Forbidden Desires: A Debt Paid in Passion / An Exception to His Rule / Waves of Temptation

Her obvious love for their daughter played on him too. Her worry after each medical checkup. The way she looked to him for his interpretation and reassurance. A cynical part of him warned against being taken in again, but her connection to their baby was too real to be manufactured.

Then there was the sexual attraction that was as bad as ever, despite how pale and weak she was. He hadn’t been able to stop himself ogling her naked breast. Her ass was gorgeously round and begging to be fondled. Every time he got near enough to catch her scent, he wanted to pull her close and kiss the hell out of her plump, smart mouth.

He rubbed his face, more preoccupied than ever by a woman he never should have touched. Work was what he needed. Studying had been his escape from the struggle to understand his father’s suicide. From age twenty, once his stepfather’s perfidy came to light, he’d been immersed in recovering their finances. The urgency of that task had been a type of salvation from emotional angst as well.

Thankfully, despite having to drop out of university, he’d had a basic version of a software program more than halfway through development. Taking it to completion and selling it had staved off his sense of failure over not realizing what his stepfather had been doing. Piling up dollars and assets like points on a screen ever since had become enormously satisfying. It always reassured him to know he was creating not just a financial umbrella, but a giant, inflated mattress of protection for his family.

A family that now included a helpless infant. That gave him more motivation than ever.

And that baby’s mother?

He took his seat at his desk and angled the baby monitor, staring hard at it until he heard her whispery breath, wondering where Sirena would fit into his life long-term.

CHAPTER FIVE

IN SOME WAYS, living with Raoul was too easy. The subliminal communication they had developed working together laid the groundwork. She knew his moods, picked up the small cues that meant his call would be a long one and already knew his boundaries when it came to making a space for her within his. Plus, he was such a work hound she was able to sneak away to quiet corners until he took a breather and came looking for his daughter.

But being out of his sight didn’t mean he was out of her mind. Why, oh, why did she have to track him with internal radar, her entire being called by his dynamic presence? No matter how many times she told herself to get over him, knowing how close he was made her mind trail back to a rainy afternoon’s passionate coming together. So stupid! Daydreams like that made her a pushover for what had been an impersonal coupling on his part. It’s what had gotten her into this mess.

She should move back to her flat, but that circumstance was being influenced by other ones, putting a pleat in her brow.

“Was that the doctor?” he asked, startling her with a jolt of unexpected excitement because she had been certain he was in his office down the hall.

Trying to downplay the way she exploded with joyful awareness, she walked the cordless phone across the lounge to return it to its cradle.

“Indra. My neighbor.” Her skin tingled despite her internal willing of the heat to leave her cheeks. These encounters in lounges and dining rooms were unbearable.

“Did something happen? You’re frowning.”

Don’t study me, she wanted to cry. Never had she imagined she would long to go back to when she’d been one more piece of equipment in his high-tech office, but his aloof attitude had been a lot easier to deal with. Nowadays he watched her every move as though trying to read between her lines and catch her in a lie.

“Everything is fine,” she said with false nonchalance. “She was asking how long I’d be out of my flat. We always had an arrangement when I was traveling that if she had family staying, they could use my place. Her niece is arriving with her new husband and, not surprisingly, they would love the privacy.”

Awkward sexual awareness poured through her in an infuriating blush. She hadn’t been cleared for sex and Raoul had made it plain he wasn’t interested. Talking about intimacy shouldn’t cause her to simmer with responsiveness, but she became enormously conscious of his masculine silhouette—so wide across the shoulders and narrowing down to those powerful thighs. She desperately wished she could swallow back her reference to the intimate things that happened between a man and a woman.

While Raoul flicked a glance down the T-shirt and yoga pants that were snug on her still-plump body. “What did you tell her?” he asked, his voice so devoid of any hint as to his thoughts she only felt more ill at ease and anxious to disappear.

“That I wished I could help her, but I’ll need it sooner rather than later.” There. She’d drawn the line.

He met her stare with one equally as steady. “What has the doctor said?”

“Stay out of the pool for another week but short walks are fine. Sleep.” She gave him a dry look. “Apparently he’s unaware that babies are night creatures.”

He frowned. “Why didn’t you say? I can get up with Lucy.”

“What’s the point? You don’t have functioning breasts.” Again with the dirty talk. Now all she could think of was his naked, very masculine chest, layered with muscle and sprinkled with fine, springy hairs. Stop! She turned to hide her flaming face.

“I can change her and settle her back to sleep as well as you can,” he pointed out.

She tensed. He was proving himself to be the generous, involved parent she had known he would be, but after so many years without any sort of support, it was ingrained in her to do things by herself.

“I need to manage on my own,” she dismissed. “Soon I’ll have no choice. And you’re working. You need your sleep.”

“What do you call transcribing?” he asked with the irritated tone he’d taken the first time he’d found her at it. “You’re courting a setback, pushing yourself like that.” He spoke in the lofty way that made him a confident company president and a completely annoying adversary.

“I’m not overdoing it. My recovery is my priority. I know my freedom with Lucy hinges on it.” She flashed a meaningless smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t be underfoot any longer than necessary.”

That didn’t seem to reassure him. His frown deepened. Fortunately Lucy woke and Sirena had a reason to escape the intensity of his inscrutable presence.

Raoul’s perfectly functioning libido watched Sirena’s curvy behind zip from the room. He was highly attuned to the meaning behind sudden blushes and flustered disappearing acts. They were the kind of signals that provoked any man’s interest and he was already interested. Way too interested.

Back when he’d first hired Sirena, he’d seen the same little betrayals of attraction. It hadn’t meant anything to him, since women always reacted to him. He had money, worked out, dressed well and groomed daily. Sirena’s suppressed awareness had been routine.

He’d ignored it and his own sexual curiosity right up until That Day. Since then, she’d been spitting and hissing and so washed-out he’d felt like a lecher for any less than pure thoughts. Today, however, her nervously smoothing her hair and standing straighter while seeming ultraperturbed by her aroused senses was insanely seductive.

Emphasis on insane. So what if her body was recovered enough to feel a flash of chemistry? He couldn’t act on it. They were barely capable of civility. Sex would make an already complicated relationship completely unworkable.

It would be easier on his libido if she left, he acknowledged grudgingly. Her involuntary reaction had pulsed male arousal through him so strongly he was drawn taut, his erection thrusting against the confines of his pants, throbbing with imperative to hunt down the woman who had incited him and find relief in the wet depths that had welcomed him deliciously almost a year ago.

There was the problem. It had been a year, he dismissed, trying to forget the whole thing.

He remained edgy into the late hours, though, even after he had accounted for his long spell of abstinence with time spent at work and with lawyers. He’d been too busy to date. It wasn’t that he was so bewitched by one particular woman that only she would do.

Hell. He should visit the city and exercise his urges. Yes, that was the solution. He loathed the idea of Lucy moving out, so—

He paused in dousing his bedroom light, hearing Lucy start crying again. Sirena kept telling him the nights were hers, but this was silly. They shared parenting well enough through the daylight hours. She was being stubborn to prove a point that was totally lost on him.

By the time he moved down the darkened hall, Lucy was quiet again and Sirena was gently closing the nursery door. She jumped as his shadow joined hers on the wall, gasping as she swung around to confront him.

Clutching her heart, she scolded in a whisper, “You scared me to death!”

“I live here,” he drawled, not the least bit scared even though his heart began to pound. She stood eye level to his naked chest, her bewildered expression burnished gold by the night-light. She was braless under a sleeveless tank and a pair of loose shorts that looked like men’s boxers, her nipples sharply peaked against light cotton.

Damn. This was the wrong kind of night sharing, but he couldn’t stop the bombardment of erotic signals that plowed into his sexual receptors. Her hair was loose and wavy. She was lightly scented from the bubble bath she’d taken earlier. Her breath hitched behind invitingly parted lips while her hungry gaze swept across his pecs, stinging him like licks from a velvet whip.

He wore loose pajama pants that drew a relaxed line across his flat abdomen, but they began to tent—

She yanked her gaze to his, embarrassed and deeply apprehensive.

And, if he wasn’t mistaken, as dazed with repressed sexual need as he was.

“It didn’t sound like she was settling,” he managed gruffly, recalling why he was here. “I was coming to take over so you could go back to bed.” Bed. It was all he could think about. They’d used a sofa that other time and for less than an hour. He wanted more. Hours. Days.

Raoul’s voice made the hairs stand up all over her body. His scent was charged and aggressive, as though he hadn’t quite made it to bed yet, while she was sleepy and befuddled. She became screamingly aware that her hair was everywhere and her thin tank and loose shorts weren’t exactly sexy lingerie. That was probably a good thing, but she secretly wished she looked attractive.

Idiot.

“She’s sleeping now,” she mumbled and sidestepped at the same time he did, almost coming up against him as he loomed before her.

It was the foyer in Oxshott again. Her startled gaze came up in time to see his focus drop to her mouth. Her heart soared and her mind blanked, just like last time.

Not again, she thought, but couldn’t move, paralyzed by attraction and wonder.

His hand came up and hesitated. The bare skin of her shoulder waited, nerve endings reaching out in anticipation. Raoul started to bend his head.

Don’t let it happen, she warned herself with anxious intensity, but her self-preservation instincts were flash-firing so rapidly she couldn’t figure out if she should retreat the wrong way down the hall, barrel through him or exit into Lucy’s room.

His big hand cradled the side of her face, tilting her mouth up to his as his mouth crashed down on hers on an aggrieved groan.

Don’t— Oh, do...

Everything about him was strong and the way his mouth covered hers, so confident and hungry, overcame her willpower. The shape of his lips fit hers perfectly. When the tip of his tongue parted her lips, she shuddered in renewal. Oh, please. She melted into him. She couldn’t help it. She knew how good it could be between them. Her body remembered the virile feel of his muscles gathering, the fullness of him inside her...

His forearm angled across her back with proprietary strength, tugging her into a soft collision that made her release a throaty cry that he swallowed. Their nightclothes were no shield. She felt everything. The hot roughness of his chest, the flat muscles of his waist under confused hands that didn’t know where to land and the fierce shape of his supremely eager erection.

Her hands splayed on his smooth waist while her thoughts receded behind a kiss that began to consume her. Sweet, deep arousal, a sensation she hadn’t felt in months, twined through her, coiling deliciously. It felt so good to be held. The way his breath hissed and he plundered her mouth as though he was slaking a lifetime of need caught her as nothing else could, making her strain to match his voracious desire.

As his hands slid over her shape, she wriggled and pressed into his touch, reveling in the way he shifted her into the hard plane of the door so he could sandwich her with his weight. When his hot hand rode up her bare thigh under the leg of her shorts and found no underpants, he groaned and nipped a line down her neck while his flat hand shaped the globe of her bottom, squeezed gently, massaged and claimed.

She arched her breasts into his chest and her hands went to where his rampant stiffness was nearly piercing a hole through the light silk of his pants.

“Yes, touch me,” he said raggedly and bared himself, wrapping his hand over hers with a crushing grip. His mouth came back to catch her cry of surprise while his own hand went up the front of her thigh, fingertips unerringly finding her plump, aching center and drawing a line into the wet slickness. The circling touch of his fingertip against the tight knot of nerves struck bolts of need into her core, driving her to push against his touch, squeeze him tight, kiss him with complete abandon.

He bared her breast and bent his head. She thought, I’m nursing.

The reality of what they were doing crashed into her. She shoved him back a step, dislodging his touch, making him stagger and lift his head.

There were so many reasons to be aghast. Her appalled fear must have shown on her face. His glazed eyes met hers and he drew in a breath of shock.

Maybe he was equally horrified to see whom he’d accidentally fallen into kissing.

Just the nearest woman. The one who was handy.

Hurt knifed into her abdomen, twisting painfully. Freshly humiliated, Sirena elbowed past him and fled to her room.

* * *

She slept late. That beastly man had sneaked into her room after she fell asleep and stolen the baby monitor. He was at the breakfast table when he should have been in his office. Why he wasn’t going into the city to work escaped her. It had been nearly a month since he’d had a full day there.

“Lucy?” she prompted, looking past him.

“I gave her a bottle, but she didn’t take much. She’s down, but probably not for long.”

At least that gave her an excuse to avoid him while she disappeared to pump the ache out of her swollen breasts. He was still at the table when she returned. He wore his I’ve-got-all-day-so-don’t-bother-stalling face.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said flatly, veering her gaze from the way his muscled shoulders filled his ice-blue shirt. If only she wasn’t so hungry. She folded a leg under her as she took a seat and reached for a piece of cold, buttered toast, biting into it mutinously.

He set aside his tablet and leaned his forearms where his place setting had been cleared.

“I know you can’t make love yet. I wouldn’t have taken it that far. I didn’t have protection either and I sure as hell don’t want to get you pregnant again.”

The bite of toast in her mouth turned coarse and bitter. All the hurt she’d been bottling and ignoring rose in the back of her throat to make swallowing difficult. She rose up from her chair with what she hoped was enough indignation to cover her wounded core.

“Do you think I don’t wish every day that Lucy’s father was anyone but you?” She heard the cut of his breath and knew she’d scored a direct hit, but there was no satisfaction in it. She had zero desire to stick around and gloat.

She was almost to the door when he said with sharp force, “Because I don’t want to risk your life again. Given how dangerous I’ve learned childbirth can be, I don’t intend to put any woman through that ever again.”

The statement was shocking enough to make her hesitate. She glanced back, certain he couldn’t be as serious as he sounded. His still posture and set jaw told her he was incontrovertibly sincere.

“Millions of women sail through pregnancy and deliver without any trouble,” she pointed out. “You don’t know how you’ll feel in future, with a different woman.”

He only gave her that shuttered look that told her any sort of discussion on the matter was firmly closed. She was wasting her breath if she thought she could reason with him. His rigid expression was so familiar, his certainty that he was right so ingrained and obvious, she felt her lips twitch in amusement.

It was the last reaction she expected. Her body was still humming with unsatisfied arousal, which only increased her aggravation and trampled self-worth. Her heart had shriveled overnight into a self-protective ball, but for some reason his misplaced, oddly gallant statement uncurled it a bit. He was showing the protectiveness she so admired in him, and it was directed at her. Well, all women, maybe, but it still felt kind and yes, there was even a weak part of her that took comfort in knowing he wasn’t likely to fill his life with children by other women. The thought of him making babies with someone he actually loved had been quietly torturing her.

“What’s funny?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she assured him, pressing a hand to her hollow stomach as it growled.

He rose with impatience to hold her chair. “Sit. Eat. You need the calories.”

She returned to slide into her chair as his housekeeper brought a plate of eggs and tomato.

To her consternation, Raoul sat down again.

The memory of last night blistered her as the housekeeper left them alone. She had tossed and turned after their rendezvous, trying to figure out how it had happened. For her it was simple: she still reacted to him. For him...convenience? It had to be. He wasn’t going into the city to work or to work out his kinks.

Blushing with anger and remembered excitement, she stared at her plate, picking at her food with the tines of her fork. That wild moment was going to sit between them like the wall of resentment over the missing money, filling all of their interactions with undercurrents. She needed her own space.

“I should be able to move into my flat after my next appointment,” she said.

He made a noise of negation.

She set her chin to disguise the leap in her heart. She was still processing that he hadn’t actually insulted the hell out of her a few minutes ago. Was he resisting her leaving because he wanted her here?

Pressing her knotted fists into her lap, she asked, “Sooner, then?”

“Never. I want Lucy full-time. That means you have to stay, too.”

The words went through her like a bomb blast, practically lifting the hair off her head and leaving her ears ringing. Unexpected yearning clenched in her and last night’s excitement flared like stirred coals reaching toward a conflagration. Warning bells in her head clanged danger, danger.

“There you go testing my incision again,” she said, and scooped eggs into her mouth as though the matter was closed. It was. “No,” she added in case he needed further clarification.

“Why not?” His challenge was almost like idle curiosity. Pithy and confident he’d eventually get his way.

She goggled at him. “That train wreck last night for starters,” she blurted, face seared with a mask of humiliated embarrassment. If he’d made a pass and she’d rejected him, that would be one thing, but the way she’d responded had been horribly revealing. She dropped her gaze, wishing she could take back her reaction, especially when it occurred to her he might use it to get what he wanted.

“So the chemistry between us is alive and well. We’ve successfully ignored it in the past. Maybe we’ll even look at resuming that side of our relationship once you’re fully recovered. It’s got nothing to do with my desire to raise my daughter.”

Sirena choked. “What relationship? What chemistry?” Incredulous, she leaped to her feet without being aware of it. Her entire being rejected everything he was saying. It was so cruel she couldn’t bear it. “I’m moving back to my flat as soon as the doctor clears me.” She threw her napkin on the table and started to walk out again.

“You’re going alone,” he said in an implacable tone that chilled her to her marrow. “Lucy is staying here.”

Slam. Here it was. The brick wall she had always known he would push between her and her child. Had she actually felt herself softening toward him? He was a bastard, through and through. And it hurt! He was hurting her by treating her this way and he was hurting her by not being the man she wanted him to be.

“That is not what our legally binding agreement says,” she whirled to state.

“Keep your lawyer on retainer, sweetheart. We’re going to rewrite it.”

He wasn’t bluffing. Her heart twisted while the rest of her, the part that had lost to a bully once before, put up her dukes. She had never wanted to physically harm anyone in her life, but at this moment a swelling wave of injustice pushed her toward him in aggressive confrontation, muscles twitching with the desire to claw him apart because he was striking at her very foundation.

He rose swiftly as she approached, surprised and instantly guarded, taking on a ready stance, his size the only thing that stopped her from lashing out with everything in her.

“Well, isn’t that like you,” she said with the only weapon available: a tongue coated with enough resentful hatred it wielded itself. “I want you, Sirena,” she mocked. “Touch me, Sirena. And the next morning it’s, take everything that matters to her and kick her to the curb. Go ahead. Send me into John’s office for another pile of legal bills I can’t afford. I’ll raise the stakes and take this to the court of public opinion. I’ll hurt you in every way I can find. I’ll take your daughter, because I will not let her be raised by someone who treats people the way you do.”

She wiped the back of her wrist across her lips, her incensed emotions deflating to despair as she heard her own words and knew that she was bravado against his arsenal of money, position and power. What did she have? Charges against her for theft.

She couldn’t continue to face him without breaking down.

“Where do you get the nerve to judge me?” she managed as a parting shot before she decamped to higher ground.

* * *

Raoul stood in astonished silence as he listened to Sirena’s retreat. He felt as though he’d just surprised a wounded lioness and barely escaped still clutching his vital organs. Adrenaline stung his arteries and he had to consciously tell his muscles to relax.

None of that closed what felt like a giant chasm in his chest. Touch me, Sirena. Kick her to the curb. Shame snaked through him, keeping his jaw clenched even though he wanted to shout back at her in defense. He was the one with the right to trust issues. Where did she get off accusing him of manipulation?

His housekeeper came through, startling him. “More coffee?” she asked, obviously surprised to see the table deserted.

“No,” he barked, then pulled himself together. “No, thank you,” he said with more control, rubbing his face then disheveling his hair. “Please make up some sandwiches for Sirena, since she didn’t finish her breakfast. I’ll be in my office.”

He went there for privacy, to work through their confrontation, not to make a dent in the work that piled up every minute he was distracted by this new family of his.

Just a daughter, he reminded himself. Not a partner.

Touch me. His gut tightened in remembered ecstasy as he felt again her light fingers encircling him. Desire had exploded in him last night. For her. Despite all his attempts to make excuses, the sad truth was no other woman tempted him. Even before conceiving Lucy, he’d been taking women to dinner without taking anything else.