*Timothy*
The woman was a mess, her hair was tied up in a bun that reached almost to her forehead, her eyes were a little puffy and Timothy was immediately concerned, even though she had left his apartment a little embarrassed, he didn't think she was that affected by the fact that he had taken the audacity to take her home when she fainted.
He just acted on impulse after Troy had told him she just needed to rest and get something to eat.
He caught himself getting in the car and telling Clark to take them to his penthouse.
It was amazing how someone trying to help another person made them feel offended and, in that case, Timothy was incredibly surprised, no one had ever refused help from him, it always had a positive effect on people. Even without needing his money, when he showed up, they had thousands of bills to pay, familiars sick, starvation and other barbarities. Everyone willingly accepted his meddling, except Melody. She who, with her huge gray eyes, was looking at him at that moment wide open in amazement at his visit.
It wasn't at all difficult for him to track her whereabouts, considering that Clark had taken her to the apartment that very afternoon, after she had left his house in a panic and almost trembling, after finishing lunch with her mother and resolving a matter of utmost delicacy and importance, he didn't think twice about going to see her. He felt guilty about how the poor pregnant woman had taken off. Timothy was not normally a man who instilled fear, so he was almost in shock at having witnessed Melody's reaction.
His desire to see if she was okay aside, there were other details that made him go to see her.
"Timothy," the whisper of his name, coming from Melody's delicate lips, made him feel perverted by the sensations it caused him.
The woman was expecting another man's baby!
Timothy found himself tempted by a growing interest in the damsel in distress in front of him. When was the last time he had felt something like this for someone?
It wasn't just a physical thing, it was a feeling, something that went beyond that and it terrified and overwhelmed him.
But this had changed when he met Melody that morning, she was different, in every possible way, with her gray eyes between confused and infuriated, he could see it all in her face and it captivated him.
Melody looked like a schoolgirl, yet seductive with her messy hair, pajamas that in a few months would no longer fit her due to her growing pregnancy and her bare, seductive feet with her toenails painted in a metallic blue.
Although, to his taste, the color was unappealing. She would look good in something more subdued; she didn't need extravagant tints to stand out.
The thought made him almost run away, what was it about this woman that made him think such things?
"Hello?" she said again and he almost cursed as he realized he had been staring at her.
Melody placed her arms across her chest, but not before Timothy noticed the effect, he had on her.
"May I come in?"
"What do you want? You came to cash me in for this morning's favor? I told you I don't have a dime," she had her arm draped over the door hinge and looked at him with narrowed eyes. "What did you come for Timothy?"
As he watched the young woman looking for the right way to get her to let him pass. He thought of all the differences this one had with his old girlfriend; Gia was not at all as plain and simple as Melody was and he hated himself for comparing them at that moment, but it was an action impossible to stop. He leaned a little towards her until he almost touched her arm on the door frame, Melody didn't move, she watched him as if they were in a dream and didn't believed that he was really in her front door.
"What are you doing?"
"Enjoying your scent," he said, smiling faintly.
"Did you fall as a child? Off your head? Off the swing and your face went into the concrete?" she made a grimace that he found tender.
Letting out a laugh he let himself be carried away by the simplicity of her conversation. She could make him forget everything.
Including the situation for which he ended up going all the way to her apartment. At the beginning he hadn't calculated it in the best way, he even thought it was stupid what his parents were proposing, what they were forcing him to do. He was a thirty-year-old man! He was a grown man, one who took the company to its highest level, did he make mistakes? Of course, he did. Everyone makes them at some point in their lives, especially when it comes to money.
When he was in the middle of a meeting with his managers, the crazy idea occurred to him, he focused his eyes on what was in front of them and it seemed completely illogical to consider it, but the truth was that Timothy did not maintain any kind of relationship with anyone, he had stopped hanging out with women since he broke up with Gia, he realized that the information about his bachelorhood had been leaked, perhaps by Gia herself, he no longer doubted that this woman was capable of anything and now all the women wanted to be with him only because his bank account, it was true that his account was quite fat, much more than any of the accounts of men of his age, the Giannato family had amassed a fortune for so long that only a person with a bad head could ruin it all. By the same token it seemed stupid and medieval to try to get him to marry to get his grandfather's inheritance and maintain his status in the Giannato Enterprise.
"Can you let me in?"
"No," she replied without thinking about it.
Well, he was going to have a tough one, he told himself as he leaned back and smiled again.
"Don't you ever let your guard down?" he asked raising one of his bushy eyebrows. That attitude had dropped more panties than he could count.
"I'm not interested in letting my guard down. I let it down once and now I'm having a baby."
Gee, he didn't expect that.
Even less after she' d apologized in the car for offending him, he thought it was simply a spur of the moment thing, something to be sparking and blurt out the first thing that popped into her head, but Melody definitely had no filter whatsoever, she spoke her mind and at that moment, he realized the reality: the girl lacked perhaps to polish that part of her life, because it was not always well received what one thought of others and he was quite clear about that, the business world had helped him to be a better man, a slower one, a calmer one, one who could get the world in a day and yet he did not brag about it.
More than that, saying what you felt to anyone, no matter how upset you were, was a step toward that person having control of you without realizing it. To give information that caused us harm to a stranger was to hand them the key to ruining us.
"I'm sorry it went so badly for you," he suddenly felt confused. Things were not happening as he imagined.
That alone made him finally understand what she already told him, he didn't know her, he knew nothing about her and therefore couldn't imagine the answers she was capable of giving, much less of the reaction she was going to have when he put his proposal on the table.
Surely, she would gladly accept. He had considered the pros and cons for both of them, he liked to make lists in Excel, to manage by pros and cons in every important decision.
And the one he should take in those days, was more than important, it meant his life, his work, for what he had fought for so many years.
He would be left with nothing, his father was going to take responsibilities away from him, he would put someone in charge in each of the sub-companies they owned.
"It wasn't all bad. I will have a son. One that will be mine alone and I won't have to share his love," she spoke to him eagerly, feeling every word, her puffy eyes sparkled with joy and he was fascinated by that. "Will you tell me why you came here?"
He had many doubts as the relationship with the father of the baby she was expecting had been, but he understood it must be a sensitive issue, considering how she expressed herself.
"Let me come in and tell you about it," he said again, looking around to see that there was already a woman well into her fifties, watching them curiously.
It must have been quite a sight, him in his Armani suit, with his shoes polished, leaning back on the hinge, trying to convince Melody to let him pass.
"But you're leaving for good," she agreed, making way for him.
"I don't think so," he commented as he walked in. "I have something to propose you and I don't know if you want me to leave right away."
"I would have preferred not to see you anymore, but we're not for what I want, aren't we?" she walked over to a faded couch and sat down, crossing her legs. She let her hair down and it fell across her chest, blocking his delightful view of her small, round breasts.
Timothy watched the silky hair fall into her lap, as she rested her hands on her thighs and slowly watched her eyes slowly lose the sleepiness he had observed when he arrived. He cursed himself for having woken her up, but he couldn't wait any longer, it was past eight o'clock at night, and when he focused on something, it deserved to be accomplished as soon as possible and his goal at that moment, was to get an affirmative answer from an incredible young woman, a woman he had met in a coffee shop and who spilled coffee on his white shirt.
Melody inspired a strange effect in him, somewhere between affection and a desire to protect her that he never felt for anyone in his life. She exuded an air of vulnerability, as he looked straight into her gray eyes, they gave him a hint that she did not fear him, that she did not fear him at all, there he captured her essence and realized, she desired him, perhaps as much as he wanted her, and this gave him an uneasiness in his battered heart.
He couldn't trust anyone else, women only hurt and took advantage of men with money, and unfortunately, he had plenty of it. To his misfortune Melody said anything else for a long time, she didn't invite him to sit down, and he just stood there looking at her and lusting after her slender body.
"Then what? You came here just to see me? I could send you a picture anyway, I'm sure your driver wouldn't be mad about having to come and get a picture of me."
It was amazing the amount of nonsense Melody could jump up with in a matter of minutes. Her little head kept coming up with wild ideas and scenarios, and instead of driving Timothy away, what she was doing was captivating him, fresh air to a heart full of weeds.
"I came here to ask you to be my wife."
There was only one way to end it fast, he laid his cards on the table without cover or warm cloths and hoped Melody would accept the move.
He watched Melody's eyes go from relaxation to astonishment, from astonishment to confusion and from confusion to... joy.
Joy?
She began to giggle like a deranged woman slapping her bare thighs as if Timothy had just made the world's best joke.
Timothy unfastened the button of his suit and knelt in front of her, taking her hands between his; at his touch she stood still and watched him with wide eyes, he captured her attention completely and said again:
"I want you to be my wife."
"The joke is good, but if you repeat it, it stops being funny," she said without letting go of his hands.
"It's not a joke, Melody."
She thought about it for a moment and the smile left her lips, the closeness bewitched Timothy and he without thinking, moved closer to her and poured himself on her lips, soft and creamy, she didn't pull away and he felt himself die at the contact. It wasn't two seconds before she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him closer, begging for more closeness, more of him. Timothy didn't beg and grabbed her waist, she spread her legs and he was between them, feeling her warmth, her body almost to the fullest. They kissed greedily, with unbridled gluttony, she caressed his neck, his hair, with her thumbs she ran gently over his jaw and moaned into his mouth. His penis hardened in his pants and shivered from a touch of Melody's delicate little hands.
Until everything stopped and she pulled away from him like the plague.
"What have you done?!" she exclaimed.
He almost growled when the heat from her mouth was gone.
"I think we kissed each other. It was what we wished since we saw each other."
"No," she said getting up from the piece of furniture and walking past him while he was still kneeling on the floor, as if he were making a marriage proposal or as if he were on punishment.
Ironic since at that moment he believed both.
"You and only you, must have wanted it since this morning," she continued by putting her arms on her hips. Her nipples stood out against her thin blouse and Timothy raised his eyebrows in amusement at her absurd denial.
"Your mouth may say what you want, but your nipples do quite a bit of talking from here," he pointed to her nipples and got up from the floor, shaking out his pants. He stripped off his suit then tossed it on the couch and tucked his shirt up to his forearm.
"Listen to my mouth, she's the one who can bite you if you ever touch me again," she tossed her hair over her chest and her silky hair hid her own arousal.
"I have no problem with you biting me with that little mouth of yours Melody. I already know you can do better things with it."
She let out a curse and ran both hands through her black hair and for a moment thought she was going to stamp her feet as her feet jerked for no reason.
"Why do you do that! You can't come here and say you want me to be your wife, kiss me, tell me...say those things to me and think it's all right, do you think this is a fucking joke?" she walked up to him quickly and without giving him a chance she stood on her tiptoes and sniffed his mouth.
The gesture caught him completely off guard. Had she lost her mind? Would she kiss him again with that passion he'd already tasted?
"You don't smell alcohol," and she nudged him with her tiny hands. "You can't be serious!"
At least that was her intention, because when she saw that his action didn't have the desired effect she grumbled off to the kitchen.
"I need coffee."
"Pregnant women don't drink coffee; I don't know if they gave you that in Mommy Class 001."
She melted him with her gaze, and he ran his index finger and thumb across his mouth pretending to zipper his lips shut.
The night was going to be endless.
But one thing he was sure of.
He wouldn't leave without a yes for an answer.