Chapter Ten #2
With the same control that he’d filled her, he began to move, slow, measured thrusts that carried her higher and higher until the pleasure became almost more than she could endure and she slipped over the shimmering precipice, sobbing Draco’s name, her heart on fire and her body convulsed in rapture, and when he joined her there, shuddering as he spilt his seed deep inside her, the only words to echo in her head were that she loved him. Loved him. Loved him. Loved him.
Loved him.
Draco’s heart was thumping violently, trying to escape the confines of his ribs.
He could feel the thrash of her heart, too, right below where his beat. He could almost fool himself into believing their hearts were trying to find each other.
He blew out a quiet, ragged breath. He knew he should ask if she was okay, but couldn’t find the words, not just to ask but to speak at all. From her uncharacteristic silence, Athena was struggling to speak too.
He hadn’t just felt her climax, he’d lived it. It had pulled him over the edge when he hadn’t even known he’d reached it.
He’d never experienced anything like that before. Nothing came close.
There was no telling how long they lay there, Athena curled into him, the fingers of her hand not threaded through his making soft circles on his chest, the fingers of his hand not threaded through hers combing through her silky hair.
He knew they needed to get up but his body was in no rush to move.
Maybe they would have spent the whole day like that, but the real world intruded with the sound of a ringing phone.
He felt the breath of her sigh against his skin. ‘That’s mine,’ she said with another sigh and lifted her head.
Their stares locked together.
His heart clenched.
With her hair all mussed and her beautiful face all sleepy and content, she’d never been more beautiful.
She smiled that beautiful soft smile and kissed him with the same softness.
His heart clenched again to watch her pick the towel up from the floor and wrap it around herself, a reminder that only a short while ago she’d never been with a man, that for all her risqué clothing, she was shy about her body. Shy because no one had seen it before. No one but him.
Only when the towel was secure did she pad to the dressing table where she’d left her bag and pull her phone out.
She cleared her throat and brightly said, ‘Hi, Grace.’ She listened a moment.
‘Oh, really?’ Another listening pause. ‘No, I’ve only just woken up.
Do you want me to check?’ Another pause.
‘Okay, hold on a minute, I’ll see if I can find him…
Yes, I know, not like him at all. Bit of a cheek if you ask me, seeing as you lot made it in on time.
’ She turned to Draco, winked and put her finger to her lips before speaking again into the phone.
‘Hold on, just reaching his bedroom.’ Then she put the phone by her side, banged loudly on her own bedroom door and yelled, ‘Are you up yet? If not, get up—the board meeting starts in thirty minutes and you’re going to make us late.
You, not me, so don’t blame me for your tardiness. ’
Phone back to her ear, she said, ‘I can hear movement. I’ll let you know when we’re on our way.’ She listened again, nodding wisely. ‘Definitely. See you soon. ’Bye.’
The call ended, she looked again at Draco. Her cheeks coloured. ‘Was that okay?’ Hints of uncertainty and shyness crept into her voice. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me to tell her you were in my bed.’
Although they both knew this was undoubtedly true, he couldn’t bring himself to agree with her. ‘What time is it?’
‘Eight-thirty.’
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t realised it was that late. His fault for leaving his phone, which he used as an alarm clock, in his bedroom.
He was never late. Ever.
Still standing by the dressing table, her top teeth were biting into her bottom lip.
‘Are you okay?’
She shook her head and confessed, ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
He could think of a few things…
But no, he needed to pull his head out of the sex and Athena stupor it had fallen into and put it back in the game. That didn’t stop him swinging his feet to the floor and opening his arms to her. ‘You can start by coming here.’
Obeying, she stood between his feet and rested her hands lightly on his shoulders.
Squeezing her hips, he gazed into her eyes. ‘What happens now is that you and I take a shower and go to work. When we’re done for the day, we come back home and do whatever you want to do.’
‘So you think you might want to share a bed with me again?’
If she hadn’t been still so shy and uncertain he would think she was joking.
He pulled her closer and trapped her between his thighs.
‘If you thought you were tethered to me before, you have no idea what it’s going to be like now.
I’m not letting you out of my sight for a second, and if you weren’t likely sore from what we just shared, I’d make love to you again right now…
’ He gripped the top of her towel and pulled it down, exposing her succulent breasts.
Taking one into his mouth, he sucked the rosy-pink nipple, bringing it to arousal.
Gazing back into her eyes, he slipped his hand between her thighs and lightly cupped her sex.
She swayed, her fingers tightening their grip on his shoulders.
Gently massaging her nub, already lubricated from their earlier lovemaking, he closed his lips over her other nipple.
Her moan of pleasure landed straight in his groin, but he ignored it.
Between licks and sucks of her breasts and with a steadily increasing pressure of his thumb, he whispered, ‘What you and I did earlier is only the beginning. A taster.’ He turned his hand so the top of his palm was doing the massaging, and slipped a finger inside her sticky heat.
‘There is a whole world of pleasure out there, my sweet…’ her hips were rocking against his hand ‘…and I’m going to teach you all of it.
Now, let yourself go…’ Her breaths shortening, she cradled his head and pressed her cheek to his.
‘That’s it, my princess,’ he encouraged hoarsely, maintaining the pressure but letting her find the rhythm she needed, entranced at how damned responsive she was to him. ‘All the way. Let yourself go.’
When she came, it was with a long cry before her lips found his cheek and sucked, and her whole body spasmed until, finally, she went limp.
Moving his hand, he held her tightly, stroking her back, thinking he might have to consider having her moved to a different office because he didn’t know how the hell he was going to concentrate on a damned bit of work with his beautiful, sexually receptive Athena sharing the same walls as him.
‘Draco?’ she whispered a long while later.
‘Yes, my sweet.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘As if you need my permission.’
She finally pulled her face away from his cheek and gently replaced it with her hand, kissing him with a reverence that made his heart sing. And then she grinned. ‘Now that I’m sleeping with the boss, does that mean I get a pay rise?’
Laughing, he wrapped her back into his arms and kissed her hard. ‘Only if you do some bloody work.’
He was still laughing to himself when he stepped under the showerhead in his bathroom, having thought it best to shower separately to Athena, seeing as he’d just proved he was already incapable of keeping his hands to himself when he was with her.
For the first time in his working life, he didn’t care that he was going to be late for work. The only thing he cared about was how the hell he was supposed to keep his hands off her in the office and keep things professional enough that no one suspected what was going on between them.
Athena replaced her mascara with her lip gloss and smeared it over her lips, then stepped back to check her appearance from all angles.
She’d chosen a grey scoop-necked dress that fell to mid-thigh and would fit in any office environment but, so Draco didn’t think she was going soft, paired it with a three-inch thick hot-pink leather belt with diamonds studded into it and purple tights.
For her feet, she chose a pair of six-inch red heels that even she had to concentrate to walk in.
She had a feeling she was going to have to do a lot of concentrating that day, mostly in an effort to stop her face showing her feelings.
Reminding herself that she was a professional at hiding her feelings didn’t bring any solace. For the first time since she was a little girl, she didn’t want to hide them.
It was imperative that she did, for Draco’s sake.
Just to think his name was to make her heart skip.
Just to spend forty minutes getting ready for work in a different room was to miss him.
Had she fallen in love with him?
When she’d climaxed the first time, her heart had spoken it to her, but now her brain was engaged and she had to remind herself that falling in love with him was the worst thing she could do. Draco wasn’t hers to love and he never would be.
But he was hers to love for now, she decided, cheering herself up, and she would love him until her contract ended and she returned to her old life.
That was if she even went back to her old life.
For the first time since her brother had laid down the law, the thought of returning to her old life with all its riches and splendour and backbiting and bitching—and she was well aware that she was the cause of much of that backbiting and bitching—made her feel queasy.
Her family brought out the worst in her. Draco brought out the best, and if she only had him for these few short weeks then she would make the most of those short weeks, and she would love him with everything she had. But never tell him. That would be the worst thing she could do.
She had a feeling that seeing his pity for her love might just kill her.