Page 152 of The Tycoon's Affair: Tempted By Desire
No. He didn’t.He could tear a woman’s heart and soul to shreds just by being him. Raw. Male. Uncompromising. Tortured, but with a deep core of emotion that made her heart break.
‘You were right, you know,’ he said heavily.
Sylvie finally found her voice. ‘About what?’
Arkim grimaced. ‘About my motivations for agreeing to marry Sophie. She represented something to me—something I’d always craved. A respectable family unit.’
And that just confirmed for Sylvie what she’d already guessed. Some day Arkim would find a woman worthy of being his perfectly respectable wife, and then hewoulddo frills and niceties. She didn’t doubt it.
The hatred she felt for that future woman shocked her. But it also made her see her own weakness. She wanted more too. She wanted to take every atom of what Arkim was offering and gorge herself before he cast her aside again. Or—if she had the strength—gorge herself so that she could walk away before he could do it for her.
She lifted her chin. ‘If I stay with you and we...we do this, I won’t give up my job.’
Arkim was very still. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’
Sylvie felt a spurt of relief mixed with pain. As long as she stayed in her ‘job of ill repute’ she’d remember who she was—and so would he. There would be no dangerous illusions or dreams, no fantasies that things could be different. Because they never could be. She wasnotthe woman who would share Arkim’s life and mother his children. And she needed to remember that.
She forced a lightness to her voice that she wasn’t feeling and said, ‘Well, then, if this dog is really mine I’d better think of a name.’
‘That’s agoodboy, Omar...’
Arkim stood at the door and watched Sylvie hand the puppy a treat from her pocket as she lavished him with praise, rubbing him behind his floppy ears. As far as he could tell the dog wasn’t doing anything that vaguely resembled obeying commands, but Sylvie was too besotted to care.
He recalled the spontaneous urge he’d felt to take the dog with him when he’d been leaving the oasis, obeying some irrational impulse because it had been the last thing Sylvie had touched. And then he’d spent a month tripping over the damn thing in London, talking to it as if it could understand him.
An alien lightness vied with a familiar surge of arousal just to see her sitting on the floor, her hair in a plait down her back. She was obviously just back from work, still dressed in leggings and a loose top. Arkim was used to women in couture creations and the latest ready-to-wear casuals. Yet Sylvie would blow them all out of the water with her inherent grace and elegance, dressed just like this.
She insisted on taking the Métro every day, refusing his offer of a driver and car. And he hadn’t even realised that his kitchen functioned until he’d come in one evening and found Sylvie taking a Boeuf Bourguignon out of the oven. Far from making him break out in a cold sweat at the domesticity, he’d found it surprisingly appealing. He’d never known what it was to come home to a cooked meal, and he’d found himself laughing out loud at Sylvie’s wry tales of learning to cook when she’d first arrived in Paris.
When she’d told him that she regularly baked for the members of the revue, he’d found his conscience smarting at the thought of how badly he’d misjudged her from that first moment he’d laid eyes on her. Because at first glance she’d epitomised everything he’d grown up to despise in a lewd, over-sexualised world.
In fact she was anything but. He’d been wrong about her.Sowrong.
It had been two weeks now since she’d moved in...and just like before, the more Arkim had of her, the more he wanted her. It made him nervous. This...this lust he felt was too urgent. Desperate, even. He couldn’t let her go.Yet.
She looked up then and saw him standing there. Her eyes widened, brightened, and she smiled. But then the smile slipped slightly and a guarded look came over her beautiful face. It made Arkim want to haul her up and demand that she...What?asked a small voice.Stop shutting you out?
Ever since that night when she’d agreed to stay Sylvie had locked a piece of herself away from him. She was careful around him—there was some spark he’d come to expect in her missing.
Except for when they made love... Then she could hold nothing back, in spite of herself.
But when they were finished she would curl up on her side, away from him. And Arkim would lie there and clench his hands into fists to stop himself from reaching for her—because he didn’t do that, did he? That would send the wrong message...that this was something more than a transitory slaking of mutual lust.
Except it wasn’t being slaked. It was being stoked.
‘A function?’ Sylvie felt a flicker of trepidation. So far she and Arkim had spent their time confined to his stunning apartment. They met here after work and indulged in satisfying their mutual lust until they couldn’t move. Then they got up, went to work and repeated the process.
Every morning Sylvie woke up praying that this would be the morning when he didn’t affect her so much...to no avail. And when they’d had dinner the other night...dinner she’d made...it had felt far too easy...seductive. She couldn’t do that again.
Arkim was leaning against the doorframe, looking edible in a dark three-piece suit, his jaw stubbled after the day.
‘It’s a charity benefit thing...to raise money for cancer awareness. I thought you’d have an interest.’
Sylvie was shocked that Arkim obviously remembered her telling him that her mother had died of cancer.
‘Well, of course I do... But... I mean, I didn’t think you’d want to be seen with me. In public.’
Some fleeting expression passed over his face and then he came over and pulled her up from the floor, his hands resting under her arms. ‘The reason we haven’t gone out together is because the minute I see you I need you. And I need you now.’
