The Sarantos Baby Bargain

Her fingers turned into talons as they sank into his arm. It was so thick, so hard she had to grab it with both hands and wrench with her full strength. That still didn’t make him turn around. She bet he finally stopped of his own accord. He was showing her how she had no effect on him and no say in his actions or decisions. As if she didn’t already know that.

Another wave of fury crashed within her when he turned in utmost tranquility. That snapped her last viable nerve.

She hit him. With both fists. Pounded on his formidable chest with all the bitterness that had long been bottled up inside her. Struck him again and again.

He just stood there, bearing her aggression without a change of expression, letting her “vent,” watching her intently, as if documenting the reactions of a strange and unstable entity. His lack of reaction cracked her open, had every loss and grief she’d ever suffered spewing out, swamping her in agony now that the leash of control had snapped.

Then suddenly, both hands were behind her back, held in the shackle of one of his, and she was pressed between the cold wall and his hot body. Before she could snatch in another ragged breath, one of his knees drove between her legs, splaying them, his other hand at her nape, tangling in her hair, securing her head, completing her imprisonment.

After one last glance into her eyes, a declaration of intent that had her choking on déjà vu, he bore down on her and crushed his lips to hers. And poisonous memories flooded her, plunging her into the past.

It had been exactly like this, when she’d gone to his hotel suite that first time, demanding he take her up on her insistent offer of herself. She’d instinctively known the edge of roughness was integral to his nature. But she’d felt he’d pushed the envelope, trying to scare her away. When that didn’t work, sending her wild with desire instead, he’d pushed some more, testing how much she would allow.

She’d allowed him everything, had reveled in the unbridled power of his passion. From that first night, he’d given her physical pleasure beyond imagining. He’d mined her body for responses and ecstasies she hadn’t known it capable of. With every encounter, he’d escalated the wildness of his possession and the ferocity of her satisfaction. But without the development of any emotional response on his part, even intense sexual gratification had started leaving her feeling drained, used up, like an addict who experienced indescribable highs, followed by crashes to dismal depths.

His conquering rumbles filled her now as he angled his hard lips against hers for a deeper invasion. He plucked at her trembling flesh with his teeth, plunged into her recesses, his tongue a slide of sex and silk against hers, inundating her in sensations, each acutely remembered and longed for.

Her surrender, even if it was with shock, not willingness as it had been before, made him take his sensual assault to the next level. His hand twisted in a fistful of her hair, sending a thousand arrows of pleasure to her core. Then he ground his arousal into her quivering belly, making that core spasm, then melt.

But it was his growl of enjoyment that caused her legs to buckle. “You taste even more intoxicating than I remember.”

And you taste exactly as I remember. Overwhelming...indispensable...

No. She’d already fallen into that abyss. Twice.

Never again.

Feeling as if she was being dragged under, drowning, she tried to squirm out of his hold, fighting not only his hunger, but hers, too. She only managed to grind herself harder into his potency. Her only hope of escape would be if he decided to let her go.

He only eased his grip by degrees, dragged his lips from her gasping mouth and across her cheek, nipping her earlobe on the way to her throat. For heart-thundering moments he sucked at her pulse point, as if he wanted to draw her heartbeats out of her. Then with a final groan, he set her hands free and raised his head.

He didn’t step away, kept their bodies fused. She remained still, not even breathing as that only pressed her closer to him. Not that she could move. It was all she could do to contain the tremors that threatened to shake her apart. It was his body’s support that kept her upright. And it was he who finally backed away from her, with such care, as if his flesh had melded to hers and sudden separation would tear off a layer of their skin.

It wasn’t far from the truth. Every inch he’d imprinted felt raw, every nerve he’d strummed exposed. His scent and feel still pounded in her core, his brooding eyes leaving her no place to hide, no chance to regain her composure.

Finally he stepped back, putting just a foot of charged space between them. She drew in a tremulous breath, hoping oxygen would kick-start her volition.

“I won’t apologize for hitting you,” she murmured. “I bet it’s the response you were after, so you’d have an excuse to do what you just did. You manipulated me into doing exactly what you want, as you always did. Good for you. Now leave. Or it won’t be your chest my next blows target.”

His eyes narrowed to steel slits, the flames of lust still flickering in their depths. “I like this new fire. You were always too...accommodating before.”

“You mean submissive.”

His gaze grew contemplative as he pursed lips fuller in the aftermath of the devouring he’d subjected her to. “Is that how you saw yourself?”

“It was how I was.”

“Not from my point of view. But then you made it clear you think I invent my own convenient, totally inaccurate version of reality. But for what it’s worth, I thought you were...pliant, yet never truly submissive.” His hand suddenly rose to her face, then he lowered it oh so slowly, running the back of his forefinger down her temple, cheek, neck and collarbone before pausing at the top of her cleavage. His voice dipped an octave into the darkest reaches of hypnosis. “You not only found pleasure in submitting to my demands and desires, but you demanded and took what you wanted as well.”

Heat surged in her loins with every recollection of those countless times she’d demanded and taken, when he’d let her feast on him until she’d lost herself in the delight.

She shrank back from his touch, which felt as if it had burned a hole right through her. That wouldn’t have been enough to sever the contact if he hadn’t dropped his hand.

She hated him for being the only one who’d ever been able to toy with her so effortlessly, hated herself more for allowing him to, for being so susceptible to him still.

She forced out a thick whisper. “I don’t think you’re here to discuss our defunct liaison....”

His slanting eyebrow arched at the word.

“You’re right,” she continued. “If I could find a word that’s more trivial and impersonal than liaison, I would have used it. Anyway, I’m not interested in dredging up a past I’ve left behind, with a person I should have never gotten mixed up with, as you so kindly pointed out to me at the beginning.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her gaze to his daunting and unabated arousal. It had just been pressed against her flesh, reminding her of all the times it had invaded her, driven her beyond all sense of self and self-preservation with urgency and ecstasy.

She snatched her gaze up, found him watching her with that cool assessment that made her want to scream.

No doubt satisfied that he’d again provoked her, in every way, he half turned. “I am going to sit down. Coming?”

Without waiting, he continued to her family room, as if those explosive minutes that had thrown the precarious stability of her world back into chaos hadn’t occurred.

This time she managed not to pursue and attack him. Not because her anger had lessened, but because she knew he’d respond the same way. She couldn’t withstand another assault on her senses. Knowing him, he might even take it further, press on until he made her beg him not to stop. Even now she feared he’d make her do whatever he wanted her to.

Feeling as if her legs had turned to soggy sandbags, she followed him into her family room.

She’d not only childproofed recently, but also redecorated the space, to make it cheery for Dora and to counter the melancholy that permeated her and the place since Nadine’s and Petros’s deaths. Now Andreas walked into it and his presence made the room darken and shrink, as he’d always done to her whole world.

He headed to the high-backed red armchair beside the gleefully floral L-shaped couch, which he must have occupied as he’d waited for her. The tea tray on the coffee table and the briefcase on the floor affirmed her deduction.

After he’d resumed sitting, he swept back the hair that had fallen over his forehead during their tussle, drawing her aching gaze again to its luxuriousness. If anything, the longer tresses made him appear even more masculine, made every slash and hollow of his face more rugged. Each change in him did. His every line and feature had been honed to a fiercer virility. And she’d thought he’d already been the epitome of manhood.

Damn him.

But that was only a facade. He was as monstrous on the inside as he was divine on the outside.

He cocked his head at her when she remained standing several feet away. “Your reaction to seeing me wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. Seems your animosity has been brewing for a long time.”

Those statements made her scoff incredulously. “If I didn’t know you have a family somewhere, I’d have thought you were grown in a lab, an experiment in producing a frighteningly efficient humanoid devoid of feelings or scruples.”

His expression showed no offense, no amusement, no challenge. Nothing at all, as usual. “If this is how you see me, it’s your prerogative. But don’t you think the impervious entity you describe wouldn’t have tried to keep you from leaving him?”

“I think you would do nothing else, to assert your dominance. You were being a dog in the manger when you refused to finalize the divorce. You never really married me, just signed a bunch of papers to stop me from ending our ill-advised affair, only to continue it under the false label of marriage, on the same barren grounds.”

“And I tried to stop you from leaving me, twice, just to ‘assert my dominance’? Don’t you think it was too much trouble for just that?”

“Not at all. I believe you’d go to any lengths to maintain your record.”

That eyebrow arched again. “What record is that?”

“Your perfect one of having everyone at your disposal and everything done according to your rules and at your command.”