Page 11 of The Bargain (Dalton Family #2)
Chapter Eleven
Sofia
E than is here, standing in my office, and I can barely breathe.
And Lord, help me, he’s so damn beautifully male that it’s impossible not to think about how perfectly the high-end fabric of his blue suit molds his tall, athletic frame.
Or how good he looks naked, how dominant and hot he is when we’re naked together.
Unbidden, I’m back in the hotel room with him, pressed to the beam next to the window, and I shove away the image.
He might be the man who touched me with the skill of an artist holding a brush to canvas, but that was before he became my boss.
Unless he’s here to tell me something went wrong and Moore’s is pulling my contract I’ve only just signed.
Somehow, I’m on my feet, my knees trembling with the very idea of this. “How are you here right now? Why are you here?”
Ethan steps further into the room and shuts the door, and my heart thunders in my chest. By the time he’s rounded my desk, I’ve turned to greet him, only remotely aware that my cotton dress is wrinkled and I’m not sure I’m wearing lipstick.
Why is he here? That’s all I can think about until I know the answer.
For a moment, he’s stone, studying me, his eyes as unreadable as his handsome face, but I notice the disarray of his thick, dark hair, as if he fretted before coming here, as if his fingers dove into his hair, and his mind and body were as wild as mine feels right this moment.
“Are you cancelling the contract, Ethan?” I ask, desperate to know the truth.
“Of course not. We’re lucky to have you, and you’re the Zoey brand in our portfolio.
” He runs his hands through his hair—just the way I imagined he did before he came here—before he closes the space between us and his hands come down on my face, tilting my gaze to his.
“I swore I wouldn’t touch you until we talked, but damn it, Sofia, I can’t seem to help myself.
I didn’t touch her. I don’t want her. I want you .
I want to kiss you. I want a lot of things with you, Sofia, but if you tell me to let you go, if that’s what you want, I will. ”
His touch is the fire that burns away the cold of my departure, but my emotions are jumbled, and I’m confused. My hands go to his waist and touching him reminds me how little control I have with him all over again. “I don’t know what I want with you, Ethan.”
“She showed up. She cornered me.”
“I saw you with her, and then you were gone,” I say, realizing now this detail has bothered me. “You didn’t come back to the room.”
“I met with her for all of ten minutes. She told me my brother is up to no good, and I believed her for one reason: she’s trying to save herself. I had to call Harper and meet her at the coffee shop next door.”
He was with Harper, not Anna. It takes me a moment to process what he’s telling me. “It was that bad?”
“Yes. It was that bad. He’s—it doesn’t matter. Or it does. I’ll tell you about it, but not now. Right now, this is about you and me.”
“There is no you and me, Ethan.” The words come out as a whisper, and then stronger, “It was a fling.”
“And if I want it to be more?”
“Why? Why would you want that? We’re from two different worlds.”
“Only if we choose to be. I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to know where that leads. I want you with me in Paris, but nothing changes professionally if you choose otherwise. I’ve gotten a lot of things wrong with you. I want to fix that now no matter what that means.”
In other words, he doesn’t want space. He came here for me, for us . I’m overwhelmed in the best of ways. “You didn’t get it wrong, Ethan. I did. And I’m sorry. I should have talked to you. I darted away, and it was an emotional decision. I’m not good at flings.”
“I don’t want you to be.” He leans in and brushes his lips over mine.
“You feel so fucking good.” And then his mouth is crashing down over mine, his tongue licking deep, and I’m moaning with the feel of him, the taste of him.
“Fly out with me,” he says, capturing my upper arms. “Stay with me in Paris. I want you with me. If you want to be with me.”
It’s right then that a knock sounds on the door, and I want to scream with the interruption, but I also know something is wrong. My hand presses to his chest. “She wouldn’t interrupt us if it wasn’t urgent or unusual.”
He curses, and his hands fall away from me. “Go. Business first.”
But there’s something about him in that moment, unsteadiness in a way I do not know him to be, and I don’t know how I’ve stirred such a reaction in him, but that is exactly what has happened.
And I can’t turn away without saying more, doing more.
I step into him and push to my toes, my lips brushing his before I say, “I want everything and fear everything with you. That’s where I’m at. That’s me being honest.”
He cups my head and murmurs, “Ditto, sweetheart. The biggest fucking ditto of my life, but I like it. I like it almost too much.”
It. This feeling. Us. I don’t even know what to do with the idea of this man, who could have any woman, saying this to me.
But it’s somehow so much more right than wrong.
“Me, too,” I whisper, and another knock sounds, and I jolt, my fingers brushing over his cheek before stepping around him and rushing to the door.