Page 42 of A Billion-Dollar Heir For Christmas

She not only knew it. She longed for it.

Tiago lifted her up and swung her into his arms, as he did so often. And he held her there for a long moment, so intense that she felt suspended somewhere between the lights in the trees and the storm in his gaze. She was aware of the way his chest moved, harsh with every breath, as if somewhere, somehow, he was running flat out when she could see he was standing still.

“You are a sorceress,” he growled with his head bent to hers. In a voice nearly too dark to bear, with all that thunder laced through it.

She lifted her hand and put it to the side of his face, where she could feel that muscle clench, once and then again.

“It’s not my magic,” she whispered. “It’s ours. The only difference is, I’m not afraid of it.”

The sound Tiago made then, raw and wild, thrilled her. So too did that sudden blaze of something not quite fury in his gaze.

And then everything went white hot and molten.

He took her down onto that chaise she had made into its own ornament. And he came with her, his hands frantic on his clothes, until he could press against her, skin to skin.

At last, she thought, as if it had been an eternity since last they’d touched instead of a matter of hours.

Then Lillie stopped thinking altogether.

Because it really was magic, this thing between them. It was an enduring glory, what he could make her feel with a single touch. And she was nothing but wildly, deeply, eternally thankful that he did so much more than simply touch her.

And better yet, that she could practice that same magic right back at him.

So that if there was a sorcery, shimmering there between them on this Christmas Eve, it belonged to them both.

It was the way he took her breasts in his hands, as if they were precious, making her nipples sing and the rest of her clench on a wave of that delirious pleasure. It was the way she crawled over him and then down the length of his body, so she could kneel between his legs and take that satiny length of him, hot and heavy, in her fist.

Then, better still, bend her head to taste him.

If it was magic, then spell after spell, they made it better. Deeper. More perfectly theirs.

They spun it out into the sweet sea breeze and the smell of pine, chasing that storm as it spiraled deep inside each of them and then bloomed hot and sweet.

Once, then again.

Because once was never enough.

And when they were finished, when they both lay there, panting and limp with the beauty of it all, there were so many things that Lillie wanted to say to him. The words crowded on her tongue.

But before she could get even one of them out, he moved. Not far.

Tiago rolled so he sat at the edge of the candy cane settee. He propped his elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands. She sat up, too, not liking the look of that for this proud, beautiful man—

In the next breath, he straightened, raking his hair back from his face.

But he still did not look at her, and Lillie thought she knew why. Because there was not a hint of that iceman who had stood before her earlier, sharing that list of all her deficiencies. Enumerating all the ways she would never live up to whatever ideal he had in his head of who his wife should be.

And therefore how he would never live up to the people who’d put those ideals there in the first place.

“You want me to be nothing more than a husk of a man, broken beyond repair,” he said, in a low voice she hardly recognized as his. “And I do not understand why.”

Lillie had the urge to laugh at that, but she didn’t. And was glad she didn’t in the next moment, because there was no way he would take to that lightly. It didn’t matter what she thought was happening here. What mattered was that he was experiencing it as brokenness.

And she believed that he felt that way. It was just that she suspected that the thing that bothered him was thefeelingpart. Not what might or what not be broken in him because of those feelings.

She reached over and carefully, gently, smoothed a hand down his back. He reacted instantly. He stiffened, then sighed.

And still did not look at her, almost as if he didn’t dare.