Maybe it had always been leading straight here.
But between the heat of his hands and that shivering deep inside her, she couldn’t seem to mind it as much as she should have.
As much as she suspected she would, once she survived this. If she survived this.
She should get up right this minute. She should move herself out of danger—out of arm’s reach. She should tell Dominik she didn’t care what he did with his newfound name and fortune, just as she should ring Matteo back and tell him she had no intention of marrying a stranger on command.
She knew she should do all those things. She wanted to do all those things.
But instead, she shivered. And in that moment, there at his feet with all his focus and intent settled on her, she surrendered.
If surrender was a cliff, Lauren leaped straight off it, out into nothing. She hadn’t done anything so profoundly foolish since she was nine years old and had thought she could convince her parents to pay more attention to her by acting out. She’d earned herself instead an unpleasant summer in boarding school.
But surrendering here, to Dominik, didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like plummeting down into sharp rocks.
It felt far more like flying.
“I will give you a wedding night,” she heard herself agree, her voice very stern and matter-of-fact, as if that could mask the fact that she was capitulating. As if she could divert his attention from the great cliff she’d just flung herself over. “But that’s all.”
“Perhaps we will leave these intimate negotiations until after the night in question,” Dominik said, that undercurrent of laughter in his voice. “You may find you very much want a honeymoon, little red. Who knows? Perhaps even an extended one. This may come as a surprise to you, but there are some women who would clamor for the opportunity to while away some time in my bed.”
Wedding nights. Honeymoons. Time in bed. This was all a farce. It had to be.
But Lauren was on her knees in the offices of Combe Industries, and she had just proposed marriage to a man she’d only met this morning.
So perhaps farce wasn’t quite the right word to describe what was happening.
Something traitorous inside her wanted to lean in closer, and that terrified her, so she took it as an opportunity to pull away. Cliff or no cliff.
Except he didn’t let her.
That hand at her nape held her fast, and something about that...lit her up. It was as if she didn’t know what she was doing any longer. Or at all. But maybe he did.
And suddenly she was kneeling up higher, her hands flat on his thighs, her face tilted toward his in a manner she could have called all kinds of names.
All of them not the least bit her. Not the person she was or had ever been.
But maybe she was tired of Lauren Isadora Clarke. And everything she’d made herself become while she was so busy not feeling things.
Like this. Like him.
“It’s not a real proposal until there’s a kiss, Lauren,” Dominik told her. Gruffly, she thought. “Even you must know this.”
“Isn’t it enough that I promised you a wedding night?” she asked, and she might have been horrified at the way her voice cracked at that, but there were so many horrors to sift through. Too many.
And all of them seemed to catch fire and burn brighter as she knelt there between his legs, not sure if she felt helpless or far more alarming, alive.
Alive straight through, which only made it clear that she never had been before. Not really.
“Kiss me, little red,” he ordered her, almost idly. But there was no mistaking the command in his voice all the same. “Keep your promise.”
His voice might have been soft, but it was ruthless. And his gray eyes were pitiless.
And he didn’t seem to mind in the least when she scowled at him, because it was the only thing she knew how to do.
“Now, please,” he murmured in that same demanding way. “Before you hurt my feelings.”
She doubted very much that his feelings had anything to do with this, but she didn’t say that. She didn’t want to give him more opportunity to comment on hers. Or call her a robot again.
“I don’t understand why you would want to kiss someone who doesn’t wish to kiss you,” she threw at him in desperation.
“I wouldn’t.” Those gray eyes laughed at her. “But that description doesn’t apply to either one of us, does it?”
“One of us is under duress.”
“One of us, Lauren, is a liar.”
She could feel the heat that told her that her cheeks were red, and she had the terrible notion that meant he was right. And worse, that he could see it all over her face.
She had no idea.
In a panic, she mimicked him, hooking one hand around the hard column of his neck and pulling his mouth to hers.
This man who had agreed to marry her. To pretend, anyway, and there was no reason that should work in her the way it did, like a powder keg on the verge of exploding. Like need and loss and yearning, tangled all together in an angry knot inside her.
And she was almost used to this now. The delirious slide, the glorious fire, of their mouths together.
He let her kiss him, let her control the angle and the depth, and she made herself shiver as she licked her way into his mouth. All the while telling herself that she didn’t like this. That she didn’t want this.
And knowing with every drugging slide of his tongue against hers that he’d been right all along.
She was a liar.
Maybe that was why, when his hands moved to trace their way down her back, she moaned at the sensation instead of fighting it. And when he pulled her blouse from the waistband of her formal trousers, she only made a deeper noise, consumed with the glory of his mouth.
And the way he kissed her and kissed her, endless and intoxicating.
But then his bare hand was on her skin, moving around to the front of her and then finally—finally, as if she’d never wanted anything more when she’d never wanted it in the first place, when it had never occurred to her to imagine such a thing—closing over the swell of one breast.
And everything went white around the edges.
Her breast seemed to swell, filling his palm, with her nipple high and hard.
And every time he moved his palm, she felt it like another deep lick—
But this time in the hottest, wildest, most molten place of all between her legs.
She could feel his other hand in her hair, cradling the back of her head and holding her mouth where he wanted it, making absolutely no bones about the fact that he was in charge.
And it was thrilling.
Lauren arched her back, giving him more of her, and it still wasn’t enough.
The kiss was wild and maddening at the same time, and she strained to get closer to him, desperate for something she couldn’t name. Something just out of reach—
And when he set her away from him, with a dark little laugh, she thought she might die.
Then thought that death would be an excellent escape when reality hit her.
Because she was a disheveled mess on the floor of her office, staring up at the man who’d made her this way.
Perilously close to begging for things she couldn’t even put into words.
She expected him to taunt her. To tell her she was a liar again, and remind her of all the ways he just proved it.
But Dominik stayed where he was, those gray eyes of his shuttered as he gazed back at her.
And she knew it was as good as admitting a weakness out loud, but she lifted her fingers and pressed them to her lips, not sure how she’d spent so many years on this earth without recognizing the way her own flesh could be used against her. And then tingle in the aftermath, like it wasn’t enough.
As if she was sexual, aft
er all.
“The company maintains a small number of corporate flats in this building,” she managed to tell him when she’d composed herself a little, and she didn’t sound like herself. She sounded like a prerecorded version of the woman she’d been when she’d left these offices to fly to Hungary. She wasn’t sure she had access to that woman anymore. She wasn’t sure she knew what had become of her.
But she was very sure that the creature she was now, right there at his feet, would be the undoing of her.
Assuming it wasn’t already too late.
She climbed off the floor with as much dignity as she could muster. For the first time in her life, she cursed the fact that she wore such ridiculous shoes, with such high heels, that it was impossible to feel steady even when she was standing.
Right, a little voice inside her murmured archly. Blame the shoes. It’s definitely the shoes.
“Corporate flats,” he repeated after another long moment, that dark gaze all over her. “How...antiseptic.”
But when she called down to the security desk to have one of the guards come and escort him there, he didn’t argue.
Lauren told herself that she liked the space he left behind him. That it wasn’t any kind of emptiness, but room for her to breathe.
And once she was alone, there was no one to see her when she sank down into her chair behind her desk, where she had always felt the most competent. There was no one to watch as she buried her face in her hands—still too hot, and no doubt too revealing—and let all those emotions she refused to look at and couldn’t name spill down her cheeks at last.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BY MORNING SHE’D pulled herself together. The tears of the night before seemed to have happened to someone else. Someone far more fragile than Lauren had ever been, particularly in the crisp light of day. She showered in the bathroom off the executive suite, rinsing away any leftover emotion as well as the very long previous day, and changed into one of the complete outfits she kept at the office precisely for mornings like this.
Well. Perhaps not precisely like this. She didn’t often plan and execute her own wedding. She’d worn her highest, most impractical pair of heels as a kind of tribute. And she was absolutely not thinking—much less overthinking—about the many questionable bargains she’d made with the strange man she’d found in the forest.
She knocked briskly on the door to the corporate flat at half nine on the dot, aware as she did that she didn’t expect him to answer. A man as feral as Dominik was as likely to have disappeared in the night as a stray cat, surely—
But the door swung open. And Dominik stood there, dressed in nothing but a pair of casual trousers slung low on his hips, showing off acres and acres of...him.
For a moment—or possibly an hour—Lauren couldn’t seem to do anything but gape at him.
“Did you imagine I would run off in the night?” he asked, reading her mind yet again. And not the most embarrassing part, for a change. She tried to swallow past the dryness in her throat. She tried to stop staring at all those ridges and planes and astonishing displays of honed male flesh. “I might have, of course, but there were restrictions in place.”
She followed him inside the flat, down the small hall to the efficient kitchen, bright in the morning’s summer sunlight. “You mean the security guards?”
He rounded the small counter and then regarded her over his coffee, strong enough that she could smell the rich aroma and blacker than sin. “I mean, Lauren, the fact I gave you my word.”
Lauren had allowed sensation and emotion and all that nonsense to get the best of her last night, but that was over now. It had to be, no matter how steady that gray gaze of his was. Or the brushfires it kicked up inside her, from the knot in her belly to the heat in her cheeks. So she cleared her throat and waved the tablet she carried in his direction, completely ignoring the tiny little hint of something bright like shame that wiggled around in all the knots she seemed to be made of today.
“I’ve sorted everything out,” she told him, aware that she sounded as pinched and knotted as she felt. “We will marry in an hour.”
Dominik didn’t change expression and still, she felt as if he was laughing at her.
“And me without my pretty dress,” he drawled.
“The vicar is a friend of the Combe family,” she said as if she hadn’t heard him. And she had to order herself not to fuss with her own dress, a simple little shift that was perfect for the office. And would do for a fake wedding, as well. “I took the liberty of claiming that ours is a deep and abiding love that requires a special license and speed, so it would be best all round if you do not dispute that.”
“I had no intention of disputing it,” Dominik said in that dark, sardonic voice of his that made her feel singed. “After all, I am nothing but a simple, lonely hermit, good for nothing but following the orders of wealthy aristocrats who cannot be bothered to attend the fake weddings they insisted occur in the first place. I am beside myself with joy and anticipation that I, too, can serve your master from afar in whatever way he sees fit. Truly, this is the family I dreamed of when I was a child in the orphanage.”
He displayed his joy and anticipation by letting that impossible mouth of his crook, very slightly, in one corner, and Lauren hated that it felt like a punch. Directly into her gut.
“It is the romance of it all that makes my heart beat faster, little red,” Dominik continued, sounding very nearly merry. If she overlooked that hard gleam in his eyes. “If you listen, I am certain you can hear it.”
Lauren placed her tablet down on the marble countertop in a manner that could only be described as pointed. Or perhaps aggressive. But she kept her eyes on Dominik as if he really was some kind of wolf. As if looking away—for even an instant—could be the death of her.
And it wasn’t his heart that she could hear, pounding loud enough to take down the nearest wall. It was hers.
“Could you take this seriously?” she demanded. “Could you at least try?”
He studied her for another moment as he lifted his coffee to his mouth and took a deep pull. “I didn’t run off in the night as I assure you I could have done if I wished, regardless of what laughable corporate security you think was in place. The vicar bears down on us even as we speak. How much more seriously do you imagine I can take this?”
“You agreed to do this, repeatedly. I’m not sure that I agreed to submit myself to your...commentary.”
She didn’t expect that smile of his, bright and fierce. “Believe me, Lauren, there are all manner of things you might find yourself submitting to over the course of this day. Do not sell yourself short.”
And she hated when he did that. When he said things in that voice of his, and they swirled around inside her—heat and madness and something like hope—making it clear that he was referring to all those dark and thorny things that she didn’t understand.
That she didn’t want to understand, she told herself stoutly.
“I’ve already agreed,” she reminded him, with more ferocity than was strictly required. But she couldn’t seem to bite it back. She had always been in such control of herself that she’d never learned how to take control of herself. If there were steps toward becoming composed, she didn’t know them, and she could blame that on Dominik, too. “There’s no need for all these insinuations.”
“You’ve agreed? I thought it was I who agreed. To everything. Like a house pet on a chain.”
His voice was mild but his gaze was...not.
“You asked me for a wedding night,” she reminded him, her heart still pounding like it wanted to knock her flat. “And you know that I keep my promises. Every time you’ve asked to kiss me, I’ve allowed it.”
“Surrendered to it, one might even say, with notable enthusiasm. Once you get started.”
“My point,” she said through her teeth, not certain why she was su
ddenly so angry, only that she couldn’t seem to keep it inside her, where she was shaky and too hot and not the least bit composed, “is that you don’t have to continue with all the veiled references. Or even the euphemisms. You demanded sex in return for marrying me, and I agreed to give it to you. The end.”
It was a simple statement of fact, she thought. There was no reason at all that he should stare at her that way as if he was stripping all the air from the flat. From the world.
“If it is so distasteful to you, Lauren, don’t.”
But his voice was too smooth. Too silky. And all she could hear was the undercurrent beneath it, which roared through her like an impenetrable wall of flame.
“Don’t?” she managed to echo. “Is that an option?”
“While you are busy marinating in the injustice of it all, remind yourself that it is not I who tracked you down in the middle of a forest, then dragged you back to England. If I wish to go through with a sham marriage for the sheer pleasure of the wedding night you will provide me as lure, that is my business.” Dominik tilted his head slightly to one side. “Perhaps you should ask yourself what you are willing to do for a paycheck. And why.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Is it? Maybe it is time you ask yourself what you wouldn’t do if your Mr. Combe asked it. You may find the answers illuminating.”
“You obviously enjoy keeping to yourself.” Lauren wasn’t sure why all that breathless fury wound around and around inside her, or why she wanted nothing more than to throw it at him. She only wished she could be sure of her aim. “But some people prefer to be on a team.”
“The team that is currently enjoying a holiday in scenic Australia? Or the one left here with a list of instructions and a heretofore unknown half brother to civilize through the glorious institution of marriage?” He smirked. “Go team.”
Her jaw ached and she realized, belatedly, that she was clenching her teeth. “You agreed.”
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