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‘Yes, you are. We were having sex. In private. Now you’re asking me to be your fiancée, your cheerleader, your guarantor. In public.’
He stared at her, his mouth curving upwards into a shape that was more sneer than smile. She felt her heart thud too hard inside her chest. ‘But I’m not asking you, am I?’ Now his face was dark with impatience. ‘Look, Lily, you know how the world works. People love a story. All we have to do is make them believe it. And you’re a very smart woman, so I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. Particularly as you have an incentive. We both do.’
She drew a rough breath. ‘I don’t like that word.’
‘Which one? Story? Incentive?’
‘We,’ she said tersely. ‘There is you and there is me. We implies consent and intimacy, neither of which are present in this current arrangement.’
His gaze narrowed, mouth curving mockingly. ‘You mean current as in this particular moment, because not long ago we were kissing, and it was definitely consensual—’
She could feel the buttons of her dress burning into her skin. The air around them was growing thicker. It was making her breathing go messy and her brain felt fuzzy.
‘That was—’
‘What?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘A bad idea? A mistake?’ He took a step forward and she felt the tension between them snap tight as his eyes fixed on where she could feel her nipples pushing against the checked cotton.
‘You’re lying to me, you’re lying to yourself. You wanted me, Lily, you still do. I don’t know why you won’t admit it—’
He was standing so close she could see the smattering of freckles along his cheekbones, the faint shadow of stubble on his jawline. Too close. But she didn’t need to be that close to feel the truth of his words and even though she didn’t want them to, they did something to her, made her remember how it felt to see him aroused, to know that she had the power to arouse him.
And right now that felt like the only power she had left.
‘So let’s have sex.’ She took a step forwards, hands on hips as if she were a prizefighter throwing down a challenge. ‘Let’s do it. Here. Now. Let’s have sex here in this barn.’
He looked taken aback in about five different ways, and after so many weeks of feeling conflicted and helpless that felt good.
‘What? You said it yourself. I want you, you want me. It’s just bodies, and it’s not as if we can have sex with anyone else. It might as well be here as anywhere else.’
She reached for him, her fingers clumsy against his shirt, pulling him closer, and she felt him tense, his hands moving to her hips, steadying her, stopping her—
‘What are you doing?’ His voice was hoarse but he wasn’t pushing her away and she could feel him against her stomach, the hardness of him making her shudder inside and arch against him.
As if he weren’t the man she had tried to run from. The man who was blackmailing her, as if she were just heat and need.
‘Lily, no, not like this—’
It was the gentleness in his voice that made her stumble backwards and she stared up at him, her face burning, and she knew that she was crying. She didn’t feel powerful any more. She had wanted to punish him, to make him hurt as he was hurting her, and she knew only one way to do that, because sex was when she had felt his equal.
Not any more.
She was just a tool, a means to an end.
‘If not like this, then how?’
Her face was wet, but she didn’t brush the tears away, instead she crossed her arms. ‘Like before maybe? Is that how you want it to be? Because that can’t happen. Not ever.’ Her voice was shaking now. ‘Do you think because I’m not beautiful like you that I don’t have feelings? That I don’t care that—’
She pressed her hand against her mouth. She had said too much. So much more than she wanted him to know.
He looked stunned, his eyes wide and bluer than she had ever seen them.
‘Lily—’
But she was already moving, stumbling through the door and out into the sunlight and then she was running, running from the pain in her heart and the pity in his eyes.
CHAPTER SIX
LEANING BACK IN the chair, Trip gazed up at the sky and breathed in deeply. It was another perfect day.
