“Chad. I can’t…hold”—I gasp as he hits the most sensitive spot deep inside me again—“back.”
“Don’t. Come with me. Now.”
Resisting him and his command is impossible, so I don’t even try. Instead, I let the pleasure roll over me as I rub and grind down on him. The scream that shoots from my throat doesn’t even sound human as the ecstasy explodes inside me, taking my sanity, my will to resist, and my heart.
Damn it. Somehow, in the span of hours, I fell for Chad Force. And as I wilt against his chest, breathing hard and trying to recover a normal heart rate, I already know I can’t stop and life will never be the same again.
Chad
What the hell just happened? One minute I was auditioning a new assistant—which I desperately need—and the next I tumbled her into bed. Now I think I’m losing my heart.
I’ll have to tread carefully. Savannah is ambitious. She would hate to be placated or coddled. Professionally, I need to let her spread her wings and prove her brilliance—preferably at Force Financial. But personally? She’s mine. She just doesn’t know it yet.
“Oh my god,” she pants.
I hold her close, still trying to recover my breath, too. “Yeah.”
A glance at Hades across the room, lounging with half-slitted eyes on the cozy chair near the fire, tells me he’s none too happy all the bouncing and noise drove him from the bed.
She sends me a satisfied, blue-eyed smile. “Amazing.”
I grin back. “Definitely fun.”
“Fun?” She sounds insulted. “That’s it?”
I try not to snicker. “Well, I don’t want to go overboard. Anything that’s fun costs at least eight dollars.”
“What the hell?”
I can’t hold back my laugh. “At least according to Eric Cartman.”
“Are you kidding me?” She rolls her eyes. “I would have thought the Chad Force was way too highbrow for South Park.”
“Nope. Now ‘respect mah authoriteh.’”
She dissolves into giggles. “Why do I get the feeling there’s never going to be a dull moment with you?”
“I’ll make sure there isn’t one, sweetheart.” I kiss her forehead, then her lips with a soft brush. “But you had other questions, so I’ll answer them. Hades came to me through my last mistress. He liked me more than he liked her—smart cat—so when I told her I no longer required or desired her, she left him behind.”
“Mistress?” Clearly, that gives her pause.
“I’ve never done the girlfriend thing. Negotiating an arrangement beneficial to both parties always suited me. No expectations. No feelings. No surprises. I work ridiculous hours and I’ve never had the time or inclination to worry about someone else’s emotional state. But I screwed up with you.”
“In what way?”
“In the past, I settled for women happy with a mere financial arrangement. But you’re ambitious, and I already know that’s not going to fly. I want more from you.” I caress her face. “For the first time in my life, I want something real.”
“I do, too. But I didn’t go into this thinking we’d have more than tonight.”
“Do you want more?”
“Yeah.”
Her soft admission fills me with relief. “Me, too.”
She grins. “I knew you were a smart man.”
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
She sends me a dry stare. “I said you were smart. I didn’t say you were Stephen-Hawking smart.”
God, this woman makes me laugh and puts a smile on my face. “What does it say about you that you knew every quote I threw at you except Eric Cartman?”
“That I don’t listen to crap from a fictional elementary school kid from small-town Colorado, so that probably makes me smarter.”
“You might be right.” I roll her to her back, gingerly avoiding my sore knee. “So now what?”
Her expression turns serious. “We need to talk.”
I thought we just did. “About what?”
“Really?” Then she does her best Cartman imitation. “When a chick says we need to talk, you might as well start punching yourself in the balls, dude.”
I let out a hearty laugh, and she giggles in my arms. “I think I love you, Savannah Blythe.”
“It may sound crazy, but I think I love you, too.”
This night just keeps getting better and better. “So what comes next for us?”
“I owe you an explanation, too,” she admits. “My parents…”
“The ones you don’t discuss with anyone?”
“Except people I trust.”
“And you’re trusting me now?”
She nods. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“Never.”
Savannah sighs as if she’s looking for strength. “My mom was born in India, in the same village in which her mother was raised. My grandfather was British, I’m told, there on some research trip. He and my grandmother had a brief relationship, which didn’t work out. Afterward, he went back to London, so my mom never met him.”
“Did you?”
She shakes her head. “He never wanted to know us, so I never sought him. But my mother’s birth was a stain on our family, and she’s carried the guilt all her life. She did everything to please my grandmother, but daadee ma always treated my mom as if the out-of-wedlock affair was her fault, so it’s no surprise my mother escaped to America the first chance she had.”
“I would have, too. What happened?”
“To make a long story short? My mother fell in love and got pregnant before she realized he was married. He denied fathering me until a DNA test proved otherwise. By then I was five, but he still wanted nothing to do with me. So we’ve never been close.”
“Why would you be?”
She nods. “When I was eight, my daadee ma fell ill. My mom raced back to India to care for her, leaving me with my paternal grandmother, Lienna.”
“The one who loved you?”
“Totally. But I helped her, too. She moved here from China as an adult, and she still wasn’t steady with the language. I taught her to read and write.”
“I’m sure she appreciated that. What about your mom? She left for India and…”
“It was temporary, she said. She was coming back, of course. But she never did. It took daadee ma two years to die. There were always reasons she couldn’t return to the States.” Savannah draws in an unsettled breath. “I found out a few years later that she never moved back because daadee ma talked her into an arranged marriage and she’s had more children. To this day, she’s never told her husband about me.”
I gather Savannah in my arms. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. You deserve people in your life who are here for you.”
“I can take care of myself, and Renee has always been in my corner.”
“You can, and I’m sure she has. But I’d like you to make room for me, too.”
She gives me a sharp-eyed stare. “How is that going to play out? If I’m working for you, and we’re not strictly professional—”