Page 3 of Forbidden Vow

The woman pushing her hips into his hardness moaned and he focused on the present. Keeping a hand at her waist, he gripped her shoulder with the other and drove in harder, beads of perspiration forming on his brow. Her voice climbed an octave, but he didn't care who heard. He had a feeling that she wasn't new to dropping her panties in this office supply closet.

He'd noticed her sizing up her potential victims on more than one occasion when he'd visited his father's personal attorney. The senior Kent had been a private man. He didn't trust many people with the inner workings of his personal or business dealings. But Clarence Drake had earned Lexington’s absolute confidence and Darius’s trust.

"I'm coming, baby," he heard the leggy blonde say.

Good, because he was ready to get this over with. "Me too," he lied. His phone chimed for the tenth time. He ignored it...again. A practice he’d instituted since learning of his father’s death.

She didn't seem to notice that while she rushed to the finish line, he’d slackened off in the race. He didn't say anything when she gyrated her hips faster. Her moans grew, and then she screamed, tiny quivers racking her body. She was experienced at this type of live theater production. Finished, he tossed the condom in a nearby receptacle, tucked his deflated junk, and zipped up his charcoal slacks as she righted her nothing-left-to-the-imagination wrap dress.

"Thanks, beautiful," he said, pulling her folded collar up before flipping it over and laying it flat. "The finishing touch."

Though there'd be no repeat performance between them, he never wanted a woman to think he didn't value the gift of her body. She spun on stiletto heels to face him and then slipped slender arms around his neck. Looking up, she placed a kiss on his cheek.

"Anytime, Darius," she crooned.

Her seduction skills were wasted on him. With one hand, he brushed a few damp tendrils behind her ear, rubbed her shoulder, and smoothly pulled her arm from around his neck. Before she could protest, he opened the door and stepped into the frosted glass hall. And, eager to ditch the Academy Award winner in the closet, he barreled directly into soft swells, slender curves, and warm woman. On contact, his body registered her identity before his brain turned on.

The only woman who’d believed he actually had a beating heart, moved in, and then hung a permanent occupant sign above the window to his soul. Raven Radell swayed backward, and he, fool that he was, snaked an arm out, snagging her around the waist. Joined, they stumbled into the open access at his back, pushing the hinges closed.

“Got you,” he rasped. In an instant, his body responded. The cock in his pants went from limp party balloon to a helium-filled bobby ready for a roaring New Year’s celebration. With one hand, she gripped his bicep, holding on to him. Where she touched him, electricity charged and searing hotwired through his veins. She gasped at the familiar sensation. The chemistry between them burned radioactive. He knew it, and when she finally looked up, connection made, those espresso eyes, half-lidded with instant arousal, told him that she felt the pull, too.

"Raven," he breathed, inhaling lush natural fragrance, warm velvet, and exotic berry.

“I am sorry for your loss, Darius.”

He didn’t want to do the bullshit polite conversation. Avoiding the topic of them wouldn’t work, not now. He’d lost too much.

“Thanks. I looked for you,” he admitted.

Her lips parted. The shock of his truth rendered her speechless. The feel of her fingers on his arms, the pressure increased. She wasn’t letting go.

With hungry eyes, he drank her in from head to toe. Thick tresses that he'd spent hours running his fingers through, that he'd twisted around his fingers as he claimed her body, were twisted in an elegant chignon at her nape. White diamond earrings the size of a small country studded her earlobes. Smooth light brown skin, a sharp contrast to his own, was as radiant as a new Bentley on the showroom floor. She wore her signature red suit. It was similar to the design she’d sported during her employment, the skirt custom designed to flatter the curve of her hips and stop at mid-thigh, giving a man a peek at what heaven must look like. Black leather boots, not the “come and get me” stilettos like the blonde in the closet but with enough height to let a man know there was a sexual woman hidden beneath her professional demeanor. Obviously, she'd found another lucrative executive assistant position.

“You look,”fucking gorgeous, “well.” In that moment, he wanted to be included, the center of her happiness. Then he did the dumbest shit his Ed Sheeran lip-syncing ass brain could conjure. He lowered his head and covered her mouth with his. The kiss, the feel of her pliable lips, the lingering sweetness of past love, it all came rushing back. Darius pulled her up close, cradling her face. And, like uploading the right computer codes, the inaccessible parts he’d locked away opened—five years morphed to five seconds—and questions didn’t need answers.

Then, he heard rustling behind him.

“Darius,” came a soft giggle, feminine and too familiar.

Shit. Someone wanted out. Fuck. One look at a wide-eyed Raven and he knew. Busted.

He held up one finger. “Wait. I can—”

“You,” Raven hissed, shoving his chest.

He didn’t know how he could justify, moments before kissing Raven, he’d beenpre-occupied. But, after five years apart, four with hers off the grid, he needed to develop a new re-entry program…quick.

“You put your lips on me after you and that nasty—” A second later, that hand which had been a fraction away from massaging his guns, or so he imagined, shot out before a pendulum maneuver had it moving back at his head with the weight of hell-has-no-fury-like-a-pissed-off-woman wrecking ball. Her open palm connected with his jaw. The smack, a reverberating shattered glass on stone tile. His head—no, his brain—rattled in his skull like he’d woken up on the boxing ropes after a drunken stumble into an underground fight club and he did a ninety-degree torque in the other direction. "Five years ago, I told you to keep your hands away from me.” She glared at the door behind us, the incriminating laughter coming from within, before saying, “Nothing has changed between us.”

Reluctant but aware of the potential for a studio audience, he released her. She still swung faster than a Major League player.

"Damn it, woman,” he glared, rubbing his jaw, the skin hot and throbbing. “That hurt," he complained, rubbing his aching jaw.

"Good," she smiled, meeting his glare and giving his chest a shove.

Five years without contact, yet the indifference in her tone pissed him off. Where the hell did she get off dismissing him? He had planned their life together, a future she’d thrown away. Anger, old and familiar, boiled in his blood.

"That's all you have to say to me?" He'd never thought her callous before. The woman in front of him looked the same as the one who held his heart all those years ago, but he sensed a void that hadn't been there before.