Page 46 of Hotshot Mogul

I ended the call. Anneliese stared down at her hands, then squared her shoulders and met my gaze. Her pupils dilated, leaving rings so dark blue they looked purple. “I could tell you stories, if you want, about our lives before.” She lifted her hair off her neck, exposing the beautiful column of her throat—the ancient siren call.

I pressed my mouth to her thudding pulse. It throbbed faster. My cock wanted inside her, now. I eased her robe from her shoulders, like opening a fragile gift. Her nipples were stiff. I teased them with my fingers. My mouth followed. I sucked one, then its twin as I cupped her sex.

She was wet. Fucking perfect. She slid her hand under my shirt, then lower, wrapping her soft hand around my cock. I was so hard I could cut glass.

Following my last glimmer of restraint, I pulled my hand away. I could smell her musky desire on my fingers. My voice cracked. “This wasn’t the plan. We were supposed to go slow.”

She smiled and unbuttoned my shirt. “I will go slow. I promise.”

Save me. She pressed her cheek against my neck, inhaled, and sighed. Moving lower, she flicked my nipples with her tongue, kissed her way down my chest, and pulled down my boxers.

She was too good at this. Anger and jealousy I didn’t expect cropped up. Had she been with someone else? I hadn’t touched another woman since she’d left me. But she didn’t know that. She was taking a dangerous chance with her health by not asking.

I took gentle hold of her waist and pulled her away from me. “Anneliese.” She rolled onto her side but kept her hand on my dick. Work with it, Clynes. How to ask this and not sound like a jealous asshole?

“You don’t know if I’ve been with someone else, if I’m clean.” She looked puzzled. I hurried to explain before she distracted me again. “I mean, free of disease. It’s been almost a year.”

Her expression darkened. She let me go. Gut punch. She stood and put on her robe. “You have been with Beth, then?”

“Hell, no. I haven’t been with anybody. But you didn’t know that. And I don’t know if you’ve been with anyone since you left.” My tone sounded flat, with an edge of anger.

“I am clean, free from disease, also. I have only been with you in this body.” She moved onto the bed. She glided her hand down my chest, over my hip, to my backside. Then she moved to my front, stopping just shy of my cock. “How many have you been with in this body?”

Another gut punch. She was smiling. My dark mood evaporated. “I was looking for you,” I quipped.

Holy hell. My throat dried. I was looking for her. I must have remembered her, longed for her. Something loosened in my chest.

I lifted her hand from my chest, pressed a kiss to her palm. Then I stood. “Be right back.”

I strode into the bathroom on shaky legs and poured a glass of water, not waiting for it to run cold. I hadn’t believed it, really—all the past-life stuff—till now. Maria Rosa’s words.

How did we move forward? Would she cut and run again? Would she trust me enough to stay if things got rough? Would my grief, if she left me again, come close to her own when we’d walked together in New France?

She touched my shoulder. “Bruce?” Her gaze was filled with love and concern. I lifted her naked body so her luscious ass was on the counter. She wrapped her legs around my waist. I kissed her, taking it slow for two seconds.

Our tongues dueled. My cock nudged her sex. Condom, I needed a condom. Not breaking the kiss, I walked us to the bed. I let her go to open the drawer in the nightstand and pulled out a box of condoms I picked up in a drugstore on the way to the hotel on the good chance I wouldn’t be taking things slow.

She scooted back so her golden blonde hair fanned out on the pillow as I opened the box. I wanted her bare, to feel her squeezing my cock so hard I had to fight to stay inside her. I wanted to make her pregnant and watch our baby grow inside her. I never wanted that before, not even with Diana. If Anneliese walked away from me again…

She flipped the packet out of my fingers, then put my fingers on the underside of her firm, toned arm. “I have the implant to prevent pregnancy. It will last for two more months.”

I could feel it. Did she think I wouldn’t believe her, that she had to prove it? My last hold on restraint vanished.

I took hold of her waist. She raked her fingernails down my back. I entered her, thrusting slowly. She wouldn’t have it. “Faster, harder,” she said, gripping my backside.

Things went hazy after that. Did she or I lift her legs over my shoulders so I could go even deeper? I stretched her until her muscles went tight. She drenched my cock with her come. Sweet heaven. I kissed her to stop her screams, and because I needed to taste her like I needed air to breathe. How had I lived without this, without her, for a whole damn year?

I wanted us to go together. Could she give me one more? I pressed my thumb to her clit, pulled out and thrusted fast—one, two, three pumps. “Weee,” she screamed as I emptied myself inside her.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Anneliese

The woman standing next to the Iroquois longhouse made of tree bark at the Milwaukee Museum glared at me as I brought my face close to the bark. I wanted the barest whiff of the forest and the trading post, although I knew this had to be a depiction, not a four-hundred-year-old dwelling. But I wanted the woodsy, smoky, and venison smell to remember. I longed for the memories the scene stirred up: my beloved Gen, even Étienne praising my cooking, which he loved—anything to dispel the cold sense of dread dancing up and down my spine. I couldn’t shake this sudden, intense feeling that something was wrong.

“Don’t touch it.” She pointed to the do not touch sign. I moved away.

A fan whirred overhead. Air conditioning blasted. I rubbed my bare arms to warm them. Bruce was outside, talking on his phone to Kathy in the Oakdale city office.

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