Resisting The Tycoon's Seduction (The Berutelli Escape) (17 page)

“Now we’re back to simple
lust.”

“
It’s powerful lust,” he argued firmly, pulling her close and gently nibbling at her neck where he knew she liked, even though she wiggled, trying to get away from him.  “And I want to protect you with every resource I have.”

She smiled, her hands gripping his shoulders while she tried to control her breathing.  It was difficult with his mouth moving down to her collar bone. 
“You’re a very kind man.”

He shook his head.  “Marissa, if anyone in any of my companies heard that, they would laugh you out of the building.  I’m not kind.  I’m demanding,” he said as he
shifted her in the chair to better prove his point.  She was now in a better position for him to remove her clothing.  “Now would you please tell me that you love me so we can get on to better activities for the evening?” he asked a moment before his large, callused hands slipped underneath her silk blouse. 

She pulled back, shock replacing the desire clouding her thinking.  “Why do you think I love you?” she
demanded, her hands grabbing his wrists.  Her grip had no impact on slowing down his hands though. 

He pulled her forward, his mouth nibbling on her shoulder.  “Because you do, first of all.  You never would have had sex with me if you hadn’t been in love with me.  And you’ve been worried that your father was after me all this time instead of worrying about yourself.”  He lifted his head and looked
down at her.  “I’m right, aren’t I?” he grinned at her outraged expression. 

Marissa wasn’t sure how to answer him.  She didn’t want to give him all the power in the relationship, but this feeling of love was practically bursting out of her.  She wanted him so badly and not just sexually.  “Yes, but that’s a bit irrelevant,” she told him, trying to pull back.  But the
expression on her face told him otherwise.

“I don’t think it’s irrelevant,” he countered.  “I think it makes all the other problems workable.”  He bit her earlobe then.  “And if you don’t tell me you love me pretty soon, I’m going to do something quite drastic.”

“What might a drastic action be?” she asked breathily, gasping when his fingers slipped higher, his thumbs rubbing against her pebbled nipples. 

He lifted her higher, his hand ripping the silk off of her body, revealing her lace covered breasts to his heated gaze.  “This might happen,” he said and covered her nipple with his hot
, demanding mouth, sucking hard while his hands held her exactly where he wanted her so she couldn’t wiggle away. 

She cried out, trying desperately to control what he was making her feel but it was too intense, to
o amazing.  In the end, she didn’t have to control anything though.  He took her higher and higher and when he finally gave in to her pleading, she screamed out her feelings for him as he loved her so thoroughly she couldn’t deny him anything.  Even after they came down from that incredible climax, she still whispered how much she loved him, her fingers running through the light layer of rough hair on his magnificent chest. 

“I do love you, you know,” she sighed happily later that night as she lay next to him in bed.

He squeezed her gently.  “I know.  I love you too.”

“But you have to tell me what’s going on.  I appreciate you trying to protect me
.  Unfortunately, I’ve been living with this for my whole life.  I can handle it.”

He looked down at her with all the love and respect he was feeling for this woman who had stormed into his life and sighed.  “I think you’re more than capable of handling anything that is thrown at you.”  His hand moved up her naked back and she loved the touch, wiggling against him.

“If I can handle you, I can handle just about anything,” she said, her fingers sliding south with a secret smile on her face.

“Make her stay, Momma,” five year old Duncan said, hiding his teary face in Marissa’s jeans clad
leg. 

Zeke came up behind her
, lifting him into his arms and holding him close.  “Your Aunt Sierra will come back very soon,” he assured his young son.  “But she has a job in Denver and she has to head back home.”  He put an arm around Marissa’s waist as well, pulling her close to comfort his very lush, very pregnant wife.  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked her carefully, seeing the tears in her eyes as well.

Marissa smiled
brightly up at her son who looked so much like her husband that it scared her at times and made her chuckle other times.  “I’m okay.  Just sad,” she said as she put her hand over his, telling him without words how much his touch and his support meant to her.  “I worry about her.”

Zeke kissed the top of her head.  “She’s okay.  I promise.”

Duncan grinned through his tears.  “Daddy calls Dave to check on her sometimes.”

Marissa stiffened and turned to look up at her husband.  “Zeke?  Do you have something you’ve
forgotten to tell me?” she asked. 

Zeke almost groaned out loud at having been caught.  “Now Marissa…” he started to say but she shook her head.

“Zeke Raphael Vaughn, tell me what you’ve been doing,” she demanded, pulling out of his arms. 

Zeke pulled Duncan closer, ignoring the little man’s giggle at his mother’s stern expression.  Zeke tried hard not to laugh either but he really loved it when
she took that tone of voice with him.  He thought she was the sexiest woman alive during normal times.  And her pregnancy only made him think she was a goddess.  But when she spoke to him like that, he wanted to pick her up in his arms and carry her to their bedroom to make love to her until she was gasping with his name.  He loved it when she tried to be stern with him.  Even pregnant, she couldn’t outweigh him, but she just looked so sweet. 

Strong men trembled when he lowered his voice, but nothing terrified his wife.  Especially not her husband when he’d been doing something she disagreed with.

“You know I love it when you talk to me like that,” he said, reminding her that he would take on her challenge whenever she tossed it out to him, like she was doing now. 

“Stop stalling, Zeke.  Tell me what you’ve done!”

He shifted his giggling son in his arms. “I haven’t done anything but make sure that Sierra is protected.”

“All the time?” Marissa asked, horrified at the idea.
Being protected in Zeke’s mind might be an invasion of her sister’s privacy and that was a treasured commodity. 

Zeke lifted his free hand as if in surrender.  He wondered if she’d get angrier if he told her how beautiful she was when she was acting all stern and mean like right now. 
“No.  Only occasionally.  And she’s doing extremely well for herself.”

Marissa threw up her arms in exasperation. 
“I know that!  I knew she’d be okay the moment she stepped out of our father’s house and went off to college on her own.”

Zeke took a step forward, only stopping when Marissa put a finger to the middle of his chest.  As if that could stop him if he wanted to hold her!  He laughed softly and shook his head.  “Listen here, woman.  I love you and you come with a great sister who is our son’s favorite aunt.  If I want to send someone in to look out for her occasionally, I’m going to do it.”

“Yeah!” Duncan piped up, his adorable face scrunched up with his eyebrows drawn down over his grey eyes, just like his father did occasionally. 

Marissa refuse
d to laugh because it would only encourage both of them.  Even though they looked so similar that it sometimes made her heart ache with love for both of them. 

Her hand absently rested on her unborn daughter.  “Zeke, don’t you dare teach Duncan to be like you.”

Of course, Duncan laughed and hugged his father tightly. 

Zeke threw back his head and laughed
as well, delighted with his wife as always.  Putting an arm around his wife’s non-existent waist, he led her back up the stone steps to their home.  “Honey, would you really have it any other way?”

She thought about that for a moment before sighing with resignation.  Laying her head on his broad, muscular shoulder she said, “No.  I guess not.”

Zeke loved this about her.  Besides being gorgeous and sexier than any woman had a right to be, she was also honest and loving, with a gentle heart that continued to astound him.  She was also an amazing business woman.  Now that her father was out of the picture, she’d been able to expand her web design business and had an entire office filled with designers working on assignments from all over the world.  And she was all his. 

“How about if we agree that you’ll take care of our daughter and
I’ll make sure everyone is safe?”

She snickered at his obvious attempt to gain permission to sneak around.  “Not going to happen big guy.  You have some explaining to do.”  She peered up at him through her long lashes.  With a grin she said, “And we’re going to have a very serious discussion about all of this as soon as Duncan’s nanny takes him for his afternoon nap.”

Duncan stiffened in his father’s arms, suddenly worried.  “Are you in trouble, Daddy?” he asked, putting his chubby arm protectively around his strong father’s neck. 

Zeke looked down into Marissa’s eyes, understanding her silent message.  With a grin, he said, “Oh, I certainly hope so.”

Duncan relaxed when he heard his mother’s laughter.  Even though his Aunt Sierra had left to head back home this morning, he suddenly felt that all was once again well with his world. 

Sierra looked at her sister closely, not understanding what was wrong.  Something had disturbed her normally unflappable sister and it scared her.  “Marissa, what’s going on?” 

She felt her sister shiver and a moment later,
Marissa simply disappeared into the house.  Sierra watched carefully, glancing at her father to see if he’d seen the escape as well.  Hopefully not and Marissa could make a clean getaway.  But as she surveyed the crowd of people around her father’s luxurious pool, her father’s eyes were following his eldest daughter closely. 

She was
just about to get her sister’s attention, to call her sister back but her eyes were snagged by a tall, gorgeous man who stepped out onto the stone patio at that moment.  She gasped, her body frozen as the strange man looked around, his eyes seeming to take in all of the important details.  Unfortunately, Sierra wasn’t one of those details, but why would she be?  A man as gorgeous as he was wouldn’t look twice at a young, skinny teenager who hadn’t a hope of blossoming into the kind of woman who probably caught his eye. 

In that same instant, her father noticed the man as well and Sierra’s heart sank with disappointment.  With a
lurch, her father stepped around his contemptible minions surrounding the bar and moved over to the tall stranger, greeting him effusively and Sierra wished with all her heart that this one man with his tall, handsome demeanor and bulging muscles that strained the fine cotton shirt stretched over his broad shoulders wasn’t one of her father’s pathetic, rock-slithering underlings. 

He certainly didn’t look like the rest of the men there surrounding the pool with their gaudy, thick, gold chains and their ill-fitting shirts, most of them with bellies that protruded repulsively over their belts.  No, this man appeared to be refined, dignified.  He had no paunch at all.  In fact, she suspected that he actually had ridges on that flat stomach of his.  There was just something about the way he held himself, the way he walked, with confidence and elegance, that told her he worked out a great deal and took too much pride in his appearance to allow himself to get flabby. 

In addition, there wasn’t any jewelry on him at all, not even a tacky, pretentious, pinky ring.  His white, tailored shirt was tucked neatly into his pressed slacks without any overlap.  In fact, he looked more muscular than all of the men combined. 

In a word, he was gorgeous! 

But what was he doing here?  Her father seemed to be excited to see him and she watched with growing disappointment as her father walked the man over to the others by the bar, all of them looking eager to greet this new person into their midst simply because her father was introducing him to everyone.   That was a sure sign that the stranger was important. 

The men who hung around her father might not be the best and brightest at math or science, but they were experts at reading body language, understanding politics and sucking up to the important people.  In other words, they had street smarts.  They knew how to survive. 

Sort of, she thought with sadness since there had been men at her father’s previous parties who were just as street savvy but had mysteriously disappeared. 

Briefly, she noticed the man’s dark eyes glance in her direction.  Did he hesitate when he saw her?  Or was it just her imagination?  The moment was brief and, all too quickly, her father was leading the handsome stranger in the opposite direction.  When the two disappeared into the house, heading towards her father’s office, Sierra felt her heart melt because the only people who went into her father’s office were underlings or business associates.  Either option was…unfortunate. 

She felt her body deflate as if it were a balloon, disappointment at the reality that the one man she’d met who looked fascinating and interesting was nothing more than a minion or yet another petty criminal in a pathetic army of unintelligent, irresponsible brutes.