The Russian's Acquistion(84)
She shuddered at the cataclysm of hearing him say that, at feeling love all around her as he held her tightly and pressed hot kisses to her wet face. Her hands sought to grasp all of him, sliding up his chest, over his flexing shoulders, following the line of his tense neck, smoothing over his hair…. Their mouths met in damp, sweet, poignant ecstasy. Clair’s heart was so full it was going to explode.
In a move of agile, male strength, he hitched her to sit on her desk, sending files skating to the floor. Bracing his hands next to her hips and his forehead sternly against hers, he said, “Tell me you’re not just reacting to the first man to tell you that. I don’t have it in me to be noble and give you up again, Clair. A man like me loves for life, and this is it.”
Life. She smoothed his bottom lip with the pad of her trembling fingertip. “Just because I’d never had sex before doesn’t mean I didn’t know what it was or ache deep down to experience it. It’s the same with love. I don’t need a hundred men to compare to in order to be sure what I feel for you is the real thing.”
“Good, because you’re not getting a hundred. You’re not even getting one other man,” he muttered with a self-deprecating curl of his lip. He tilted her chin up, his gaze so tender it warmed her to her soul. “Are you too shy to say it properly?”
She smiled, stunned by how easily the words formed on her tongue. “I love you.”
The expansive emotion seemed to fill the room. The adoring smile he gave her as he stroked her cheek made fresh tears spring to her eyes, happy ones. His kiss was reverent and full of longing.
“Aleksy,” she said, reluctantly breaking a kiss that so easily could have spun into something very compromising. “This is my work. There are children here. We have to take this off-site if we’re going to keep this up.”
He sobered. “Can you leave? In the long term, I mean. Can you—will you—work from Russia or must you stay here? We can come back whenever you’re needed,” he promised.
She melted, thrilled but at the same time incredibly touched by his understanding. “Thank you for seeing how important the foundation is to me.”
His ironic expression made her chuckle.
“I didn’t sleep with you just for the foundation,” she insisted.
“I’ll choose to believe that,” he said with disgruntlement. “But you’ll marry me for no other reason than that you want to.”
Not a question. A demand. Wounded he might be, but never weak. Her grin widened. “Of course I will. But I’m given to understand I have to anyway. A woman’s virginity belongs to her husband, doesn’t it?”
He didn’t betray one iota of compunction, only smiled with wolfish satisfaction. “True. But I don’t just miss you in my bed,” he added with deep sincerity. “I miss you in my life.” With utmost tenderness, he asked, “I mean it, Clair—will you come home with me? Be my wife and make a family with me?”
All the details flitting through her mind scattered, completely eclipsed by the momentous wish that had just come true for her. She couldn’t even speak she was so overcome.
Aleksy tensed as a shadow passed across Clair’s face, but when he tilted up her chin, her blue eyes gleamed. Her joy was so tangible he could taste it like spun sugar on his tongue.
“I always wanted someone to come here and say that to me,” she managed to husk. “It was worth the wait.”