Page 37 of Baby Perfection

She made her choice even before the options were fully considered. Tossing aside her book, she crossed to where he sat and picked up the sleeping baby. In no time she had Mikey changed and tucked into bed. Then she returned to the living room and turned out the lights, just as Lucius had done the night before. And there, caught within the soft city glow and glitter, she slowly, tantalizingly removed her clothing, piece by piece.

Once again, she couldn’t see his expression. But she heard the tenor of his breathing change. Heard it deepen, thicken, grow heavy with desire. And she smiled. When had it happened? When had she lost her nervous dread, her insecurity about satisfying a man? She stood before him wearing only a tiny scrap of silk and lace clinging to her hips and reveled in her femininity, knowing that Lucius wanted her above all women. Not just for her body, though he’d left her in no doubt how he felt about that. But for her intellect, for her personality. And soon, if she had any say in the matter, for her heart.

“Finish it,” he practically growled.

She laughed, the sound soft and low. Ripe. Womanly. She skated her hands down her hips and shimmied free of the last of her clothing. And then she stood before him wearing nothingbut the ring he’d placed on her finger, the flash a beacon calling him home. She traced her hand across the slight curves of her breasts, allowing the diamond’s fire to beckon. Traced her hand downward over her belly to the shadowed valley between her thighs where the fire became a flame.

With a muttered oath, he shot from the couch and caught her in his arms, tumbling her to the thick carpet at their feet. They fought through his clothing, his hands and hers colliding. Tearing. Ripping. Desperate to feel flesh against flesh. And when they were both stripped bare, open and vulnerable, one to the other, they came together.

“No more walls between us,” she demanded. “No hiding. No barriers. Just the two of us, allowing the other in.”

He shook his head. “It’s not what you want.” He nuzzled her breast, captured her nipple between his teeth and gently tugged. “Not what either of us wants. We’re too damaged to open ourselves like that again.”

She shuddered beneath the delicate touch. “How can you say that when this is what happens whenever we make love?” The words hung within the softness of the night, powerful and bright against the darkness. “Itiswhat I want. What you want. What we both want from each other. To try again. To feel again. Admit it.”

His fingers danced low, sliding into the source of her heat and making her moan in longing. “You’re not Lisa…I get that. You’re not like any other woman I’ve known. But I lost the capacity to feel long ago.”

How could he say that? He tried to be that dispassionate man, no question. But he was so much more. She’d seen it. Sensed it. “Are we going to live like strangers for the next half-dozen years? Opening ourselves physically, but nothing more? Is that what you want for yourself? For Mikey?” She trailedher hands across the dips and ridges of his abs, following the crisp curls that guided her downward. He was hard and slick, the epitome of masculine strength and virility. She circled his length, guiding him to her heat. “Or do you want everything, everything I have to give?”

Lucius shook his head. “I can’t give what I don’t have,” he claimed.

And yet… And yet she felt the slip. The reluctant easing. The subtle collapse of barriers shifting and trembling. It wasn’t a surrender. But it was a start. They had time. Endless time to transition from a place of hurt and suspicion to trust and certainty.

She lifted her hips, took him in, crying out at the sheer perfection of fit and rhythm. “Lucius!” His name became both prayer and demand.

He took her mouth in an endless kiss, then pulled back ever so slightly. “Look at me. I want you with me on this ride.”

Their gazes met, clung. And what she saw there gave her hope. A spark. Just a spark of it, but it was enough. She let go, gave herself up to the heat and fire that burst into life whenever they came together. The flame became an inferno, unstoppable in its power. Branding them. Joining them. Binding them, one to the other—the fit, utter perfection.

Possibilities. He’d stopped believing in possibilities so very long ago.

Lucius gathered Angie up in his arms and carried her to their bedroom.Theirs.He shook his head, amused by the speed with which he’d transitioned from “his” to “theirs.” And he could pinpoint precisely when it had all changed. It had stopped being his bedroom the first night she’d shared his bed, just as he’d stopped being alone that very same night.

He’d resisted involvement. Would probably continue to resist…for now. But he could see that this time, because of this woman, his life would never be the same again.

She’d shown him a road he’d never noticed before, was utterly surprised to find it beneath his feet and himself some distance along its path. He hadn’t anticipated that occurring. Would have vehemently denied the possibility of it ever happening. And yet, here he stood with a woman in his arms and a longing in his heart he hadn’t felt in…

Forever.

Possibilities. For some reason his life had become filled with endless possibilities and they were all because of one woman. The woman who wore his ring on her finger. And if he had anything to say about it, it was a ring she’d continue to wear for the rest of her life.

Chapter Nine

“Irealizethis is bad timing, but I have a business trip to New York that I can’t postpone,” Lucius announced one morning over Sunday breakfast.

To his relief, Angie nodded, not revealing any hint of concern that she’d be left in charge of Mikey and the home front. She poured herself a cup of tea and took a seat beside him. “The Tobias project, I assume?”

“It’s reached a crucial point and I need to meet with the investors before moving forward with it.”

She took a sip of tea and sighed in unconscious pleasure. He noticed she always did that with her first sip, made that soft, semimoan that caused him to clench his muscles in helpless want. No doubt it had something to do with the ecstatic expression that slid across her face when she drank. He recognized it as a pale reflection of how she looked when he made love to her, the resemblance just close enough to tempt him to sweep her into his arms and closet them in his bedroom for the next several hours. Maybe he’d get used to his reaction toher, to the relentless desire that filled him whenever he looked at her. Maybe he wouldn’t respond to that sigh each and every morning for the rest of his life. Maybe. Though somehow he doubted it.

It had been two weeks since they’d become engaged. Two incredible weeks during which, with a fast assist from the Pretorius Program, he’d put a new PA in place, freeing Angie to slip seamlessly into her new responsibilities. Granted, the new PA wasn’t Angie, but the motherly woman would do.

When it came to his home life, he couldn’t quite get over how well he and Angie fit together, blended, and he’d realized a few days earlier that he no longer thought of their engagement as a position he’d hired her to fill. He couldn’t say when the transition had occurred. Like everything else about Angie’s advent into his life, it had been equally seamless. He simply recognized that life was different. Better.

He could even fool himself into believing their engagement had come about the way normal engagements did—with two people falling in love and deciding to link their lives through marriage. And though he wouldn’t go so far as to claim they’d fallen in love, they’d certainly fallen in lust. Even more important, they enjoyed each other’s company. Respected one another. There was such an amazing naturalness to their interactions, a comfortable fit to how their lives had blended. And yet they could exchange a single glance and have passion explode instantaneously between them.

He removed Mikey’s breakfast dishes and dumped them in the sink before grabbing one of the neatly folded washcloths on the counter. “I also wanted to warn you that, according to my sources, the Ridgeways still plan to file for custody.” He dampened the washcloth and returned to the table to applyit to Mikey’s hands and face, ignoring the baby’s squirming protests at his mistreatment. “I want our wedding to take place before that happens so no one can accuse us of marrying as a countermeasure.”

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