Intimate Seduction - Brenda Jackson [70]
“You can ask, Natalie, but that doesn’t mean I’ll do it. In fact, I can guarantee you that I won’t.”
That spiked her anger. “You think you can just stay here, against my wishes?”
“Pretty much, mainly because the rift between us is just as much your fault as it is mine. I admit that I should not have jumped to conclusions,” he said, standing up and pulling the shirt out of his pants. “But you aren’t completely blameless. Had you told me the truth from the beginning, that you were a chemistry professor, I would not have had a reason to think you were a corporate spy. Granted, I was swift to make a judgment and I apologize for that, but there’s a reason why I did it.”
She tried not to notice he was now unbuttoning his shirt. “Is there?”
“Yes. I felt myself falling for you. You were too good to be true, and deep down, a tiny part of me wanted to believe you really weren’t true. So when I found what I thought was proof that you weren’t the woman I thought you were, I jumped on it. I apologized for it and you said you accepted my apology. Yet, you’re acting cold, unemotional and dispassionate toward me. I want the old Natalie back.”
“You can’t have the old Natalie back.”
He stood in the middle of her living room, shoeless and shirtless. “Do you care to bet on that?”
No, she didn’t care to bet on it, not when he was looking at her like she was a piece of chocolate he planned to gobble up. She took a step back. He actually assumed—even after everything—that he could actually just walk in here and expect things to be as they were before.
“I don’t think that,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “There are a number of things we do need to straighten out—like why you didn’t tell me everything in the beginning. We will get to that. But first, we need to get to this.”
His hand went to the zipper of his slacks. She saw the huge bulge there and remembered the last time she’d seen him in such a state and how she had taken matters into her own hands. Literally. But she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to remember.
But when he began easing down his zipper, memories flooded her—every tantalizing detail—and her mind became jammed with all kinds of thoughts, jumbled with all sorts of memories.
“Will you come over here or do I have to come over there?”
She knew what she wanted to say but she couldn’t form the words. He took her silence as indecisiveness and said, “Before either of us takes a step, I think you ought to know something, Dr. Natalie Ford.”
She swallowed. “What?”
“I love you very much. I didn’t think I would or could say those words to a woman, but I’m saying them to you.”
He loved her? Actually loved her? Before she could let her heart fill up with joy, she had to know one thing. “And what about what I do for a living?”
“What about it? Should it matter?”
She shrugged. “It did to other men. They considered me a chemistry geek.”
Donovan held steadfast to her gaze. Now he understood, at least he thought he did. But to make sure, he asked, “Did other men find what you do for a living a turnoff or something?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“It’s their loss for not getting to know the real you. The passionate you. I don’t care about you being a chemistry geek because in my bed you are a sexual goddess. You make me feel things no other woman has ever made me feel.”
He took a step forward. “You’re mine, Natalie. You became mine the first day I saw you in my bed. I later made you mine in that same bed. The first for me and any woman. And you’ve technically christened my entire house. There’s not a single room I can go in without thinking of you, without remembering making love to you in it.”
He glanced around. “And now I want to do the same for yours. I want to leave my mark in every room in this house, so whenever you’re here without me, you will remember.”
“That’s an ambitious goal, don’t you think?”
He chuckled. “Yes, but one I plan to achieve, starting now. In here.”
She stood there, watching as he removed his pants, his briefs and then sheathed himself in a condom. Her mind barely registered what