Entry-Level Mistress - By Sabrina Darby Page 0,47

wouldn’t let me go. But then he did. I spared a brief look back at him before moving on. His dark gaze seemed to promise something dangerous, as if I’d regret abandoning him. Which was silly, because Daniel Hartmann didn’t need me to protect him against an ex-girlfriend.

• • •

I knew exactly when Daniel left the house. Even with hundreds of people there, with bodies pressing against mine in the crush, the room felt empty in his absence. Tatiana, however, had not gone with him and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I tied up my conversation with Fitzi, made my way through the crowd. Somewhat drunk on more than the wine, I felt wittier, smarter, prettier and more powerful. I wasn’t hiding from anyone or anything.

Leanna had suggested that I seize the moment, give this relationship a chance. That I put aside the fear.

This night, with the lulling cascade of jazz in the background, the scent of the tiki torches, night jasmine and salt air, anything seemed possible.

I walked down the wood-slatted path toward the beach, away from the brighter lights of the house. Close to the water’s edge, I shivered in the midnight ocean breeze. My father had had a house here once, a long time ago and I’d spent months here as a child. Then there was the summer that Daniel’s mother had lived with my father. I had avoided them for the most part, painted or read, hung with the few people I knew. This stretch of beach, this midsummer air, filled me with nostalgia.

I saw Daniel, his white shirt catching the thin moonlight, making him a beacon. I followed his gaze up to the sky where the stars above him winked in the night. I could make out Orion. Then the Pleiades. His future. He was Daniel Hartmann, entrepreneur, billionaire and business maverick, as Fortune magazine had labeled him.

I wanted to cry but I wasn’t sure why.

He looked over his shoulder, found me, and then took long strides across the beach. I slipped off my shoes, dangled them from my fingers and stepped off the path. The sand was damp and cold between my toes, but I walked forward in the inky darkness to meet him halfway.

“You’re so alive,” he said, catching my face between his hands. “Your energy, it’s inspiring. You make me want to be more but not the way I was. Not simply to fill my father’s shoes and then surpass him.”

My heart aching with the sweetness, the import of his words, I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came. He filled the silence with his kiss and suddenly I had everything to say, with my hands, my lips, my tongue and teeth. My thighs against his, hips to his. It was a new conversation, a new weight with each movement, and I fell with him to the ground, heedless of everything but the way our chests rose and fell with each ragged breath. My dress around my hips, thong discarded, I cradled him between my thighs.

It was as if the wind and the lapping water, the harsh sand and the thrust of his body into mine were all echoing silent words of love. I held onto him and, to myself, finally admitted the truth: I didn’t want this to end.

Chapter 14

Night shifted to dawn, and we lay in bed, me curved against Daniel, one leg resting over his body.

“Emily,” he urged me awake. I shifted in his arms, wriggled, made little noises. Burrowed deeper into the space under his arm. He was warm and I was cocooned by delicious sleep. His chest tightened beneath my cheek. “Emily, wake up.”

“What’s the matter?” I forced the words—thick and drawn out—out of the depths of sleep.

“We need to talk.”

“Now?” I shifted my head slightly, pressed my lips to his bare chest and then snuggled up again.

“Emily, this isn’t working.”

All the softness of sleep turned rigid. I was awake and alarmed. The warmth of his arms became a sweltering heat around me.

“What isn’t working?”

“Us. You and me.”

What was he saying?

“Emily?”

I didn’t move. Couldn’t move. As long as I lay there, still draped across him, our bodies entwined, as long as there was no space between us, everything could be contained. Was he breaking up with me? When he had just tried to convince me to stay only two days earlier? When he’d done everything but say I love you the night before?

Oh. Suddenly this made sense.

Maybe that had scared