Page 18 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride

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.