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Cecily

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lie to him , a voice warns, but I already have too many untruths accumulated to add one more to the list.

The look in his eyes tells me he won’t give up until he gets an answer. Even without life experience when it comes to men, I know it’s a completely inappropriate conversation for an employee and a boss to have, but I can’t deny him what he wants to know.

“No,” I say, embarrassed and averting my eyes from his sky-gray ones.

Now, more than ever, Dionysus will know how strange I am. Who, at twenty years old, hasn’t had a boyfriend yet?

“Look at me.” It’s an order, but it also sounds like a husky, sensual command, which makes me shiver.

My God, what is happening to me? I might just be going crazy!

Annoyed, I look at him again. “No. I didn’t have the time or interest in it.” I’m only partially revealing the truth.

I was curious, yes. After all, I am an avid reader of romance novels. The problem was having been born in a town with five thousand habitants, where everyone knows everyone and everything is talked about.

“And you wanted to, did you?”

“I’m feeling like a specimen in a laboratory. Do you think I’m a freak because I haven’t tried anything yet? I don’t want to be with someone just for the sake of it—I want them to mean something to me.” I could go back to the party, but I feel numb, as if his gaze has the power to keep me still, and that’s both scary and exciting.

“I didn’t say that being inexperienced was abnormal. I’m just surprised.”

“Why?”

“We’re not boss and employee yet, so I’ll speak freely.”

I nod my head in agreement.

“Does that mean I can say whatever I want without you feeling like you’re being harassed?”

Again I nod, and I see one corner of his mouth lift in a half-smile.

Everything about him is kind of mesmerizing. The color of his skin, the mischief in his eyes, the sensual mouth with the lower lip that is a little fuller than the top one.

The man can make my hormones boil just by looking at me, and God wanted the one to awaken me to sexual attraction to be the same person who is forbidden to me.

“Ask me again,” he says, approaching.

“Why were you surprised when I said I’d never been with anyone, Mr.—"

“No, we’re still in neutral territory, Cecily. Say my name, without ‘Mr.’ or ‘sir.’”

“Why were you surprised when I said I’ve never been with anyone, Dionysus?”

He’s very close, almost glued to me, on me. I feel it everywhere, and I like the feeling.

“Because you are beautiful, which makes it unbelievable that you’re untouched.”

I blink, not believing he just said that. “Are you saying that to make me feel better or because you really find me interesting?”

“ Interesting?” he repeats and touches a strand of my hair, feeling it in his fingers, just like his son did. “No, you are not interesting , girl. You are delicious.”

My body goes crazy form the proximity. I forget the party and the people. I forget what I came to do in New York and that from tomorrow this man will be my boss. What I do know is that I want more of this. A little more from him .

We face each other in silence, and I melt at the steel-gray glow that is now interspersed with flames, incandescent and inviting.

My limbs are like jelly, and my lungs aren’t working like they should. All my senses belong to him, and inside me, a voice—crazy, reckless, and without judgment—screams: mine .

I shake my head, trying to clear it, but it’s no use. The feeling doesn’t go away, because my body screams for his, feverish and needy.

I lift my face so I can see him better, since he’s very tall. Now we’re so close I feel the heat of his breath.

I want to touch him and feel how hard I guess his body must be, and I’m embarrassed because I think he can read me completely and knows what I’m feeling.

“Do it,” he orders, confirming my intuition, and feeling like I’m outside my body, I take a step closer. His commanding tone makes me shiver and my entire skin tingle.

“I shouldn’t.”

“We are nothing yet, except a man and a woman. Do what you feel like, Cecily.”

I hear a moan like a cat’s whine, and with horror, I realize that it has escaped me.

His nostrils flare, and his gaze hardens. His breathing is as shaky as mine as he leans down and whispers in my ear, his lips brushing it, “Touch me. It will be your only chance. I don’t get intimate with employees.”

That should offend me because he’s assuming that everything depends exclusively on his will, as if he’s sure that I would succumb in the blink of an eye. I’m long past the pride phase, however, and his statement encourages me to do what I want.

I place both hands flat on his chest.

“That’s right. Feel my flesh. Is that what you want?”

I don’t answer, and he grabs my chin to make me look at him.

“It’s what you want,” he repeats arrogantly, and this time, it’s an affirmation.

“Yes, but I wanted to feel the heat of your skin too, because even through your shirt, you are so hot . . . How can someone be that hot?”

I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. I just focus on taking what I can, remembering what he said. Tomorrow this trance of lust will no longer be allowed.

I run my fingertips across his chest and stop at his nipples, massaging them, and a husky sound escapes his throat. I let my hand slip between the buttons of his shirt, and I’m startled when he catches my wrist.

“I don’t give a damn if you’re a virgin. If you weren’t going to become my son’s babysitter tomorrow, I would spend the whole night inside you.”

My knees lose strength at the exact moment he wraps an arm around my waist. “Oh, God.”

I try to move away because I don’t know how to deal with this. His words turned on all the nerve endings in my body at once, like a switch that only he knew the location of.

“I can’t have you, but I want you to remember today when you go to bed. Caress your pussy for me. Imagine it’s my hand when it’s wet and moaning with lust.”

I shiver in his arms and feel dizzy, too.

He is very seductive. If another man said something like that to me, I would push him away, so why do I want more with this one?

“Ah, there you are!” I hear Elina’s voice say, and I get such a shock that if Dionysus’s arm hadn’t been around my waist, I would have fallen.