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And besides,came a wise sort of voice from deep inside her,you would never have methimthere.
Geraldine sighed. And she understood the layout of this house now, so she walked along the terrace until she could see around the corner and into Lionel’s wing. And felt everything in her spin and whirl, because he was in there now.
There was no sign of his office work. Just him, sitting on that couch again, this time swirling a drink in one hand.
Looking brooding and implacable and delicious in ways she couldn’t entirely admit to herself.
Geraldine told herself that he couldn’t see her, because the lights were on where he was and she stood in the dark, but her body knew different. Every hair on her body seemed to be lost in those dances from last night, standing on end and swaying as if his hands were still all over her...
Maybe he couldn’t see her, she thought when he shifted, but he knew she was here.
And she let out a breath, though it shook.
The terrible truth was that she wanted him.
Geraldine had never felt anything like this before in her life.
She did not deceive herself. He did not want a divorce, but he certainly didn’t want her as his wife in any real way.
That should have been enough to send her packing and looking for escape routes.
But shewantedhim.
And maybe she could have fought that, but it would necessitate leaving this place and leavinghimand she wasn’t quite sure how she would do that if he didn’t allow it. She knew where she was on a map, but all the staff were loyal to him, she spoke only a few words of Spanish, and didn’t have private jets at her disposal.
Yet even if she did, where would she go? Back to Minneapolis where she was certain Jules’s father was not? If she had to start from scratch in that search, it seemed obvious to her that it would be a lot easier to do here, already in Europe.
If she thought about all that, it almost felt rational.
Geraldine knew that it wasn’t.
She knew that the real reason she was even considering this had nothing to do with paternity tests, and everything to do with him. With Lionel himself. With the way they’d danced last night. She had surrendered herself to him, to the music, and it had felt like flying. Yet all the while she had been anchored to the earth and the way his hand pressed against her back. The way the other gripped her hand. The way he looked down at her, all gleaming dark eyes and the hint of a dangerous smile.
Tonight that spot on her neck still pulsed too hard from before. She could still feel the graze of his teeth against her flesh.
Surely, a voice inside her whispered dangerously,you deserve to feelsomethingfor once. Maybe more thansomething.
And Geraldine had always been distressingly practical. She understood, as she stared out across the Andalusian night into the windows where the most relentlessly masculine man she’d ever beheld sat waiting, that there was far more at risk here than the loss of a few years, her autonomy, or the respect of her family and friends.
There was her heart, already feeling precarious in her chest. Likely because she couldn’t seem to separate what she knew intellectually was a physical reaction from her emotional response to the fact that Lionel Asensio was the only man who had ever made her feel like that.
Who had ever made her feel much of anything at all.
A smart woman would rejoice that shecouldfeel and then run in the opposite direction, and Geraldine had always prided herself on being smart.
But instead she stood here, on the first night of her official honeymoon with this man she should never have met in the first place.
And she knew herself well enough to know that she’d already decided.
He wanted her. And she wanted to know what that meant. What that was.
What those promises in his dark gaze meant.
She would be his.
Whatever that looked like and for however long this lasted.
And she would worry about picking up the pieces later.
