“Some of us do. And some of us exist better as solitary beings.” His mouth curled. “Get married and have your white picket family, Mina. All the power to you. But that’s not me.”
“Who says I want to settle down now? I want my freedom now that I have it. The rest can come later.”
“You think you want your freedom. Soon you’ll want more. All women have the nesting gene.”
His condescending attitude irked her. “I guess that’s right if you say so.”
His gaze sharpened. “Picking a fight, Mina? That’s a new one.”
“Maybe I’m tired of being told what I want. There’s a whole world out there for me to experience, Nate. Not just business. I plan on doing so.”
His steps slowed as another, lazier, Sinatra tune followed the last. “I’m all for seizing the moment,” he murmured idly. But the gaze he had trained on her was anything but. “So what will you do when our year is up, then? Take a series of lovers to satisfy your need for human connection? Keep your affairs short and sweet so no one gets too attached?”
“You’re playing with me now.”
“I’m curious. You forget I know you’re an innocent, Mina. How does that factor into all this? Do you plan to simply give your virginity away to the first man who does it for you?”
Her lashes lowered. If that were the case, she’d be giving it to him.
“My virginity is a matter of circumstance. A bargaining tool my mother used to sell me. I refuse to treat it as such. When I decide to give it to a man it will be because I made a conscious decision to do so without overcomplicating things.”
“I see.” He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s quite a thing to lay at a man’s doorstep. What happens if he falls for you? You simply kick him out the door and say you’re not ready?”
She frowned. “Who says it would be me kicking him out?”
“Because you are devastatingly, undeniably desirable, Mina. With just the right air of vulnerability to have men falling over themselves to claim you if you offer them your innocence. They won’t stand a chance.”
Her gaze locked with his for a long, heated moment. It seemed ridiculous to be speaking of other lovers when the only man’s hands she wanted on her were Nate’s. When that’s all she’d wanted ever since he’d unleashed that devastating kiss on her.
“Not happening, Mina.” His husky drawl slid over her sensitized flesh like a slow, potent caress. “We have a very functional partnership going on here.”
She knew it. He knew it. But she couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from his. “I know,” she agreed. “I know it’s insanity, but I—I can’t seem to stop thinking about what happened between us. About how alive...how lost I felt.”
“Try harder,” he bit out. “This, we, cannot happen. I don’t mix business with pleasure.”
“You’re the one who said we hardly have a straightforward business relationship. I believe you called it...unique.”
“Unique enough,” he growled. The storm in his eyes intensified. “You are vulnerable, Mina. You are looking at me like I’m some knight who’s come to your rescue when I am anything but. You have no idea what you are throwing out there right now.”
She swallowed hard. “I am vulnerable right now but I want to feel vulnerable. I want to want what I want. I want to figure out who I am. And I am under no illusions as to what this would be between us. I’ve just said I’m not looking for a commitment. Not now. Not for a long while.”
He was silent, so heart-stoppingly silent she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. “Just to be clear,” he rasped finally, “you’re telling me you want us to go to bed together. And to hell with the consequences?”
She bit the inside of her mouth. Hard. “You keep baiting me, Nate. You won’t leave it alone, either. What do you want?”
* * *
She had a point, Nate thought blackly. What did he want? Because he couldn’t seem to leave this thing with Mina alone. Not when she felt this good in his arms. When the floral, delicate smell of her, the soft curves that tempted him beyond reason, were his for the taking.
He had gone on the offensive to try and distract her when she’d started prying into the pieces of his life he would never expose. In doing so, he’d started something he couldn’t finish. Definitely couldn’t finish. Proving that seemed to be the way to go.
He let go of her hand. Reached up to trace a line down the silky-soft skin of her cheek to her mouth, his thumb dragging across the plump skin of her lower lip. “What you should be afraid of,” he drawled, “is me taking you up on your offer, Mina, because even I have my limits and I’m fast approaching them, common sense be damned.”
Her eyes widened. But she drifted closer, not further away as he explored her lips with the rough pad of his fingertip.
“Mina,” he growled. “You should walk away. I’m not your human connection project. I promise you that.”
She stayed where she was, her gaze fixed on his. He sank his thumb into the warmth of her mouth. Watched the heat in her beautiful dark eyes catch fire. And lost his mind just that much more.
His hands dropped to her hips, tugging her forward until her delectable curves were pressed against him. Mina’s long, silky lashes arced over her cheeks as he angled his head and brought his mouth down on hers.
Urgently, deliberately, he drank her sweetness in, tasted her endlessly until there was not one millimeter of her lips he hadn’t explored. When her hand curled around the back of his neck and urged him closer, he teased her mouth further apart and invaded with his tongue. She had learned from the last time they’d kissed, found her rhythm quickly now, her tongue sliding delicately against his. His body hardened in an instant visceral response that should have stopped him. Instead, it spurred him on.
The bare skin exposed by the back of her dress was an irresistible temptation. He swept his palm from her shoulder blades to the base of her spine, urging her closer. Her shocked gasp as she came into contact with his aroused, pulsing body heated his blood.
“There’s still time to run,” he murmured, dragging his mouth across her cheek and up to her earlobe.
She did the opposite, arching into him, fitting herself to him so perfectly it tore a groan from his throat. Holding her with the fingers he had pressed against the small of her back, he held himself completely still. “You make me crazy,” he muttered, wrapping his lips around the tender flesh of her lobe and nipping at it. “Move, Mina. Now.”
She tipped her head back and gave him more room to explore. He took her lobe deeper into the heat of his mouth and scraped his teeth across it.
“Nate...” she breathed in that way of hers that made it sound more like Neet.
Crazy sexy.
He worked his way down the column of her throat to the place where her pulse raged at the base of her neck. Pressed hot, openmouthed kisses against the delicate flesh he found there. Mina shuddered. Wrapped her fingers in his hair.
He brought his mouth back up to hers and took her lips in a hard, hot kiss. Unable to resist, he cupped one of her perfect, uptilted breasts in his palm. She stiffened as he ran his thumb over its delicate, half-erect peak. Over and over again until she moaned and melted into him.
“You like that?” he murmured against her lips, transferring his attention to her other rounded globe.
“Sì,” she whispered. “I feel like I’m on fire, Nate.”
His head exploded. Dissolved into urgent flames that obliterated any last vestiges