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“Why not? I wasn’t your woman.”
“But you are now.” He reached out an arm, and catching her low around her waist, drew her toward him.
And with his body hot, his groin hard, he roughly slipped his finger between the buttons at her breastbone and popped the first button off. “Just as you always will be,” he said, moving down a button and popping that one off, too. “So let’s dispense with this blouse, shall we?”
Her lips now were nearly as pink as her cheeks. “Why don’t you just lift my skirt and get this over with?”
She spit the words at him as if she could shame him.
He wouldn’t be shamed though. He remembered how they’d been together. Intense, physical, passionate.
“Why rush our pleasure?” he asked, reaching out to touch one of the loose blond waves that now fell past her shoulders.
She stared him in the eye, her expression disdainful. “You wouldn’t know how to pleasure me if you tried.”
“Why do you want to provoke me?”
“Not trying to. Just stating facts.”
Facts. His lip curled ever so slightly.
Despite everything, she was still determined to play a game with him, something he found both disturbing and intriguing.
She was either incredibly brave or ridiculously foolish. He wasn’t a man to toy with. She had to know that. So why dangle her adventures with other men before him? Why throw his so-called inadequacies in his face?
Brave or foolish, she did intrigue him.
She’d intrigued him in Istanbul and then she’d intrigued him in Bellagio and now here she was, cornered on his plane, his ring on her finger, mocking him. Challenging him. Attempting to defy him.
Interesting, so interesting because so few people tried to defy him, much less a slim scrap of woman who didn’t even reach his shoulder. Jill Smith was a complete enigma. She was small and fine-boned and yet so very fierce. She had a heart-shaped face, heartbreakingly high cheekbones and fire in her eyes. She flung her head back as if she were a tigress and to draw blood she talked of other men.
Of other men pleasuring her. Of other men making her moan and scream.
He should want to crush her. He should want to teach her a lesson.
But he didn’t. Because he also knew that beneath her fire and fury there was terrible sadness.
He’d sensed it that first night they were together and then nearly every night after they’d made love, she would wrap her arms tightly around him and cling tight. Clinging as if her life depended on it.
He held her against him, her cheek pressed to his chest, and he’d stroke her hair again and again until she fell asleep.
Some nights he felt tears on his chest.
Some nights he felt her take a deep shuddering breath.
But always the sadness, and always his aching need to help her. To save her. To protect her.
That’s when he knew he loved her. That’s when he imagined marrying her.
He’d marry her and give her a new life, a better life. She could start over as a d’Severano with him.
And now she was, his wife but under totally different circumstances. Which intrigued his mind but left his heart cold.
“I see,” he said evenly. “This is your idea of foreplay. You want me to talk dirty, manhandle you a bit, before dominating you in bed.”
Two spots of pink color bloomed high in her cheeks. “You’re crass.”
He felt his lips curve in an unfeeling smile. “And you were the one that suggested I lift your skirt and get it over with. Would you prefer I do it here, against the wall, or would you rather I bend you over the armrest and take you from behind? I do remember you enjoyed it on your knees—”
