Page 23 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
“I don’t.” He tilted his head to one side. “But I suspect you do.”
He thought he’d scored a hit. She stiffened further, then relaxed again in the next instant as if determined not to let him see it. And then her cheeks flamed with that telltale color, which assured him that yes, she cared.
But a better question was, why did he?
“I don’t have any feelings about marriage at all,” she declared in ringing tones he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe. “It was never something I aspired to, personally, but I’m not opposed to it. I rarely think about it at all, to be honest. Are you telling me that you lie awake at night, consumed with fantasies about your own wedding, Mr. James?”
“Naturally,” he replied. And would have to examine, at some point, why he enjoyed pretending to be someone completely other than who he was where this woman was concerned. Purely for the pleasure of getting under her skin. He smiled blandly. “Who among us has not dreamed of swanning down an expensive aisle, festooned in tulle and lace, for the entertainment of vague acquaintances?”
“Me,” she retorted at once. And with something like triumph in her voice.
“Of course not, because you are devoid of feelings entirely, as you have taken such pains to remind me.”
“I’m not sentimental.” Except she looked so deeply pleased with herself just then it looked a whole lot like an emotion, whether she wanted to admit such things or not. “I apologize if you find that difficult to accept.”
“You have no feelings about marriage. Sex. Even kissing, no matter how you react while doing it. You’re an empty void, capable only of doing the bidding of your chosen master. I understand completely, Lauren.”
That she didn’t like that description was obvious by the way she narrowed her eyes, and the way she flattened her lips. Dominik smiled wider. Blander.
“How lucky your Mr. Combe is to have found such devotion, divorced of any inconvenient sentiment on your part. You might as well be a robot, cobbled together from spare parts for the singular purpose of serving his needs.”
If her glare could have actually reached across the space between them and struck him then, Dominik was sure he would have sustained mortal blows. What he was less certain of was why everything in him objected to thinking of her as another man’s. In any capacity.
“What I remember of my parents’ marriage is best not discussed in polite company,” she said, her voice tight. He wondered if she knew how the sound betrayed her. How it broadcast the very feelings she pretended not to possess. “They divorced when I was seven. And they were both remarried within the year, which I didn’t understand until later meant that they had already moved on long before the ink was dry on their divorce decree. The truth is that they only stayed as long as they did because neither one wanted to take responsibility for me.” She shook her head, but more as if she was shaking something off than negating it. “Believe me, I know better than anyone that most marriages are nothing but a sham. No matter how much tulle and expense there might be. That doesn’t make me a robot. It makes me realistic.”
Something in the way she said that clawed at him, though he couldn’t have said why. Or didn’t want to know why, more accurately, and accordingly shoved it aside.
“Wonderful,” he said instead. “Then you will enjoy our sham of a marriage all the more, in all its shabby realism.”
“Does that mean you’ll do it, then?”
And he didn’t understand why he wanted so badly to erase that brittleness in her tone. Why he wanted to reach out and touch her in ways that had nothing to do with the fire in him, but everything to do with that hint of vulnerability he doubted she knew was so visible. In the stark softness of her mouth. In the shadows in her eyes.
“I will do it,” he heard himself say. “For you.”
And every alarm he’d ever wired there inside him screeched an alert then, at full volume.
Because Dominik did not do things for other people. No one was close enough to him to ask for or expect that kind of favor. No one got close to him. And in return for what he’d always considered peace, he kept himself at a distance from everyone else. No obligations. No expectations.
But there was something about Lauren, and how hard she was clearly fighting to look unfazed in the face of her boss’s latest outrageous suggestion. As if an order to marry the man’s unknown half brother was at all reasonable.
You just agreed to it, a voice in him pointed out. So does it matter if it’s reasonable?
One moment dragged on into another, and then it was too late to take the words back. To qualify his acceptance. To make it clear that no matter what he might have said, he hadn’t meant it to stand as any form of obligation to this woman he barely knew.
Much less that boss of hers who shared his blood.
“For me?” she asked, and it was as if she, too, had suddenly tumbled into this strange, hushed space Dominik couldn’t seem to snap out of.
He didn’t want to call it sacred. But he wasn’t sure what other word there was for it, when her caramel eyes gleamed like gold and his chest felt tight.
“For you,” he said, and he had the sense that he was digging his own grave, shovelful by shovelful, whether he wanted it or not. But even that didn’t stop him. He settled farther back against his chair, thrust his legs out another lazy inch and let one corner of his mouth crook. “But if you want me to marry you, little red, I’m afraid I will require a full, romantic proposal.”
She blinked. Then swallowed.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I don’t intend to make a habit of marrying. This will have to be perfect, the better to live on all my days.” He nodded toward the polished wood at his feet. “Go on, then. On your knees, please.”