The Marriage Contract. Kat Cantrell
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had been so strong it transcended flesh and bone?
Or would that sound as crazy to her as it did in his head?
“I wasn’t aware I was so transparent,” he said gruffly, a little shocked that he didn’t totally hate it. “Did you want something?”
Her dark eyes were so expressive he could practically read her like a book. He rarely bothered to study people anymore. Once, that had been the only way he could connect with others, by surreptitiously observing them until everything was properly cataloged.
All it had ever gotten him was an acute sense of isolation and an understanding that people stayed away from him because they didn’t like how his brain worked.
She shrugged. “I was bored. Larissa is putting Conner to bed and it turns out that having a nanny around means that once I feed him, I’m pretty much done. I haven’t seen you in, like, a week.”
McKenna, apparently, had no such aversion to Desmond. She’d sought him out. So he could entertain her. That was a first.
“I had no idea you’d mark my absence in such a way.”
Lame. He was out of practice talking to people, let alone one who tied his brain in a Gordian knot of puzzling reactions.
But he wanted to untangle that knot. Very badly.
“Are you always so formal?” McKenna came around the long table to his side and peered over his shoulder at the monitor where he had a drawing of the robot hand spinning in 3-D. “Wow. That’s pretty cool.”
“It’s just a... No, I’m not—” He sucked in a breath as her torso grazed his back. His pulse roared into overdrive and he experienced a purely primal reaction to her that had no place between two people who shared a son and nothing else. “Formal.”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah, you are. You remind me of my statistics professor.”
“You took a statistics class?” Okay, they shared that, too. But that was it. They had nothing else in common and he had no reason to be imagining her reaction if he kissed her.
“Have to. It’s a requirement for premed.”
“Can you not stand there?”
Her scent was bleeding through his senses and it was thoroughly disrupting his brain waves. Of course the real problem was that he liked her exactly where she was.
“Where? Behind you?” She punched him on the shoulder like they were drinking buddies and she’d just told him a joke. “I can’t be in front of you. There’s a whole lot of electronic equipment in my way.”
“You talk a lot.”
She laughed. “Only because you’re talking back. Isn’t that how it works?”
For the second time she’d rendered him speechless. Yeah. He was talking back. The two conversations he’d had with her to date, the one at the hospital and this one, marked the longest he’d had with anyone in a while. Probably since Lacey.
He needed someone to draw him out, or he stayed stuck in his head, designing, building, imagining, dreaming. It was a lot safer for everyone that way, so of course that was his default.
McKenna seemed unacquainted with the term boundaries. And he didn’t hate that.
He should. He should be escorting her out of his workshop and back to the main part of the house. There was an indoor pool that stayed precisely the same temperature year-round. A recreational room that he’d had built the moment Mr. Lively called to say McKenna had conceived during the first round of insemination. Desmond had filled the room with a pool table, darts, video game consoles and whatever else the decorator had recommended. Surely his child’s mother could find some amusement there.
“Tell me what you’re building,” she commanded with a fair enough amount of curiosity that he told her.
“It’s a prototype for a robotic humanoid.”
“A robot?” Clearly intrigued, she leaned over the hand, oblivious to the way her hair fell in a long, dark sheet over her shoulder. It was so beautiful that he almost reached out to touch it.
He didn’t. That would invite intimacies he absolutely wanted with a bone-deep desire but hadn’t fully yet analyzed. Until he understood this visceral need, he couldn’t act on it. Too dangerous. It gave her too much power.
“No.” He cleared his throat and scrubbed at his beard, which he still hadn’t trimmed. “A robot is anything mechanical that can be programmed. A robotic humanoid resembles a person both in appearance and function but with a mechanical skeleton and artificial intelligence.”
It was a common misconception that he corrected often, especially when he had to give a presentation about his designs to the manufacturers who bought his patents.
“You are Dr. Frankenstein,” she said with raised eyebrows. “When you get it to work, do you shout ‘It’s alive!’ or just do a little victory dance?”
“I, um...”
She’d turned to face him, crossing her arms under her breasts that he logically knew were engorged from childbirth, though that didn’t seem to stop his imagination from calling up what they looked like: expanses of beautiful flesh topped by hard, dusky nipples. McKenna had miles of skin that Des wanted to put his hands on.
What was it about her that called to him so deeply?
“I’m just teasing you.” Her eyes twinkled. “I actually couldn’t imagine you doing either one.”
A smile spread across his face before he could stop it. “I can dance.”
“Ha, you’re totally lying.”
“I can dance,” he repeated. “Just not to music.”
He fell into her rich, dark eyes and he reached out to snag a lock of her hair, fingering the silky softness before he fully realized that he’d given in to the impulse. The moment grew tense. Aware. So thick, he couldn’t have cut it with a laser.
“I should...go,” she murmured and blinked, unwinding the spell. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
The lock of hair fell from his fingers as the mood shattered. Fortunately her exodus was quick enough that she didn’t get to witness how well she’d bobbled his composure.
He’d have sworn there was an answering echo of attraction and heat in her gaze.
He wasn’t any closer to unraveling the mysteries lurking inside her, but he did know one thing. McKenna Moore had taken his seed into her womb and created a miracle through artificial insemination.
What had once felt practical now felt like a mistake. One he couldn’t rectify.
But how could he have known he’d take one look at her and wish he’d impregnated her by making love over and over and over until she’d conceived?
Madness. Build something and forget all of this fatalistic nonsense.
Women were treacherous under the best of circumstances and McKenna Moore was no different. She just had a unique wrapper that rendered Des stupid, apparently.
Of course the most expedient way to nip this attraction in the bud would be to tell her how badly he’d wanted to thread all of his fingers through her hair and kiss her until her clothes melted off. She’d be mortified and finally figure out that she should be running away from Desmond Pierce. That would be that.
* * *
McKenna fled Desmond’s workshop, her pulse still pounding in her throat.
What the hell had just happened? One minute she was trying to forge a friendship with the world’s most reclusive billionaire and the next he had her hair draped across his hand.
She could still feel the tug as his fingers lifted the strands. The look on his face had been enthralled, as if he’d unexpectedly