Page 47 of Out of Office Nights
‘So she judged your mother for making the same mistakes she did?’ Sharp slivers of bitterness coated his question.
‘You think she had no right to do that after doing everything in her power to warn my mother of the risks?’
He spiked her with a censorious look. ‘You presume your grandmother held the golden key to happiness. A path that only involved your mother not repeating her mistakes. What if your father had proved to be both a playboy and the man who granted your mother the greatest happiness, given the chance to reconnect that he apparently wasn’t allowed to have?’
She frowned. ‘Do you hear yourself? That’s a contradiction in terms.’
‘Is it? You think your mother would’ve only been happy with a staid, excitement-averse nobody who would flog himself for so much as accidentally smiling at another woman?’
Memories of rows and tears after her grandmother had attempted to force just such a procession of supposedly safe suitors on her mother reeled through her mind. Her mother had hated every one of them, pleaded with her grandmother to stop. It’d reinforced the acrimonious belief that the El-Maleh women were doomed to love only one type of man.
She refocused on Teo to find him looking at her. Daring her to admit the truth. She licked her suddenly dry lips then cursed herself when he followed the action with blazing eyes. ‘So you’re saying she should’ve chased playboy after playboy until she found one willing to reform just for her?’
‘I’m saying no one has the right to inflict their expectations—or lack thereof—on others, even if they themselves have failed in their own endeavours.’
Layers of bitterness in his tone made her heart lurch for him, tugging her close to the dangerous flame of their shared sense of misery loving company.
She watched intently, spellbound as he went over to the table, picked up the wine he’d brought with him and two wine glasses and returned to where she stood. It was another bottle of the exquisite Château Latour she’d so enjoyed last night.
His gaze still on her, he slowly filled the glass, set the bottle down on the wall and held the glass against her lips.
Despite the way she looked and the constant barrage of sex-centricity generated because of it, she’d never considered herself an especially sexual person. She suspected years of watching and hearing what beauty had done to her family had diminished any desire to explore her sexuality until it’d receded to the back of her mind, buried—but apparently not dead.
In her innermost thoughts, she’d often wondered whether it was that lack of exposure which had made her gravitate, naive and oblivious, towards Nathan’s overtly carnal existence. The charm he’d exuded so freely.
And whether it was why she was so fearful of being caught in Teo’s erotic vortex. Of losing herself so entirely in it that she wouldn’t be able to see top from bottom. And while knowing Nathan’s other deplorable characteristics had been what had eventually devastated and soured her emotions, she didn’t feel the same danger when she was with Teo.
No, his was a different sort of peril. With him she sensed a deeper entanglement, a fathomless yearning she’d never once felt with Nathan. A certainty that emotional annihilation with Teo would be apocalyptic.
‘Isn’t that the very definition of learning from one’s mistakes?’ she asked, unable to stem the river of sensual delight flowing through her veins. Thick and heavy as she took a large, indelicate gulp of wine, spilling a drop that dripped to her chin and landed on her collarbone.
Her breath strangled completely as he followed the red trail, his eyes turning hot and mercurial.
‘But it wasn’t your mistake. And taking on literal generations of tribulation and carrying it on your back, no matter how much you love your family, won’t get you very far if you’re so weighed down.’
She swallowed, resisting that pull he so effectively lassoed around her. ‘You wouldn’t be asking me about Nathan if you didn’t know that it’s not just others’ mistakes that have affected me, Teo.’
His nostrils flared in a visible, primal act of temper and slivers of jealousy. It shouldn’t have thrilled her so much. ‘You know I despise rumours. Tell me what happened with him,’ he breathed the order.
She resisted. The humiliation might not burn as searingly, but it was lead at the bottom of her soul, weighing it down.
Maybe it’s time to let it go, then…?
She jolted, that internal voice sounding so distinctly like Teo’s it was disarming. She set her glass down with a sharp clink. ‘God, get out of my head,’ she blurted before she could stop herself. ‘I don’t need anything from you,’ she forced out, more in hope than belief.
A trace of his displeasure receded, replaced by a bleakness that signalled she’d touched a sensitive nerve.
He raised his glass and sipped his wine then set it on the wall next to hers. ‘If you insist, then so be it,tesoro. To hell with everyone else. It’s time to be your own muse—’
She launched herself at him, threw her arms around his neck. ‘Stop talking! Every time you do I feel… I feel…’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure whether to slap you or thank you. It’s driving me insane.’ Her fingers dug in, her reaction matching his primal one a minute ago.
A tremor charged through him, and a jagged sound left her throat.
‘If it helps, you drive me insane too,’ he replied, eyes raking over her face to settle on her mouth, another fine tremor transmitting through her. ‘And you’re welcome to do either. Both even,’ he added hoarsely.
