Irresistible

by Shara Azod

  “I’m coming, Delilah.” She knew his words weren’t really a warning of an impending orgasm. “I’m going to come deep inside you. I’m going to mark you as mine.”

  Why did that make her shiver? The sounds of his own erotic torment sunk deep, impaling her with intense pleasure every bit as much as his dick did.

  “Oh God, yes!” She felt it. As soon as he uttered the words, she felt his seed flood her, sparking a volcanic eruption like nothing else could. Her being splintered and broke, particles of herself settling on the man she should hate.

  Chapter Seven

  “Here are some books on basic science, math study guides, and college literature and composition.” Delilah took the study books, not sure what else to do. Thumbing through them, she saw they looked a bit more advanced than the ones she’d been going over with David. She wasn’t about to tell Edward that. “Do at least three lessons from each. We’ll go over them when I get home.”

  She wasn’t sure if he was expecting a thank you, but one wouldn’t be coming from her any time soon. Unsure whether to foster the indignation she felt by his casual orders or be touched that he took her quest to further her education seriously, she just sat at the table, finally dressed in the comfortable sweats that she’d worn to work Friday evening. Part of the problem was it was very hard to be mad at Edward when he was so close. Memories of the past two days intruded whenever she looked in his general direction. The way she let go of all of her inhibitions haunted her, the way he so easily made her scream with complete abandon teased her, the way his touch made her feel mocked her. Two whole days, and this was the first time they had been fully dressed.

  At first, Delilah really believed she would be going home after Edward worked her out of his system. He claimed that he believed there was nothing going on between her and David. If that were true, he’d have no reason to get back at her, punish her or whatever he’d set out to do originally. Maybe it was some kind of sexual fetish thing that made him think he could keep her. Perhaps he’d never been with a black woman before and liked the novelty of it. It was completely possible he thought to make her his new mistress, thereby making damn sure his nephew stayed away from her. Not for a single moment did she believe the offer of marriage was in any way real. If it were none of those things, then she was at a complete loss as to his motives.

  “When can I leave?” Delilah hadn’t mentioned going home since Saturday morning, when he’d shown her all too clearly what he could do to her resolve. Besides, so far he hadn’t brought up the ridiculous proposal. The very subject scared the shit out of her because she knew it wasn’t real. It seemed downright cruel in a way.

  Edward fixed one of his infamous long, silent stares on her face. At least his eyes weren’t icy as they sometimes could be. The look no longer intimidated her; she had started meeting him stare for stare, sometimes raising an eyebrow for good measure.

  Oddly, after several tense minutes, he’d break into a wide grin as if he were proud of her, like he did now.

  “You don’t like the house?” The voice was bland, as if her reply didn’t really matter. She knew nothing could be farther from the truth. Just as she was beginning to read his mood by the things he didn’t say, she knew how to read between the lines of what he did say. Her reply was important to him, though she couldn’t say why or in what way. His body was vibrating with tension as he waited to see what she’d say.

  “Your home is lovely.” She’d heard someone say that on television once. There’d never been an occasion to say it herself before now.

  As was becoming a habit with him, Edward heard everything she didn’t say.

  “But you’re not comfortable here, are you?”

  That was putting it lightly. The entire house was like a palace, and she had only seen a few rooms. It was difficult to feel comfortable when she was scared of touching anything. Hell, even the bedspread looked as if it cost a small fortune.

  “Not exactly,” she conceded, looking down at her rapidly cooling breakfast. “I’d like to go home.”

  Locked in her tiny apartment, she was able to fully let go, decompress. The walls may need paint, the water took forever to heat, and her sheets and comforter came in a bag from a discount store and cost about thirty bucks, but she could be herself there—

  just Delilah, former runaway dealing with her own personal demons in her own unique way. Cinnamon never made an appearance in her mirrors; all traces of the stripper were left at the club. It was the home she worked damn hard to create for herself. Maybe it wasn’t filled with things that were hard to pronounce and impossible for a regular person to afford, but it was all hers. More importantly, it reflected how she felt. A little sad, a lot lost, but determined to be the best it could be.

  “We’ll move.”

  Like it meant nothing at all to just pack up and move. Delilah stared at Edward, certain now he’d lost his mind. That was not something someone did either as a practical joke or some elaborate lesson of some sort. It was even less normal to up and move for a fling, or whatever the hell he believed this to be.

  “Or I could just go home.”

  “Is that what you really want, Delilah?”

  His voice dropped as he asked her the question she didn’t really want to answer.

  No, she didn’t really want to, but if she didn’t she would lose herself completely.

  “How can you lose yourself when you’re not even sure of who you are?” Edward’s words made her mouth drop open in horror. Oh God, had she really said it out loud? Of course she had; it was written all over his face. There was that harsh determination she was coming to recognize in those gray orbs, a stubborn set to his usually full lips. He wasn’t about to let her go now. Oh, she could lie all she wanted, tell him she wanted nothing to do with him, that she wasn’t the least bit confused about who she was and where she was going. The truth was she’d lost Delilah a long time ago. For a while she had really started to be Cinnamon, but that had only brought pain and emptiness. All she was doing now was trying to find a way back to square one so she could begin to dream again.

  “Don’t bother to answer that. I’d prefer you never lie to me.” Edward stood, looking down at her until she began to squirm in her seat. This time she didn’t stare back. She couldn’t. “We can start looking at places this afternoon. I’ll put in for some vacation time and we’ll look until we find a place you approve of.”

  “Just like that? You’d walk away from this place just because I’m uncomfortable?”

  What was with him? Didn’t he understand how bizarre the very notion was?

  “I’m afraid the estate is part of the family trust, so I wouldn’t be walking away.

  However, I don’t have to live here.”

  It made sense in a weird Edward kind of way. The man was literal, yet so twisted it boggled the mind. What was worse was that after a mere weekend she’d begun to understand at least part of his thought process. A hand cupped her chin, gently pulling her face upward. Delilah expected more “Edward logic;” she wasn’t prepared for the soft, gentle kiss that clung for a bittersweet moment before he slowly pulled away.

  “I’ll be back early,” he promised as if they were already wed. “Use my study if you like. We’ll go over the lesson plan when I get back.” A stroke of his hand against her face and he was gone.

  Delilah stayed where she was, staring down at the breakfast Edward had cooked for her. He’d cooked every meal they’d had over the weekend. It shocked her that he knew his way around the kitchen so well. Silly thought, but it was so much better than focusing on what she should be doing or saying to get him to take her home. It was easier than admitting there was no place else she’d rather be. So where did that leave her now?

  She looked down at the books he’d given her. It was Monday morning; she’d confessed what she’d been doing with David Saturday morning. So when had he gotten the books, and from where? He was a professor, so it was plausible he’d had them lying around. Running her fingers
over the small pile, she had to dismiss that theory if she were to be rational. These were brand new, plus Edward only taught graduate students.

  He’d either ordered them or had someone pick them up sometime between Saturday and now. There was no other way—he hadn’t left her side, at least not while she was awake. To be more exact, they hadn’t left the bedroom much, just to eat.

  She sat at the table long after Edward left, trying to make some kind of sense out of the weird turn her life had taken.

  “Cinnamon? What are you doing here? Where is Uncle Edward?” Great, just great. The very last person she wanted to deal with was David Prichard, Jr. He really was a sweet kid, earnest and giving. Today Delilah had neither the energy nor interest in making some rich kid feel better about his life. As much as David had helped her with studying, she had listened and encouraged him, offering him an ear and a shoulder. As far as her being at his uncle’s table, sitting in front of a by now ice-cold breakfast wearing worn sweats, well, she was a little too worn out to feel embarrassed.

  “Hello, David. You missed your uncle by about an hour or so.” She might as well have been talking of the weather. How strange her life was becoming. “I’m sure you can catch him on his cell or at his office.”

  Dear Lord, she sounded downright domestic. Obviously David found it just as weird, judging by the open-mouthed gawk he was throwing in her direction. Damn, she wished she’d drunk the coffee while it was hot. She was groggy from lack of sleep and battles with Edward she couldn’t win. Run, you need to run away now! She had to get away from this insanity before she became unable to. As it stood, she was already dangerously close to that line.

  “David, do you think you can drop me off at my apartment?” If he wanted her to expound on that, he was going to be sorely disappointed. He didn’t need to know the whys of what brought her here or why she wanted to leave.

  “Uh, well, yeah. That’s no problem.” At twenty-two, David still hadn’t grown into his gangly body quite yet. He was too thin for his six-foot-three-inch frame, just a shade under his uncle’s height. As he stood there his face turned several shades of red, though she had no clue what he felt so embarrassed about. “What, uh, why are you here? I mean, at my uncle’s house?”

  “Long story, I really don’t feel up to talking about it.” And as she expected he would, he let the subject drop rather than press her on it. One day he’d learn the value of just being who he was. The shyness would be replaced with a sense of his place in the world. She only hoped he wouldn’t turn out to be like so many of his friends who often visited the club; a prickish rich asshole with more money than manners and common sense.

  “Okay, sure.” One thing Delilah really appreciated about David was the fact that he wasn’t the pushy sort. “I, um, went to the club Saturday for our session. They told me you quit.”

  “What?!” Shit! That was so not good. As long as the bosses didn’t know what had happened with Edward, she needed her job. She couldn’t lose her only source of income. At her age, she’d been lucky to find another place to dance in today’s youth-obsessed culture. Nobody would hire a stripper close to thirty years old. Not a half-decent club anyway.

  “I need to leave now.” Maybe she could sweet talk Manny or Victor, two of the club’s nicest managers, into giving her job back without Red or Bull being aware she was gone all weekend. Shit, she needed to come up with one hell of a story, and she was probably going to have to buy her way back in. Tell them someone offered her a nice paycheck for a private party. It would devastate her savings, but the amount had to be substantial; she’d stopped doing private parties years ago. “Well, are you going to take me home or what?”

  Chapter Eight

  Edward took a deep breath as he maneuvered his car into his designated parking spot and sat there, fighting the urge to turn the car around and go back out to the country estate. He’d looked at himself in the rearview mirror a dozen times this morning. There was nothing physically different, but he didn’t expect there to be. Yet he looked anyway, trying to find signs he wasn’t the same man he’d been when he left campus on Friday afternoon hell bent on disentangling his nephew from what could’ve been a disastrous situation. Friday he’d been a tiny mind masquerading as a sophisticated man of the world. He may have traveled to every continent on the globe, but until he’d come face to face with Delilah, he’d never really lived. Before now he’d been an outside observer of life, a ghost, watching but never partaking, and then came—Delilah Thomas.

  The physical attraction had been immediate and intense, completely overwhelming them both. Not touching hadn’t been a choice either could make. Even more than the magnetism, there was something deeper Edward was hard pressed to put a name to. Something inside him drove the urge to claim her, mark her, make her his in every conceivable way. Frankly, what Delilah brought to life inside him scared the shit out of him. How did one deal with their own primordial side that they had no hope of controlling? One look brought out longing Edward had never known he harbored. More than an urge, more than a need, being with her had become imperative, and he couldn’t explain why, even to himself.

  Edward had never really attempted having a traditional relationship with a woman. An introvert at heart, there had never been a female to tempt him beyond the physical, so he shut himself off. Interactions on a social level were done at a minimum and only when absolutely necessary. Like the biblical temptress, Delilah called to everything male in him and dared him to take her. If for one second he thought the attraction was all one-sided, then he’d… No, the truth was he still wouldn’t let her go.

  More like he would start a long, slow siege until he won her.

  As it turned out, she was more than attracted to him. When he held her, when he kissed her, she didn’t just yield. Soft, sweet submission was his reward, and damned if he could ever live without it now that he’d tasted what it really meant. Over the weekend Edward had watched Delilah carefully, really gotten to know her in the most intimate ways possible. Strangely, he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d gotten to know her more than she allowed anyone else. There was more than a kindred spirit between them. Much like him, she had no close friends, tended to keep to herself. Edward got the feeling that unlike him, it wasn’t because she hadn’t tried to get close to anyone.

  That bothered him a hell of a lot more than he cared to admit.

  The intoxicating thing was the way she read him right back. She loved to push him, dare him, knowing on some level it would drive him crazy. He was walking a dangerous line, and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Lord love her, Delilah didn’t seem inclined to stop him either. How many times had he offered to take her home if that was what she really wanted? Yes, he had made damn sure he’d been touching her in some way every time he said it. Almost as if he was afraid of allowing her to think without putting her through some kind of sexual torment. Ah, but the way she surrendered to him, gave him everything he demanded and more, shook him to the core.

  Try as he might to shake off thoughts about the woman he’d left at his home, his mind returned to her over and over again. Walking into the Anthropology building, he barely acknowledged greetings from colleagues or students; his mind remained on the woman he was determined to make his, permanently. End-of-the-year tasks were done by rote; he moved like an automaton, thinking of nothing more than getting shit done so he could return home—an unusual reversal of his normal day. The university office used to be a refuge. Work, research and related duties had always been a blessed relief from the emptiness that waited at the end of the day, ready to shroud him in a vast cloak of nothingness.

  Had Edward not known better, he might’ve suspected his fascination with Delilah stemmed from a sense of severe loneliness, only he’d never felt so alone until he saw her in that club. Eyes of a world-weary woman who’d seen too much, lost too many dreams, reflected the pain of missing something vital from his life. Only, there was also an undeniable innocence, something wounded that entr
eated him to fix what was broken. As an academic, he knew it was pure foolishness on his part, but he supposed he was long overdue for a little foolishness.

  “Uncle Edward, I need to talk to you.”

  Ah, the young David. Honestly Edward had been expecting his nephew, though he had hoped the boy would’ve slunk home after finding Delilah missing from the club.

  It was almost three in the afternoon now. One could hope he hadn’t gone to the country estate, though Edward suspected that he had.

  “Did you take her back to that dilapidated apartment building she calls home?” Edward was careful not to look up at his nephew. David was young and more than a little careless. He didn’t want to lose his temper.

  “I- I- She wanted to go.” The stutter spoke volumes. Realization came late to most young men. It was lamentable but not totally unexpected. “We weren’t doing anything. If you’d asked I would’ve told you my mother worried needlessly. I haven’t spent all that much at that place, uh, club—”

  Edward cut off David’s spate of righteous indignation before he could work up a full head of steam.

  “I didn’t ask because I had no interest in your answer.” Which was true in a way.

  “What I want to know is if you got a good look at where you dropped her off at?” This time Edward did look up in time to see David blush to his blond roots.