Married on Paper: The Argentine's Price / The Inherited Bride / Marriage Made on Paper

“Only if you can’t handle me yourself.”

“I’m more than capable. I’m not a little girl.”

No, she wasn’t. Not even close. His heart thundered heavily in his chest, the desire, the need to reach out and touch her almost overwhelming. But he couldn’t afford to feel anything. Not now. Not when he was so close.

He forced his thoughts back on his goal, on his reason for being there. “Good. Busy tonight?”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I don’t know. Am I? Do I have a choice?”

Annoyance surged through him. “Do you think I’m taking total control of your life?”

“I don’t know what you expect from a little wife,” her words taunting, arousing, infuriating.

His heart thundered hard in his chest. She was making him out to be some kind of a tyrant. She was making him feel like one. He didn’t like it, he didn’t want her to see him that way, and he had no idea why he should care. When she hadn’t seen him as the enemy, she’d seen him as beneath her.

He rounded the desk and she stood, hands on her round, shapely hips, a deadly glitter in her eyes.

“I expect you to attend events on my arm,” he said. “I expect to use your connections to make advantageous business deals. And I expect this.” He hooked his arm around her waist and drew her to him.

She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling against his chest. He realized he was breathing hard too. To hell with fighting it. She was his now, no longer off limits to him.

See. Want. Have.

He put his hand on her face, cupped her cheek, touched her soft lower lip with his thumb. “I want this,” he said, his voice sounding rough, strained, even to his own ears.

He dipped his head and kissed her. Her lips parted beneath his. He wasn’t certain whether it was in shock or supplication, but he wasn’t going to stop and analyze it either.

She would be his now. Finally. His. All the longing, the lust that he’d carried around with him for so many years, aching and unsatisfied no matter how many women had warmed his bed since …

She tasted the same. Just as he remembered. So utterly unique, unforgettable. The only woman who had ever made him lose his head, the only woman who had ever rejected him. The only woman whose memory lingered after years of separation. Most women were a vague impression after a few days. Not Vanessa. She had stayed vivid and powerful in his mind.

And it had only been a shadow of the reality.

Actually kissing her, the velvety slide of her tongue against his, the soft sigh of satisfaction she made against his lips, her fingers curling around the fabric of his shirt as she held on to him, anchoring him to her, that was better than anything in his memory. It made his blood run like liquid fire through his veins, made his body pulse with need, made him hard and aching with the necessity of burying himself inside her.

She stole any semblance of control with the softness of her lips.

He slid his hand around the indent of her waist, the curve of her hip. She had changed physically. Her curves were softer, more womanly. More enticing. He’d been a boy twelve years ago, but he was a man now. And she was all woman.

Vanessa felt empowered by his passion, his anger. He was trying to show her that he had the power, but in one intense rush, she realized that she was the one who held it, because his hands, sifting through her hair, were unsteady, his body was hard with arousal. For her. Because of her.

He deepened the kiss and she took his bottom lip between her teeth, nipping the tender skin, showing him that she wasn’t going to be passive, in this or anything else, needing badly to stake a claim on him, as he was doing to her.

A growl rumbled in his chest and he took a step, backing her into her desk. She heard her pencil holder fall onto the floor, its contents scattering. She didn’t care.

There was nothing. Nothing but this. This battle of wills and the all-consuming passion that was taking over her mind, her body.

His fingers crept beneath the edge of her top and she was arched into him, powerless to do anything else. And that sudden loss of control, that concession to his power, made a jolt of reality slap her in the face.

She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to let him have this control. She shouldn’t feel the way she did, as if she would die if she didn’t have him. Inside of her. Now. On the floor, the desk, wherever.

She couldn’t afford to give him this part of her, to let him have dominion over her body. He would never love her, and if she gave in to this … she would be vulnerable. She couldn’t allow that.

Maybe you can’t have love, but you can have this.

Amazing, all-consuming lust.

No. It would never just be that. Not for her. Lazaro was more to her than just a hard body. And she would never be anything more to him than a simple means of feeding his sex drive.

She let go of him and pulled away, her heart thundering in her ears.

He flicked a dismissive glance in her direction, seemingly unaffected by what had just happened between them. Totally unfair, since her world had had another dramatic shift on its axis.

“I can see it won’t be a problem,” he said.

“What?” she asked, still feeling thick and muddled from the arousal that was crowding all the good, useful information out of her brain and leaving room only for the screaming want that was pounding through her.

“The attraction between us is very strong. That part of our marriage will not be a problem.”

As far as physical attraction went, no, it wouldn’t be. But it would be everything she’d never wanted and then some. A man using her because she was convenient. Because she had status. Because she had things he wanted, not because she was who he wanted.

That he was attracted to her didn’t make her feel all that special. Yes, Lazaro was a sex god with looks that could not be denied, but men tended to like sex from whoever would give it to them. And after that display he was probably feeling pretty positive that getting it would be easy.

“I have work to do,” she said, sinking back into her chair.

“I’ll leave you to it then. Are we on for tonight?”

“What are we doing?” she asked, her eyes wandering to the pen still resting in her teacup.

“It’s a surprise.”

Vanessa watched him walk out of the room and her only thought was that she didn’t think she could take another surprise from Lazaro.

Lazaro touched the velvet box in his coat pocket and cursed the flash of adrenaline that raced through him. It was adrenaline; it certainly wasn’t nerves. He didn’t do nerves. He did decisive action. He didn’t question, he moved forward with confidence. Always.

That was how he’d worked his way up from the ground level of the massive corporation he’d eventually built up with his ideas on how to reinvent the place. It was how he’d built a career, a name for himself. How he’d netted billions in the bank.

He took advantage of every resource and did what had to be done. As he was doing now.

It was extremely fortuitous that one of the art museum’s head curators happened to be on a par with Vanessa’s father as far as social clout went. And even more fortuitous that she was a gossip.

It meant that she would tell anyone who was even half-interested that Lazaro Marino had paid to have the museum empty this evening so that he could ask the woman in his life a very important question.

In Vanessa’s circle, media exposure was seen as vulgar, common. Anyone could earn that kind of notoriety. The First Families and those like them saw class as something you were born with, not something you could acquire. And anyone who wasn’t born with it was somehow less.

The way to spread the word was through careless discretion, nothing half so common as an actual write-up in a newspaper.

He curled his fingers around the ring box and leaned against the terrace railing. Vanessa was due to arrive soon, another detail carefully coordinated with a trail that would be easy to follow.