Living in Secret: Living In..., Book 3 by Jackie Ashenden Page A

to get up in her face again, get close, watch that reserve crumble like it had while she was in the armchair, while he was directing her pleasure.
    She didn’t move, but her jaw hardened, her mouth in a tight line as he came closer.
    He stopped, inches away, looking down into her face. The scent of sex was still in the air, intensifying the ache in his groin. He ignored it. “I will sign those papers. But only on one condition.”
    “Oh? And what’s that?”
    “I want you for one week and one week only. In my bed.”
    Something flickered in her gaze, immediately masked. “Sex, you mean?”
    “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”
    “Why? When you’ve never shown the slightest bit of interest in sex with me before?”
    He should give her the truth. Tell her he’d wanted her since the day he’d first seen her. But he wouldn’t. Because that would lead to other questions, other truths he wasn’t prepared to give to anyone, let alone her.
    “That was then,” he said. “This is now. And now what I want is you.”
    “Really?” Her mouth twisted. “You’ll forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe.”
    He didn’t think, reaching out and closing his fingers around the slender bones of her wrist. Pulling her hand down and pressing it to the front of his suit trousers, where his damn hard-on was still going strong. “Do you believe me now?”
    Her gaze flicked down to where he was holding her hand, her mouth opening slightly. And he heard her breath catch. The heat from her palm was sweet agony, but he didn’t release her wrist, keeping her hand there.
    A tense, silent second passed.
    “Well?” he demanded. “Say it, Victoria.”
    “Yes,” she said after a moment, her voice thick. “I believe you.”
    “Then what’s your answer?”
    Her attention stayed on her hand, slim fingers spread on the black wool of his trousers. “If all you want is sex, why can’t you find someone else? Why do you need me?”
    Another good question. But this wasn’t purely about sex and it never had been. It was about a desire that had been simmering away for years, kept hidden, kept secret, that he was only now allowing to be set free. An intense, physical desire which had always been for her and only for her.
    Oh, he’d looked at other women over the years. And he’d felt some vague twinges of attraction for them. But not in the way he felt for Victoria. Not with such intensity and insistence. Marrying her had been the wrong thing to do, yet he’d done it anyway, not wanting to let her go.
    Yeah, and your marriage became an agony.
    Maybe it had been. Which made now the perfect time to put it behind them once and for all.
    “Because I don’t want anyone else,” he said. “I want you. Take it or leave it.”
    Her fingers pressed against him unexpectedly, the breath catching in his throat at the touch. Then she looked up at him, her eyes dark. “And if I say no?”
    “You don’t get your divorce.”
    “Neither do you.”
    “I can live with that.”
    She looked away and he felt her wrist tense against his fingers. He didn’t release her. He would have this. He would.
    “You bastard.” Her voice was soft.
    “Does that mean you’re going to lie again? Tell me you don’t want me?”
    “Let me go.”
    “No. You can feel what you do to me, Victoria. And I saw what I did to you. Don’t tell me you don’t find the thought of a week in my bed even a little bit intriguing.”
    “Intriguing is not the way I’d describe our sex life for the past five years.”
    He stilled, staring down into her face, studying her expression. Because that almost sounded like…regret.
    He’d never had one sign from her she wanted him physically, not one. Until tonight. And that lack of interest had been one of the reasons he’d decided to marry her. It made her safe. And if she’d shown she wanted him, he would have broken it off to protect both of them.
    But she hadn’t. And so he’d married her. And in the whole five