Chapter Five

A week went by and though Aurora was trying to be patient and follow her mother’s advice, time still hadn’t told Aurora shit. Except that being pregnant kind of sucked. She was irritable, her nipples had started hurting, and to add insult to injury, she was horny as hell.

Aurora couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been this turned on. All the time. She couldn’t stop thinking about her night with Dante. The hottest sex of her life. And that was really bothering her because she was trying desperately to figure out a way to reach out to Dante as a friend.

Her mother had encouraged her to get to know him better before she broke the news to him. And Aurora could definitely see the wisdom in the advice. However, she had no idea how to pull it off.

They had never been friends, even before they’d slept together. And any advance that Aurora made now was sure to be taken as an indicator that she wanted to sleep together again.

Which she totally did. She couldn’t deny that. She’d replayed their passionate night together more times than she could count. But she was certain that it was a bad idea to sleep with Dante again. He scrambled her brains when what she needed to be was clearheaded and deliberate. Now more than ever. As her mother had advised, she needed to figure out what kind of man he was.

Besides, it wasn’t like her love for her boss had disappeared overnight, simply because Dante had helped ease her pain for one night. Granted, she’d woken up the next day confused over two men instead of one, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t have either of them. Not as a lover or a husband.

But whether she liked it or not, Dante might just play another part in her life. The role of father to her child, if he was so inclined.

As she prepared a file to bring into Gio’s office, she pondered how to get to know Dante better without winding up in his bed again. Maybe she could find some work-related project to team up with him on. That way she could be in his sphere, observe him, get to know him, but not run the risk of blurring any lines.

Intrigued by the idea, Aurora straightened her emerald green silk blouse and brushed off her charcoal pencil pants. She smoothed her hair back before she left her office. She was no longer trying to attract Gio, but it didn’t hurt to look her best.

She strode into his office, holding the file triumphantly in the air. “Found it!”

“Thank God,” Gio said, pushing back from his desk and coming around to stand next to her. “I really didn’t want to have to do all that work over again.”
“I’m sorry, are you under the impression that you did it the first time?”

Gio grinned. “Ah. My mistake. I wouldn’t have wanted you to have to do all that work over again.”

She laughed. It was just one of the many things she loved about him. He’d never been intimidated by her competence. Even when she’d started here as his executive assistant, he’d recognized her talent immediately. In many ways, he was her mentor. She stared at the side of his face as he surveyed the file. He was just so dang handsome. All black hair and five o’clock shadow and milk chocolate eyes.

“Am I interrupting?”

Dante’s voice came from the doorway. His hair was tousled from the wind and he had a messenger bag slung across his chest.

And he was looking at Aurora like he could see right to the heart of her.

* * *

Suddenly everything made sense. Painfully clear sense.

She was in love with Gio.

Dante had daydreamed about seeing that look on her face. Soft and sweet and hopeful. He’d wanted Aurora to look that way at him, and instead she was doing it for Giovanni Esposito.

Damn. He’d been having such a good day too. Michelle’s words had inspired him to come clean to Aurora. He was going to lay his cards on the table. And if she didn’t pick those cards up? Well, then he was just going to have to be a big boy and move the hell on.

But now, this. What the hell was he supposed to do with this?

“Ah, Dante,” Gio said as he looked up, taking a file from Aurora’s hand. “Glad you’re here. I have a few things I want to go over with you.”

“I’ll leave you to it.” Aurora ducked out of the room, leaving nothing more than a whiff of her scent. It was subtle, light, but it went straight to Dante’s head like a shot of whiskey.

Dante sat down and went over the file that Gio had wanted to show him. He surveyed him, taking stock of Giovanni the way a gladiator might take stock of his opponent in the ring.

Sure, Gio was dating a woman named Rose now, but had Dante missed something? Had Gio and Aurora ever slept together? The thought curdled in his stomach like spoiled milk. He swallowed against the insane rage that rose up through his throat.

“Dante, are you even listening?” Gio was looking at him like he was a crazy man right now. What had he just said?

Dante tried to focus on the business at hand, but he found his mind was still spinning. All he could think about was the fact Aurora was in love with a man who didn’t want her. And somehow, that had ended up with her being in his bed.

His brain just sort of shorted out at that one. Because who in their right fucking mind didn’t want Aurora LeMonde? The woman was pure, walking sin. Sex in the body of Aphrodite.

A small knock on the door of their office interrupted their meeting, and not a moment too soon. Dante was about ten seconds away from leaning across the table and smacking the handsome right off Gio’s face. Just for being whatever the hell it was that attracted Aurora.

The men turned to see Rose standing shyly in the doorway of the office.

Gio stood up so fast that the papers they’d been studying fluttered to the ground. “Rose!”

Dante raised an eyebrow and watched Gio fumble for the papers and then hurry around the desk to Rose. Was this what he was like with Aurora? Yikes.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Dante said. “Nice to see you again, Rose.”

“You too,” she replied, but she obviously only had eyes for Gio.

Apparently every woman in the world only had eyes for Gio.

Dante left Gio’s office and closed the door behind him. He eyed Aurora’s closed office door. So that was it. She was in love with someone else.

But then a thought started uncurling in his head. He assumed that she’d been in love with Gio when they’d slept together before, so apparently it wasn’t too much of a problem for her. It made his blood pump and his fists clench to think about her longing after Gio, but in a way, it also relieved him.

Finally, Dante had the missing piece of the puzzle. He had all the information. He could finally make a good game plan here. He’d been flying blind before. He considered his options, and as the extremely shrewd businessman he was, a plan started to form.

He knocked once on Aurora’s door before he strode into her office, closing the door behind him and sitting down in the chair across from her desk. She sat behind her desk, looking good enough to eat in that clingy silk blouse. She raised her eyebrow at him.

“Can I help you?” Her voice had its usual dose of disdain for him, but there was something else there, too. Nerves.

“Now that you mention it, yes,” he said, giving her an exaggerated lascivious grin, hoping to make her smile, and it almost worked.

She bit back her smile and rolled her eyes. “I’m actually glad you’re here,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I was wondering if you’d want to collaborate with me on the Sydney expansion project. I can do it on my own, of course, but it’s a lot of man-hours, and I was thinking—”

“How long have you been in love with Gio?” He asked the question casually, his body reclined in his chair like he was a lion eyeing a gazelle from across the prairie.

“I… what?” Her face had gone white, just like it had before when she’d almost fainted last week.

“I just wondered. Has it been weeks? Months? Years? No wonder you slept with me the night of the party. It was the first night he ever brought Rose around.” The words were like gravel in his mouth but he spit them out anyway.

She stared at him, her pupils dilated and her breath coming fast. “I…”

“Look, actually, never mind.” He held up a hand to stop her. “None of my business. I just figured that you might want someone to talk to about it. It must be hard, being in love with a man who loves someone else.”

Her eyes dropped down and for a moment, Dante wanted to drink poison. He was such a fucking dick. But he’d had to land that blow to be able to propose something that would be good for both of them. Mutually beneficial.

She cleared her throat, raising her eyes up again, although they didn’t quite meet his. “Do you have a point, Callaghan?”

“Yeah, actually. I think I can help.”

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

He eyed her. “You find it hard to believe that I would want to help you, Aurora? You think so little of me?”

Her expression softened just a little. “No, of course not.”

He nodded. “Because what I have to propose would be very beneficial to both of us.”

She raised an eyebrow, then gestured for him to go on.

“Use me.”

She let out a surprised, exasperated laugh. “Excuse me?”

“You need to get over Gio somehow or another, no? You’d rather do it quickly, no? Well, I’m here. I’m obviously willing. Do whatever the hell it is you want to be doing to Gio, but do it to me. Just get it the hell out of your system.”

She was looking at him like he’d just spoken in another language. Like the words had to make it through Jello before they got to her. “I’m sorry.” She stood, her hands tented on her desk. “I can’t possibly be hearing you correctly.”

He remained seated. “You heard me just fine. Use my body however you want to use Esposito’s and work through some of these feelings. You can’t just hold them down forever, Aurora. They’ve gotta go somewhere. So let them out with me. And then move on.”

She closed her eyes and pressed those luscious lips together. “Get the fuck out of my office, Dante.”

He rose, knowing when to retreat. “Offer’s on the table, LeMonde.”

* * *

It was rude. Insulting. Presumptuous. Arrogant. And he was an absolute ASS for proposing it.

Aurora slammed her briefcase closed and slung the strap over her shoulder. She’d never been so incensed in her life. She took a deep, hissing breath and tried to let it out slowly.

This kind of rage couldn’t be good for the baby. Between the anger and the constant hum of lust in her belly, this kid was on track to being born an extremely passionate person.

Just like its daddy. Aurora paused at her office door as memories of that night washed over her. He was extremely passionate. She’d never had a more thorough or attentive lover. He’d known what she was feeling before she had. And he’d used every weapon in his arsenal. She shivered.

Her mind shifted from what had been to what could be. Her eyes fell to the chair he’d sat in earlier that day. The way he’d looked, draped across it like a king. God, he was an ass. But he was also very appealing. His hair was longer than it had been that night and she’d found herself wanting to tug on it. Tunnel her hands into it while he buried his mouth between her legs.

Aurora shook her head. She couldn’t possibly want that. He was the biggest jerk she’d ever met. He’d actually proposed that she be his fuck toy.

No. Wait. Actually, he was proposing that he would be her fuck toy. In a way, it was a little bit sweet.

Aurora shook her head. She must be insane. She blamed it on the pregnancy hormones. Yeah. It was the pregnancy hormones that had her pressing her legs together in her slacks. It was the hormones that had her picturing striding around her desk and straddling him where he sat.

Aurora reached for the door handle of her office but let her hand drop. She really had to get ahold of herself before she went out into the world. She was liable to do something insane if she just walked out there like this. Like confess her love to Gio. Or jump a total stranger.

Aurora looked down at her body. Same old body she’d always had. Tall, curvy, currently filling out a silk shirt and work slacks. No one would guess that there was a river of sexual need pulsing through her right now.

Well, Dante might have guessed it. But she was ignoring that right now.

She took a deep breath. And then another. She was a grown woman in her place of work. She was just going to get in her car and go home and regroup when she got there.

She was going to have to figure out what the hell to do with this considerable need pulsing through her. Sex obviously had to be in her near future in some way, with someone. She couldn’t go on much longer feeling like she might pass out if she didn’t get off.

Aurora flung the door open to her office and strode to the elevators. Get home. That was the only goal. She jammed the elevator button and froze. Wait, was that…? Oh my god. That was a giggle coming from Gio’s office. A woman’s giggle.

Aurora whipped her head around to face the other way. Rose must be in there. In Gio’s office right that second. She must be in there, touching him, sitting on his lap, nibbling her way up his neck.

Oh god. Aurora was sick. She was so horny that even the thought of Gio with another woman was turning her on. The elevator doors opened and not a moment too soon. She needed to get the absolute hell away from this office and away from Gio and Rose.

She took the elevator down to the car park and her body trembled. From rage? Yes. From horniness? Yes. From adrenaline and pain? Yes. She felt like she could pull her skin off and dance around. She simultaneously felt as if she could run a marathon and get into bed and sleep for a week.

So far, she was not impressed with pregnancy.

All she knew was that she needed to get a little action. Something to take the edge off. She’d be able to think clearer after that. Aurora pulled out her phone and scrolled to the Tinder app. She’d installed it on a whim a few weeks ago. But she’d yet to open it. Her finger hovered over the little square before she dropped the phone in her lap and leaned forward, forehead against the steering wheel.

God, how pathetic was she? Tindering for a one night stand in the parking structure of her office while Gio was upstairs canoodling with his girlfriend or whatever. Oh yeah, not to mention that she was pregnant and on the search for meaningless sex.

She couldn’t have sex with a stranger. What if they did something weird or awful and it ended up affecting the baby? Aurora would never forgive herself.

Her only options were celibacy or… Dante. Which was insane. Absolutely insane. Why in the name of god in heaven would Aurora ever agree to sleep with the man from whom she was currently trying to conceal a pregnancy.

Although, she didn’t exactly LOOK pregnant right now. She would still have some time before she had to come clean with him.

Aurora chewed her lip and picked up her phone. In a way, it would be killing two birds with one stone. She’d get to scratch this god-awful itch with someone who was truly incredible at sex. And she’d inevitably get to know Dante better in the process.

The real question was, did she want to? Did she want to sleep with him again? Aurora’s mind took her back to about four a.m. of the night they’d spent together. She’d been straddling his lap as they sat up on his bed, their arms wrapped around one another and his cock buried inside her. He’d had his forehead pressed into her shoulder and her head had fallen back with the pleasure of it all. Something had caught her eye and had her looking to the side. A floor length mirror that hung on the back of his open closet door. It reflected their image back to her.

Aurora had been shocked by what she’d seen. The passion between them had been more than obvious. She’d seen it in every line on her face, the way her fingers dug into him, the straining, trembling grip of her muscles. But even more than that, she’d been shocked by his utter beauty. The fluid, almost violent grace of him as he’d pumped himself into her. His strength, both wildly evident and viciously restrained at the same time. He’d been a fierce, unforgiving lover. But she could see in the mirror exactly how much he was holding back from her, keeping gentle for her. It had been deeply intoxicating to see him coiled and taking and giving.

Aurora’s fingers moved over her phone. She was typing and she’d barely even given herself permission to consider the consequences.

Apparently her body had become very bossy since Dante had knocked her up.

Fine. You win. I’m coming over in half an hour.