“If I didn’t know better I would say you were in a hurry to escape my presence.”
“I am,” she said, flashing a smile. One he very much wanted to kiss right off her pretty face. But he was still calculating. When. Where. What. He wouldn’t touch her until he made those decisions.
If he touched her at all.
“I do admire your honesty,” he said, instead of kissing her.
“What is taking so long?” She scowled, hitting the button again. Then suddenly, the doors slid open.
“Tenth time’s the charm,” he said, stepping inside.
She gave him a withering glance before moving inside after him.
The doors slid shut and he had the impression that all the air had been sucked out of the space.
The tension between them was unlike anything he had ever known before. Likely because she was the only woman he had ever bothered to resist. He could remember well the first time he had noticed her as a woman, rather than a girl. Sometime after her seventeenth birthday, when all of her snubs and cutting comments had begun to arouse even as they enraged.
When they’d given way to fantasies of him showing her how base and beneath her he truly was.
His attraction, swift, sudden and abhorrent to him, had hit him low and fast in the gut, so quickly he had not had the chance to guard against it. He had not expected to have to guard against an attraction to his chilly younger stepsister.
He had nearly acted on it back then.
He could well remember the time he’d come home from university to see her getting out of the pool. Sleek curves barely concealed by a hot pink bikini that should have clashed terribly with her red hair, but rather was all the more enticing for how incongruous it was.
And he’d gone over to her, and she’d said something snotty, as she usually did. Then he’d grabbed hold of her arm, and pulled her to him. Her green eyes had gone wide, those pink lips parting gently. Begging to be kissed.
But he hadn’t. He’d watched the water drops roll over her bare skin, over her breasts, had imagined lowering his head and slicking up the slow-rolling water. But he hadn’t done that, either.
He’d waited. Waited until her eyes had darkened with desire. Until he’d seen her breath speed up, the pulse in her neck beating at a rapid rate. He had held her arm until he’d been sure he’d turned her on. Until he’d been sure the little ice princess was hot all over.
Then he’d let her go, and turned away, hard as iron and fantasizing about what he might have had.
And now... Well, now he’d had her, hadn’t he? He had answered the question he’d never meant to ask.
He looked at her now, at the sleek ponytail that begged for him to grab hold of it, to wrap it around his hand. Her long, elegant neck. The soft curve of her pale lips. His stomach tightened. Clearly, his lust for her was not so easily dealt with via one quick screw up against the wall.
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she said, pressing the button that would take them to the floor that housed her office.
“Do what?”
“I wish you wouldn’t stare at me.”
“I’m trying to unlock the mysteries of your mind,” he said. “Or rather, I’m attempting to remember what you look like underneath your clothes.” He knew that taunting her was the wrong decision. Knew that it would only push them back to the place he was so desperate to stay away from.
You don’t want to stay away. You want her naked and panting in your arms again.
“Stop it,” she said.
“You’re so desperate to forget what happened between us.”
“Nobody likes to remember rock bottom, Apollo. I consider having sex with you my own personal walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
“I’m honored, I’m sure.”
“Honored isn’t what you’re supposed to be.” She arched one finely groomed brow, her lips twisted into a sneer. She was so self-righteous when she was just as guilty as he was. So sure she was above this attraction that burned between them when she was just as enslaved.
He wanted her. The angrier he got with her, the more he wanted her. Whatever this thing was, the sick, twisted desire that was exploding between them, he couldn’t measure it or assign a number to account for it. He couldn’t parse it the way he could a business acquisition. It wasn’t the simple desire he felt for the sort of woman he usually picked up to spend a few hours of fun with. It was much, much darker.
It was forbidden. Something he had told himself he couldn’t have.
Perhaps that was why it was coming to bite him in the ass now. He didn’t typically practice restraint. Maybe by creating forbidden fruit, by placing it in the middle of his personal garden and telling himself he could not eat it, neither could he touch it, he had created temptation.
That made the most sense. Since Elle looked like original sin. A brilliant, shining apple he wanted to bite into.
And why shouldn’t he? His reasoning for resisting her didn’t matter now. He didn’t want to honor her father. And he still wanted to kiss that puckered expression off her face. So why the hell not?
“You don’t like me,” he said, that darkness compelling him now. “And yet, you do want me.”
“Come now, Apollo, don’t tell me you like every single one of your bed partners. We both know that sex isn’t love,” she said, tilting her chin upward, a faint blush spreading across her cheekbones, adding a kind of dissonance to her bold words.
Elle was certainly playing the part of experienced woman. She had gone up in flames in his arms, an equal participant in the conflagration. And yet, it didn’t all ring true. Didn’t quite piece together in a way that made sense.
He wasn’t sure he cared to analyze it. It wouldn’t change his actions either way.
“Perhaps. But sex and hate don’t typically go together,” he said. “And you claim to hate me.”
“I do,” she said, green eyes flashing. “I hate you for what you’ve done to my father. To me.”
“Not enough to leave the company.”
“That would be abandoning it altogether. What he built. What he’s trying to keep hold of, in spite of you. I won’t do that.”
“I do admire your dedication. Your loyalty.”
“Why do you admire my loyalty? You don’t possess any of your own.”
“We admire the things in others we struggle with ourselves, do we not?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know. I certainly don’t admire anything in you.”
He chuckled, turning to face her, closing some of the distance between them. Her eyes widened and she backed against the wall. It reminded him a little bit too much of what had happened the last time they had been alone in an enclosed space together.
“I think there are a few things you admire about me,” he said, moving in a little bit closer. Her eyes widened, her pupils expanding, the green in her eyes reduced to a thin ring. Her mouth dropped open, soft and round, and begging to be kissed. To be explored. “You most certainly admire what I can do to your body. I think we both know that.”
“I do possess some restraint,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Do you?” he asked, his voice sounding rough, ragged even to his own ears. “Perhaps we should test it.”
He reached out and hit the stop button on the elevator, his stomach