Page 20 of His Forgotten Wife

“I do accept your proposition. On the condition that when I leave here, we can still remain friends. Even though we won’t be colleagues, or fake engaged anymore.

” It was more than a little pathetic but she wasn’t sure she could stay sane and functioning if she didn’t see him from time to time.

At least, this way, she could ease herself out of his life slowly instead of taking herself out at the knees.

Instant tension suffused every muscular inch of his body.

Shoulders straight, his flat abdomen rippled with his angry breaths.

“Let me get this straight. You are agreeable to having sex with me, posing as my fake fiancée, and at the end of all of this, you still plan to walk away but want to remain friends?”

“Something like that.”

He shook his head, dislodging a thick wet strand onto his forehead.

Dolly’s fingers tingled as she imagined pushing that lock back.

Why was she just imagining it? Through some twist of fate, the man she had pined after for years wanted her and she was in his bedroom. She was allowed to touch him.

He was hers , even if only for the next couple of weeks. He was hers without any doubt tonight. Covering the distance between them, Dolly stepped up to him and pushed that stubborn lock of hair back.

He caught her wrist, stopping her from coming any closer. “Why not come back to work for me, then?”

“Because unlike you, I won’t be able to separate the personal and the professional. Not after tonight. It’s messy and will disrupt my work.”

“Because you will have feelings for me after having sex with me?” he said, watching her with an unerring intensity. God, the man had lashes she would die for.

A knot of tears and an unbearable ache sat in her throat. Too late , her heart whispered. “Possibly,” she said, forcing a laugh.

“But you’re very sure that I won’t?”

She clasped his cheek, the stubble rasping against her palm.

“You like people to stay in very specific, separate boxes, Ares. You need your world to function in a particular way. We have complicated this too much anyway.” Her thumb moved over the jut of his cheekbone. “You will find all this tedious soon.”

He nodded, as if she was imparting a very important lesson.

“So after these few weeks of having sex with me and pretending to be my fiancée and shedding tears over how much pain I was in, you will leave me like you left the company. And go back to the search for the perfect man to fall in love with?” He pressed his cheek deeper into her palm and rubbed, even as his words aimed to cut.

“Clearly, you operate in the same way I do, Dahlia.”

Dolly flushed. “What are you saying?”

“I think if you leave, you and I are done. It is as simple as that.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Not at all.”

Widening his thighs, he pulled her close.

The swipe of his straining cock against her inner thigh made her gasp.

As if pulled by a string, her gaze dipped to his crotch.

The thick outline of his erection made hot pulses run up and down her entire body.

She licked her lip and a rumbling sound came from his mouth.

“See, this is getting messy already,” she said hoarsely. “I’m here, desperate to kiss you and touch you and…you’re making this about how you want this to play out.”

“Are you? Desperate for me?”

Leaning forward, she buried her face in his throat and breathed in deep. It might be her safe place in the entire world after all. “I can’t sleep for wanting you. The whole world, all these experiences that you have laid at my feet, everything feels colorless when I imagine touching you.”

His mouth found hers in a violent frenzy. She gasped as he devoured her, as if she were his last meal.

There was no soft claiming or learning or exploring, like their kisses of the last week. No waiting for her to feel comfortable or familiar with his particular brand of need.

This was a pure devouring hunger, spreading to every limb, shaking her from within.

His hands were everywhere—in her hair, stroking over her shoulders and back, cupping her hips, grabbing her ass and pulling her fully into him.

The press of his cock against her heated center made her throw her head back and moan like a wanton creature.

Ares dragged his teeth down her throat, leaving a trail of scorching heat behind. “Wrap your legs around my waist.”

Dolly had no idea how she got her limbs to follow his command, but the next thing she knew, his erection rubbed against her core with the exact amount of pressure she needed.

She sank her fingers into this thick, damp hair, eager to touch him everywhere.

She wasn’t going to leave an inch of him unexplored tonight, she promised herself.

She would glut herself on him so much that he would remember tonight forever too.

The bright recessed lights in the ceiling made her blink as her back hit the cool sheets. Even the silky glide of her robe against her fevered flesh was too much sensation.

His torso looming over her, Ares looked down at her, taking in her shaking form with a fascinated gaze.

The sensuous thrust of his lower lip made her want to bite him.

Hard. “I wondered how you would look with all that efficiency and composure stripped from you,” he whispered, pushing away damp tendrils of hair from her forehead.

“I thought my efficiency and composure were what made me such a model assistant,” she croaked out.

“Not in every context.” One long finger rubbed at her lower lip and then drew down her neck and chest, stopping at the V-neck of her pajama top.

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. He had cared 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 wondered if 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.”