Mistresses: After Hours With The Boss: Her Little White Lie / Their Most Forbidden Fling / An Inescapable Temptation

He left that part out. If only he could leave it out of his mind. If only he could scrub the memory away. Hold on to the good, leave out the bad. But it wasn’t possible.

The good always came with bad. Always.

A tear slipped down Paige’s cheek. “She must have been wonderful.”

“She was,” he said.

“I have failed at so many things,” she said. “And I don’t know why. I don’t know why things are harder for me. I tried to do well in school … I just couldn’t. And my parents … I think they tried to be supportive of me, but I don’t think they really believed that I was trying. My brother and sister, they were extraordinary, and they worked for it. But I had to work for ordinary. I had to bust my butt just to be average. And that meant no college for me. In their minds … I suppose I was a failure. I mean, I had my art but art doesn’t translate to much, not to them.”

“And that’s why you moved.”

She nodded. “To find out what it would be like if I wasn’t surrounded by people who expected nothing from me. People who had given up on me. Shyla always believed in me. She said I was smart. No one ever said that. No one else. She encouraged me to go out for the position at Colson’s and I thought … I thought there was no way. I had no degree, no experience. But your hiring manager … she saw something in me, too. In my work. She took a chance on me, and the only reason I was brave enough to take a chance on myself was because of my friend. I can’t let her down,” she said, her voice shaky. “There is so much at stake here and I can’t fail. But failure is something I’m so good at, I’m afraid history will just repeat itself.”

“Tell me, are your bother and sister artists?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Your parents, are they artists?”

“No.”

“Could any of them imagine the window settings that you do? Not only that, could they find the materials, imagine the lighting, the colors, everything that you do, to make them a reality?”

“Probably not.”

“Then maybe you haven’t failed. You’ve simply succeeded in different areas. Areas that those other people couldn’t, and so don’t understand.”

“I …” She blinked rapidly. “You’re the first person who’s ever … said it like that.”

“It’s true, though. We can’t all be great at everything. I couldn’t design the windows for the store, so I hired you to do it.”

“Your hiring manager did.”

“Fine, but you get the idea. I don’t do everything. I don’t have the ability to do everything. Why should you?”

“It’s just that what I do has never been important to my family.”

“That’s their problem. You’re good at what counts. You stand firm when you’re needed. You’re coming through for Ana. Your instinct, when you were being interviewed by the social worker, was to protect her, to keep her with you no matter what. If that doesn’t prove that you’re strong enough to do this, nothing will.”

She slid down from the counter, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She took a sharp breath and crossed to him, standing in front of him, eye level to his chest. She reached up and put her hands on his cheeks, then tugged his face down as she drew up onto her tiptoes, pressing her lips against his.

He held on to the edge of the counter, letting her lead the kiss, letting her part his lips with her tongue. Letting her set the pace, the intensity.

He could taste the salt from her tears on her mouth, could feel the barely contained sadness in each shaking breath.

He ached to take control. To tug her up against him and to kiss her with every bit of pent-up passion, sorrow and pain that was buried inside of him. That was threatening to claw its way out through his chest if he didn’t find a way to release it.

But he couldn’t allow it.

This was for her, to have what she would. He would give it to her, and feel no sense of sacrifice. Whatever she wanted, she could have. As long as the true control belonged to him.

Paige pulled back from Dante, her heart thundering, her hands shaking. She didn’t know what she was thinking, if she was thinking. All she knew was that she wanted to feel something big. Something real and affirming. She wanted Dante’s actions to confirm his words.

She wanted to prove that she could want someone, and have them want her. That she wasn’t broken. That she wasn’t a joke. She wanted the unobtainable, beautiful man all for herself.

She didn’t want happily ever after from him. She didn’t want love. And she didn’t want to thank him. It was something else, a need so deep and raw that she could hardly understand it.

All she knew was that his touch would make things better. His kiss would heal so many wounds, be the confirmation for what he’d spoken.

To prove that she wasn’t a failure with men. That she wasn’t undesirable. That someone could want her.

She smoothed her hands over his chest, his muscles hot and hard beneath her palms, his chest hair crisp. So sexy and masculine. So different from her own body.

“I want you,” she said, her lips still pressed against his.

The silence that followed seemed to last forever. He might reject her. He probably would. But this was the first time she’d ever been willing to take the chance. It felt like a chain had been loosened on her, like she could move more freely.

He slid down from the counter, locking his arm around her waist and drawing her hard up against his body. “You want to kiss me? Or you want more?”

“M-more.”

“I have to hear you say it,” he said, his tone stretched, tortured.

“I want to … to sleep with you tonight.” A sudden, horrifying thought occurred to her, and her stomach sank to her toes. “Unless you don’t want to.” Why would he? He’d pulled away from every kiss they’d shared. He was a bronzed god of a man with a physique that looked too good to be real. A man with tons of sexual experience. A man who could have, and had had, any woman he wished. For a crazy moment she’d been convinced she could have this, could have him. But maybe she’d been fooling herself. Again.

He chuckled, rough and humorless. “How can you think I don’t want you?”

“I’m average, remember?”

He moved his hand up to her hair and pushed his fingers through it, tugging on a pink strand, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. “I have never seen anyone quite like you. Which means the description cannot be accurate.”

“You hate my hair.”

He shook his head. “It’s growing on me.”

He pressed his other hand against her lower back and brought her into closer contact with his body. With the evidence of his desire for her.

Her eyes widened. “You do want me.”

“I’m sorry it’s so hard for you to believe. But by the end of tonight, it won’t be.”

She wished she had a witty reply, something to defuse the tension. Something to loosen the knot in her stomach and lessen the ache between her thighs. To lessen the importance of the moment. But there was nothing. Her brain was too busy spinning around all the ways he could show her.

Never before had discovering what she’d been missing with sex been so important. Been so essential. But it was now.

He kissed her again, intensifying it. He moved his hand down to the waistband of her pajama pants and let his fingertips drift beneath the flannel fabric, and down low so that he was palming her butt, his touch hot and rough and perfect. He squeezed her and a shot of liquid, sexual heat poured through her, zipping straight to her core.

She arched into him, rubbing her breasts against his chest, looking for a way to dull the ache there, squirming as the one between her thighs intensified, the hand on her bottom so close to where she needed him, the nearness making it all the more frustrating.