Page 29 of Bedding the Baby Daddy

Twenty minutes later, Aurora sat in her car and contemplated what her mother said. Then she finally did what she’d been wanting to do ever since she left Dante’s house. She texted him.

Chances of us happening again = 100%. Tomorrow night?

* * *

The night after Aurora texted him, she showed up at his house after work. This time, they’d managed to make it to his bedroom, but not by much. And then a few more tomorrows after that came and went in the same way. She’d come over, they’d fuck one another’s brains out, and then he’d feed her. It never failed to amuse him how ravenous she was after sex.

Soon, two weeks had gone by and Dante was under the distinct impression that he was starting to date Aurora LeMonde. He just wasn’t sure that she’d agree.

He stared out the window of his office, twenty stories up in downtown Los Angeles, and tapped a pencil against his desk.

He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been so satisfied and so frustrated at the same time. He had her. He had her many times a week. That body, those lips, that voice, that hair. It was his. Ripe for the taking.

And at the same time, he didn’t have her.

She was in love with Gio. And if she wasn’t thinking of Gio during sex, then she certainly was knocking on Dante’s door to work off some energy after a day of working side by side with Gio.

The pencil snapped in his fingers.

He knew he had an ego. What man didn’t? But it was more than that. He didn’t want Aurora just because she was another man’s and it pricked at him. He wanted her because he wanted her. And yes, because she wanted him. Plain and simple.

“What’s wrong with you?” Michelle asked from the other side of his desk, her head popping up from the pages of a Percy Jackson novel. Her after school program had been cancelled today so Dante had had to pick her up and bring her to work while he finished up a few things.

She didn’t usually mind an hour of killing time, but he knew they were fast approaching the danger zone. The time of night when she’d be hungry, tired, and bored.

“Nothing.” He tossed the two halves of the broken pencil into the trash and kicked out from behind his desk. “You ready to get going, kid?”

She nodded her messy brown hair. “Finally. I was about to gnaw off my own arm.”

“From hunger or boredom?” He picked up Michelle’s black and white striped backpack and threw it over his shoulder, leaning down and helping her stand up.

“Hunger, obvi. I haven’t had anything since lunch.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything, pipsqueak?” He looked back at her and opened his office door. “I woulda gotten you something from the vending machine. I’m not a monster.”

“Oh.”

Dante whipped around to face the open door of his office. Aurora was standing there, her bag slung across her shoulders and a file in her hands. She wore a coral colored dress, tight at the waist, with a pattern of little cut outs around the neck that gave tantalizing glimpses of her golden skin underneath. Her hair was swept halfway back in a knot and the rest fell around her shoulders.

Dante clapped his mouth closed before he drooled all over himself. “Aurora.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, taking half a step back. Her eyes zipped from the backpack on Dante’s back to Michelle’s messy hair and the oversized t-shirt that currently had a jelly stain on the front. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to drop off the Peterson contract. I saw the light on from downstairs and thought…”

Was she rambling? Was she blushing? Peterson contract, his ass. Dante would bet any amount of money that she’d come to fuck. Well. He would not have complained.

Alas, hungry kid, school night, his life. “No need to apologize. We were just headed out. You remember my kid sister, Michelle?” He pulled Michelle in front of him and gave her shoulder a little squeeze to remind her what to do next.

“Hi,” Michelle said, holding out her hand for a shake. “You’re Aurora, right? You took me to the bathroom at that picnic thing a few years ago.”

Aurora bent to shake hands with the girl, her hair falling over her shoulder. “Good memory.”

“Dante was just going to take me to get some Chinese food. Wanna come with us?”

Dante dropped his eyes down to Michelle as she tipped her head back and grinned up at him. “I was?” he asked wryly.

“Sure,” she shrugged. “Least you can do after starving me up in this cage all afternoon.”

“Yeah. Callaghan Inc. is a real Alcatraz,” he said, gently shoving her forward and flicking the light off in his office as the three of them walked toward the elevator.

---