Page 15 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
Hisvoice was a dark rasp that made her quiver all over again, deep inside.
“You promised and you’ve already broken that promise. It didn’t even take you—”
Her voice cut off abruptly when he ran his palm down the length of her ponytail and tugged it. Gently enough, so there was no reason she felt...scalded straight through.
“What promise did I break?” he asked mildly. So mildly she found herself frowning at him, because she didn’t believe it.
“One kiss,” she said severely.
And the way his mouth curved then, there below the knowing silver of his gaze, made her shiver.
“You’re the one who has to say stop, little red. I don’t remember you saying anything of the kind. Do you?”
And for another beat she was...stupefied.
Unable to breathe, much less react. Unable to do anything but gape at him.
Because he was quite right. She hadn’t said anything at all.
In the next second she launched herself off him, leaping back in a way that she might have found comical, had she not been so desperate to put space between her and this man she’d made a devil’s bargain with.
“This was our agreement, was it not?” Dominik asked, in that same mild voice. He only watched her—looking amused, she couldn’t help but notice—as she scrambled around to the back of the chair facing him. “I hope you do not plan to tell me that you are already regretting the deal we made.”
And Lauren did not believe in fairy tales. But it occurred to her, as she stared back at this man who had taken her over, made her a stranger to herself, and made her imagine that she could control something she very much feared was far more likely to burn her alive—she realized that she’d been thinking about the wrong kind of fairy tale.
Because there were the pretty ones, sweeping gowns and singing mice. Everything was princesses and musical numbers, neat and sweet and happy-ever-afters all around.
But those weren’t the original fairy tales. There were darker ones. Older versions of the same stories, rich with the undercurrent of blood and sacrifice and grim consequences.
There were woods that swallowed you whole. Thorn bushes that stole a hundred years from your life. There were steep prices paid to devious witches, locked rooms that should have stayed closed, and children sent off to pay their fathers’ debts in a variety of upsetting ways.
And there were men like Dominik, whose eyes gleamed with knowledge and certainty, and made her remember that there were some residents of hidden cottages who a wise girl never tried to find in the first place.
But Lauren hadn’t heeded all the warnings. The man so difficult to find. The innkeeper’s surprise that anyone would seek him out. That damned uninviting path through the woods.
She’d been so determined to prove her loyalty and capabilities to Matteo during this tough period in his life. If he wanted his long-lost older brother, she, by God, would deliver said older brother—once again making it clear that she alone could always, always give her boss what he needed.
Because she did so like to be needed.
She understood that then, with a lurch deep inside her, that once Matteo had mentioned Dominik this had always been where she would end up. This had always been her destination, which she had raced headlong toward with no sense of self-preservation at all.
This deal she’d made. And what it would do to her.
And she knew, with that same lurch and a kind of spinning sensation that threatened to take her knees out from under her, that it was already much too late to save herself from this thing she’d set in motion.
“I don’t regret anything,” she lied through lips that no longer felt like hers. And though it was hard to meet that too-bright, too-knowing gray gaze of his, she forced herself to do it. And to hold it. “But we need to head back to England now. As agreed.”
His lips didn’t move, but she could see that smile of his, anyway. All wolf. All fangs.
As if he’d already taken his first bite.
“But of course,” he said quietly. “I keep my promises, Lauren. Always. You would do well to remember that.”