It took him a moment to even remember why they’d come to his office. Dropping his gaze to her lips, he gave into temptation and bent his head to kiss her. The moment their mouths brushed, electricity sizzled in his nervous system and threatened to short-circuit his brain. Leashing the raging desire firing in his blood, he lifted his head and stared into her eyes. “No, the briefcase isn’t what I wanted to show you.”
The corners of her eyes crinkled and she laughed. “You take my breath away.”
“Ditto,” he told her solemnly and forced himself to open the case and pull out the journal of the American Mathematical Society. He held it up for her inspection. “See, I read everything you do.”
Her mouth went slack and her earlier tears threatened again, one splashing down her cheek. “Why?”
“Why what, darling?” He hated her tears, hated them. He wanted to make them go away.
“If you—this…why do you read everything I write?”
Did she truly not understand?
Sebastian slid into a chair and tugged her into his lap, giving into the desire he’d been struggling with since he’d seen her again to enfold her close. He wanted her near always. “Because you wrote it. You.” It really summed up everything for him.
Meredith stared down at the journal and then up at him. She was wavering.
“Say yes, Meredith.” It was a calculated risk, ordering her. She could still tell him no. “Say you’ll stay. Say you’ll give me these few days. I know we can make this work.”
Closing her eyes, she bowed her head, but she didn’t pull away. If anything she moved closer and fisted his shirt in herhand. “Do you really think we can?” Hope and longing so mirroring his own twined in her question.
“I know we can,” he told her, resolved. “Say. Yes.”
She opened her eyes, brought her face to his and kissed him. He welcomed the slow, tentative invasion of her tongue and tangled his hand in her hair. Kissing her was an erotic pleasure. He indulged his senses, lapping up the taste of her sweetness while reveling in how she bloomed to his touch.
“Say yes,” he told her between long, strokes of his tongue against hers. When she finally broke the kiss and lifted her head, he experienced the weight of her study all the way to his bones.
Whatever she’d seen must have satisfied her because she exhaled with a beaming smile. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Relief flooded him.
“Yes,” she repeated and then laughed when he crushed her close. “Yes, Bastian. Yes.”
Time.She’d given him time.Thank God.
MEREDITH
Still in his lap, she shifted to claim the journal issue, which had included the title of her research on the cover. Sebastian rested one hand on her hip and massaged her nape with the other. First his insistence they could work this out, then the combination lock to his briefcase—the number of the suite where they’d ended up spending three hedonistic days in total lust with each other—then the journal. Her emotions seesawed all over the place.
“Where did you go?” Sebastian’s quiet question tugged her from the memory of their first weekend.
“Vienna,” she smiled. “I was thinking about the conference. The dinner. What happened after the dinner.”
Wickedness deepened his smile. “I still think they could have given us a better wine selection.”
Laughter erupted through her and she shook her head. “You harangued our poor waiter until he went and brought you a bottle.”
“I was trying to impress a lady,” he admitted. “Cheap wine was not going to cut it.”
“You were not.” She tried to laugh it off, but when he lifted his brows and stared at her with utter sobriety, her amusement faded.
“I most certainly was.” He slid his fingers up into her hair and began to massage her scalp. The touch was downright hypnotic and the tension beading her muscles since she’d walked in to shower began to ease.
“Why?” The man commanded attention when he walked into a room. She’d only seen him in passing, following a panel where she’d engaged in a heated disagreement with an economist. The man cited her dissertation in his presentation and misrepresented her findings. She’d been livid by the time he finished. She’d intended to address the situation privately—and then he’d called on her.
Sebastian’s brows climbed. “Because you were the most beautiful woman in the room—and the most intelligent—and even after bribing someone to switch out the dining cards so I could be seated next to you, you barely noticed I was there.”
It was her turn to gape. “Of course I knew you were there. Everyone at the table stood and Doctor Ramanijun nearly had a heart attack when I didn’t stand along with everyone else. Wait—you bribed someone to sit at our table?”
