Page 28 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

But Tiago did not seem to notice. He hoisted her high against his chest, and gazed down at her in a way that made her shiver.

Because she knew this look. She knew this man. She even knew why he carried her like this, the way he had back in Spain that night because he did not want to part with her for even as long as it would take for her to walk from one part of her room to the other.

Like then, he kept stopping so he could kiss her again.

Deeper. Hotter.

With all those storms she could see in his eyes.

And she knew that this had been building for too long. Since Spain, maybe. And ever since the wedding, she had been waiting for him to do something about it, but that was foolish. Left to his own devices, Tiago would sit about in stiff-looking suits, droning on about duty and honor until she wanted to start throwing the crockery about, just to makesomethinghappen.

Note to self, she thought as he carried her down one hallway, then up a set of stairs, not seeming to even breathe heavily while he did it.Kiss the man. As often as possible. So he is not tempted to forget that this is how we got into this mess in the first place.

It was one thing to ponder that particular mess while sitting on her own, yet again, in her guest suite. It was one thing to brood on it as she walked out into the vineyards, alone.

Revisiting that mess, with all the heat and wonder that had caused it in the first place... Well. That was something else.

Lillie pulled him down with her when he laid her out so carefully on a big, wide bed in what she took to be his bedchamber.

And later she might think more about the fact that it seemed so stark in here, so austere, that it reminded her of a monastery. More like a hotel suite than a man’s personal bedchamber, but she couldn’t care about that. Not now.

Not when he was finally stretched out beside her once again.

Lillie accepted, in that moment, that she’d thought this would never happen again. She’d thought it and she would have said that she’d come to terms with it, too. Because what choice did she have? She had first tried to find him, but had been forced to give up on it. And woven into all the ways she’d thought about the fact that she was set to become a single mother had been that secret bit of sadness she hadn’t known how to share. Not with herself. Not with anyone.

She’d missed him. She’d missed this.

And there was no possible way to explain that to anyone.

Because it was only one night. That was all they’d shared. It shouldn’t have meant anything.

But that had always been the trouble with Tiago.

She knew, and she thought he knew too, that everything had changed when they’d laid eyes on each other. That kind of thing was supposed to be a myth. It wasn’t supposed to be possible. If asked, she would have told anyone who would listen to her that love at first sight wasn’t real. Even her own parents, still in love to this day, hadn’t had that. Theirs was a love that had grown deeper and richer over time, as they liked to tell anyone who would listen.

But that didn’t change the fact that Lillie had looked up, seen Tiago, and everything after that had felt...inevitable.

It still did.

He was muttering words she didn’t understand now, pressing them into her skin as he moved over her, kissing her as he went.

And there was no time for this. There was notimebecause there had been nothing but time and she couldn’t bear it. Lillie couldn’t keep her hands to herself. She pulled at his clothes, pushing his hands away when he got in her way. She was in a kind of panic, so desperate to get her hands on his bare skin. To get her mouth into the crook of his neck. To rediscover that astonishing V carved above his hips.

To learn him all over again, like this was new.

But before she came anywhere near getting her fill, he was rolling her over again. He put her on her back so he could peel her dress from her body, make short work of her undergarments, and then settle there beside her so he could finally learn this new shape of her.

And he dedicated himself to the task.

He ordered her to lie still when she wanted to fight him, because she wanted to rise up and wrap herself around him. She wanted to reacquaint herself with him, too. She wanted to feel him everywhere, real skin to real skin, not the dreams she’d been surviving on all this time.

“My poor, greedybenzinho,” he murmured, that current of laughter back in his voice.

At last.

It wasn’t there when he told her what Villelas did and didn’t do, as if he couldn’t decide to change it if he liked. It wasn’t there when he lectured her on duty and told her about the perfect wife he hadn’t married.

It was only here, with his mouth against her skin and his hands moving from her tender breasts down the length of her body. Here where he lingered over her bump, then found his way to the oversensitized furrow where she longed for him most. It was only here, she thought, that he was truly himself.