Page 17 of His Forgotten Wife
Ares had never gotten over his half brothers tormenting him as a teen, over his parents not protecting him. The very idea of Dahlia somehow betraying him too brought the sensation of his chest caving in with a vengeance.
When she opened those big brown eyes and he was caught in them, he told himself to see the truth cemented deep in his bones. That Dahlia would never do anything to harm him in any way.
Her long lashes fluttered, as if she needed to hide away her expression. “I’m sorry. I nearly dragged you down.”
“Enough apologizing, Dahlia,” he said sharply, frustrated by her wariness.
She straightened herself, her eyes taking him in greedily. “Is there anything I can do to help with your workload? I feel like I’m really doing nothing.”
There was that thread of guilt again. He decided to ignore it for now. “You’re kidding, right? I couldn’t have gotten through this morning without you. And that’s not counting all the paperwork and documentation of months that you’re sorting for me.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. Her fingers lingered around his mouth, her finger once again tracing some imaginary lines. “I don’t like seeing you like this. You’re limping, and Arabella said you look deathly pale after a physiotherapy session. And clearly, you aren’t sleeping well either.”
“Recovery will take as long as it will. It’s frustrating, yes. But my body has its own rhythms and needs that I must respect.”
A soft, tremulous smile curved her lips. “I thought I would find you flipping out that you aren’t healing faster or that things are not getting resolved quicker.”
He shrugged. “I think nearly dying and then being out of it for almost two months has given me a different perspective on life. Isn’t that what you’re always moaning at me to develop? Asking me to stop and smell the damned roses wherever they are?”
She scowled. “You make me sound like a nagging wife.”
He grinned, finding the idea of Dahlia nagging at him day and night quite delightful. She had been like that once, he realized with a frown.
Their early years at GenTech, she had been more playful and snarkier and just more…open with him. In the last couple of years, all of that had disappeared.
Why? Had he discouraged it? Or had he done something else to make her close herself off to him?
Another thing to figure out and return to how it used to be. He added it to the endless mental to-do list with her name on it.
He didn’t know whether it was healthy or not, but she was definitely becoming an obsession to him. And he found it mildly alarming that there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“Why did you want to spend time alone with me?” she said, raising her chin. Suspicious little creature knew he was up to no good.
Slowly, pushing away the edges of her wrap, he reached for her waist. He wanted to touch the tight dip and the silky skin there. Her breath hitched audibly. “I noted that you didn’t bring me a birthday present this year.”
Soft pink dusted the tops of her cheeks while loose strands framed her fragile face.
She rolled her eyes and Ares wanted to tug her braid and kiss the sarcasm out of her.
“You hate it when I drag you to a restaurant and present you with a gag gift every year. You moan for days about it after as if I tormented you. You tell people who visit you at the office horrible stories about my gifts.”
“Yeah, but now I’m used to it. I look forward to it even.”
She folded her arms at her midriff, unintentionally emphasizing the upper curves of her breasts. Ares kept his gaze on her eyes through conscious effort while his fingers itched to trace those curves. “Okay. What do you want?” she demanded.
“Come closer. You aren’t scared of me, are you?”
“Of course not,” she said, her brown eyes turning a deeper amber in the sun.
“And you will tell me if anything I do is not okay?”
“Yes.” Her eyes flitted between his. “Ares, what is it that you want?”
“I want to touch you.”
Dolly wondered if somehow Ares had figured out how to tap into the deepest part of her psyche and decided to persuade her by using that. “Touch me how?” She blurted the question before she could curb it.
A grin danced at the edges of his mouth. The rascal pretended to frown, as if he was giving it a lot of thought. But she knew his tells from years of watching him and his answer was ready.
“Like a lover,” he said, his eyes darkening.
She pulled back as if she could read his intentions.
He held her gaze without looking away, as if he didn’t care what she saw in it.
She licked her lip and swallowed and like a laser pointer, it focused on her mouth.
His hand reached out, gently wiping the beads dancing over her upper lip.
She felt like a pinned specimen, every breath and movement under complete scrutiny.
Then there was the fact that she had waited for so long for him to feel like this. To want to touch her and kiss her and…to want her, simply.
And yet, when she’d admitted something similar, he had been so angry . So put off. So was this change because of the new Ares the accident and the coma seemed to have unleashed? Or was he testing her to catch her out?
No, that was too cruel. Even for how blunt and cutting Ares could be.
“Dahlia?” he prompted, something careful in the way he said her name.
“Let’s get this straight. Just so I’m not floating around in some feverish, fantastical dream,” she said, voice turning hoarse, “you want to touch me like a lover would?”
“Have you had feverish fantastical dreams about me?” he pounced, that bad-boy swagger back.
“That’s not the answer to my question.”
“Yes, I want to. I want to more than touch you, Dahlia. I want to kiss you and pleasure you and…do other filthy things to you.”
Her heart gave a wild kick in her chest, her belly churning. “Since when?” she said, unable to hide the flicker, no, the live flame, of interest that lit her up.
Now his frown was real. “Why does that matter?”
“Because,” she said, nearly shouting the word, “I want to know if this is some kind of game you’re playing. You know, to…” The sudden hard glint in his eyes made her choose her words carefully. “Change my mind. To stop me from leaving.”
“Wouldn’t wisdom advise the opposite?” he said, bitterness punctuating each word. “That entangling sexually with your executive assistant—the woman you’re fake-engaged to and one who knows all your professional secrets—is the most dangerous thing to do?”
“It would,” she said, heat streaking her cheeks. “I just…” She stared at him, the words refusing to come. She was too tempted.
But there was also the reminder of how she’d barely survived his rejection before the accident. Tangling with him now was like playing with fire.
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.”