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She affects me, and I hate that about her. I always have. All the ways she’s irresistibly dangerous to me are all the reasons I need to say no to marrying her.
“You realize the hypocrisy in what you’re saying considering Zax was with Suzie for a hundred years, not to mention I’m a grown-ass woman and can be with whomever I want. That notwithstanding, you won’t be near me. Not like that anyway. I think we both know those days are over and better left in the past.” Her head tilts as she reaches me, studying me. “Are you considering saying yes?”
Am I? Who am I kidding? I was never going to say no. “Yes. But I’ll have rules.”
She smiles, and it’s like the first breath of dawn after a stormy night, and something inside me twists in the worst and most painful of ways. This is going to cost me.
“Oh, trust me, Lenox, I have plenty of my own.” She pats my shoulder, and I immediately pull back, making her frown. “You’re going to have to get over that for a few days. Married people are generally in love and touch each other as such, and we’re going to have to sell it even if we’re not.”
The thought of touching her, of pretending to be in love with her makes my pulse quicken and my fingertips tingle. I remember every line of her body. How her hair feels and smells when my face is buried in it. The sounds she makes and the way she looks when my hands are on her body, giving her pleasure or simply holding her.
It’ll be a fucking nightmare even if the touch is innocuous and purely for show.
I quickly change the subject, needing to clear that from my thoughts. “And you feel Ezra will believe this? That we’re in love and married when you only ended it with him four months ago.”
She flushes and shrugs. “I once told him that I had been in love with you when I was younger. I believe I had referred to it as a stupid teenage infatuation. But frankly, there is nothing to argue if I’m married. That’s the point of this. They have no recourse or ability to force my hand or guilt me into it.”
Only I doubt he’ll take that lying down if he’s grown obsessed with getting her to marry him and then she ups and marries someone else. Things like that make men dangerous and unpredictable, especially when he already perceives her as his.
“We’ll have a prenup,” she explains. “It’s already been drafted since I had one with Ezra. It says you keep your stuff and I keep mine, and any assets we acquire in our marriage are divided in half, though I don’t think that last part will be an issue for us. And, if you agree to do this, I will have another contract drafted that gives you three percent of Monroe Securities.”
“Keep your company, Georgia, I’m not interested. If I say yes, I’m doing this for other reasons.” Like keeping you safe. Like not wanting you to ask this favor of anyone else, or worse, end up marrying Ezra. “You should go now. I’ll give you my answer by seven tomorrow morning.”
She swallows, takes a step back, and without another word, turns and leaves.
The moment I hear the door shut, I spin around, drink down my bourbon, and then chuck the glass across the room until it shatters against the wall. This time I don’t bother going to clean it up.
Fuck! What the fuck am I going to do? I scrub my hands up and down my face as I try to think.
But all I see are her broken eyes and the way she begged. And then hearing all that she had to say? Yeah, I understand why she feels this is her only option. But I can’t imagine these men are going down so easily. Monroe Securities is a very pretty commodity with a stunning woman running its show. A stunning woman they want to own as much as they want to own her company.
I need to call Zax and Grey. I need to tell them Georgia was here and all about her proposal. My stomach twists into knots, the bourbon churning like acid, eating away at me. With a wasted breath, my mind wanders back to that night.
My body dropped onto Georgia’s, heavy and boneless, as I panted for my life. Sweat coated our bodies, and my tongue swiped out, tasting it on her neck. A sweet, little contented hum emanated from the back of her throat, and I found myself smiling—a rare fucking phenomenon that only happened with her—as I rolled us over until she was on top of me, my half-hard cock still inside her.
I needed to leave, but with every time that thought hit my brain, I found myself bargaining against it. Just five more minutes. Just a little while longer. Letting go of Georgia required herculean strength, and in moments like these, I had none to spare. Especially when she snuggled into me, her head on my chest, listening to my heart beat as if only she could hear it.
My fingers trickled through the soft waves of her hair when her head popped up, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes bright, as she killed me with a smile and then killed me all over again when she said, “I love you.” Just like that. Like she couldn’t hold the words in a second longer. Like they had been eating at her and setting them free unburdened a weight from her soul, when all they did was send a rush of heady warmth and burgeoning panic through mine.
I froze. I didn’t ask her what she said because I was terrified she’d repeat it. My heart raced, thumping painfully against my ribs, and I found myself pushing her off me and sitting up, unable to catch my breath with her on top of me, looking at me like that.
In a scramble, I snatched my boxer briefs from the floor and tugged them hastily on and then stood up and did the same with my jeans, all the while knowing she was watching me. “Well, that’s not the response I was hoping for,” she teased, but I could hear the hurt in her voice. And fuck. How did I do this to her? How did I allow this to go so far? It was my fault. All of it. I told her from the start it would only be this, only sex, but… it’d been two years.
Two years because I didn’t know how to let go of her.
Only I was the last man on earth Georgia Monroe should ever love. I was nothing. I was empty. Fragmented. Nowhere near worthy of her or her love. My inability to act was why my sister and father were dead, and my inability to act was why Georgia loved me. Georgia loved me. A fresh wave of sweat broke out on my forehead, this one as cold as ice. What had I done?
“Lenox?” she clipped out, breaking through my panic, and I turned to her as I slipped my shirt over my head. She had her sheet pulled up over her naked body, her eyes questioning and angry. “What are you doing?”
Do the right thing. Walk away from her. Save her from yourself. You’ll only hurt her more later if you don’t. She deserves better than you. She deserves everything you’re not.
It was true. I knew it. Deep in the farthest reaches of my soul, I knew it. I didn’t want her love. Her love was pure and good—like she was—and I wasn’t that. I was as fucked in the head as a man can get, sinking deeper and deeper into the darkness instead of drifting toward the light. I hadn’t done a thing right by her since I first came to her bed two years ago, and it was fucking time I did. I used her. I drank from her like a vampire, needing her to sustain life.
“Leaving,” I said, my voice flat despite the riot in my body and mind. It was getting harder to breathe, harder to put one foot in front of the other.
“Just like that? I tell you I love you, and you leave?”
Pain swam in her eyes, and the urge to hold her, to kiss it all away overwhelmed me. I didn’t want to hurt Georgia. I fucking loved her. But loving her was finally doing right by her.
