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“That’s...creepy. Do you know that?”
“Hmm.” He made a thoughtful noise. “I have kidnapped you out of your bedroom window, in spite of the fact that you were set to marry my brother. In spite of the fact that you have likely spent the past two weeks in his bed. I have been obsessed with you from the moment that I saw you and plotted a way to make you mine. Obviously I’m a bit creepy. And I’ve made my peace with it. Hence the kidnapping and arranged speedy marriage. Do you honestly think that pointing it out is going to shame me?”
“You’re...”
“A monster? I called myself that only moments ago. Why exactly do you think that will insult me.”
“A criminal,” she said.
“I’ve been called worse. If you’ve ever a mind to find out exactly what, feel free to peruse the internet.”
“I don’t have access to it.”
“I didn’t say it would be easy for you to peruse the internet. I just said that you could.”
“Perhaps I’m not that interested in you, Diego. If I was going to fight for internet access I would go online shopping instead of googling you.”
“There is no need for you to online shop. Everything you could possibly want is already here.”
“You don’t know my taste.”
He reached out, gripping her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “That’s where you’re wrong. I know everything about you. Everything. I’ve looked at every photograph that exists of you that’s been published in public. I made a study of you every time I went to your father’s house. Every item of clothing in that closet fits you. Believe me. I have made a study of your curves.”
A shiver went down her spine. She should be mortified. Furious. And on some level, she was. But there was more. She felt... She didn’t even know. She had never been someone’s focus. Not like this. And while she knew he had other reasons for taking her, while she knew it served him in other ways, the fact remained that she did matter. He wanted her. Matías didn’t want her. He didn’t care. He certainly wouldn’t have kidnapped her out of the bedroom window. He simply would have found another woman. Diego made it sound as if he couldn’t. It was...
For a woman who had felt almost invisible for most of her life it was intoxicating in a way it should not be.
Perhaps her father had been right to protect her all this time. Maybe her natural inclination was to be drawn to darkness.
But you have no way of turning on the light, so you might as well accept it. You might as well live in it.
She didn’t see that she had another choice. Not now. Why fight when she couldn’t win?
“We need to sign an agreement,” she said.
“You’re not really in a position to be making demands,” he said, his voice dry.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. I have something you want.”
“By that you mean your body?”
“Yes. My body—” she tried to speak without trembling “—and my acquiescence to being your wife. I think I’m in a fantastic position to be making demands.”
“By all means, list them.”
“I want assurance that you will give me a settlement.” She named a sum. Outrageous. She was certain that he would tell her she could jump straight off the hillside manor and into the sea.
“Double it,” he said. “I’m a man of means, tesoro. I will hardly leave my ex-wife without access to designer clothing.”
“Generous of you,” she responded.
“Not at all. Of course, you should receive a healthy payment for time spent in my bed.”
Heat lashed her cheeks. “Don’t make it sound like that. You’re not paying for...for that.”
“Am I not? I find I would pay quite handsomely for access to that space between your thighs.”
She gritted her teeth, well aware that he was trying to be inflammatory. Or maybe, he wasn’t trying. Maybe it was simply who he was. But the man she had met at her father’s house had been a damn sight more charming than the one who stood before her now. But still, Diego, even in all his arrogance, even as he was, caused her pulse to race. And not only from anger.
“But that isn’t what you’re paying for,” she reiterated. “You’re paying for me to be your wife. That includes—” She swallowed hard. “That includes sex. It is part of being married. It’s different than paying for sex.”
“However you twist things so you don’t feel like a whore, querida, it is not my concern. Twist them at will. The fact remains, that I am promising you this money.”
“And I require a document.”
His lips turned up into a wide grin and he reached toward the heavy oak desk that sat in the center of the room. He grabbed a piece of stationery and slid it to the center, taking hold of a gilded pen and making strong, bold lines across the paper. It made her wince, watching those thick, dark strokes of ink mar the page. As if she were watching something indelible take place before her that she now regretted bitterly, even though it was what she had asked for.
He slid the page toward her. And there it was, in black and white, the promised sum of money, her promised declaration to provide him with marital duties and an agreement to divorce when his inheritance was settled.
“This is not binding.” She sniffed. “You wrote it on a piece of paper, and we have no witness.”
“It will have to do, sadly. I can procure a last-minute priest, but the acquisition of a last-minute lawyer might be a bit ambitious.”
“I’ll keep this,” she said, folding it up and holding it tightly in her hand.
“So little trust between us. Hardly a good start to a marriage.”
“No, I think the kidnapping was perhaps the bad start.”
“If you say so.” He looked at her, his dark eyes assessing. “If you want something binding to seal that document, I do have a suggestion.”
“What?”
That was when she found herself being hauled toward him, her hands pressed against that hard chest, his dark eyes cutting through her as if she were nothing. An insubstantial waif so easily flayed by all that raw power that he possessed.
And before she could protest, his lips were on hers.
And it was...
It was the explosion she always feared could occur inside of her. It wasn’t a slow build, a gentle introduction into sexuality. No. It was like being hurled into space, cast into the darkness, so black, so intense that there was nothing else. No way to see through it. No way around it.
No way through it.
His kiss was hot, vast and slick and endless and everything she had ever hoped and feared a kiss could be.
Her heart was thundering hard, her entire body going weak and breathless from the onslaught of sensation that had tumbled over the top of her.
He forced her lips apart, his tongue sliding against hers savagely as he claimed her. And suddenly something bubbled up inside of her, something entirely foreign. Or perhaps, not so now.
It was the same thing that had struck her after the phone call with her father.
She
had power here. She was not simply an object. He wanted her. Diego wanted her. And that made her a force of her own kind. Made her something powerful and strong. Something that he couldn’t control or manipulate. Or at least, not without consequence.
She returned the kiss, some unknown intuition inside of her driving her movements. She traced his outer lip with the tip of her tongue and relished the feral growl that exited his lips as she did so. He wrapped his arms around her tightly, pressing his pelvis against hers, allowing her to feel just exactly what her kiss had done to him. He was hard, long and strong and so much bigger than she had imagined a man could be.
Classical paintings had not prepared her for the aggressive outline of Diego’s masculinity. Had not prepared her for the overwhelming heat and hardness, for the leashed strength.
And nothing, no erotic turn of phrase or illicitly penned fantasy, had prepared her for the desire that welled up inside of her. For the need that overtook her, wrapped itself around her throat with a decisive click, like a collar, binding her to him.
She found herself clinging to his shirt, holding on to him tightly as he continued to savage her mouth with his own.
If she had not been a hostage before, she certainly was now. Hostage to him. To pleasure. Her own weakness.
She whimpered, and as if it was the magic turn of phrase to break a spell, he pushed her away from him, taking a step back, his dark eyes blazing with black fire.
“Dios mio,” he rasped, pushing his hands through his dark hair. “You are a witch.”
“I’m not,” she said, her voice small, her mouth bruised, her entire body buzzing with rampant heat.
“You must be.” He turned, as if to go, and then he paused. When he faced her again he reached his hand out, pressing his thumb against the center of her lower lip and staring at her intently as he held it there. Then without a word he released her, walking out of the room and leaving her there alone, feeling somehow trapped and untethered at the same time.
The fact that she was unchaperoned had hit her in a particularly strange way just before he had come to kidnap her. And oddly, though she found herself in his custody now, that sense was even stronger now.
