The Affair: Week 4 Read Free

caressing the sprinkle of freckles.
    “That’s okay,” she murmured. “You don’t have to.”
    “I know I don’t have to.” He leaned down and kissed her. He’d meant it to be a brisk kiss, but he caught her flavor and scent, and lingered. She smelled like lemons and honey. Even the taste of her sweat was sweet. “I want to,” he said a moment later, looking into her sex-flushed face. His gaze ran down the length of her appreciatively. Unable to stop himself, he caressed a pale breast and delicate pink nipple. Desire flickered in him when he felt her bead beneath his touch. Five weeks? Would it be enough? he wondered idly. When she set the limit, it had initially annoyed him until he realized she’d given him a convenient out. Wasn’t she making it all easy for him, and for her as well? That was important in her case. He didn’t want to hurt her.
    Emma made
everything
so easy. Certainly his desire had never been this sharp, ready to rear up and clutch at him with just a glance or a touch.
    “Why are you frowning?” she asked softly, touching his furrowed forehead and splintering his thoughts.
    “I took you very hard. I hadn’t intended to. Waiting all week for your answer . . . it made things very trying . . .” He faded off. “Are you all right?”
    She gave him a half-shy, half-mischievous glance. “Yes. It was incredible.”
    “It was,” he agreed. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead distractedly. “Come on, I’ll take you into the city for dinner.” She opened her mouth but he preempted her. “Don’t worry, we’ll stop by your apartment and pick up what you might need until tomorrow morning.”
    “Tomorrow morning?” she asked, clearly surprised
    He turned, rolling off the bed. “We’ll stay the night at my place in the city. I’m not flying to Nice until late tomorrow.
    “You have a place in the city?”
    He nodded. “My plant is in Deerfield, but I have a business office in the city. I need a place there for when I work late.”
    He felt her eyes on him as he walked around the bed toward the bathroom. He was starting to think he’d feel her eyes on him even in his sleep.

Chapter Eighteen
    Her mind was preoccupied almost exclusively with one—admittedly stupid—thought all the way home.
Should I ask him inside my apartment, or would he prefer just to wait in the car?
Asking Vanni inside seemed
intimate
. Somehow it didn’t seem to match up with the purely sexual affair she’d agreed to with him for a circumscribed period of time. She suspected
he
felt that way, at any rate, and so she wanted to act accordingly.
    Earlier in his suite, he’d asked her politely if she’d like to shower there or at her home, to which she’d answered the latter. Then there’d been nothing left for her to do but sit in a chair in the sitting area and watch in mounting fascination the tail end of his grooming/dressing ritual.
    He’d quickly showered after they’d made love, and then changed into a suit. It was a dark gray, with which he wore a white shirt, a slim black tie with two white stripes, silver cuff links, and a crisp white pocket square.
    He’d donned his clothing in a methodical fashion, as efficient as a knight putting on his armor. He’d put on the pants, shirt, socks, and shoes in a large dressing closet, where she couldn’t see him. When he’d stepped out, she stared at him with a mixture of fascination and lust. He looked beautiful with the shirt unbuttoned, his ridged abdomen and powerful chest showing through the two-inch gap between the plackets. He hadn’t shaved, and an attractive dark scruff was on his jaw and upper lip. She watched, spellbound as he fastened his shirt and crisply tied his tie in the mirror over his dresser. His hair had still been a little damp around the collar by the time he snapped on his platinum watch and turned his gaze to her where she sat on a chair in the seating area, blinking at her expression of bemused fascination. She’d been