Bound By My Scandalous Pregnancy / Redemption Of The Untamed Italian

‘I could tell you—but should I? I owe you nothing. You have no right to answers. But if you truly want to know if I can get it up, I invite you to find out for yourself,’ he rasped thickly, his hooded gaze announcing that he knew every single yearning crashing through me.

My tongue thickened in my mouth, and that same acute urge to test where this alternative route would take me rammed unadulterated temptation through my bloodstream.

Sweet heaven. Surely he wasn’t really suggesting what I thought he was…? And surely I wasn’t truly considering it.

Was I?

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_7e0165d1-268f-5774-a813-398114b112aa)

MY BREATH BURST from between my lips, the wild, dizzying leap of my pulse a damning testament to the fact that his words had exhilarated me for one blind nanosecond before reason reasserted itself.

He can’t truly mean that. He’s just toying with you.

Even if he wasn’t, the proposal was absurd.

‘Is this a joke?’

‘Do I look amused, Sadie?’ he returned.

No, he didn’t. That raw confession in the kitchen returned, and the looming possible result of my actions—that I’d deprived not just him and his immediate family but the larger Xenakis clan of his future descendants—hit me with powerful force.

Helpless despair wove through me, and my chest tightened as I watched him, attempted to see beneath the taut mask of his face. Was this all because he truly didn’t want to be alone to confront the dire position I’d put him in?

If so, was this his answer?

I shook my head. ‘I…I’m not sure what this is all about.’

He shrugged. ‘You want me to provide spoilers for a story you seem very interested in. I invite you to peek beneath the cover. Or are you all bluster?’

‘Just so we’re clear, I’m not making any so-called reparation in the form of sex,’ I blurted. Simply because my imagination was threatening to take flight again, and the look in his eyes was sending my senses into free fall once more.

I grappled them down—hard.

One mocking eyebrow elevated. ‘You jump to conclusions with the same careless abandon that I suspect landed you in this predicament in the first place. Perhaps you should wait until you’re invited to my bed before you respond in one way or another.’

His censure smarted, regardless of the fact that I’d agreed to give him a little leeway in the perpetrator-versus-victim scenario.

‘I’m not stupid, Mr Xenakis. I can read between the lines. And whatever you think is going to happen here, it isn’t,’ I stressed, although the caution was equally for me as it was for him.

‘Has no one told you to quit while you’re ahead?’

Many times. But I never went against my instinct.

‘I believe in laying my cards on the table.’

Slowly, his relaxed stance altered. His arm dropped from the sofa, his body leaning closer as he pinned me with his gaze. With the width of the sofa between us, he wasn’t crowding me. But he didn’t need to. His presence filled every square inch of space, proclaiming his power and glory in ways that were hard to define and impossible to dismiss.

‘Do you? Well, hear this. If I wanted you in my bed you would come—and willingly. Not because of the unfortunate circumstances you find yourself in.’

‘If that’s some sort of dare, I promise I won’t be taking it,’ I stated firmly, despite that insidious temptation striking deep. Deeper. Making my every breath strain, making my nipples tingle and peak and yearn.

God, what was wrong with me?

He shrugged again. Drawing my eager attention to the firm, bronzed expanse of his throat. Striking me with a fervent need to place my hand right there…where his pulse throbbed powerfully beneath his skin.

I averted my gaze, but the lingering look he gave me said he’d caught me staring. I needed to get up. Leave. Put some distance between myself and the turbulent temptation that oozed out of him. But doing so would send another weakening message. He’d invited me here. I’d lobbed the ball into his court. So I waited for his move.

The muted sound of a door opening heralded the arrival of a butler, bearing a silver tray with more drinks on it. While I was a little startled, Neo looked unruffled, as if nothing unusual had happened to interrupt his normal after-dinner routine.

He accepted a glass of cognac, then glanced at me. ‘Nightcap?’

I shook my head, surprised at his cordial tone. Then I snapped my spine straight. I couldn’t afford to lower my guard. He still hadn’t spelled out the parameters of my reparation. Nor given me a straight answer to my question…

With a few words Neo dismissed the butler. The moment we were alone, he discarded his untouched drink and turned his piercing gaze on me.

My eyes connected with his as if pulled by invisible magnets. As much as I was reluctant to admit it, the man was a superb specimen. His impossibly broad shoulders demanded attention, and the gladiator-like synergy of sleekness and power combined with an animalistic aura impossible to dismiss.

The look in his eyes intensified, sending the distinct message that now we were getting down to the heart of whatever was on Neo Xenakis’s mind.

‘Come here, Sadie,’ he ordered, confirming my frenzied thoughts.

Get up. Walk out. He can’t stop you.

But temptation could. It wrapped its sinuous vines around me, hard and fast, left me breathless and speechless.

This was theory testing. Curiosity satisfying. Nothing else.

My life had taken a left turn this morning. Not that things had been rosy before… My mother and her gambling problem, my landlord’s growing threats, my jobless state… My life and plans were a world removed from what I’d imagined for myself back in the idyllic days when I had the illusion of a solid family. When a fulfilling career, perhaps eventually a family, wasn’t a laughable, ephemeral prospect.

The dismaying sensation in the pit of my stomach that had arrived along with my father’s callously dismissive postcard and stayed all these years later, the sensation that mocked and questioned and poisoned my dreams, claimed I was as worthless as my father had deemed me, was very much present now, questioning my audacity to remain here, reaching for this temptation.

Step back, it said. This isn’t for you.

But I wasn’t ready to step back into my life just yet. I craved more time in this peculiar bubble with Neo Xenakis. Just for a little while longer.

Before I could stop the motion, I swayed towards him.

He didn’t reach out. Simply lounged against the velvet seat, the king of his shiny castle, awaiting his due. And, like a moth to a flame, I couldn’t resist the danger, the excitement, the otherness he offered.

One taste. Then I could end this any time I wanted.

One minute, then I could get back to why I was here, perhaps armed with the confirmation that he wasn’t impaired in any obvious physical way.

The thought that I was attempting to slot this beneath the banner of research drew a hysterical chortle, quickly smothered beneath the pulses of lust swelling through my system.

Before I knew it, my body hovered next to his, almost horizontal on the sofa as I heeded his command.

‘Here I am,’ I replied in a voice that sounded nothing like mine.