by Lynda Chance
Suddenly her brain went into overdrive as she forced herself from the bed. Wrapping the sheet around her torso, she stumbled to a door that she prayed concealed a bathroom. She opened it and bingo.
She quickly took care of her business and then stood at the vanity, staring in the mirror and berating herself harshly. Glancing around, she found toothpaste and a neatly wrapped and ready toothbrush that she quickly made use of. There were several bottles of water on a shelf, along with an array of single-dose envelopes of over-the-counter painkillers. She opened a packet and a bottle and downed the pills and two-thirds of the water.
Now for her clothes and her purse. Suddenly, all she could think about was finding her purse. She wanted her lifelines, and she wanted them now. Her phone, her credit cards, her passport. Shit. Another hazy memory hit her. Had he asked her about her passport?
Was she even now somewhere other than the US? Bitch. This just kept getting better and better. She took a breath and tried to think of a time when she’d acted so irrationally, but nothing came to mind. She’d never done anything stupid in her life. She vaguely remembered a friend from college telling her about a time she’d left with a man she’d only just met in a nightclub. The girl had gone on and on about the man’s limo and his Black American Express card. Erin had been appalled at her friend’s actions—but now she’d done way, way worse.
Preparing to fix what she’d fucked up, she opened the bathroom door and took a few steps forward with the sheet still wrapped around her like a sarong, and came face to face with—her husband?
She sucked in a breath as her feet came to a stumbling halt. As she felt color flush her cheeks, she noticed that he didn’t smile but only raised a single, mocking eyebrow. His gaze pierced hers, sending her stomach to her feet in a mess of stupid feminine weakness. Then his eyes trailed down her body, stopping at her breasts and thighs, before sweeping down to her bare ankles and feet before slowly moving back up again.
Erin’s heart rate kicked up to a vicious degree, and as he took one step forward, for the life of her she couldn’t stop herself from taking one step back.
He obviously noticed and, thankfully, he immediately stopped. His lips twisted diabolically as he drawled slowly, “You look beautiful, sweetness.”
Her pulse accelerated alarmingly at both the compliment and the endearment. Oh, yeah. It was damn well obvious why she’d waltzed into that freaking wedding chapel with him. Even now, with her composure under attack, hating herself for what she’d done the night before, he still made her knees weak. Could her emotions be any more screwed up? She wanted to scream at him; she wanted to throw herself in his arms and hope he kissed her senseless once again. But she did neither of those things—she was too confused to do anything but stand on her own two feet while she kept her mouth clamped tightly closed.
He prowled another step closer and then another, and with each step he took she scooted away, until the base of her spine was flush against the built-in bureau. The magic of his touch was blaring in her memory—it wouldn’t help her case in the slightest if she were to feel it now, when she desperately needed to retain what little brainpower she had left.
He was dressed for the new day in a crisp suit that screamed Savile Row, and he came so close that she was forced to lift her face to maintain eye contact. When she did, he put a single finger under her chin and lifted it further, jarring her nerves alarmingly. “You are fucking gorgeous—and undoubtedly the best coup I’ve pulled off in my lifetime.”
His voice sounded different—not seductively persuasive as it had been the night before, and that difference wasn’t doing a thing to help clear her mind. The arrogance was still there, but with it came something else—something menacing, something sinister that was colored with uncontestable mastery. And even with his off-colored compliment sending tingles straight to her nipples, the word ‘coup’ jumped out at her, and while she tried to wrap her hung-over mind around it, he continued, “We’ll get on well together, of that, I have no doubt.”
As he subtly caressed her chin, she opened her mouth and tried to speak, but was cut off when he lowered his head and took her mouth under his—as if he had every right. Against her will, a firestorm of lights went off in her brain. Oh, God, yes, she remembered his kiss. She remembered his scent … she remembered his taste.
She remembered exactly why she’d agreed to what he’d wanted.
Desperately clutching the sheet to her chest with one hand, she was incapable of stopping her free arm from reaching up and twining its way around his neck. Her brain was in upheaval. She’d missed out on the chance for a big wedding—so what? She prayed this situation was as it seemed, that they had both wanted each other so much that they’d done the crazy and tied the knot. That’s what she hoped, but her nerves were telling her it wasn’t true—at least not on his part.
When she grasped him around the neck, his kiss rapidly changed to full blown possession. It hit her immediately—here was yet another difference in his manner. His kisses before had been romantic, sexy, deliciously wanton. This kiss was different. It was possessive, intractable, dominant. As his tongue swept inside, he took her hand from around his neck and thrust it behind her, trapping her full-length against him. She suddenly had the feeling that she was somehow his captive, and damn if that didn’t send an entirely inappropriate rush of sparks erupting along her nerve endings. How could her body and rational mind be in such conflict?
Max groaned, the sound radiating through his body into hers, and the fingers around her chin changed dramatically as well, going from soothingly gentle to inflexible steel in less than a heartbeat.
As he held her chin, he began tongue-fucking her mouth, deep, fast strokes that left her questioning her sanity and fighting for oxygen. His kiss was relentless, forceful, yet perfect. It demanded nothing from her, he only took what he wanted, leaving her with no decisions to be made. It was an addictive feeling, a safe feeling, letting him take the lead.
His hips moved in to press against hers; his erection was more than apparent as it blatantly pushed against her stomach.
She felt an equal measure of lightheadedness and arousal. She shouldn’t be allowing this—everything was messed up and her faculties weren’t in working order. Something felt not quite right. Did she care? She had to care. The near loss of control was enough to jerk her from her lethargy and force her brain to start functioning again.
She pulled her lips from his and turned her head to the side, dragging in air so hard that it made her chest jerk up and down. Max’s hand slid from her chin to her jaw, holding her captive, even as he growled a low warning and dropped his mouth to her breast, where he unerringly found her nipple under the sheet that covered her.
At the aggressive touch, her traitorous nipple pebbled and heat formed anew between her thighs, her trembling legs doing nothing to hold her up; it was his body pressed against hers that enabled her to remain standing.
She released her tentative hold on the sheet to push against his shoulder. “Max.”
Another low rumble came from his chest as he ignored her struggles and began dry humping her against the bureau. His hips pressed into her; his teeth scraped over her nipple as if he couldn’t get enough.
Desperate now to stop what he very obviously wasn’t going to stop, Erin began pushing harder. “Max—stop.”
His muscles tightened. She felt it happen. His touch seemed to go from compelling to territorial as his pecs hardened. He lifted his mouth from her chest and slowly, he stood up, but he didn’t release her. His hand left her face and sank around her waist, the other threading through her hair, tangling in her messy locks and holding her hostage as his eyes snapped open.
The look emblazoned on his face sent a thrill down her spine—it also scared the holy bejesus out of her. The expression he displayed was ownership, pure and simple. His brown eyes dared her to challenge him—as if he’d stamp out any struggle for control before she even attempted to test her boundaries. There was nothing
displayed on his features that hinted at a lack of purpose. The wedding ceremony had been calculated—not something he’d done on a lark, she could see that now.
Why her? She wasn’t buying his amazing sex explanation—even though his nostrils were flaring with the same look he’d had the night before as he’d thrust inside her. And suddenly, with her stomach sinking in a fit of petrified anxiety, she had to know just how badly she’d messed up. She cleared her throat and asked as innocuously as possible, “Where are we? Where are we going?”
“Home,” he announced succinctly and decisively.
Home? Damn it. “Where?” She asked in a voice that wasn’t supposed to have been a whisper.
His features turned slightly remote. “Argentina.”
She sucked in a breath and almost came unglued. Argen-fucking-where? She licked her lips and stared up at him. “I’m sorry. Did you say Argentina?”
“I did, sweetness. We will be landing in Buenos Aires shortly.” His voice was irrefutable, assertive, as if expecting no contest from her.
Panic in its purest form settled like a lead weight in Erin’s stomach. But she had to know. She absolutely had to know the worst of it. Forcing an optimism she was far from feeling, she asked, “And this is where—?” she swallowed, how could she even say the H word? “This is where we’ll honeymoon for a week or so before flying back to the States?”
His eyes began to glitter as he slowly began shaking his head back and forth before answering, “No, love.”
“No?” Shit. That definitely came out as a whisper. Where was her effing spine?
“No, sweetness. Argentina is the paradise where we will live out our lives together—happily ever after, as they say.”
Abruptly, the painkillers seemed to kick in as her head cleared. She felt twin emotions—a wild, provocative thrill that this man would want her so much that he’d whisk her away, yet also a blaring, sweat-inducing panic when she realized that the thought could only be a fairytale. What were the chances of that, really? Girls like her were a dime a dozen. She was decently pretty, but nothing he couldn’t have every day of his life with a simple snap of his fingers. So, something was very definitely wrong here. Way wrong. Worse than getting married to a man she hadn’t even known existed until two nights ago. Worse than getting on a private plane when she was in a state of inebriation.
Pushing against him, he finally let go and took a single step back. As he stood watching her with impenetrable eyes, waiting silently, another barrage of memories hit her, this time with more clarity than before: Max at the bar in the restaurant watching only her even as countless single women hovered around him, trying to catch his eye. Max casually asking about her passport. Max introducing himself as Santiago when he’d clearly given Villarreal as his name before the ceremony. And just now, only moments before, Max using the word, ‘coup’ as if he’d won a battle, or even a war.
Why would he use that particular word? It didn’t make sense. And why would the name ‘Villarreal’ make a sprinkle of gooseflesh break out on her arms? What the hell? A vague memory tickled her brain, something that was telling her she’d heard the name before. For whatever reason, that particular surname was sending a shiver down her spine—and not in a good way. The name definitely held something almost sinister, but where the hell had she heard it? Maybe at work? From her brothers?
Her brothers—that had to be it. Immediately after the thought, she could almost visualize a stamp of rage on Garrett’s face—but she still couldn’t remember, damn it. She could not get her brain to put two and two together, but her gut was telling her that it was imperative that she do so.
And then the truth struck like a lightning bolt. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t remember exactly why the name was triggering nerves, because one thing became glaringly obvious to her. None of this had anything to do with her, even though there was undoubtedly sexual chemistry between them. This wasn’t about him stumbling upon her and simply being drawn to her. This wasn’t about him sweeping her off her feet because he felt compelled to do so. This marriage didn’t have anything to do with her. Oh, no, it wasn’t nearly as simple as that. The fact that she was on a plane? Virtually being kidnapped? It wasn’t about her at all—it was about them.
With the discovery came more pain than she was prepared to admit. It really had been too good to be true. A man like Max? Going after an ordinary woman like her as if he couldn’t stop himself? Yeah, right. She knew one thing for sure. She’d never fall for his shit again and she’d never let him see that he’d hurt her. But for now, she had to get the confrontation over with. They had to be on the same page. She braced her stance and took a deep breath, ready to challenge him. “Your actions haven’t been about me, have they? This is about my brothers and their corporation.”
A merciless glint flashed in his eyes before he took the step that brought him into her personal space once again. He stood almost indolently, but the dangerous sizzle that poured from his eyes negated the façade of polished urbanity. There was no question—in that moment, he was uncultured, undomesticated, untamed. His words when he spoke were brutal—irrefutable as they blistered around her with unyielding authority. “Two days ago this was about your brothers. Today—and for the rest of your life—it will be about you.”
For the rest of her life? Live her entire life with a man who’d used her as a pawn? A man who only wanted her because her last name was Rule? Erin had never thought of herself as predictable. But evidently she was, because as soon as his words sank in, she did the most predictable, basic thing she could do—she crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.
****
Caught off guard, Max made a grab for his wife before she could hit the floor. He was immediately concerned for her and pissed at himself for scaring her—who the hell knew she was prone to fainting? With one arm under her legs and the other cradling her back, he moved to the lounge area and sank down in his seat. Wanting no eyes on her but his, he quickly wrapped the trailing sheet around her torso. Firmly, this time.
He called for his flight attendant and as soon as the man brought what he’d requested and left again, Max attempted to rouse Erin from her faint.
He pressed the damp compress to her forehead while calling her name. Her color was coming back—he wasn’t too concerned for her physical health, nonetheless, he wanted her awake and lucid, just to be sure. As for her mental health? He felt a fleeting measure of regret at the pain he’d glimpsed in her eyes, before her backbone had stiffened and she’d gone on the offensive, having come to the not unreasonable, and correct, conclusion about his motives. At the same time, he couldn’t help but admire her quick-fire mind, her resilience, her defiance. Yes, his brand new wife had spirit, and the tantalizing prospect of subduing her—just enough—was, even now, sending a hot rush of anticipation through his blood.
He ran the compress around her cheeks, down her throat and continued to call her name. Just as he was about to shake her, she let out a small, distressed feminine moan and then her lids fluttered open. Dark brown confused eyes captured his and when her look transformed into one of open panic, a blaze of concern grabbed him by the throat, so strong that it astounded him.
He cleared his throat and began reassuring her. “You’re all right, love, no need for worry.”
She stared back at him as if he were her only lifeline … and like he was the devil incarnate, as well. Such conflicting emotions had undoubtedly precipitated her earlier faint, and damn if he would let that happen again.
He jostled her to a more upright position and held a bottle of water to her lips. “Have a drink, it will make you feel better.”
The panic in her eyes mostly receded, replaced by a look of supreme distrust. She cleared her throat, a suspicious frown on her face. “You certainly like to ply me with drinks, don’t you?”
He supposed he deserved that, but he didn’t care for it, nonetheless, and his mouth flattened in response. “I’m not entirely to blame—but this is water, as you ve
ry well know.”
He gave her the bottle and she took a long sip before placing it on the table to her left. He was aware of the fine trembling of her fingers and didn’t care for it. What the hell had he expected? That she’d learn her fate and then throw herself into his arms with pure abandon? Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t for her to sink down into a dead faint. He wanted her as she’d been the previous two evenings—strong and capable—albeit under his full control.
As she clutched the sheet to her chest, she made a move to remove herself from his lap but before she could manage it, he tightened his hold.
Her muscles stiffened in rejection of his touch, which irritated the shit out of him. Meticulously removing her eyes from his, as if he were beneath her, she glanced around the interior of the plane. “Let me up.”
Let her up? “No.”
Her gaze snapped back to his with the hint of fire he’d come to recognize over the last two days. “Would you like me to begin screaming?” she snapped.
Was that a threat that was supposed to make him tow the line? If it was, then she had a lot to learn. “Not particularly.”
Her lips tightened. “Well, then I would advise that you take your hands away.”
A white-hot mix of aggression and sexual heat slammed him in the gut at her challenge. Did the girl not realize that he held all the cards? Did she not get that she was totally at his mercy? Although he knew that he needed to take it slow— his first concern was to make sure that she wasn’t going to faint again—his base instincts were screaming at him to make her understand. His fingers sinking around her wrist, he squeezed just enough to let her know that he would only take so much. “Tread carefully, love. Right now, I consider you an innocent pawn in everything that’s happened to you. It would be best for you if I maintained that belief.” Her face paled, making him want to kick himself in the ass for upsetting her again. Trying to get a grip, he forced his tone to be low and soothing as he asked, “Are you feeling better?”