth. He did the same with the other, inflicting his delicious torture until she was truly mindless in his arms, bucking against him, trying to ride his hardness as he pressed against her.

  He laughed slightly, and tilted her up and toward him, so her legs fell on either side of where he knelt on the mattress. Then he let one hand find its way to her softness. He held her for a moment, making her pant with desire and impatience. She could feel the heat of his hand through the scrap of lace—and could not help the way her hips rolled against his palm, demanding that he end this torture.

  But instead, he kissed her, taking her mouth with dizzying skill. Again and again he tasted her, and then he slowly, achingly, worked his big hand into her panties, until he could trace her femininity with his clever fingers. One stroke, another, making her sex flood with heat, making her gasp against his mouth, and then he twisted his wrist and drove one finger deep into her. Then another. Then, still kissing her as if he would never stop, he set an easy, devastating pace. His hot hand against the center of her core, his fingers inside of her, and his mouth against hers.

  Becca bucked against him, again and again, clutching at his shoulders, and then she burst into a thousand pieces, sobbing his name into his mouth.

  When she came back to herself, she was flat on her back on the bed, her panties were gone, and Theo was laying tender kisses along the undercurve of her breast, the slight swell of her belly and the jutting thrust of her hipbone.

  She looked down the length of her own body to see his dark head, shockingly black against her own pale skin, his skin shades darker than hers, the contrast seeming to emphasize how much bigger he was, and how strong. He held her hips in his hands and made love to her navel, and then traveled lower, making the fire she’d thought extinguished roar back into life.

  She tried to tug at his shoulders, to pull him away from what seemed far too intimate, far too telling, somehow—but he refused to budge. He looked up at her, his eyes nearly gold with desire. She could not help the shiver that ran through her then.

  “I want you,” she whispered, her hands on him, urging him up. “I want you inside me.”

  “So forward,” he chided her, teasingly, as his hands wrapped around her bottom and tilted her hips toward him. “We hardly know each other yet.”

  “Theo,” she began, even as that drumbeat began again in her, that demanding passion, thudding out her want, her need. Her hunger.

  “Luckily,” he continued, spreading her thighs even wider with his shoulders as he bent between her legs, “I have the perfect remedy.”

  And then he leaned down, pressed his mouth against her sex, and tasted her, long and slow and deep.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE CLIMAXED AGAIN almost immediately, but Theo couldn’t stop. She was irresistible. He felt off balance, intoxicated—lost in her. And he could not get enough of it.

  He tasted her, honey and cream, and though his sex was so hard it ached, he could not tear himself away. She moaned out his name, and he liked it. He liked it far too much. He licked into her, making her shudder and moan, and only when her head thrashed back and forth on the bedcover yet again did he roll away to rid himself of his trousers.

  She lay before him like a goddess, like a dream. Her breasts were full and perfect, and tasted like a marvel. H
er curves intoxicated him, and he could not get enough of her taste, so delicate and female and Becca.

  She met him when he came back to the bed, rising up to kneel before him, and he gloried in the feel of her nakedness against his, finally, and the softness of her belly like satin, cradling the hardest part of him.

  He wanted her so much it actually caused him something akin to pain. But he could not think about that now. The late-afternoon light cast shadows all around them, but she still seemed to shine, bright and true, in the middle of it.

  God, how he wanted that light. How he wanted her.

  He couldn’t wait any longer. He lifted her into his chest, rolled his hips and thrust deep into her.

  She cried out, and her head fell back. She moved to put her legs around his waist and he eased them both back down onto the bed. Only then did he move, thrusting deep inside of her and then out again, testing his length, marveling at the slick, sweet fit.

  She was his. She was finally his.

  He felt as if he’d been longing for her forever. As if she had been crafted for his hands alone, made to fit him perfectly, her body and his like a lock and key. He could feel the dead bolt click over inside of him. He welcomed it.

  And then passion took over. He set a hard, demanding pace, and she met him, her hips rising to meet his, her hands urging him on, her nails digging into his flesh. He bent his head to hers and put his mouth against the slender column of her neck, grazing it with his teeth, making her sob out his name. He rocked against her, feeling her stiffen and hearing her moan, and when she climaxed for the third time, she screamed.

  He called out her name, and followed.

  Much later, she stirred against him, and he felt himself harden yet again, his length still buried deep inside her.

  Her startled laughter was husky, still laced with the passion they’d just spent, the fires they’d banked. It moved over his body like a caress.

  “Not possible,” she murmured. “Not even for the great Theo Markou Garcia.”

  He grinned, and rolled, so she lay sprawled on top of him, her soft breasts pressed into his chest, her ripe curves his to explore. Watching her expression, he pulled back until he was almost clear of her entrance, then slowly thrust back in. Teasing. Tantalizing. Building the fire anew.

  She sighed, pleasure making her features that much softer, that much prettier. Mine, he thought. All mine.

  “I told you,” he said, thrusting into her slowly, so very slowly, and watching her mercurial eyes darken with that same need. “Once is not nearly enough.”

  And then he claimed her lush, wanton mouth with his, and lost himself in her.

  Again.

  The week had passed in a sensual haze, then continued into the next, and when reality intruded once more in the form of the vile Whitney family, Becca was woefully unprepared.

  It was almost as if she’d forgotten the reason she was here at all, she reflected as she put the final touches on her evening’s outfit. As if she had just magically appeared in this penthouse, in Theo’s bed, and everything that had brought her here was blurred and opaque. Or perhaps she’d simply wished for that to be true, she thought, facing the unpleasant truth.

  Because it was far easier to simply live for the hours she and Theo spent in bed, wrapped around each other, exploring each other’s bodies with a wild passion and a creative flair that made her shiver to think about, even now. Theo was a man who liked to cover all of his bases. He did his research and he was as determined as he was methodical. He was ruthless, focused and as deliciously, sensually demanding in bed as he was when he acted as her personal trainer. All the qualities that made him an overbearing temporary employer made him a phenomenal, masterful lover.

  Oh, the things he could do. And did.

  “Wake up,” he had ordered her that very morning, his dark voice husky as his hands had streaked over her, as he’d slid deep into her, both waking and arousing her with each deep thrust.

  She had burst into flame before she’d remembered where—or who—she was, shattering into pieces all around him.

  Becca squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, as that insistent ache pulsed in her core, that same familiar longing welling up in her anew. The more she had him, the more she wanted him, with a hunger that nothing ever seemed to satisfy. That was one more thing she didn’t dare think about. One more item she filed away and vowed she’d look at … later.

  But tonight she had to face her demons. Her so-called relatives. Tonight, the rude reality of her presence here could no longer be avoided.

  She took a last, long look in the mirror, and squared her shoulders. She knew she looked as she should. Like Larissa. She wore her hair in classic Larissa-style, the pale blond strands swept high in front and then cascading to brush her shoulders. She’d picked a simple pale gold dress that shimmered when she moved, picking up the light and seeming to reflect it, as if she was bottled sunshine. She’d done her makeup to perfection, and she’d even started wearing the contact lenses that made her eyes glow green, like a cat’s. She was as Larissa as she was likely to get.

  And still her stomach was clenched tight, like a pretzel. Like an unbreakable knot. She let her hands rest there for a moment, trying to soothe the clenched feeling away.

  “We will dine at Whitney House tonight,” Theo had said over breakfast, that implacable command in his voice. He had not looked up from his computer. It had been as if she had not screamed out his name only a scant half hour before, as if he had not left a mark on her collarbone with his teeth when he’d found his release.

  It had been as if they were back to the same place they’d been at the start. So long ago, she’d thought, that at first she hadn’t understood what was happening. And when she’d finally comprehended it, she was surprised at how much it hurt. How deeply it seemed to cut into her.

  “I can’t think of anything I would like to do less,” she had said, determined not to show him that he’d struck a blow. Determined, for that matter, not to admit it to herself. She’d lounged in her chair, languid and unconcerned, every inch the pampered little princess she’d been pretending to be for weeks.

  She hadn’t much cared for the way he’d looked at her then, his amber gaze something much too close to condemning. Or was it simply that he’d reverted to the all-business, hyperfocused version of himself, that she hadn’t seen in over a week?

  “It wasn’t a request,” he’d said softly, his voice brooking no argument.

  And that simply, he’d reminded her. Of her place. Of the situation. He had not come out and said it. He hadn’t had to say anything.

  He might as well have dropped her over the side of the penthouse wall, letting her plummet to the Manhattan street so far below. That was how hard Becca had hit the ground.

  Wake up, you fool, she’d mocked herself. Welcome back to reality.

  Because the harsh truth was that he might want her in his bed. He might groan out her name and murmur words she was afraid to attach too much importance to in the light of day. He might smile at her sometimes as if she was capable of lighting up his world. But most of all, above all things, he wanted her to pretend to be Larissa. Maybe he’d been pretending she was Larissa already, this whole time.

  The thought made her sick to her stomach.

  But more fool, she, for putting that possibility—that likelihood—out of her mind for even a moment. Much less for all these days and endless nights that blended together and sat on her, in retrospect, like a great weight.

  And she was a fool to the end, because even now, she thought as she walked through the soaring rooms of the penthouse, nodding at the driver who waited for her in the foyer—even now she wished he was here instead of meeting her over at the Whitney mansion, wished she could touch him, wished she could feel that inevitable rush and burn that she was beginning to think would always consume her when she saw him. That it was simply the effect Theo had on her.

  He had ruined her, she thought with a flash of something too close
to despair, and she hadn’t even started the hard part of this charade. At this rate, she’d be lucky to leave in pieces.

  Much sooner than she was comfortable with, Becca found herself sitting outside the Whitney mansion, staring up at it from within the depths of the low-slung limousine that had whisked her here from the penthouse’s underground garage—the garage that Theo had deliberately not used the day he’d had them run the paparazzi gauntlet.

  Funny how that memory made desolation yawn open within her tonight, when she hadn’t minded back when it had happened. Quite the opposite—she had understood so completely it had propelled her directly into Theo’s bed, and she had hardly come up for air since.

  What had happened to her? She’d known better than to let this happen—she’d known it from the moment he’d strode into that room in the Whitney mansion so long ago now. Her whole body had rioted in warning, aware of the threat he presented. He’d made her display herself for him, he’d ordered her around, and none of that seemed to matter. She could not even work up the appropriate level of outrage now, as she considered her own fall from grace. She had lost herself, she knew. Perhaps forever.