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When she disengaged from him and pulled the doors open, he cursed under his breath, raked a hand through his hair. All noise across the floor silenced, and he immediately grabbed his jacket, shoved his arms into it as he followed her to the elevator.
He pushed inside before the doors closed, and she turned her face toward the mirror when he demanded, “Do I get two weeks to convince you to stay? I want you here. And I want you in my bed.”
“You want. You need.” Her voice quivered with anger, and its tentacles curled around him so hard he could’ve sworn it would kill him. “Is that what you wanted to speak to me about? Becoming your…mistress?”
His heart had never galloped this way. His plans had never veered off so unexpectedly, so decidedly. Their gazes met. Hers furious. His…his burned like flames. He grabbed her shoulders. The need inside him was so consuming he saw red. “Say yes. Christ, say yes now.”
But the way she looked at him wasn’t the same way she always did. “Do you think that’s what I want?” she asked, so softly he barely heard through the background elevator music. “Did I ever give you the impression I would…settle for…such an offer?”
Stunned that she would look at him like he was a monster, he took a step away from her, and another. His body burned with the want to show her he meant not to punish but to love her with every graze of his lips and every lick of his tongue.
And he said, out of desperation, impulse, the exact second the elevator halted at the lobby floor, “I love you.”
And the words, magic words, ones he’d never, ever said before, didn’t have the effect he’d predicted.
Her laugh was cynical. “See, you’re so good at pretending, I don’t believe you.”
And she spun around and walked away, out of the elevator, away from him, away from it all.
Stunned, he braced a hand on the mirror, shut his eyes as he fought to make sense of the rampaging turmoil inside him.
What in the hell?
Thirteen
Alone in his Fintech offices, motionless in his chair, Marcos stared out the window.
The nineteenth floor was empty. It was 3 a.m. But th
ere was no power on this earth, no way in hell, that he’d go back alone to his apartment. His penthouse had never felt so cold now that Virginia Hollis was gone. The sheets smelled of her. He’d found a lipstick under the bathroom sink and he’d never, ever felt such misery. The sweeping loneliness that had accompanied that unexpected find was staggering.
He’d stormed out of his home and now here he was, inside his sanctuary. The place where he evaluated his losses and plotted his comebacks. Where he’d conquered the unconquerable and ruthlessly pursued new targets. Where, for the last month, he’d spent countless hours staring off into space with the single thought of a raven-haired temptress with pale, jade-green eyes.
And now he stared out the window, blinded to the city below, and he told himself he did not care.
He told himself that a month from now, he would forget Virginia Hollis.
He told himself this was an obsession and nothing more. He told himself the gut-wrenching, staggering throb inside him was nothing. And for the hundredth time, until the words rang true and his insides didn’t wince in protest every time he thought them, he told himself he did not love her.
But it was a bluff. A farce. A lie.
Virginia had her money. Their arrangement had culminated at the Fintech party and had left him with an overwhelming sense of loss he couldn’t quite shake. She’d left him wanting. Wanting more.
Marcos, I love you.
She hadn’t said it in exactly those words—but in his mind, she did. And he’d never heard sweeter words. More devastating words. Because suddenly, and with all his might, he wanted to be a man who could love her like she deserved.
The pain in her eyes—he’d been the one to put it there. Touch of gold? He scoffed at the thought, thinking he destroyed anything he touched that had life. He’d put that misery in Virginia’s eyes and he loathed himself for it.
His proposal, what he’d offered her, not even half of what he’d truly wanted from her, sickened him.
All along, he’d wanted her. He was a man accustomed to following his gut, and he did it without a conscience. He knew when he saw land and wanted it. He knew what he looked for when he bought stocks. He knew, had known from the start, he wanted Virginia in his bed, under his starved, burning body. But now, clear as the glass before him, he knew what else he wanted from her.
He wanted it all.
He wanted a million dances and double that amount of her smiles.
He wanted her in his bed, to see her when he woke up, to find her snuggled against him.
