Page 30 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride
“My point,” she said through her teeth, not certain why she was suddenly so angry, only that she couldn’t seem to keep it inside her, where she was shaky and too hot and not the least bit composed, “is that you don’t have to continue with all the veiled references. Or even the euphemisms. You demanded sex in return for marrying me, and I agreed to give it to you. The end.”
It was a simple statement of fact, she thought. There was no reason at all that he should stare at her that way as if he was stripping all the air from the flat. From the world.
“If it is so distasteful to you, Lauren, don’t.”
But his voice was too smooth. Too silky. And all she could hear was the undercurrent beneath it, which roared through her like an impenetrable wall of flame.
“Don’t?” she managed to echo. “Is that an option?”
“While you are busy marinating in the injustice of it all, remind yourself that it is not I who tracked you down in the middle of a forest, then dragged you back to England. If I wish to go through with a sham marriage for the sheer pleasure of the wedding night you will provide me as lure, that is my business.” Dominik tilted his head slightly to one side. “Perhaps you should ask yourself what you are willing to do for a paycheck. And why.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Is it? Maybe it is time you ask yourself what you wouldn’t do if your Mr. Combe asked it. You may find the answers illuminating.”
“You obviously enjoy keeping to yourself.” Lauren wasn’t sure why all that breathless fury wound around and around inside her, or why she wanted nothing more than to throw it at him. She only wished she could be sure of her aim. “But some people prefer to be on a team.”
“The team that is currently enjoying a holiday in scenic Australia? Or the one left here with a list of instructions and a heretofore unknown half brother to civilize through the glorious institution of marriage?” He smirked. “Go team.”
Her jaw ached and she realized, belatedly, that she was clenching her teeth. “You agreed.”
“So I did.” And all he was doing was standing there across a block of marble, so there was no reason he should make her feel so...dizzy. “But then again, so did you. Is that what this is about, little red? Are you so terrified of the things you promised me?”
That took the wind out of her as surely as if she’d fallen hard and landed worse.
“What does it matter if I’m terrified or not?” She only realized after she’d said it that it was as good as an admission. “Would it change your mind?”
“It might change my approach,” he said, that gleaming, dark thing in his gaze again, and she didn’t understand how or why it connected to all that breathlessness inside her. Almost as if it wasn’t fury at all. “Then again, it might not.”
“In any case, congratulations are in order,” she managed to say, feeling battered for no good reason at all. “In short order you will have a wife. And shortly after that, a wedding night sacrifice, like something out of the history books.”
He laughed, rich and deep, and deeper when she scowled at him. “Do you think to shame me, Lauren? There are any number of men who might stand before you and thunder this way and that about how they dislike the taste of martyrdom in their beds, but not me.”
“I am somehow unsurprised.”
Dominik didn’t move and yet, again, Lauren felt as if he surrounded her. As if those hands of his might as well have been all over her. She felt as if they were.
“You’re not terrified of me,” he said with a quiet certainty that made her shake. “You’re terrified of yourself. And all those things you told yourself you don’t know how to feel.” That laughter was still all over his face, but his gray gaze made her feel pinned to the floor where she stood. “You’re terrified that you’ll wake up tomorrow so alive with feeling you won’t know who you are.”
“Either that or even more bored than I am right now,” she said, though her throat felt scraped raw with all the things she didn’t say. Or scream.
“Yes, so deeply bored,” he said, and laughed again. Then he leaned forward until he rested his elbows on the countertop between them, making it impossible to pretend she didn’t see the play of his muscles beneath the acres and acres of smooth male skin that he’d clearly shared with the sun in that Hungarian clearing. “But tell me this, Lauren. Does your boredom make you wet?”
For a moment she couldn’t process the question. She couldn’t understand it.
Then she did, and a tide of red washed over her, igniting her from the very top of her head to the tender spaces between her toes. No one had ever asked her a question like that. She hadn’t known, until right now, that people really discussed such things in the course of an otherwise more or less regular day. She told herself she was horrified. Disgusted. She told herself she didn’t even know what he meant, only that it was vile. That he was.
But she did know what he meant.
And she was molten straight through, red hot and flush with it, and decidedly not bored.
“You have twenty minutes,” she told him when she could be sure her voice was clipped and cold again. “I trust you will be ready?”
“I will take that as a yes,” he rumbled at her, entirely too male and much too sure of himself. “You are so wet you can hardly stand still. Don’t worry, little red. You might not know what to do about that. But I do.”
He straightened, then rounded the counter. Lauren pulled herself taut and rigid as if he was launching an attack—then told herself it was sheer relief that wound its way through her when he made no move toward her at all. He headed toward the flat’s bedroom instead.
“You’re welcome to join me in the shower,” he said over his shoulder, and she didn’t have to see his face to know he was laughing at her. “If you dare.”