Chapter 8 Sofia #2
“I can handle it ’til we hire another new girl,” Renee said with a laugh.
“You replaced Miss Susana, and she only retired because her arthritis was getting to be too much.” She shrugged.
“I’ve got it made here.” She glanced at Andre, who smiled.
“I don’t envy Mr. Roman’s staff.” She snorted.
“All those parties and messes he has from socializing like he does. All the women who come over. No. I can handle this grumpy workaholic loner. Ain’t much to clean at all with how he’s a hermit and bachelor. ”
Andre waited until she left the room to arch one brow at me. “Tomorrow.”
I furrowed my brow, my appetite waning under his intense attention. “Why me?”
He only smiled.
“Why are you so determined?”
“I’m giving you options, Sofia. You can still take my first offer. Be mine. Let me in. And you won’t have to work at all.”
I shook my head, angry that what he claimed couldn’t be true. That I couldn’t just be with him. That I couldn’t have an easy life and do what I wanted for a change.
He tossed his napkin to the table. “Why are you so proud?”
I gaped at him. “Proud?” I felt like I was barely hanging on to my sanity near him. And he thought I was being difficult because of my pride?
“Why do you have to be so damn independent?” he demanded.
“I’m not!” I was so cruelly and sadly dependent. On my uncle who’d pay for my cousin’s treatment. On my cousin’s survival so I would have one person to call family.
When she passed, I’d have no one, and it was too heartbreaking of a fate to accept yet. It was inevitable. She wouldn’t last long, but I tried my best to tell myself I was doing all I could to make her remaining days as good as possible.
“I’m not…” I blinked rapidly to stem the tears that threatened to spill. He had no grounds to accuse me like this. “You don’t know me, Andre.”
He stood, coming around the huge table toward me. I shot to my feet too, ready to run. To hide. Screw eating with him and pretending I wasn’t a maid here but someone he’d consider as much more.
“I want to, Sofia. Goddammit, I want to know you. I want you to let me in.” The frustration thickened with every word he growled.
He lifted his hand to grip the back of my neck as he implored me to budge for him.
“I want…” He let out a heavy breath and held me closer, wrapping his other arm around my back.
“I’ve warred with wanting you from the first second you told me to take it easy. ”
I shook my head, tormented with this pull to hug him, burrow my face against his chest, and give up on this desire. To let it consume me and bliss me out all so I could return to my responsibilities and worries later.
“I have fucking wanted you since the second you frowned at me when I was bleeding out in my office.” This time, he shared the sentiment with more of a gruff tone as he lowered his hands to pick me up and hoist me onto the edge of the table.
One swipe of his arm cleared the dishes out of the way as he leaned me back.
His lips latched on to mine. That same hunger and desperation fused me to him.
Oh, God.
Oh, my God.
Andre…
Closing my eyes and holding on tightly, I clung to him and kissed him back. To show him with the frantic energy I couldn’t hide from him how badly I wanted him too. How this craving to hold him and let something other than Mafia politics and family rivalry burn so hot between us.
Oh, Andre.
I wanted him too, even if I couldn’t say it, even if I couldn’t stand by my desire for him.
“Fuck.” He wrenched his mouth from mine and pressed his forehead against mine. Panting and breathing so hard, he was like a raging, wild animal barely under control for me. “Sofia. I want you to surrender to me.”
I frowned, keeping my hands around his neck and feeling his pulse racing. “I want to erase every goddamn reason you keep falling back to that keeps us from exploring how else it can be.” As he gripped my ass, he slid me over to the very edge of the table as he devoured my mouth again.
Under his lips, I came apart, whimpering with need and kissing him back like I’d wither away into nothing if I stopped.
With his hands sliding up under my skirt, I caved to needing him just as badly. Parting my legs, I gave him more access to slant me over the table. To welcome the heavy bulk of his body hovering over me as he addled my mind with his lips, his tongue, even his teeth as he nipped at me.
“Look what you do to me,” he growled after a hungry kiss.
I cried out at his fingers yanking my panties aside. Closing my eyes at the naughtiness, at the forbidden nature of submitting to him at all, I dismissed how wrong this was.
It couldn’t be when his fingers pushing into my throbbing pussy felt so good.
It had to be right when his mouth rendered me breathless for more of his demanding kisses.
Nothing was wrong about him pushing my dress up and pistoning his fingers in and out of my slickness.
“Look at how you fit with me. How you—” He growled as I cried out again, so close to the sweet pinnacle of an orgasm already.
Between his big hand where it didn’t belong, his long fingers stroking my cunt, and his tongue chasing mine as we kissed, I was so close to exploding.
All the pent-up frustration reached a peak.
Every second of denial flew to the extreme of combusting.
I was. I shattered as he put more pressure against my clit. Waves of relief washed over me, drowning me at the same time I felt like I was soaring. That band of tension snapped. The anxiety and racing need to come were over.
Trembling under his touch, I curled up. I hugged him. Needing something to ground myself as I shivered and shook from the exquisite and sharp pleasure that shocked me, I sucked in deep lungfuls of air and tightened my arms around him.
Before I could fully catch my breath, he leaned up and looked down at me. The smugness in his smirk was like a switch. Instead of gazing up at him with something softer, I hardened into a defensive regret.
That wasn’t my first orgasm. I was a virgin, only twenty-one and not allowed to have much of a life because of my uncle, but I had pleasured myself before. He wasn’t the first man to please me with his touches.
But it was the first time I could witness the self-satisfied smile of a man who’d taken something I wasn’t ready to give.
He hadn’t done that out of any real affection. Out of love.
If he had, he wouldn’t be looking at me like this, like he’d “won” this game. That he was the victor to prove to me how easily I could be putty in his hands.
It didn’t mean anything, and in the crux of this heated moment, I was let down with the realization of how badly I’d wanted it to matter. To mean something to him beyond a physical challenge.
Tears stung at the corners of my eyes and I damned my weakness. I scorned myself for caving at all, because now that I had experienced such a high, such a bliss from him, I felt cheapened in knowing it was just fun and games to him, just scratching an itch.
No woman wanted to be something to conquer. I didn’t care for the reminder that the men in my life would always lord over me or try to.
“Get off.” I shoved at him, eager to escape.
Ashamed and hating myself for how quickly he could persuade me to lose sight of my reason for being here, I pushed up and scrambled off the table as I tugged my skirt back down to cover myself.
Sticky cream coated my thighs, and I closed my eyes at the physical reminder of how far I’d already fallen to his ploys. How far I’d failed in doing what I could to care for my cousin.
“Sofia—”
I flung my hand up, unable to speak to him or hear a single word of his excuses and cunning teases.
Without a look back, I hurried out of the dining room with my shame and regret trailing after me.