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‘The whole world knows it, of course.’ She was still speaking, frowning at him. ‘And it isn’t what a new bride would like to hear.’
‘Is that so?’ Lukas demanded, that full mouth of hers...doing things to him.
He told himself it was the whisky still running through his veins from the limo drive home, though he suspected that was not actually the source of his perturbation. He’d probably sweated that out after the first couple of hours of beasting himself.
Across from him, Oti lifted her shoulders as elegantly as she possibly could.
‘You like to live life to its fullest. You drink and gamble and carouse.’
‘Carouse?’
Her eyes narrowed at him. ‘Now you wish to take issue with my choice of words?’
Despite everything, amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘Forgive me, Lady Octavia.’
She glowered at him, and he liked that rather more than he ought to.
‘My point is,’ she emphasised irritably, ‘that you are infamous for having a string of lovers. So I would ask whether you intend for your endless string of affairs and flings to continue?’
It was puzzling how little the idea appealed to him suddenly.
‘Does it matter?’
‘It does when you’re dictating who I may and may not meet now that we are married. Sauce for the goose and all that.’
‘There will be no sauce,’ he ground out, barely able to focus. His head was being turned inside out. ‘No taking my driver to meet other men. No affairs.’
‘And you?’ she pressed. ‘Not that I care about the affairs per se, of course. More that I don’t wish to be made to look a fool any more than it appears you do.’
She leaned back on the bed then, her arms extended behind her. Lukas suspected she had no idea how that put her breasts on display in that figure-hugging top. Less idea still of quite how her gentle unpretentiousness was affecting him.
He’d never much cared for sweet women before, preferring those who knew what they were getting themselves into with him. He desired women, sure, and he prided himself on being a thorough, generous lover. But he’d never been so preoccupied with fantasies about peeling their clothes off, slowly and delicately. Taking such time and care.
It was all that had consumed his thoughts ever since she’d hauled that insane wedding dress around his house last night.
Ever since he’d opened that door and seen her standing there in those scraps of lace like some kind of real-life erotic pin-up.
‘Are you offering yourself as an alternative?’ His voice was little more than a rasp as he deliberately avoided her question.
He barely recognised himself. Or the primal creature that howled inside him, making him take one step, and then another, getting all too close to where she sat. To the bed on which she sat.
And he found that he felt altogether too much like an untried, overeager adolescent.
‘If you want me to yourself, my lady, then you need only say so.’
She laughed, a sensual sound that seemed to wind itself around his groin like a fist. A very soft but firm Octavia-style fist.
What the hell was wrong with him? He didn’t even want to want her. She was everything he despised. From her lifestyle to her morals. And whilst that might be okay for a single night of mutual satisfaction with a woman he would never have to see again, it wasn’t a good idea to complicate things in this clear-cut arrangement of theirs. Why blur the lines with a woman he would have to see day in, day out for the foreseeable future?
And still he kept advancing.
‘I realise you may find this difficult to understand, given the sheer volume of women who follow you around just hoping you’ll notice them for a night, but you are not at all my type, Lukas. I am not the slightest bit attracted to you.’
Victory smashed through him. It made him want to punch his hand into the air.
Because here, at last, he finally knew she was lying.
He knew women, and he knew how his new bride had looked at him. Yesterday, on their wedding day and the first time they had met. She might not like him much, and she might like his reputation even less, but she was attracted to him. She couldn’t help herself any more than he could. It was apparent in every line of that lush body of hers.
