by Naima Simone
“How is it possible that you, who has every reason in the world not to see the best in people, still believes in things like a parent’s love and fairness?” he murmured. With one more caress over her skin, he released her, dropping his hand to his glass of wine. He raised it, sipping, but his scrutiny never wavered from her.
She didn’t have an answer for him. But then again, he didn’t seem to expect one.
“But to answer your initial question, at this point, I can’t tell my mother to back off because no matter our history, I have to be gentle with her. She’s been through enough these past months. And other than those first couple of weeks, I don’t believe she’s allowed herself to fully grieve. Instead, she’s focused all her rather formidable attention on other endeavors—one of which happens to be finding me a wife. I think if Jason had married, if he’d had children before he died, her desire to see me settled with someone wouldn’t be this...passionate. She would’ve had a piece of him to hold on to, to cherish. I can only imagine she doesn’t want history to repeat itself. And it might be selfish, but I’ll suffer through her annoying attempts rather than see her broken again.”
Selfish? There were several words she could use to describe him—arrogant, demanding, high-handed, sexy as hell—but selfish? No. Not when he would create an elaborate fake relationship just so his mother wouldn’t sink back into dark grief.
Grayson Chandler was...complicated. Playboy. Gentleman. Sometimes asshole. Seducer. Selfless son. Enigmatic stranger.
And with every layer he exposed, she wanted to peel away another. And then another. She longed to find the core of this man, see who lay beneath. See the truth she suspected he revealed to no one.
In other words, damn her, she wanted to be special to him.
Maybe she was more of her mother’s daughter than she acknowledged.
“Sir. Ma’am. Can I interest you in dessert or an after-dinner coffee or drink?” Their waiter appeared next to the table, saving her from more enlightening and terrible revelations about herself.
“I’m fine. Nadia?” Grayson asked.
She summoned a small, brittle smile. “I’m through, as well.”
Minutes later, table cleared and check paid, Grayson escorted her from the restaurant, a hand placed on the small of her back.
Warmth from his palm penetrated her dress to the skin below. The clothing between them might as well have been invisible, because her imagination convinced her she could feel every hard curve and plane of that hand. Lust, bright and ravenous, curled low in her belly, and every step forward, every brush of her thighs against each other, cranked up that need until she shivered with it.
Oh yes. She’d fallen so far down this rabbit hole. But did she want to climb out?
She didn’t know. And that indecisiveness spelled one thing.
Trouble.
Eleven
Grayson curled his fingers tighter around the steering wheel as he guided his black BMW i8 toward Nadia’s blue-collar Bridgeport neighborhood. Within the interior of the car, he couldn’t elude her wind and rain scent. Couldn’t block out the memories of how that scent was denser, richer on her skin—between her thighs.
Sometimes he woke up at night imagining that so-damn-addictive flavor on his tongue. And his hand wrapped around an erection.
Chaining down the growl rumbling in his chest, he kept all his focus on the road in front of him. Because glancing over and glimpsing the long, lush legs molded by her dress might be his undoing.
When he’d purchased the clothing, he’d imagined how it would slide over the full mounds of her breasts, skim over the wide, feminine flare of her hips and cling to the thick perfection of her thighs. Both regal and sensual. Powerful and sexy. But he’d underestimated how the material would caress every dip, arc and curve like a lover’s hand. How the dress would have him desperate to peel it from her and expose the walking wet dream of her body that he’d had the pleasure of only once.
Given her mother’s history with men, the truth of why Nadia most likely dressed in drab, ill-fitting suits had struck him like a fist to the gut. Finances undoubtedly played a part, but a woman with her looks, her siren’s body, had probably deflected more than her fair share of advances. Especially if the opinion in her town had been—how had his own father put it?—that she didn’t fall far from the maternal tree.
Yet, he’d harbored no regrets for buying her the dress or the new wardrobe crowding his trunk. As he’d told her, she deserved it all.
Dinner had been a test of how long he could pretend to be civilized when all he hungered to do was climb over her like a stalking, starving beast and consume every goddamn inch of her.
Yes, it’d been a trial, but one he’d passed, and not because of his own strength. She’d successfully kept him in his chair with her vulnerability.
God, she humbled him. With that sliver of trust and with who she was.
His father’s report might have included all the bullet points of her history, but it hadn’t captured her determination, her fire, her fighter’s spirit, her loyalty to family.
Something grimy slid through him. How would Nadia, who’d sacrificed her education, her time and own comfort for family, feel about his refusal to sacrifice for his own family? Had it been his fear of seeing disdain etched on her lovely face that had trapped his confession about leaving KayCee Corp for Chandler? This woman had placed everything on the line for her brother. But Grayson refused to do the same for his father and mother. For Jason.
“Thank you for dinner,” Nadia said into the silence that suffused the car. “It was the loveliest anyone’s ever taken me to.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied quietly. Then, because an unhealthy curiosity to learn more about her rode him hard, he added, “You’re a beautiful woman, Nadia.” And sexy as hell. “So while I understand that you came from a small town, I don’t comprehend how there weren’t any men who didn’t want you, shower you with dates to fine restaurants, offer you the world.” He risked a glance over at her. Noted the delicate but strong line of her profile. The proud tilt of her shoulders. The thrust of her gorgeous breasts. “Were they all blind?”
“No.” The word, though soft, held such an aching note that he battled the urge to jerk the car to the side of the road and look into those deep chocolate eyes. To demand she tell him what lay behind that bleak tone. “They weren’t blind.”
She didn’t say anything more, but Grayson didn’t miss how she also hadn’t replied to his first comment about whether or not there had been anyone who wanted her. The omission grated, burrowed under his skin.
He wanted all her answers. Her truth.
He wanted her naked in the way he refused to be for anyone else.
He was a hypocrite, and he didn’t care.
Minutes later, he pulled the car to the curb outside her humble home. Dark windows stared at them. He should turn off the car and walk her to the door. Make sure at least one of those windows was glowing with light before he drove away.
Instead, he continued to sit behind the wheel, engine idling. Beside him, Nadia didn’t make a move to exit the car, either. The silence that had joined them for the ride from the restaurant settled between them again, but this time tension, thick and alive, vibrated within it.
“Is your brother home?” he asked. The thought of leaving her inside the empty house unsettled him. She hadn’t mentioned a lack of safety in the neighborhood, but still...
“No,” she said. “He texted me earlier. He’s staying with a friend tonight.”
On edge, Grayson removed his hands from the steering wheel and settled them on his thighs, digging his fingers into the muscle. Reminding himself to keep them there and not reach across the console and touch the soft flesh on the other side.
“Is it sad that the most real relationship I’ve had is this pretend one with you?” Nadia rasped into the dark. “I�
��ve built this...this wall around myself because I’ve had to. I’ve learned to. It’s how I’ve survived. But other than Ezra, it’s also kept me from getting close to people. The only time I’ve lowered my guard in years was the night of the blackout. With you. And it felt so good. Such a relief to, for once, not have to protect myself because, even though we worked at the same place, I didn’t think we’d come into any meaningful contact again. I felt...free. You asked me once if I ever wanted to just let go. Hand over my control and let someone else take care of me for a little while. I did in that hallway, and I want to again. Tonight.” She turned to him, and frozen by her admission, he met her gaze. “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”
Need—a deep, hungry yearning—stretched inside him. It expanded, twisting and tangling until he breathed it, became it. And all because of the woman across from him and seven words: I don’t want to be alone tonight.
He understood loneliness. Often battled it. But was it him she wanted to keep her company? Or would anyone do? Was he just convenient?
I don’t care.
The confession pounded against his skull, the truth reverberating in his chest.
He wanted her—no, craved her. Had since first seeing her in that mansion’s hallway. If she wanted to use him to push back the isolation, the dark, then he wouldn’t question why or who he was a temporary replacement for. He’d give her that. And take some for himself.
Because, damn him, he wanted to take.
“If you go home with me, I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep my hands off you. Right now, it’s requiring every bit of self-control I have not to stroke my hand under that dress and reacquaint my fingers with the wet warmth my dick wakes up hard for,” he ground out as a warning. The only one she’d get tonight.
“I didn’t ask for your promise,” she whispered. Her lips parted, and her gaze dropped to his thighs. To the unmistakable imprint of his erection. When she returned her eyes to his, they gleamed with the same arousal that coursed through him. “I don’t want your promise.”
With that husky avowal echoing in his head, he eased the car back into Drive and pulled away from the curb. Neither of them spoke, not for the entire journey to his downtown condominium. They didn’t exchange words as he parked the car in his reserved space under the seventy-story building or on the swift elevator ride to the penthouse apartment. The doors opened into his large living room, and, cradling her elbow, he led her inside.
Sweeping a glance around his home, he attempted to see the place through her eyes. Vaulted ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows that encompassed three walls, an open plan where each room flowed seamlessly from one to the other. The Chicago skyline, Millennium Park and Grant Park seemed to crowd into his place, a beautiful vista of lights and shadow.
It’d been this view that had convinced him to purchase the property. Not the paneled library with its stone fireplace, or the chef’s wet dream of a kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances. Not the three luxurious bedrooms with en suite bathrooms or the twenty-four-hour doorman service or exclusive rooftop club.
None of that could compare to the panorama of the city he loved. The city that had welcomed him with open arms, offering him the chance to prove he was more than just the Chandler spare.
Dragging his attention from the glittering skyline, he focused all of it on Nadia. On her face. Her body. Studying her for any hint that she’d changed her mind. That she regretted accompanying him here. From their conversation over dinner, he’d detected her opinion about men with money. They were users. Opportunists. Selfish. Her experiences with rich men hadn’t been positive, and with him waving three-quarters of a million in front of her for her “services,” she’d no doubt lumped him in the same category as those men who’d exploited her mother.
But maybe she hadn’t painted him with the same brush.
Because she stood here in his home, and as she shifted her espresso eyes to him, they didn’t hold contempt or remorse.
Just desire.
A groan rolled up his chest and throat, but he trapped it at the last minute, tamping it down. One more chance. He’d give her one last chance to opt out of this before he touched her. Because once he put his hands on her, all bets would be off.
“Are you sure, Nadia?” he rumbled, voice like a poorly maintained engine. “If you’ve changed your mind, I’ll take you back home, no questions, no pressure, no anger. This is your choice, and yours alone.” God, those words scraped his throat raw as he uttered them, but they needed to be said. She needed to know he didn’t expect more from her than she was willing to give. “Another thing.” He allowed himself to cup her jaw even though that small caress sent a jagged bolt of lust ripping through him. “This has nothing to do with our agreement. Whatever happens here—whatever doesn’t happen here—is between us alone. Understand, baby?”
She nodded, and as she’d done in the restaurant, slightly turned her head and brushed her lips across his palm. And like then, his body turned to stone, his erection pounding like a primal drum.
“Tell me something nobody knows. Something that will stay here,” she whispered, the moist heat of her breath bathing his skin. Her gaze flicked up to meet his as she pressed a sweet and sexy open-mouth kiss to his palm.
Through the almost painful grip of arousal, he recognized the request. They’d asked it of each other the night of the blackout. The past collided with the present. On a dark growl, he lifted his other hand to her face, caging her in, holding her steady as he lowered his head until just a bare breath separated their mouths.
“No one knows that I haven’t been able to erase you from my mind since that night in the hallway. You were supposed to be a one-night distraction. But instead, you haunt me. You, this fucking need that grinds my gut to dust, won’t leave me alone. And I resent and want you in equal measure.”
Her hands clutched the waistband of his pants, holding on to him.
“Your turn,” he damn near snarled, a little angry with himself for admitting all he had. “Tell me something nobody knows and that will stay here.”
She encircled his wrists, rose on her toes and crushed her mouth to his. With a groan, he parted his lips, welcomed the thrust of her tongue, sucked on the silken invader and dragged an answering moan from her. Jesus, she tasted like his happiest memories and his darkest moments. Like every decadent treat he’d luxuriated in and every indulgence he’d denied himself.
Like addiction and temperance.
Like everything.
The alarming thought whispered through his head, and he mentally scrambled back from it. This—his mouth on hers, her tongue tangling with his—was physical and so goddamn good. But still temporary and simple.
There was nothing simpler than sex.
“Tell me, baby.” He ground out the order against her lips.
“You’re American royalty, one of our princes,” she whispered, her nails biting into the thin, sensitive skin on the inside of his wrists. “And you make me feel like the Cinderella you called me.” She paused, bowing her head until his lips pressed to her forehead. “More, I want to be your Cinderella. Just for a little while.”
“You dream of being a princess, Nadia?” He thrust his fingers through her hair, fisting it and tilting her head back so she had no choice but to meet his gaze. He needed to see her eyes. “Is that who you’d like to pretend to be?”
“No.” Shadows shifted in her brown gaze, but so did the truth. “I want to pretend to be wanted.”
The groan he’d imprisoned before barreled out of him, and he claimed her mouth. Took it. Voracious for it. For her. He thrust his tongue past her parted lips, conquering. No, not conquering, because she opened wider for him, laying down every defense and surrendering.
Pleasure quaked through him. Pleasure and acceptance of her gift.
Bending his knees, he dropped his arms and gripped the undersides of her thighs. Wit
h a swift movement, he hiked her in his arms. Her short, sharp cry reverberated in his ears, but she encircled him with her arms and legs.
Damn. All that soft flesh and strong muscle pressed against him, embracing him. Her position shoved her dress up her thighs, and the material bunched high. He glanced down between them, catching a glimpse of black lace. Clenching his teeth against a curse, he swiftly strode forward toward his bedroom. But each step rubbed her exposed, panty-clad sex against his hard-as-steel dick, and he fought not to stumble and slam them back against the wall.
“I can feel you, baby,” he muttered against her lips. “Soaking me through my pants. Already telling me how much you want me. Good,” he damn near snarled. That’s how much his control had deteriorated. “Because I need you. I haven’t stopped since you let me inside this sweet, hot body.”
In response, she opened her mouth over his throat, licking a path up the column and sucking the skin right under his jaw. Pleasure charged from that spot directly to his erection, hardening it even more. He inhaled a sharp breath, his grip on her tightening.
“Go on and play,” he warned her. “Because when I get you naked on my bed, I fully intend to.” She stiffened in his arms, and he gently nuzzled her hair, though he didn’t bother to prevent his irritation from leaking into his voice. “No, Nadia,” he snapped. “Whatever thoughts just crowded into your head, get rid of them. They don’t belong here.”
He carefully set her down on her feet in front of him. Once more he burrowed his hands into her hair, cradling her head between his palms and tilting it back.
No hiding from him. Not tonight.
“They don’t belong here at all.” He gently tapped her temple. “Every curve—” he slipped his hand down her shoulder, brushing the backs of his knuckles over the mound of her beast “—every valley—” he swept a caress over the dip of her waist, the slightly rounded swell of her stomach “—every inch—” he slid his hand between her thighs, cupping her drenched, warm sex “—deserves to be seen. To be worshipped.”
