Page 37 of His Forgotten Wife
His gaze burned with molten desire that Dolly couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams. But there was also something more there that she couldn’t identify.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said, unable to hide her vulnerability from creeping into her tone.
“You are beautiful, Dahlia.” He shook his head, spraying her bare skin with tiny droplets of water that should have sizzled against her skin for how hot she felt. “Your mouth, your breasts, your curves, your legs…everything about you is hot. And you tell me, in nine years, I never had the guts or urge to tell you this? Much less act on it.”
Dolly swallowed. What could she say to that? How could she convey to him how afraid she was that this Ares, who saw her, wanted her, touched her like this, might disappear in the blink of an eye? How did she explain to him that she was existing on the razor’s edge of fantasy and reality, afraid of both?
“No. You—you didn’t like dating, and for the big charity events, you usually hired someone professional, from like a dating agency. I always had the impression that you were not into…physical stuff. As for me, I was very much a tool in your kit, Ares. A very important one, mind you, but an accessory. I don’t think you saw me as a…”Person, she’d been about to say but caught it at the last second.
He had paid Isiah years ago just so she could have someone to talk to about her nightmares and he hadn’t even had that much disposable cash at that time. Hehadcared about her pain. About her happiness.
About her.
Confusion filled her. But still, as always, she tried to navigate this, both for him and herself.
“Some of your irrational dislike for relationships, romantic or otherwise, your refusal to feel emotional vulnerability… I understand those things better now, given your childhood and your family. Of course, I think it was easier for you, than anyone else, to shut down all that stuff. To not let yourself go down that route at all. Your willpower, your ability to focus, shutting everything else out is, as you know, your superpower.” She added a little laugh to her words. “And superpowers have downsides too.”
Ares frowned, even as his broad palm pushed her top up, his fingers rubbing every inch of flesh he uncovered. Her nipples beaded as his fingers moved under her breasts, and in between, and over and around, but never touching the aching buds. How he could make her analyze him even as he drove her crazy…she didn’t care to know, as long as he kept doing it.
“Clearly, I was a foolish man,” he said, grabbing the neckline with both hands. Anger punctuated each word. The fabric ripped with a hiss in the thundering silence. Dolly wonderedif the entire world could hear her thumping heartbeat as his penetrating stare moved to her bare breasts.
She thought his fingers might be trembling when he cupped her breasts, his thumbs now tapping and tracing and drawing mindless circles around her nipples. Her spine arched off the bed, and she would have flown away, if she didn’t sink her fingers into his hair and anchor herself there.
“Tell me, Dahlia. Tell me what you need. I have some ideas, but I want to hear what you want. I want those delicious sounds you make when you come. Only a thousand times louder. I want to leave you soaking so that when I come inside you, I can take you as roughly as I want.” He whispered the words against her breast, the rasp of his stubble deliciously scraping the sensitive skin.
She pressed her hands on top of his palms covering her breasts and squeezed. “My nipples… I would love your mouth here.” She closed her eyes, whatever little courage she had used up in saying that.
His pine scent surrounded her, his heart was thumping against hers but she still couldn’t believe that she was saying these words to the man who she had worshipped first as a friend, then as a fantasy lover.
“Your wish is my command,” Ares whispered as he sprinkled soft, slow kisses all over her breasts as if he had some great plan in his head. He kept kissing in concentric circles around the needy tips.
She tugged at his hair, impatience making her rough. “My nipples, Ares. Give me what I need.”
His husky laughter rumbled against her skin. And in the next breath, he flicked at one nipple with the tip of his tongue and then wrapped his lips around it.
Dolly held his head to her breast and moaned so loud that it wouldn’t be a surprise if everyone heard her. Not that she cared.
The way he gave his thousand percent to any task he undertook, Ares licked and sucked at her nipple, as if it was the most delicious treat he had just discovered.
When one side felt over sensitized, he switched to the other one and laved it with the exact same attention. On and on he circled her, inside his mouth, the tip of his tongue tapping against her in some rhythm that tightened the knot in her lower belly.
Dolly arched and moaned as his mouth moved down her belly. Her hand stretched out on the bed, reached something…that felt like a notebook. Without thought, she grabbed it, distracted.
Usually, the man was as careful with his notebooks as a dragon would be with its treasure. They were his necessity and his one luxury vice. He ordered the most expensive hand-stitched ones, made endless, copious amounts of notes for different projects in them and didn’t let anyone, even her or Christina, so much as get a peek inside.
She was about to put the notebook on the side table when she caught her own name written on the white label in his neat script. Her breath was rapid and her gaze more than a little blurry as she opened the notebook. Flow charts, and names of body parts, and sketches and instructions written out in his methodical handwriting jumped at her.
For just a second, she wondered if this was some kind of master plan to seduce her into staying with him. It wasn’t that much of a stretch because she’d seen his notes for companies he was about to acquire and so on. A hard nip at her hip had her look away from the notebook, into the deep gray gaze that instantly took her captive.
“You’re not here with me,” he said, digging his teeth deeper into the flesh of her hip. Even as his fingers busied with the hemof her panties. “You know I demand a hundred percent of your attention, Dahlia. Now I’ll have to punish you.”
Dolly smiled at his impatient tone. Clearly the man was as bossy here as he was in a boardroom. “What is this?” she said, shaking the book in her hand.
“Oh, I made some notes.” As if that answered enough, he played with the tiny bows on the seam of her panties.
Dolly tapped his shoulder with her foot, even as part of her was horrified that she was touching him like this. And when he didn’t look up from humming against her skin, she put her other foot on his other shoulder and tapped again. He looked up, his mouth curving in the most wicked smile she’d ever seen.
“Notes about what? And why are my name and different body parts in here?” she said, almost losing her line of thought when he moved that delicious mouth down to her mound, still covered by the thin mesh of her panties. The kiss he placed there made her arch her hips into chasing his mouth with wanton abandon.
