“Yeah. As in leave.”
Frowning into my wine, I said, “I can’t just leave. I have a contract.” Well, I could leave. That ninety-day probationary period worked both ways.
“Is it the job…or him?”
“Both.”
“And if it doesn’t work out?” she asked softly.
I didn’t have an answer.
Molly sighed. “So you have to decide. Either ride it out and hope for Prince Charming…and hey, maybe this is just a crush, right? You’ll have some time to bank your money, maybe make some contacts and get some experience, right? Or you can quit and…”
I grunted. “Quit and do what? I think I’m stuck here, at least for a while.”
“Look at it this way.” Molly’s voice took on a cheerful note. “You stuck it out with Emma
and
Gary for six months and made a lot less.”
There wasn’t a lot of humor in my laugh.
“Now…listen, you’re feeling better already,” Molly teased.
I tossed back half my wine and said, “No. Not really.”
But yeah, actually I was. At least I had a plan of sorts.
Then I heard the door open and that plan seemed to evaporate. Dominic appeared in the doorway.
Shit.
Chapter 10
Aleena
“Molly, I have to go.” I didn’t wait for her to ask why or even for her to respond to my statement. I hung up the phone and set it aside, unable to look away from Dominic.
His face was pale and it dawned on me that he didn’t look like he’d been sleeping well. He almost always had some five o’clock shadow going, even in the morning, but the scruff was thicker today.
In the weeks I’d known him, this was one of the few times I’d seen him look less than one hundred percent put together.
“Dominic.” I stood.
“You’re thinking about quitting,” he said quietly.
I swallowed. Unable to meet his eyes, I turned away. “What are you talking about?” I asked quietly.
“I heard you.”
The sound of his shoes on the marble floors had me tensing and I looked up to see his wavy reflection appear in the darkened windows just behind me. Pretending to busy myself with my food, I found the colander and drained my pasta. “Are you hungry? I always end up making more than…”
His hands came down on my shoulders.
“I heard you,” he said again. “I guess you were talking to Molly. Are you leaving?”
With hands that shook, I put the colander down in the sink. Steam wafted from it as I slowly edged out from under his hands and faced him.
“No.”
He caged me in up against the counter. Heat flooded me at the feel of his body against mine.
“Don’t lie to me,” he warned, his voice low. “I heard you talking about quitting.”
“Yeah,
talking
.” I jutted my chin up. “That doesn’t mean I
am
. For now, I’m sort of stuck. So no. I’m
not
leaving.”
His eyes flashed.
I tried to edge away and he brought up his arm, boxing me in. Before I could try the other side, he blocked that avenue as well. The air seemed a bit thicker than it had only a second ago.
“What…” I cleared my throat. “What are you doing?”
Instead of answering, he dipped his head and nuzzled my neck. “Do you know that the first time I saw you, I wanted you? When you fell against me that day in the restaurant, I had the insane idea…
I caught you. Can I keep you
?”
My breathing hitched.
“When we danced at the ball, I didn’t want to let you go. When I had the chance to kiss you,” he murmured. He paused and skimmed his lips down my throat. “I knew it was stupid, but I’d been waiting for that chance for too long. It felt like most of my life. I wasn’t going to let it slip by.”
He caught my earlobe and tugged on it lightly.
My knees tried to buckle then and he caught me up against him.
“You weren’t supposed to do this, Aleena,” he said, his voice going hard and flat. “You’re in my head, in my thoughts, in my dreams.”
I brought my hands up, bracing them on his chest between us.
“Being around you every day. Knowing you were so close and not being able to touch you,” he said. “It made it so much worse.”
“I need you,” he whispered, his mouth just a breath from mine.
Half-afraid to move, I lifted my gaze to his.
His eyes blazed hot, so hot, I thought they might burn.
No, I was already burning and I wanted to beg him to touch me, to have me, to do whatever he wanted. But I couldn’t give him what he needed.
I didn’t know how.
“I think about you, too.” The words escaped me before I could stop them.
He sucked in a breath and then, slowly, he lifted his hands to cup my face. I took advantage of that and slipped away.
He spun on me and the glint in his eyes blazed hotter.
Refusing to give in to the need inside me, I shook my head. “But you don’t need me, not really.”
His eyes narrowed on my face.
“I work for you,” I said, clearing my throat and going with the obvious and easiest route.
“We’ll figure it out.” Something passed across his features and was then gone behind that professional mask I hated. “Unless you don’t want me.”
My jaw dropped. Did he really think that? How could he think that? One touch from him and my entire body was singing. One look and my knees felt weak. I’d spent every minute of the past month denying how much I wanted him.
“I’m not what you want.” I forced myself to say it. “I know that what we did the other night...it’s not what you like.”
A muscle in his jaw pulsed, but he said nothing.
Damn it. I was going to have to say it, wasn’t I?
“The first weekend we were in the Hamptons, I went into the main house to explore.” I looked down, unable to meet his eyes while I confessed. “I…um…heard you. And Maya. I wasn’t sure what I was hearing, but I went upstairs…and…”
There was just the faintest sound and I jerked my head up.
“You saw,” he said quietly.
Jerkily, I nodded my head.
“And?”
I stared at him. “What do you mean…and?” The blush staining my face so red was almost painful. Swallowing, I looked away.
Then he moved toward me.
It was just one small step, but I felt it.
His hand came up and cupped my cheek. I felt him tugging gently on my face, but I didn’t want to look at him.
“What did you do, Aleena?”
The rough whisper was like a caress of silk down my spine. I shivered.
Then, as I was trying to figure out why I was suddenly, desperately turned on, he stroked his thumb across my lower lip, he leaned in and spoke softly into my ear. “What did you do, Aleena? You didn’t run away screaming. Somebody would have heard. And you didn’t quit, horrified by what you’d seen. So…what did you do?”
This time, when he tugged on my chin, I let him guide my face back to his.
“I watched,” I said, the words coming out reluctantly.
“You watched.” A slow smiled curled his lips. He leaned in closer and I almost moaned as he lifted an arm, bracing it on the island behind me—it was now a barrier just under my breasts, brushing up against me but not really touching me. “Did you like it, Aleena? Did you like what you saw?”
I shivered.
“I’m going to kiss you now.” He spoke with the same confidence he’d had when he’d kissed me that first time. “If you stop me, I’ll respect your choice and it will never happen again.”
I jerked my gaze up to his, watched as he shifted his weight until he was leaning lightly against me. “You…what?”
He traced my mouth with his thumb again.
“I’m going to kiss you. If you don’t want me to, or if you don’t want me, then stop me. We’ll go back to business only. Or, if you prefer, we will terminate our relationship and you will be free to leave with the severance package outlined in your contract.”
I’d pretty much stopped listening when he said he was going to kiss me.
He cupped my face and waited. When I didn’t push him away or step back, he lowered his head. He started gentle, his lips soft as they pressed against mine. Then his lips parted and his tongue flicked against the corner of my mouth.
I opened with a sigh.
He made a sound and the kiss changed, became hungrier. Hardened. His teeth captured my bottom lip, worrying at it until I moaned. He sucked it into his mouth, soothing it with his tongue. It felt swollen as he released it, breaking the kiss and dropping his hands, but not moving away from me.
“I want you,” he said, his voice calm. And his eyes were…not. He stared at me with a hunger that was almost desperate. Then he slid a hand up and closed it around my neck. “I want you. You think you can’t give me what I want? Then let me teach you, Aleena.”
Well, damn.
Chapter 11
Aleena
Let me teach you…
“I want you, too.” I could hardly believe I was saying the words. My stomach was on a crazy dance and my head wasn’t much better. “But...”
He tensed, the grin on his face fading.
I hurried, wanting him to understand. “You need to know that when I said I wasn’t experienced, I didn’t just mean in the way you were doing things.” My face was already so flushed that I didn’t think I could blush any more deeply. “I’ve only been with one guy. I was fifteen and...”
I looked away.
Dominic slid the hand on my neck up into my hair. “Tell me,” he murmured.
“It’s a common enough story,” I said, trying to smile. “Geeky girl, always acing the tests and messing things up for everybody else. Then a cute guy asked me to homecoming. He…um…he asked if I’d like to stop for a while on the way to the dance and I said yes.”
Darting a look up at Dominic, I saw a muscle pulse in his jaw and jerked my gaze away again. “We…well, we had sex. It was my first time. I didn’t really want to, but he talked about how much he liked me and, well, nobody ever had. So…I let him. It hurt.”
I blew out a breath at the memory, knowing the most painful part is what happened next. “When we got to the dance, he told everybody.” I remembered everything—the taunts, the pointed fingers, the girls whispering and laughing. One guy raising his hand and asking, “can I be next?”
“Want to know the worst part?” I said, a short bark bursting from my throat. “He hadn’t wanted to take me at the dance. He just did it because one of his friends…” I stopped abruptly.
“Aleena.”
Blowing out another breath, I made myself finish. “I’d been partnered with one of his football buddies as my lab partner. We were supposed to do a big project and the jock wasn’t pulling his fair share. I told the dumb idiot that if he didn’t do the work, that was fine, but he wouldn’t get the credit. I finished the project and turned it in without his name on it. Short story is, the guy failed and couldn’t play in four of the games that year. The dance, and what happened before, was payback. They all set it up, just to humiliate me.”
An ugly snarl escaped him and his long body tensed. After a moment, he seemed to calm. His hands smoothed up and down my arms and he drew me up against him. “Did he hurt you?”
I shook my head. “He didn’t force me.” My voice was muffled against his chest. “He just didn’t care that it was my first time. And…”
I stopped. I had sworn I’d never cry over that bastard again, but found the tears burning the back of my eyes. My throat clogged with the memory and a sob leaped from my mouth.
No!
Jerking away from him, I stormed over to where I’d left my wine and grabbed it, draining it in one long pull, trying to swallow the past with it. “The douche bag was an upper-class white boy.” Holding out my arms as if displaying myself, I said, “Clearly, I am not white. He told me he’d heard that ghetto bitches like me were supposed to be nymphos, but I’d turned out to be a
real
disappointment.”
My voice cracked.
Slamming the glass down, I turned away. “I’ve never even
been
to any kind frickin’ ghetto,” I said, sniffling. “There aren’t even that many black people back home. One of my friends told me I was the whitest black person she ever knew.”
I swiped at my tears as he came up behind me. Jerking my chin up, I glared at him. “I’m just a middle-class girl from a middle-class family and I’m
fine
with that. I’m biracial, but there’s nothing ghetto about me.” Then I cocked a brow at him. “If there
was
, I’d be just fine with it. But the son of a bitch only slept with me to hurt me and for revenge. Then, because I’m half-black, he thought that meant I’d be some kind of sex fiend who would enjoy the humiliation.”
Dominic stroked a hand down my hair. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
I sniffed once more. “Yeah, well.” Recalling what Molly had told me, I said, “It is what it is, right?”
“And sometimes what it is sucks.” He slid an arm around my waist. “Please tell me your next time was better, Aleena.”
“Well…you tell me.” I closed my eyes. “You were there.”
He grew still and silent, I couldn’t even hear him breathe. When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Please tell me that when we slept together, it wasn’t only the second time you’ve ever had sex.”
“Okay. I won’t tell you.”
“Shit.” He turned me to face him. His fingers were gentle as he wiped away the lingering tears. “If I would’ve known, I would’ve…” He stopped and I watched him search for the words. “Hell, I can’t say I would have been gentle. I wasn’t in a good place.” His thumb pressed against my lower lip. “Tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
“I enjoyed what we did,” I said.
“That’s not an answer,” he countered.
“It was...intense.” I chose my words carefully. “It may have hurt a bit, but not in a bad way. Not like before.”
He moved closer and I backed up. I couldn’t go far. The island was there and I found myself caged in, trapped between his body and the solid piece of kitchen furniture. “And when you saw me with Maya…was that intense? Did you enjoy watching me?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
His face moved closer. “Do you want me to do any of that to you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to teach you?”
His mouth closed over mine. His tongue pushed inside my mouth, harder this time, driving inside with intent and purpose. I sucked on him and I felt his reaction in the way his body tensed against mine. I did it again and curled my arms around him, arching closer.