Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride. CAITLIN CREWS
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in no way desperate. And I would love nothing more than to discount what you say, but you have said very little.” He held her gaze. “Make your case, if you can. Explain to me why I should leave the comfort of my home to embrace this family who have ignored me for a lifetime already. I’m assuming it would be convenient for them in some way. But you’ll understand that’s not a compelling argument for me.”
“I already told you. The paparazzi—”
He shook his head. “I think we both know that it is not I who would dislike it if your reporters found me here. I am perfectly content to deal with trespassers in my own way.” He could see by the way her lips pressed together that she was imagining exactly how he might handle trespassers, and grinned wider. “But this rich boss of yours would not care for the exposure, I imagine. Is that not why you have made your way here, after searching for me so diligently? To convince me that his sudden, surpassing concern for my privacy is a genuine display of heretofore unknown brotherly love rather than his own self-interest?”
“Mr. Combe was unaware that he had a brother until recently,” she replied, but her voice had gone cool. Careful, perhaps. “If anything should convince you about his intentions, it should be the fact that he reached out to find you as soon as he knew you existed.”
“I must remember to applaud.”
She didn’t sigh or roll her eyes at that, though the tightness of her smile suggested both nonetheless. “Mr. Combe—”
“Little red. Please. What did you imagine I meant when I asked you to convince me? I’ve already had my mouth on you. Do you really think I invited you in here for a lecture?”
He didn’t know what he expected. Outrage, perhaps. Righteous indignation, then a huffy flounce out of the cabin and out of his life. That was what he wanted, he assured himself.
Because her being here was an intrusion. He’d invited her in to make certain she’d never come back.
Of course you did, a sardonic voice inside him chimed in.
But Lauren wasn’t flouncing away in high dudgeon. Instead, she stared back at him with a dumbfounded expression on her face. Not as if she was offended by his suggestion. But more as if...such a thing had never occurred to her.
“I beg your pardon. Is this some kind of cultural divide I’m unfamiliar with? Or do you simply inject sex into conversations whenever you get bored?”
“Whenever possible.”
She laughed, and what surprised him was that it sounded real. Not part of this game at all.
“You’re wasting your time with me.” Her smile was bland. But there was a challenge in her gaze, he thought. “I regret to tell you, as I have told every man before you who imagined they could get to my boss through me, that I have no sexual impulses.”
If she had pulled a grenade out of her pocket and lobbed it onto the floor between them, Dominik could not have been more surprised.
He could not possibly have heard her correctly. “What did you just say?”
There before him, his very own Little Red Riding Hood...relaxed back against the leather of her armchair. Something he also would have thought impossible moments before. And when she smiled, she looked like nothing so much as an oversatisfied cat.
“I’m not a sexual person,” she told him, and Dominik was sure he wasn’t mistaking the relish in her voice. It was at odds with the sheen of something a whole lot like vulnerability in her gaze, reminding him of how she’d melted into his kiss. “It’s a spectrum, isn’t it? Some people’s whole lives are completely taken over by the endless drive for sex, but not me. I’ve never understood all the fuss, to be honest.”
He was half convinced he’d gone slack-jawed in astonishment, but he couldn’t seem to snap out of it long enough to check. Not when she was sitting there talking such absolute nonsense with an expression that suggested to him that she, at least, believed every word she was saying.
Or, if he looked closer, wanted to believe it, anyway.
“You are aware that a kiss is a sexual act, are you not?”
“I’ve kissed before,” Lauren said, and even shook her head at him, wrinkling up her nose as if he was...silly. Him. Silly.
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