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Yes, she’d been late. She hadn’t known what to wear. A stupid consideration, given that her clothes were about to be stripped from her, for the first of their contractual nights together.
The very thought of that sickened her. Could he really do this? Would he really demean and debase what they’d shared, by reducing it to this?
And if he did, then what?
She fought the sting of tears, moving towards him with a determined glitter in her eyes. “I’m here now,” she said with forced calm. “So? Where would you like me?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “I—thought we could eat?—,”
“What’s the point?” she pushed, knowing she needed to serve like for like. He’d turned this into a business deal, so she’d do the same. “We both know why I’m here, and it’s not for my conversational skills.”
“Maddie—,”
But she didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She’d come here for one reason and one reason only. To see if he could really go through with this. If he could, then she’d walk away from him once and for all. There was no way on earth she was going to be traded for a property.
And if he was the kind of man to believe her capable of that, then she didn’t want a bar of him. Even when she really, really did.
She reached for the buttons of her trench coat, unfastening the top one, and then the next, and the next, parting it until his eyes dropped and it became very clear to him that she wore only a silky negligee beneath.
A hiss escaped from between his teeth, that turned into a curse when she dropped the coat to the ground and stood before him in cream lace and a pair of sky-high heels.
“Maddie,” he groaned now, shaking his head a little, eyes latched to her almost in fear.
Fear? Of what?
Her hands reached for the hem of her negligee, to lift and remove it, but his own hands stilled hers and her breath caught, out of a wild, essential hope that he wasn’t going to do this after all.
“Please, let me,” he groaned instead, lifting the negligee slowly up her body, sending a riot of goosebumps over her skin, and making her tremble all over for a wholly different reason now. He removed the garment completely, dropping it to the floor, letting his hands return to her body, his rough palms brushing her breasts, her nipples, then her sides, her hips, curving around her buttocks and cupping them, bringing her forward so she pressed against his hard length.
He swore into her ear. “I want you,” he growled. “I’ve missed you.”
I’ve missed you. If only she could believe that. If only she didn’t want those words to mean so much more than they did. But all the ‘if only’s’ wouldn’t change what they were, what he wanted, and what he saw her as.
“I know,” she murmured, hating him then, from the bottom of her heart. For offering her close to what she wanted, but not quite. For making her realise she loved him, all the while showing her that love would never be in the equation for him. He just wasn’t capable of it. And wasn’t that a good thing? Maddie should have been thanking her lucky stars that there was no real risk here. No risk of trusting him, no risk of dreaming of a forever future with him, no risk of building a whole fantasy around what she wanted because he’d been as unfailingly honest as always. A wolf in wolf’s clothing, as always.
Tears stung in the back of her throat so she did the only thing she could and kissed him. Kissed him so he wouldn’t notice, kissed him so he wouldn’t see. Kissed him so she wouldn’t feel.
Her skin was like silk, so soft it had an almost dream-like state. So sweet to taste, like vanilla and lavender and something else, something he couldn’t get enough of. He tasted her all over, his tongue running from each of her most sensitive points to the next—the flesh beneath her earlobe, her decolletage, her breasts, her nipples, her hips, her sex, all of her. All over. Again and again, until she was incandescent and writhing in his arms, begging him to take her, begging him to make her his. Begging in a way she didn’t need to, but that he loved to hear, because it made him feel less alone in the ‘desperately needing’ department. And when he took her, he kissed her on the mouth, his tongue dueling with hers in perfect synchronicity with his movements; thrust, take, feel, possess.
She arched her back, welcoming him deeper, and right there in the middle of the hotel’s impersonal lounge room, he gave himself over to the seventh circle of hell, to the surrender of lust, to the sealing of a deal he’d had no business making in the first place.
Right there, he made love to Maddie, even when turning what they were into any kind of contract felt all kinds of wrong to him. He took her, because they both wanted it, because when it came to sex, they had no common sense, apparently. And then he rolled onto his back afterwards and stared at the ceiling, disgusted with himself for what he’d let happen, even when he was also rejoicing, because God, how he’d missed her…
“Well, then,” her voice shook a little. “I guess that’s that.”
Tears were now doing more than threatening the back of her throat, they were filling her eyes with angry condemnation and disbelief.
Something in her voice must have communicated itself as serious, because his head whipped around to hers, his eyes landing with a questioning thud on her face even as his chest was still heaving with the motion of deep breathing, after the exertion of what they’d just shared.
“Maddie?”
She shook her head a little; she needed a moment. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe all she needed was to get the hell away from him. This had been a mistake. Thinking she could come here just to show him how stupid his proposition was had been a fatal miscalculation. Maddie wasn’t like Rocco—she wasn’t cut out to see sex as meaningless, nor transactional. Every time they’d been together had meant something to her.
And she realized then her worst fears had come true: she was just like her mother. Falling hopelessly for the wrong guy not once, but twice.
She pushed to standing, her whole body shaking with the force of her self-recrimination.
“Maddison.” His voice was stern and came from right behind her.
