It was amazing how completing a few basic tasks made her feel like herself again.
As if that strange creature who had lost herself on a strange man’s lap had never existed at all.
She threw herself into the work that waited for her, delighted that it gave her the opportunity to continue pretending she had no idea who that girl could have been, wild with abandon on Dominik’s knee. The farther they got from those woods, the farther she felt from all those bizarre sensations that had been stirred up in her.
Fairy tales, for God’s sake. What had she been thinking?
Lauren resolved that she would do whatever she could to make sure she never succumbed to that kind of nonsense again, no matter what bargains she might have made to get Dominik on this plane.
But all through the short flight, no matter how ferociously she tried to concentrate on her computer screen and all the piled-up emails that required her immediate attention, she was aware of Dominik. Of that considering gray gaze of his, following her every move.
And worse, the heat it kicked up in its wake, winding around and around inside her until she was terribly afraid it would make her burst wide open.
Fairy tale nonsense, she told herself sharply. People didn’t burst, no matter what they felt.
That was what came of tramping about in the wilderness. Too much clean air obviously made her take leave of her senses.
Back in London she felt even more like herself. Calm. Competent. In control and happily surrounded by tarmac. Concrete. Brick buildings. All the solid reminders of the world she knew. And preferred to inhabit, thank you very much.
“England’s greenest hills appeared to be rather more gray puddles and a procession of dingy, squat holdings,” Dominik said from beside her in the backseat of the car that picked them up from the private airfield outside the city. “What a disappointment.”
Lauren congratulated herself on her total lack of reaction to him. He was nothing more than a business associate, sharing a ride.
“Surely, you must know that it rains in England,” she said, and even laughed. “A great deal, in fact.”
She would have said nothing could possibly divert her attention from her mobile, but every cell in her body went on high alert when Dominik turned. And then faced her, making it impossible for her to pretend she didn’t notice the way his big body took up more than his fair share of room in the car. His legs were too long, and those boots of his fascinated her. They seemed so utilitarian. So ruthlessly masculine.
And she couldn’t even bring herself to think about the rest of him. All those long, smoothly muscled limbs. All that strength that simmered in him, that she was dimly surprised he managed to contain.
He didn’t sit like a San Giacomo. He might look like one of them, or a feral version, anyway, but he was far more...elemental. Matteo and his sister, Pia, shared those same gray eyes, and they had both looked stormy at one time or another.
But Lauren couldn’t help thinking that Dominik was a storm.
And her body reacted appropriately, prickling with unease—or maybe it was electricity.
Lightning, something in her whispered.
“What happens now?” Dominik asked, but his voice was lazy. Too lazy. She didn’t believe he cared what happened now. Or ever. This was all a game to him.
Just as she was.
That thought flustered her, and she didn’t make it any better by instantly berating herself for feeling anything at all. She tried to settle her nerves—the ones she didn’t believe in—as she stared at him sternly.
“What would you like to happen?” she asked, and told herself she didn’t know why she felt as if she were made of glass.
“I assume you are even now in the process of delivering me safely into the bosom of my warm, welcoming family.” His smile was as sharp as she felt inside. Jagged. “Will there be a fatted calf?”
“I’m currently delivering you to the London headquarters of Combe Industries,” Lauren replied as crisply as she could manage. Especially when all she could seem to concentrate on was his sardonic mouth. “Once there, you and I will wait for further instructions from Mr. Combe.”
“Instructions.” Dominik looked amused, if darkly. “I can hardly wait.”
Lauren gripped her mobile in her hand and made herself stop when she realized she was making her palm ache.
“Mr. Combe is actually not in England at present,” she said, and she didn’t know why she was telling him this now. It could have waited until they were out of this car. Until they were safely in the office, the place where she felt most at home. Most capable. “He is currently in Perth, Australia. He’s personally visiting each and every Combe Industries office.”
If Lauren had expected Matteo to greet the news that she’d found his brother by leaping onto a plane and heading straight home to meet him, she kept that to herself. Because Matteo showed no sign of doing anything of the kind.
And it felt disloyal to find that frustrating, but she did.
“The great saint is not in England?” Dominik asked in mock outrage. “But however will we know how best to serve him if he isn’t here to lay out his wishes?”
“He is perfectly able to communicate his wishes at all times,” she assured him. “It’s actually my job to make certain he can, no matter where he is. Don’t worry. You’ll know exactly what he expects of you.”
That was the wrong thing to say, but she only realized that once the words were out there between them. And Dominik’s eyes gleamed like silver as he gazed at her.
“Between you and me, little red, I have never done well with expectations.” His voice was much too low for her peace of mind. It was too intimate. Too...insinuating. “I prefer to blaze my own trail.”
“There is no blazing of trails in the San Giacomo family,” she retorted with far more fervor than she’d intended. But she tried to keep her expression impassive when his dark brows rose. “The San Giacomos have existed in some form or another for centuries. They were once a major economic force in the Venetian Empire. While their economic force might have faded over time, their social capital has not.”
“They sound marvelous,” Dominik murmured. “And wholly without the blood of innocents on their hands, I am sure.”
“I couldn’t say what the San Giacomo family did in the eighth century, of course. But I think you’ll find that Matteo Combe is a good and decent man.”
“And you his greatest defender,” Dominik said, and there was something less lazy about his voice then. “He must pay you very well indeed.”
Her breath caught, but Lauren pushed on. “Whether you like expectations or do not, I’m afraid that the blood in your veins means you must meet them, anyway.”
That dark amusement in Dominik’s eyes made them bright against the rain outside. “Must I?”
“There are more eyes on the San Giacomos now than usual,” Lauren said, and wasn’t nervous. Why would she be nervous?
“It would seem to me that those eyes are more focused on the Combe side of the family,” Dominik said after a moment. “Less Venetian economic might and more Yorkshire brawler, if I remember correctly.”
Lauren didn’t instantly bristle at that, which struck her as evidence of more disloyalty on her part.
“I’m not sure that there’s any particular model of behavior for how a man is expected to act at his father’s funeral,” she said quietly. “Especially when his mother died only weeks before.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Dominik replied, and that voice of his wasn’t the least bit lazy any longer. “Having never met anyone who would claim me as a son in the first place.”
Lauren felt as if he’d slapped her. Worse, she felt a flush of shame as if she deserved the slap he hadn’t actually given her.
“Why don’t we wait to have this argument—”
Dominik laughed. “Is this
an argument? You have a thin skin indeed, little red. I would have called this a discussion. And a friendly one, at that.”
“—until we are in the office, and can bring Mr. Combe in on a call. Then he can answer all these questions instead of me, which seems more appropriate all around.”
“Wonderful,” Dominik said, and then his mouth curved in a manner she could only call challenging. “Kiss me.”
And she had truly convinced herself that the bargain they’d struck had been some kind of hiking-inspired dream. A Hungarian-woods-inspired nightmare, made of altitude and too much wildlife. She had been sure it had all been some kind of hallucination. She’d been sure.
You’re such a liar, a voice deep inside her told her.
“You can’t mean now. Here.”
“Will you make me say it every time?” Dominik’s voice was soft, but the look on his face was intense. Intent. “When, where and how I want. Come now, Lauren. Are you a woman of your word or not?”
And it was worse, here. In the back of a town car like so many other town cars she’d ridden in, on this very same stretch of motorway. Here in England, on the outskirts of London, where she had always prided herself on her professionalism. Her competence and efficiency. Where she had built a life made entirely of needs she could meet, and did.
She still hadn’t figured out who the Lauren Isadora Clarke was who had kissed this man with such abandon and hunger. But the intrusion of the fairy tale story she refused to accept was real into her life—her real life—was a shock. A jolt.
Her stomach went into free fall.
And Dominik shook his head sadly, making that tsk-ing sound as if he could read her every thought right there on her face. “You agreed to this bargain, Lauren. There’s no use pretending you suddenly find the notion disgusting.” His eyes were much too bright. “It is almost as if kissing makes you feel things, after all.”
That shook her out of the grip of her horror—because that was what she told herself it had to be, that wild, spinning sensation that made her feel drunk from the inside out. It spurred her into action, and she didn’t stop to question why it was she was so determined that this man never know that his kiss was the only one that had ever gotten to her at all.
It was information he never, ever needed to know.
She hardly wanted to admit it to herself.
And she threw herself across the backseat, determined that whatever else happened, she would do what she’d promised she would. That way, he would never know that she didn’t want to do it because she wasn’t bored by him the way she wanted to be.
Dominik caught her as she catapulted herself against his chest, then shifted her around so that she was sitting draped over his lap, which didn’t help anything at all.
He was much too hard. There was the thick, enticing steel of his thighs, and that hard ridge that rose between them. And Lauren felt...soft and silly, and molten straight through.
And she was sitting on him again, caught in the way he gazed at her, silver in his eyes and his hands at her waist again.
“I know you know how to do this, little red,” he said, his voice a soft taunt. “Or are you trying to play games with me?”
“I don’t play games,” she said stiffly.
As if, should she maintain proper posture and a chilly tone, she might turn this impossible situation to her advantage. Or at least not drown in it.
“So many things you don’t do,” Dominik murmured, dark and sardonic. “Until you do.”
She wanted him to stop talking. And she wanted to get this over with, as quickly as possible, and somehow those two things fused together and made it seem a terrific idea to lift her hands and use them to frame his face.
He stopped talking.
But the trouble with that was, her brain also stopped working.
She was entranced, suddenly and completely, with that strong jaw of his. She marveled at the feel of him, the rasp of his unshaven jaw beneath her palms.
A giant, hot fist she hadn’t known lurked there inside her opened then. Slowly, surely, each finger of pure sensation unfurled, sending ribbons of heat to every last part of her.
She studied the sweep of his cheekbones, the lush shape of his mouth, and felt the shiver of it, so deep inside her it made parts she hadn’t known she had bloom into life.
And she had the craziest urge to just...rub herself against him.
But instead, she kissed him.
She had some half-baked notion that she would deliver a peck, then retreat, but the moment she tasted him again she forgot about that. His mouth was a temptation and sin at once, and she was giddy with it. With his taste and heat.
With him, full stop.
So she angled her head and took the kiss deeper.
Just the way he’d taught her.
And for a little while, there was nothing at all but the slide of her tongue against his. The tangle of their breath, there in the close confines of the back of the car as it moved through the London streets.
Nothing but that humming thing that kicked up between them, encircling them both, then shuddering through Lauren until she worried, in some distant part of her head, that she would never be the same.
That she was already forever changed.
She kissed him and kissed him, and when she pulled her mouth away from his she fully expected him to follow her.
But he didn’t.
She couldn’t begin to describe the expression on his face then, or the steady sort of gleam in his gaze as he reached over and traced the shape of her mouth.
“Good girl,” he said, and she knew without having to ask that he was deliberately trying to be provocative. “It’s nice to know that you can keep your promise even after you get what you want.”
“I am a woman of my word, Mr. James,” she said crisply, remembering herself as she did.
And suddenly the fact that she was sitting on him, aware of all those parts of him pressed so intimately against her, was unbearable.
She scrambled off him and had the sinking suspicion that he let her go. And then watched her as if he could see straight through her.
And that was the thing. She believed he could.
It was unacceptable.
“The only thing you need to concern yourself about is the fact that you will soon be meeting your family for the first time,” she said, frowning at him. “It wouldn’t be surprising if you had some feelings around that.”
“I have no feelings at all about that.”
“I understand you may wish—”
“You do not understand.” His voice was not harsh, but that somehow made the steel in it more apparent. “I was raised in an orphanage, Lauren. As an orphan. That means I was told my parents were dead. When I was older, I learned that they might very well be alive, but they didn’t want me, which I believed, given no one ever came to find me. I don’t know what tearful, emotional reunion you anticipate I’m about to have with these people.”
Lauren was horrified by the part of her that wanted to reach over to him again. This time, just to touch him. It was one more thing that didn’t make sense.
“You’re right, I can’t understand. But I do know that Mr. Combe will do everything in his power to make sure this transition is easy for you.”
“You are remarkably sure of your Mr. Combe. And his every thought.”
“I’ve worked for him for a long time.”
“With such devotion. And what exactly has he done to deserve your undying support?”
She flexed her toes in her shoes, and she couldn’t have said why that made her feel so obvious, suddenly. Silly straight through, because he was looking at her. As if he could see every last thing about her, laid out on a plate before him.
Lauren didn’t want to be known like that. The very notion was something like terrifying.
&nb
sp; “I see,” Dominik said, and there was a different sort of darkness in his voice then. “You are not sexual, you tell me with great confidence, but you are in love with your boss. How does that work, exactly?”
“I’m not in...” She couldn’t finish the sentence, so horrified was she. “And I would never...” She wanted to roll down the window, let the cool air in and find her breath again, but she couldn’t seem to move. Her limbs weren’t obeying her commands. “Matteo Combe is one of the finest men I have ever known. I enjoy working for him, that’s all.”
She would never have said that she was in love with him. And she would certainly never have thought about him in any kind of sexual way. That seemed like a violation of all the years they’d worked together.
All she wanted—all she’d ever wanted—was for him to appreciate her. As a woman. To see her as something more than his walking, talking calendar.
“And this paragon of a man cannot stir himself to return home to meet the brother you claim he is so dedicated to? Perhaps, Lauren, you do not know the man you love so much as well as you think.”
“I know him as well as I need to.”
“And I know he’s never tasted you,” Dominik said with all his dark ruthlessness. It made her want to cry. It made her want to...do something with all that restlessness inside her. “Has he?”
Lauren could barely breathe. Her cheeks were so red she was sure they could light up the whole of the city on their own.
“Not answering the question is an answer all its own, little red,” Dominik murmured, his face alight with what she very much feared was satisfaction.
And she was delighted—relieved beyond measure—that the car pulled up in front of the Combe Industries building before she was forced to come up with some kind of reply.
But she didn’t pretend it was anything but a reprieve, and likely a temporary one, when she pushed open the door and threw herself out into the blessedly cool British evening.
Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride (Conveniently Wed!) Page 6
