Page 59 of Secret Baby Daddy

“Don’t you dare.”

We don’t make it to the bedroom with any grace.

I get his jacket off somewhere near the fireplace, and he gets my blouse open with hands that are anything but steady, and every point where his skin meets mine feels like the answer to a year of increasingly elaborate arguments neither of us ever admitted were their own kind of foreplay.

He kisses down my throat like he’s memorizing it, murmurs something rough against my skin that might be my name, and I pull him closer, greedy, adrenaline and fear and a year of pretending finally burning off into something we can’t take back.

He backs me toward the bed without breaking the kiss, and when the backs of my knees hit the mattress, I pull him down with me.

For a man who approaches everything like a tactical operation, there is nothing calculated about him now.

His hands move over me slowly at first, as if he’s giving me every possible chance to change my mind.

I don’t.

I drag his shirt over his head instead.

“Still want me to stop?” he asks, his mouth against my throat.

“Ask me that again and I might actually kill you.”

A rough laugh leaves him, low against my skin.

“There she is.”

He kisses me again, and whatever restraint he had left disappears.

I have spent a year fighting this man across conference tables, through endless text messages and arguments neither of us knew how to lose.

Now every sharp word, every look held half a second too long, every moment I’ve wanted to strangle him has found somewhere else to go.

His mouth trails lower and my fingers tighten in his hair.

“Dominic.”

He looks up at me.

And that almost undoes me more than anything else.

No arrogance.

No challenge.

Just that unnerving, absolute attention he gives to everything that matters to him.

Tonight, somehow, that’s me.

By the time he comes back up to kiss me, I’m breathless and impatient and completely done pretending I want anything except exactly where this is going.

“Condom?” I manage.

He stills immediately.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He reaches for his bag without another word, and the tiny interruption should make the moment less intense.