by Jane Porter
He smoothed his T-shirt over his lean, flat stomach before extending his legs and crossing them at the ankle, and then he looked up into her eyes and smiled.
“Better?” he asked.
She ground her teeth together. Rowan Argyros was enjoying himself immensely.
“My father was the breadwinner,” she said flatly. “My mother was a homemaker. It meant that when they divorced, she still had to depend on him to provide. I will never do that. If we marry, I’m not giving up my career.”
“When we marry, we won’t end up divorced.”
“I’m not giving up my career.”
“You barely scrape by. I make millions every year—”
“It’s your money. I want my own.”
“I’ll open a personal bank account for you, deposit whatever you want, up front, and it’ll be yours. I won’t be able to touch it.”
“It will still be your money. I don’t want your money. I’m determined to be self-sufficient.”
“Why?”
She gave him a long look. “Surely you don’t really have to ask that.”
“You’re the mother of my child. You’ve struggled these past few years to provide for her. Let me help.”
“You can help with Jax’s expenses. We will split them. Fifty-fifty.”
“What if I provide for Jax and the family, and then you can use your own...money...for your personal expenses?”
She leaned forward. “Why do you say money like that?”
“Because you have virtually nothing in your bank account.” He rolled his eyes, apparently as exasperated with her as she was with him. “I’m not hurting financially. According to the Times, I’m one of the wealthiest men in the UK. I can afford to make sure you’re comfortable.”
“My work gives me an identity. It gives me purpose.”
“Being a mother doesn’t do that?”
“This isn’t about being a mother. It’s about being a woman, and I don’t want to be a woman who depends on a man. My mother spent her life living in my father’s shadow, and as we both know, he cast a pretty big shadow. I don’t want to be defined by a man, and I like being able to contribute to the world.”
He said nothing and she added more quietly, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Work makes me feel valuable. It tells me I matter.” She looked away, throat working, emotion threatening to swamp her. “I need to matter. I must matter.” Her eyes found his again. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
“But you do matter. You’re the sun and moon for Jax. You’re her everything.”
“And what if something happens to Jax? What if—God forbid—there was a tragedy, and I lost her? I’d be lost, too. I’d be finished. There would be nothing left of me.” Her voice cracked but she struggled to smile. She failed. “She’s everything.”
“Nothing is going to happen to her,” he said gruffly. “Why would you think that?”
She couldn’t answer. She bit down into her lip, her heart on fire, because bad things did happen. Her parents had divorced when she was young and her father had virtually forgotten her and then later it turned out that he was a criminal...he’d stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from his clients...
“Nothing is going to happen,” Rowan repeated more forcefully.
She nodded, but tears were filling her eyes and she was pretty sure that she hadn’t convinced either of them of anything.
For a long minute it was quiet. Logan knit her fingers together in her lap, knuckles white. Rowan didn’t say anything, deep in thought. She glanced at him several times, thinking he’d lost the glint in his eyes, aware that his hard features had tightened, his mouth now flattened into a grim line.
She couldn’t handle the silence any longer. “Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way. Maybe it seems irrational—”
“It doesn’t.” His voice, pitched deep, cut her short.
She looked at him, surprised.
His broad shoulders shifted. “My little brother’s death destroyed my mother, and it ended my parents marriage.”
“You lost a brother?”
He nodded. “I was seven. Devlin was two, nearly three.”
Jax’s age.
He knew what she was thinking. She could see it in his eyes.
“But that won’t happen to Jax,” he added roughly, his voice as sharp as ground glass. “I will make sure nothing happens to her. And that’s a promise.”
She couldn’t look at him anymore, couldn’t stomach more of the same conversation. Jax was so valuable. Jax was perfect and innocent, not yet hurt by life or other people. She didn’t yet know that people—even those who claimed to care about you—would fail you. Hurt you. Maybe even deliberately hurt you.
Logan hadn’t remained a virgin so long because she didn’t have options. Her virginity wasn’t kept because there weren’t men available but because she wanted to hold part of herself back. She wanted to save herself for the right person. She’d wanted to give that one thing—that bit of innocence—to a man who’d value her.
How she’d gotten that wrong!
Being disappointed was a fact of life. Learning to deal with that disappointment, another critical life lesson. And it was fine to learn about life, and have to accept loss and change, but far better if those lessons came later. If the individual self was shaped and formed. Strong.
“You and I can make sure Jax is safe,” Rowan said quietly, drawing her attention to him. “With vigilance we can give her the life I know you want for her.”
Logan blinked tears away. “What life do I want for her?”
His gaze held hers for an extra long moment. “You don’t want her crushed. You don’t want her broken. You want her to remain a child as long as possible—safe, loved, cherished.” He hesitated, and the silence hung there between them, weighted. “You want to give her the childhood you never had.”
His words cut, pricking her when she didn’t have the proper defenses. Startled, uncomfortable, she left her chair, crossing the floor a ways to stand before the bank of monitors. Jax’s door remained ajar, just as she’d left it. She suddenly wished she could see Jax, though. She wanted to be sure the little girl was still soundly sleeping.
“Do you have sound, if you wanted it?” she asked thickly, keeping her back to him even as the threat of tears deepened her voice.
“Yes.”
“Can you turn it on in her room? Or in my room? So we can check to see if it’s quiet or if she’s crying?”
“I could turn the camera in her room on. If you’d like?”
She glanced at him now. “So there is a camera in the closet?”
“I disabled it earlier, but I can turn it on.”
“I didn’t see one in the closet. Where is it?”
“It’s positioned in the crown molding, hidden in the shadows of the woodwork.”
“It’s very small then?”
“No bigger than the head of a writing pen.”
“Are cameras truly manufactured that small?”
“Mine are.”
“You make cameras?”
He shrugged. “One of my companies manufactures cameras and security equipment. These small cameras are now used all over the world, in every big hotel, casino, government building.” He crossed to her side, tapped several buttons on a panel and suddenly one of the dark screens came to life, and then he tapped another key on the panel and she could see Jax in her little bed, still sound asleep, although she now lay on her back, arms up by her head.
Logan shot him a troubled look. “I hate that you can spy on us.”
“I don’t spy on you. I haven’t spied on you ever.”
“Joe...?”
“Protection. And the cameras that remain are for protection.
“I deactivated a
ll of the cameras in the closet, the bathroom, the bedroom, but the one positioned on the closet door. I thought it was important to know if Jax wandered out.”
Logan shot him another assessing look. “Or if someone wandered in.”
“Yes.”
“Does that include me?”
“You’re her mother.”
“Which is why you’re afraid I might try to run away with her.”
He made a soft, tough mocking sound. “It’s crossed my mind,” he agreed. “More than once.”
The smiling curve of his firm mouth just barely reached his eyes. His green gaze wasn’t as warm as it was challenging. She didn’t understand what she saw, didn’t understand the tension or emotion...if it was emotion. But then he was an enigma, and he had been from the start.
That night at the auction he’d given her the same look—long, searching, challenging.
He’d looked at her with such focus that he didn’t seem to be standing across the room, not part of the auction, but all by himself, and it was just the two of them in the room.
Everyone fell away that night in March.
The music, the sound, the master of ceremonies at the microphone.
There was just Rowan standing on the side of the stage looking at her, making her go hot and cold and feel things she didn’t know a stranger could make her feel.
“And why would I run from you?” she asked, her chin lifting, her voice husky. She wasn’t going to be the one to break eye contact. She wasn’t going to back down. Not from him, not from anyone.
“Because you know when I take you to bed, it’ll change everything. Again.”
Her stomach flipped and her head suddenly seemed unbearably light, as if all the blood had drained away. “That’s not happening.” Thank God her voice was relatively firm because her legs were definitely unsteady.
“You sound so sure of yourself.”
“Because I know myself. And I know you now, and I know how devastating it would be to go to bed with you—and not because you’re good in bed, but because you’re cruel out of bed, and I don’t need more cruelty in my life.”
“That was three years ago.”
“Perhaps, but standing here with you, it seems like yesterday.”
He shrugged. “I can’t change the past.”
“No, you certainly cannot.”
And then he was reaching out to lift a heavy wave of hair off her face, his palm brushing her cheek as he pushed the hair back, slipping it behind her ear. “But I can assure you the future will be different.”
His touch sent a shiver coursing through her. “I don’t want—” she started to say before breaking off, because he was still touching her, his fingers sweeping her cheekbones, his fingertip skimming her mouth, making it tingle.
“Mmm?” he murmured, eyebrow lifting. “I’m listening, love.”
She stared up into his eyes, her heart racing even faster, beating in a hard, jagged rhythm that made it difficult to catch her breath, much less speak. But how could she speak when her thoughts were scattered, coherent thought deserting her at the slightest touch?
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, combing her hair back from her face to create a loose ponytail in one hand, “I never asked you about relationships you might have left behind...is there someone significant...?”
He was seducing her with his touch. She couldn’t resist the warmth, couldn’t resist the tenderness in his touch. She hated that she responded to his caress this way, hated that she felt starved for affection. He wasn’t the right man for her. He’d never be the right man. “No.”
“Why not? You’re young and stunning—”
“And a mother with a young child dependent on me.”
“You didn’t want to meet someone...someone who could help you, make things easier for you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Surely it doesn’t surprise you that I don’t have a lot of confidence in men? That the men I’ve known—” she gave him a significant look “—cared only for themselves, too preoccupied by their own needs and their own agendas to take care of anyone else.”
“You’re not describing me.”
“Oh, I most certainly am.”
“Then you don’t know me, and it’s time to change that. Starting now. Tonight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HE CAPTURED HER MOUTH with his, shaping her to him. The kiss had fire and an edge that revealed far more of his emotional state than he preferred her to know, but right now he was damned if he cared about anything but taking what he wanted. And he wanted her.
He would bed her tonight.
He would claim her as his.
He wondered if she even realized that she didn’t stand a chance because, now that she was here at Castle Ros, he wasn’t about to lose her.
He’d made the mistake once. He wouldn’t make the same once twice. And, no, his feelings weren’t tender or loving, but passion and possession didn’t require love. Passion and possession needed heat, and there was plenty of that.
“Mine,” he murmured against her mouth, making her heart race.
She heard him but couldn’t decipher it, not when heat flooded her, making her weak.
His kiss did this to her. His kiss turned her inside out, confusing her, making her forget who she was and why they didn’t work...
Because right now they did work. Right now he tasted like life and hunger and passion, and she wanted more, not less. And no, it wasn’t safe, but she hadn’t lost control in years...not since she was last with him...and suddenly she was desperate to be his...desperate to feel him and know him and remember why she’d given herself to him.
What had made him the one?
He shaped her to him, his powerful body hard against her and his mouth firm, nipping at her lip, parting her lips, tasting her. He wanted more from her, too. More response. More heat. The insistent hunger of his kiss made her head dizzy and legs tremble.
She clung to him, feeling one of his hands at the swell of her breasts. She shuddered and then shuddered again as he cupped her breast, sending sensation rushing through her. She made a hoarse sound of pleasure and he practically growled with satisfaction.
She felt his hands on the hem of her sweater, lifting the hem and tugging it up over her head, and then he was at the waistband of her trousers, tugging the zipper down before glancing at her feet and noticing the boots. He pushed her back onto the bed so that he could remove one boot and then the other, and then the trousers were gone, leaving her in just her bra and matching pantie.
She reached for his coverlet, wanting to hide, but he leaned over her, pinning her hands to the mattress.
“I want to look,” he growled, his voice deepening, his Irish accent becoming pronounced.
She felt shy and she closed her eyes, but even with her eyes closed she could feel his burning gaze, which drank her in the way a parched man drinks a tall, cool glass of water.
His head dipped, and his lips brushed her jaw and then the column of her throat.
Air bottled in her lungs and her toes curled as he kissed down her throat to the hollow between her collarbones.
She shouldn’t like this so much. She shouldn’t want his mouth and his tongue and his skin...but she did.
She loved his firm grip on her wrists and the way he pinned her to the bed, his body angled over hers, his knees on the outside of her thighs.
His mouth trailed lower, his lips between her breasts and then light on the silky fabric of her bra, his breath warm through the delicate fabric, teasing the pebbled nipple with the lightest scraping of teeth, making her arch up, and her hips shift restlessly.
He worked his way to the other breast, teeth catching at the edge of the bra, and then sliding his tongue along t
he now-damp fabric, his tongue tracing the line of her bra against her skin.
She could feel the rasp of his beard and the heat of his mouth and as erotic as it was, it wasn’t enough.
Her hips rocked up. She felt hot and wet and empty.
He could fill her. He should fill her. Hard. Fast. Slow and fast.
Anything, everything.
“You know what I want,” she whispered, licking her upper lip because her mouth had gone so dry.
His head lifted, and he gazed down at her. “And you know what I want,” he answered.
“I want sex and you want a wife.” She’d meant it bitterly but her voice was so husky the words came out breathless. “Something seems wrong here.”
“It’s easy to have sex. It’s harder to find the right wife.”
“I’m not the right wife.”
“You are now.”
“Because of Jax.”
“Because of Jax,” he agreed, head lowering, his mouth capturing one taut nipple and sucking hard on the sensitive tip.
He worked the nipple until she was writhing and panting beneath him.
“Rowan, Rowan—”
“Yes, mo chroi?”
“You’re torturing me.”
“Just as I will torture you every night in my bed.” He blew on the damp silk of the bra, warm air across the pebbled nipple. “I’m going to do this to your pussy, until you come.”
“Rowan. I want you in me.”
“I know you do, but I’m not ready to give you what you want. I think you need to be punished—”
“For what?”
“Where do I start?” He bit down on the nipple making her cry out. “You should have told me who you were...you should have told me you were a virgin...you should have told me you were pregnant...” He looked down at her, green-gold eyes blazing. “Should I go on?”
“But that’s it. That’s all. There’s nothing else I’ve done wrong.”
“So you admit you were wrong.”
Her eyes closed as she felt his hand on her hip, caressing the hipbone. “I could have been better at communicating,” she whispered, pulse racing, thinking she should tell him to stop even though she didn’t want him to stop.