Page 26 of The Billionaire's Last-Minute Marriage
‘It must have been truly important information, for your mother to sacrifice you into a bargain with a man like Zeus.’ His tone was filled with anger. She looked up and was shocked to see barely constrained rage in his eyes.
‘My mother refused to allow me to do it, actually. She has always been overprotective of me, my father too. Maybe that was why I defied her orders and insisted that I could handle it.’ She could still see the older man towering above her mother, hear him threaten her. ‘That night set something off within me, it spurred a need I’d long ignored to take control and prove myself. To show that I was capable of protecting her too.
‘You helped me to see that, you know,’ she said softly. ‘In the midst of it all, before Zeus sought me out once more and made his bargain...I met you. I realised that I wanted more from my life than what I had living in Ireland. You made me realise that I wanted more. I should have known then. It’s not normal to have such thoughts about a complete stranger.’
‘What kind of thoughts?’ he rasped, stepping closer. ‘Because they couldn’t be any more scandalous than the ones that I’ve harboured.’
‘You...you have?’
‘Months,’ he whispered. ‘Months of remembering that night and wondering what might have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted. Months of resisting you and despising him for placing you in front of me. I’m sorry that he used you against me this way. I’m sorry that he deceived you and your mother. Zeus...he knew exactly what he was doing.’ The last sentence was a growl, wrought from him.
‘Why were you so cold towards me these last four months? Did you believe that I sought you out at the gala deliberately?’
‘I was furious with myself. It’s no secret that I am the product of my own father’s lack of control around his employees. I’d never had a whiff of scandal with anyone who was even remotely subordinate to me. And then there you were, the biggest walking temptation that I’d ever encountered.’
She swallowed the knot of emotion forming in her throat and tried to focus past the pool of longing building within her. With sudden clarity, she knew that if they gave in to the madness again, this time, there would be no stopping either of them.
She wanted to make love with him more than she wanted to breathe. Her body hurt from trying to hold herself together, from trying to deny the raw primal need that filled her every time his body was close. But it was more than just wanting a warm male body against her own; she wanted him. She wanted Xander. And for that reason she took a deep breath and spoke, knowing he might walk away but needing to take that risk.
‘I can’t pretend that I’m not affected by you, Xander,’ she said, pushing herself to get the words out. ‘It’s just not the way I’m wired.’
He’d warned her not to expect anything from this marriage. Especially not love. So she needed to keep guarding her heart for all she was worth if she wanted to survive the next twelve months.
‘You think that I’m not affected by you?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea what you think or feel, you are the most infuriating puzzle I have ever encountered and yet...I just keep wanting to push you. To try to unravel that iron-clad control of yours...to see what’s underneath that mask you wear for the world. To show what is underneath my own.’
‘Is this what you wished I would do?’ He pulled her closer. ‘You wanted me to take control, to be the demanding boss of your fantasies?’
‘Yes,’ she breathed, not even caring how crazed she sounded.
‘Christos... I can barely look at you without wanting to pull you away to the nearest hard surface whether it’s a bed or a floor...or a wall.’
‘Or a desk?’ she suggested.
He groaned, his hands on her face and in her hair, and his mouth sought out hers. She was instinctively sinking into the kiss before she had the sense to pull back.
‘This can’t be normal, feeling this way. I’m going to combust,’ she heard herself say.
‘I’m in control here, remember. And, Pandora, this is not normal for me either.’
She felt the hard, hot evidence of his arousal pressing below her belly button, branding her with molten heat. His lips sought the soft flesh beneath her ear, his tongue tracing a slow path along the sensitive lobe that made her shiver. She felt that pull, that delicious fire threatening to burn again and swallow her whole...but she resisted. She needed to get her thoughts out of her head before they took this any further past the invisible line they had already drawn in the sand. Because sexual arousal faded and she had agreed to stay married to him, to stand by his side as his wife for the next year.
Suddenly, what they were doing seemed utterly ridiculous.
She pulled back in the circle of his arms but he kept his hold on her hips, flexing his fingers slightly and sending little bites of sensation through her.
‘There’s a reason why I don’t just sleep with every woman who catches my attention, Pandora.’ His voice was like gravel, his eyes dark with intensity. ‘I’ve never even come close to breaking my own rules. Until you...’
She closed her eyes at his words, resisting the warm sensation they evoked deep in her core. A sensation that felt perilously close to hope. That was the one emotion that she had promised herself she would not unleash on their arrangement, no matter what happened between them.
‘I’ve spent four months controlling myself for every moment that I was in your presence.’ Xander frowned, running one finger down the centre of her chest, making her shiver. The wide muscular span of his hands came to rest under her ribcage and she felt deliciously caged in, held together by the firm pressure.
‘I need to know that you won’t regret this in the morning. That if we take this one night for ourselves, we can live with it,’ she said. One night would have to be enough. Risking more was to risk a shattered heart.
‘One night?’ he teased, pulling her closer, fisting one hand through her hair with a touch that managed to be both sensual and deliciously firm all at once. ‘Do you deliberately set these limitations, knowing that I am a man who always wants more?’
‘I’m serious.’ She met his eyes with every ounce of steel she could muster, considering his touch had turned her entire body into a writhing mess. ‘It’s important to me.’
