options it was the best she could do.
The elevator doors slid open on his private floor and she approached his office with dread in her heart. She found him awaiting her arrival, looking well-rested and refreshed in a custom-made black suit. It was wretchedly unfair, especially since she felt like she’d spent the night inside a bread mixer set to high.
“You’ve reached your decision, I trust?” he asked, ushering her into his office and then closing the door behind them.
She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, refusing to be cowed despite that fact that he’d backed her into a corner from which there was no escape. “You act as if there is a decision to be made. As if I have any choice in the matter.”
“You do.”
“Not really.” She wouldn’t show her fear, wouldn’t reveal how scared she was to open herself up to the intimacy of his bed. But marriage wasn’t an option. She would do anything to protect her sweet, innocent daughter from the anger and resentment of a loveless union. “You know I can’t marry you,” she said in a thin, defiant voice.
His grim smile held a veneer of triumph. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Anguished impotence, combined with her inability to avoid the coming pain, made her break out in a cold sweat. Her palms grew damp against her black tank dress, but she forced herself to maintain eye contact. The least she could do was hang on to her last shred of dignity. “No, you’re not,” she told him. “You’re gloating.”
“Do you blame me?”
She forced herself to breathe past the tightness in her chest. “No. I’ve lost. You’ve won. It’s a heady feeling, I’m sure.”
His triumphant eyes glimmered. “It is.”
A wave of second thoughts she couldn’t entertain clubbed within her veins. “Don’t celebrate your victory just yet,” she said in a reedy voice. “It’s doubtful I’ll make as good a mistress this time around.”
“You underestimate your abilities, sweet.” His blue eyes flashed with fiery heat as she swallowed back the retraction filling her throat. “Here. I have a gift for you,” he said, withdrawing long enough to retrieve a package from the bottom drawer of his desk. Wrapped in distinctive white and silver paper, the gift bore the seal of New York’s premier lingerie store.
“No.” Panic clawed at her throat. She shook her head, her hands knotted against her waist as she backed away from him.
“Open it.”
“No,” she whispered. She stared at the package in mutinous fury, her stomach quivering in silent protest. “I don’t want it.”
He arched a brow. “Is this really how you intend to fulfill your mistress role? By defying me at every turn?”
“I don’t want to be your mistress,” she gasped. “I don’t want your gifts. I don’t want anything from you!”
The warmth in his eyes transformed to brittle ice. “You knew your choices,” he said in a flat, commanding tone. “You chose this.” His voice lowered ominously, overruling her arguments as he slid the package toward the edge of the desk. “Are you reneging already?”
Her voice wouldn’t work. Her mouth felt dry as dust. So she shook her head jerkily and walked toward the package with shaking legs.
“Good girl,” he said with a grim half-smile.
Swallowing, she slipped her trembling fingers beneath the tape as if approaching her own execution. By the time she’d finished opening the gift, her careful ministration leaving the paper completely unmarred, he’d moved to watch her from his chair behind the desk. Her hands stalled, hovering uncertainly above the delicate puddle of pale apricot silk and transparent lace.
“I bought it to match your freckles,” he told her. “And your skin after I’ve pleasured you, when it’s all flushed and pink.”
Heat burned a path from her toes to her scalp.
“Come here.” He beckoned her forward, between his chair and the edge of his desk.
She inched closer, her nervousness mounting with every step.
“That’s right,” he said as soon as she stood mere inches from his spread knees. “Now show it to me.” “I don’t—” “Show me.”
She slowly twisted to withdraw the slippery film of silk, so thin and transparent she could have threaded the entire thing through a buttonhole. The doubled-up bodice was sheer enough to reveal the pattern of her fingerprints, and the thought of her breasts beneath the fine web of lace, exposed to his gaze, made a fine tremor claim her limbs.
“I can’t wear this,” she told him as she turned back to face him, her throat too tight to breathe.
“Of course you can.”
“No.” She