Page 32 of His Forgotten Wife
And yet, surviving his rejection and the last weeks where she’d thought she’d forever lost him had given her new perspective on herself too. Why should she not reach for what she wanted, when he was offering exactly that? Why couldn’t she have a fun fling and work him out of her system? Why shouldn’t she have this, if she already knew she could stay standing when it ended?
“It’s not a game, Dahlia,” Ares said, pulling her closer. The more he touched her, the easier her surrender would be and he knew that too.
“How are you flipping the switch to this so easily?” she whispered, sounding helpless but drawn in.
“Have you ever known me to question why my mind operates the way it does?” he said.
A swift, loose kind of heat was spreading through her limbs, pooling in her lower belly. The brush of his engorged shaft against her belly was its own torment.
All he wanted was to push her into the sand and sink into her so that he could relieve the ache. To discover if she would feel as good as he was beginning to believe. “All I know is that you’ve taken it over entirely. Like today, when you walked in…” Gently, he nudged her a step back and ran his gaze over her. “You’ve never dressed like this before.”
Ares wrapped his fingers around her waist. Like an invading conqueror refusing to give up hard-won ground.
For once, she met his eyes straight on, not hiding the naked desire thrumming through every inch of her. It was a trip in itself, to let him see all of her like that. To let him see how she trembled from head to toe when he was near.
Desire spun through her at the simple eye contact, making her dizzy. Because he rarely, if ever, let anyone look into his eyes.
“Don’t you want to hear what the sight of you, dressed like this, does to me?” he said, each word dripping with his hunger.
Like her, he was taking down the last of the armor between them and surrender, Dolly decided, had never felt sweeter.
“I want to know,” she said. “Even though the sensible part of me is screaming that we’re crossing a line that can never be uncrossed.”
“Are you worried that I’m taking advantage of you?” Belying his question, his grip on her hips tightened. And she wondered if he even knew. But there was no doubt that he wanted her as much as she did him. His words, his body language, and the tension gripping him told her that. He nuzzled her nose and Dolly thought she might melt like ice cream under the hot Greek sun. “Does this scare you?” A thread of vulnerability he couldn’t mask echoed through the question.
“Let’s get one thing clear, Ares,” she said, clasping his cheeks. “I’ve never, nor will I in the future, be scared of you. I just think…we’re complicating things.”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. Right now, I’m attracted to you. That’s all. Then there’s the fact that you’re determined to leave me soon. So you see, I would be a fool to not make this move right now. When you consume every waking thought. We both know it can’t be anything more.”
She nodded, not surprised that he was thinking along the same lines as her about this…affair. With his usual blunthonesty, telling her what it would be and what it wouldn’t be. No more foolish dreams, no weaving extra meaning into every gesture. “Wow, if only I had your logical brain. Your persuasive words. Your utter arrogance that the world will arrange itself to your needs,” she said.
His gaze ate her up as he dragged his fingers down to her clavicle and the hollow of her throat. When he notched his thumb into it, her pulse rocketed. Satisfaction blazed in his eyes, turning the irises molten.
“You’re so responsive to my touch, Dahlia. It’s the most primal thing I’ve ever known.” His mouth joined his fingers, tracking warm trails down her jaw. “Should I tell you how I want to explore all this silky-smooth skin with my lips and tongue? How much I want to dig my teeth into the tight dip of your waist? Or how sexy your thick, toned legs look in those shorts?”
“God, Ares. Let a girl catch her breath,” Dolly murmured, her body bowing in his arms however he wanted it. Fantasy blended into reality and she lost her foothold on both. For just a second, fear swamped her. With her wrapped around him like a vine, would he remember that fateful moment when she had confessed something similar to him, though not in such blatant words?
“Shh… Dahlia, I’ve got you,” he said, pressing his fingers into her lower back. “This is me,agapi. There’s no need for fear between us.”
Dolly buried her face in his neck, afraid of what he might see. But she refused to let his previous rejection ruin it for them now, refused to let the shadow of a future that had never been possible blur the present. “I know,” she said, as much for herself as for him. “But it’s hard to reconcile this man who can so easily give words to his wants, who feels such naked desire, with the man who never even noticed that I was a woman, much less a desirable one.”
It was a question he had asked himself numerous times.
“I can only surmise what the past me, who by the way sounds like a dumbass, was thinking.”
She smiled then, even though it was the curving of her lips against his neck that he sensed. It felt like a ray of sunlight touching his face after standing in musty darkness for too long. Even this hunger for her touch, this new need to bind her to him…all of it was like standing in brilliant sunlight after living in a cave all his life. “I might agree with that.”
He buried his face in her hair and the familiar scent calmed him. “All I can say is that I must have wound myself up very tightly around the boundaries between us. And given how important you are to me, didn’t wish to cross them.”
“Okay,” she said, still shaking.
Ares knew how much of a chance she was taking on him, how brave she was being by exploring this thing between them. “Put your arms around me, Dahlia,” he said, not giving her an inch.
The few seconds before her arms came around his neck, fingertips creeping upward into his hair, felt like a thousand eternities to Ares’s impatient mind.
And when she went on her toes and pressed herself deeper into him, near-violent shivers racked her strong frame. So much vulnerability wrapped in strength. But even he, with little knowledge of how this worked, understood that these shivers spewed from a different source. Her breasts rubbed up against him in a delicious glide that made his eyes nearly roll back.
He grinned, his attention drifting to the rise and fall of her chest and the nipples poking through the crop top. She was aroused by his nearness, by his words, by him. Having that proof was so much better than the speculation. He wanted not just her kisses and her passion, but all her deeply held secrets.
