He’d gotten her an incredible assortment of lilies, her absolute favorites. He’d realized that, too, from her mugs and trays and coasters.
The gifts weren’t expensive. But they were…just right.
She didn’t remember what she said, or what they did until Alex, who’d been playing contentedly at their feet, suddenly lay on his side and was asleep in seconds.
“That’s his new trick,” she said when Aristedes looked at her with surprise and a tinge of worry in his eyes. “After eight months of keeping me awake at night.”
His worry drained to be replaced by something so…soft. “A merciful trick. He’s enough of a handful during the day.”
She nodded and he rose, pulled her up to her feet, bent and picked up Alex then walked with her to the nursery to put him in his crib.
They were walking down the corridor afterward, feet away from her bedroom door, when he stopped, looked down at her.
To ameliorate the unbearable intensity of the moment, she said, “Thanks for the gifts again…Aris.” His eyes flared at hearing the name he’d expressed as his desire to hear on her lips. She forced the rest out. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to. I’m glad you and Alex enjoyed my choices.”
“They were very…astute.”
“And I’m nothing if not astute, eh?”
She didn’t want him to think she was implying it was another manipulation, wanted to wipe that sardonic twist off his mouth. “That wasn’t a veiled dig.”
She succeeded. He smiled, all traces of disappointment evaporating. “No. You don’t do veiled anything. It’s all out there in the open, full blast, in my face with you.”
Before she could say any more, he caught her to him. She melted in his arms on the spot, like a candle in an inferno.
He swept her up, took her from gravity’s hold into his, took her lips, over and over, in clinging, will-draining kisses, then rumbled inside her trembling depths, “Thank you for the gift of today, Selene.”
Her head spun, her thoughts tangled, her heart splashed and spilled, her body ached, begged, wept.
When she thought he’d sweep her around, take her to her bedroom and end her torment, he raised his head, straightened.
“I think this means I’m granted another day,” he groaned as he let her slide down his body, put her on her feet. He held her for one last shuddering moment then turned and walked away.
Before he closed the condo’s door behind him, he smoldered at her over his shoulder. “Till tomorrow, kala mou.”
Six
Selene spent the night in an unremitting fever.
Every moment of the day Aris had spent with her, with them, kept replaying in a loop inside her head until she felt her vital circuitry overheating, melting.
Aris—as she suddenly could only think of him—could have stayed the night if he’d wanted. He must have known he could have made her beg him to stay. But he hadn’t. Why?
He’d wanted to. At least, he’d wanted sex. Her body pounded its demand for him again as it relived feeling the daunting hardness of his desire against her molten core. Yet he’d still walked away. She could think of only one reason why.
This experiment he was conducting didn’t include sex as one of its parameters. As she’d said more than once, nothing to prove in that arena. Sexually, they were compatible, explosively so.
But…were they? Maybe he responded like that to any reasonably attractive female who had the hots for him. As for her reaction, it must be what he got from all women. He’d intimated that what they shared was special, but men did say things like that in their efforts to get resistant women to agree to their casual arrangements. But now, as he’d also made it clear, things were no longer that simple. Alex complicated matters. Now casual sex wasn’t in Aris’s best interests, or those of his “test.”
By the time the first strands of dawn filtered through her bedroom window, her turmoil had reached its zenith.
And she decided. She’d call him first thing in the morning. Tell him she wasn’t continuing this experiment. If he wanted to continue to see Alex, they could come to an arrangement. If the arrangement worked, and in a couple years’ time, if he lasted that long and proved to be a constant and positive presence in Alex’s life, they would discuss making Alex his legally.
She didn’t want to be included in this test. She had no doubt the part concerning them would either collapse dramatically or expire gradually. And she didn’t enter into endeavors she knew were doomed to failure, no matter the temptation.
At 8:00 a.m. sharp, she phoned him.
Seconds later, she heard a no-frills, classic ringtone. On the other side of her condo’s door.
Her heart gave one violent boom before it stumbled into a mad gallop.
Aris. He was on her doorstep. He’d come back.
She expected him to see her number, reject the call, ring the doorbell. But since when did he ever do the expected?
The phone she still had clamped to her ear clicked and his velvet-night voice poured right into her brain. “Kalimera, Selene. I hope you had a better night than the one I had.”
“If you had a terrible night, we have a stalemate.”
A dark chuckle, male smugness made audible, purred into her ear, vibrated along her already-strung-tight nerves, made her palms itch, made her press her thighs together. “And you’re going to punish me by leaving me standing on your doorstep?”
So he knew she knew he was outside her door. She wouldn’t ask how he knew, wouldn’t bother pretending she hadn’t known. “If you think you deserve punishment, you evidently think you’re the reason for my terrible night.”
“I know you’re the reason for mine.” Suddenly his voice dipped into a whisper potent enough to blow a woman’s hormonal fuses. “I wouldn’t mind you punishing me, though. In fact, the very idea is appealing to me more by the second. But only if you do it…firsthand. Open the door and dish it out, kala mou.”
On top of everything he had to go Greek on her and call her “my beauty” and in that devastatingly sensual way, too. How would she tell him of her resolution now?
She had to, though. Somehow. She should just open the door and get it over with.
She rose on jellified legs, teetered to the door, opened it.
And Aris was standing there, overwhelming all over again in a casual-chic silk suit the color of his eyes.
This time, he had a woman with him.
She looked her confusion from him to the woman and back.