Sway With Me (Inspiring the Greek Billionaire) (14 page)

Chapter 14

The ancient saying is no heresy.

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

William Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice
, act 2, scene 9

She stood before him in a robe made of silk, the white fabric sheer enough he could see the shadow of curls between her thighs.

She licked her lips and slipped the robe off one shoulder, revealing a creamy expanse of skin which begged for his lips. “Don’t you need to see what’s underneath the robe?”

Although he didn’t require her naked, he would not refuse her offer. “Yes. You may drop your robe now.”

She nibbled on her plump lower lip, her cheeks turning red from her fear of being seen by anyone other than her husband as the sunshine lit up the black of her hair like a raven’s wing.

He moaned, his fingers tightening on the hard wood, wishing they could sink into her flesh. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve her, but he’d never betray her trust. And with this commission, he’d finally provide her with the lifestyle worthy of a Muse.

With a shy smile, she untied the sash of her robe and slowly pulled back each side, showing him the blush which trailed from her cheeks to her breasts.

His temperature soared, his clothes became tight and restrictive. He couldn’t remain dressed. He strode to her, his intention to yank her to the ground and take her hard.

He didn’t. Instead, he fell to his knees, wrapped his arms under her buttocks, and pressed a slow, gentle kiss to her womanly core. Her fingers entangled in his hair as he laid his cheek against her flat abdomen, suddenly sensing something different about her.

He looked up and she smiled down on him with tears in her eyes. “We are going to have a baby, my love. Does this please you?”

“More than I could possibly express,” he declared, sliding up her body to take her into his arms. “But let me try.”

“Make love to me again. I need to feel you inside of me once more,” she demanded.

He lowered himself to the grass, laying her on top of him to protect her and the baby from the hard ground. How he loved this woman!

Ryan didn’t want it to end. Portia felt so damn good writhing on top of him, kissing him as though she’d never get enough. He ran his hand through her long hair, tangling it around his fingers, kissing her harder, deeper. His other hand crept under the fabric of her shirt, massaging the hot, silky skin of her back.

Wait. When had she gotten dressed?

His eyes flew open. He’d been dreaming. Again.

They were in the mansion. In bed. Kissing. Touching.

He hadn’t spoken to her since leaving her on the dance floor of the club. On the way home, he’d stopped at the liquor store and slammed a few shots with a sympathetic Zeus before crashing for the night. He’d spilled all the details about their dirty dancing and how she had jumped to the belief that he would use sex to get her to sell the house. Then the intuitive cat had reminded him that Portia hadn’t said a damn thing. It was Ryan’s guilty conscience that had taken him in that direction. She’d simply asked him why money was important to him.

How could he explain money hadn’t meant anything to him until his friends and family assumed the worst of him? They’d automatically concluded that he’d spent the millions from his trust fund on partying, toys, and gambling. With the exception of Braden, no one bothered to ask him. He’d gambled all right . . . on a woman he’d thought he loved. A woman he thought loved him, up until the day she screwed him over, only not for the reasons everyone believed.

His family had told him it was time for him to stand on his own two feet and earn his own money, to prove he wouldn’t casually throw away millions of dollars again. They wanted him to understand its worth. In that moment, when his mother and father had treated him as just another trust fund baby rather than the son they should have known well enough to know to ask him where the darned money went, he’d learned that money meant everything in this world.

They’d never forgiven him for his role in the fire Alexander had started. The loss of his funds gave them the perfect opportunity to punish him for that mistake, as if he hadn’t punished himself for months. It was inevitable they’d turn their backs on him, so he’d turned his back on his family first.

He’d hoped Portia would be different.

Maybe she’d had a change of heart when she’d come home from the bar and this was her creative way of telling him? God, he hoped so.

He returned her kisses, plundering his tongue into the hot recesses of her mouth. He dragged her shirt higher up her back.

Eyes closed, she moaned and arched her spine, tipping her head toward the ceiling. “Does this please you?”

“Oh, you have no idea,” he responded, taking the opportunity to kiss her neck. He stopped. A nagging sliver of worry tickled at the corner of his mind and continued to grow until a full-blown sense of
déjà vu
slammed into his awareness. Hadn’t she spoken those very words in his dream?

He clutched her face in his hands. “Portia, are you awake?”

She turned her head to kiss his palm. “Make love to me again. I need to feel you inside of me once more.”

Ah, hell, not only was she sleeping, but she was dreaming the same dream. How was that possible?

He flipped her onto her back and gently shook her shoulders. “Portia, wake up.”

She cracked her lids and looked around in a daze. “Is it morning?”

“No,” he whispered. “You were . . . I don’t know how to say this, but . . . you were . . .”

“Spit it out, Ryan, so I can go back to sleep. Was I snoring?”

He shook his head. “You were kissing me.”

“What?” she asked sleepily.

“Were you dreaming of us making love in Greece?”

“I don’t remember. Night,” she said, her eyes drifting shut as she rolled over to her side.

She’d played it cool, but he didn’t believe her for a second. This wasn’t over.

After Ryan had woken her up and informed her she’d kissed him in her sleep, Portia panicked. Then she did what any logical woman would do . . . She attempted to breathe deeply like she’d immediately fallen back to sleep and didn’t move a muscle until Ryan’s even breathing indicated he’d passed out.

How the hell had he known about the dream?

Hours later, her lips still tingled and a slow, dull ache pulsed between her thighs. Not only had she dreamed of making love to Ryan, she’d almost done it for real. Thank goodness he’d woken up and stopped her, because if she had been the one to wake up first, she might not have come to her senses.

He’d saved her from the embarrassment of giving herself to him then regretting it in the morning once he tried to convince her to sell. Money was important to him and she didn’t have any. He’d never want a poor, out-of-work, uneducated woman like her when he was used to supermodels and heiresses.

If she made love with him, she’d hand him her heart. She’d give him all of her, just as her mother had done with Portia and Viola’s fathers. What had her mother gotten in return for inspiring the inner artists of those two men? Other than a couple of fatherless daughters—nada. Her mother claimed those men were not her soul mates, but as their Muse, she had a duty to inspire them. Apparently, in her mind, a Muse’s inspiration must require unprotected sex. Portia didn’t buy it for a second. Her mother wouldn’t have given herself to them unless she loved them. And Portia didn’t want to live her life drifting in the wind, endlessly searching for someone to give her life meaning. Her life already had meaning . . . even if she didn’t know exactly what that was at the moment.

Loving Ryan could destroy her. She couldn’t allow that.

She pushed her thoughts of Ryan out of her head and concentrated on what was really important . . . the house.

Later that day, while he cleaned the gutters of leaves, she tackled the dining room, scrubbing the walls and sweeping up debris left from the fire. Holding a broom in one hand, she used it as a partner and waltzed around the room. Whenever she got confused, dancing helped clear the clutter in her head.

There was more to that story about the fire. The creases on Ryan’s forehead and his rigid demeanor when he’d told her of Alexander’s delusion attested to that. She wished he would open up to her. Last night, he’d let the mask slip, and she saw a glimmer of the passion lurking inside of him. His possessiveness, his territorial claiming of her on the dance floor, the way his eyes had narrowed their focus to her, tracking every move she made. She’d never felt more desired in her life. Then something had scared him enough to slam those walls back up and shut her out again.

She was tired of the hot and cold game he was playing, but if she wanted the game to end, she’d have to take the initiative and stop it.

Pulling her cell from her pocket, she took a deep, cleansing breath. She had to do this for the both of them.

She dialed, half-hoping she’d get his voicemail. No such luck.

“Good morning, Portia,” Dillon said smoothly.

Goose bumps prickled all over her skin, and not in the good, ‘I’ve got to have you’ kind of way. Waves of guilt bombarded her, twisting her stomach and squeezing her throat. She closed her eyes and went
relevé
. As wrong as this felt, it was a necessary evil. “Hi, Dillon. I thought about it, and I’d like to take you up on your offer to go to dinner, just the two of us this time.” With Ryan at her side the whole night, she hadn’t given Dillon a chance. She’d rectify that and hopefully force Ryan out of her mind and, God willing, out of her heart for good. Once she started dating someone, the attraction and flirtation between her and Ryan would end.

“That would be fantastic. Are you available this evening?”

She ignored the sensation of somersaulting monkeys in her belly. “Yes, tonight would be great. I think it would be best if I met you somewhere.”

He chuckled. “I get it. I’m not anxious to have another run-in with your roommate, either. How about we meet at my uncle’s restaurant, Grecian
Taverna
, at seven?”

Another pang of guilt slammed into her. Not only was she going on a date with a guy she wasn’t interested in to get over her infatuation with Ryan, she was going to eat at a restaurant which competed with Braden’s. Guess when she did something to feel guilty about, she did it to the extreme.

“That sounds fine,” she responded with fake enthusiasm.

“Portia . . . are you sure you want to do this? If you and Ryan—”

“There’s nothing going on between Ryan and me,” she lied, digging her nails into her thighs. She hated to lie, but after tonight, it would be the truth.

He paused. “Okay, then. I’ll see you tonight.”

She hung up and slumped to the floor. Why should she feel guilty? She and Ryan weren’t in a relationship. She wasn’t promising Dillon her everlasting love and devotion. Just dinner. And she owed no allegiance to Braden even if he did lend her a car. If Viola could hang out with Jon—the man who owned the competing restaurant—then Portia could go on a date with the owner’s nephew.

Loud music blared from down the hall. She tipped her head and smiled, recognizing the high note of Steven Tyler in Aerosmith’s “Dream On,” one of her favorite songs. Ryan must have finished the gutters. Where was he?

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she got up and followed the music down the hall to the ballroom. She found the door closed and debated whether to interrupt. Maybe he wanted to be left alone. After she’d blatantly lied to him about the dream, she wouldn’t blame him.

Sucking it up, she knocked. Let him decide if he wanted her in there or not. Surprisingly, the door creaked open. She stepped into the room and at the sight of Ryan, froze as still as a statute while her heart sped up to the point of pain.

He was in jeans. No shirt. No shoes. Just tight pants which accentuated every muscle hidden underneath. For some reason, seeing him like that was sexier than if she’d seen him naked.

Okay, maybe not sexier than if he was naked because she hadn’t seen him totally naked yet. She shook her head and wrung her hands—scratch the
yet
part—but definitely sexier than Ryan in his underwear and Ryan in a towel. It wasn’t only what he was or wasn’t wearing. It was the intensity of his gaze, the confidence in his hand as it effortlessly glided back and forth over the piece of wood he held in his palm. What would it feel like to have all of that intensity directed at her? She’d only gotten a small taste of it last night. This Ryan . . . this was the man he hid from everyone. This was the one she’d give almost anything to know. This was the man she’d dreamed of these last two months.

She coughed, partly out of necessity to draw air into her lungs, and partly to alert him to her presence. Whether the music hampered his ability to hear her or he was too enraptured in his task, he didn’t acknowledge her. What was he doing?

She cautiously moved toward him. If he paid attention, he’d see her reflection in the mirror, but he was too busy staring at the small piece of wood in his hand.

“Ryan?” She reached out and tapped his naked shoulder then quickly pulled it back, curling her hand into a fist to resist the temptation of doing something which would defeat all of her good intentions.

He swirled around and dropped the wood to the floor. “Portia.” His eyes blazed hot as he looked her over from head to toe. He blinked a few times as if coming to his senses and bent to retrieve the wood. “What’s up?”

She didn’t want to yell her news about her date. “Could you turn down the music?”