Page 46 of The Heir Affair

‘Of course I can…’ Standing up, he stepped to her and clasped her hand to tug her out of her chair. He banded his arm around her waist, drawing her flush against him, until she could feel his erection, as insistent as the determination in his eyes. ‘You need a home, somewhere safe, for you and our child and this was always more your island than mine.’

The fist continued to punch her chest. His gift was so generous, and so over the top, but also somehow so Xander. So why did it feel like a bribe?

She cradled his cheek, trying to soothe the muscle twitching in his cheek. Trying not to freak out, not to overreact, not to let her own insecurities misinterpret what was really going on here.

Maybe this extravagant gift and the marriage proposal were simply the only way he knew how to tell her he loved her.

He turned his face to kiss her palm, nipping into the flesh under her thumb and making sensation sink into her sex, even as her nipples began to throb painfully.

‘Do you remember, you told me once this was the last place you were truly happy as a child…?’ he murmured against her hand. ‘Let me make you happy again, here. Parádeisos is yours, Poppy. But you must take my name—that is the deal.’

Her heart swelled against her ribs. Even as her panic increased.

Itwasa bribe. A bribe she could never accept, because it would mean they could never be equals. But the fact that he had remembered the dream she’d told him about that day and wanted to give it to her felt significant. And moving.

She tried to concentrate on that, and not the fear.

She threaded her fingers into his hair, to pull him to her. ‘I don’t need the island, I don’t want it, all I want is you, Xander,’ she whispered against his lips. ‘Make love to me,’ she managed, suddenly desperate to show him how she really felt about him, even if she was too scared to say it out loud.

‘Yes. Yes.’ He growled, then captured her mouth at last in a mind-numbing kiss.

Sweeping everything on the table onto the sand, he grasped her bottom and lifted her until she sat on the edge. She ripped open his shirt, desperate to touch him and validate their lovemaking as he grappled with his flies to release the huge erection. He pressed her to lie back on her elbows, her knees raised. Then hooking her panties to one side, he plunged into the tight sheath, his hand clasping her hip as he thrust deep.

She writhed, impaled, the thick intrusion forcing her to take the full measure of him. The climax rose up like a tsunami, sudden and frantic and shattering, sweeping through her likewildfire, scorching everything in its path—and burning away the doubts, the panic, in the bright, incandescent beauty of their physical bond.

He panted against her neck, the afterglow already like a drug as he rocked into her one last time and shouted out his own release.

She clung to him, letting him hold her, his breathing as ragged as hers, as their bodies shuddered through the final waves of the titanic climax.

She raked her fingers through his hair, feeling his hot breath on her swollen breasts.

‘I love you, Xander. So much,’ she said, needing him to know, ashamed of her cowardice.

The words seemed to float on the salty air and the funky smell of sex like a promise, a validation, until he stiffened. He raised his head, the huge erection still firm, stillthereinside her. But his expression looked haunted in the moonlight.

‘We will be wed tomorrow, then, Poppy. And the island will be yours.’

The afterglow faded, leaving her feeling shocked and strangely numb.

Hadn’t he heard what she’d said? Why did she suddenly feel as if her feelings didn’t really matter to him at all? Just her obedience?

She’d told him she loved him and, for a moment, he’d looked stricken.

He pulled out of her, then stepped away from her to rearrange his clothing.

He helped her off the table, held her when she wobbled, her knees becoming shaky as all her old insecurities crawled back.

Why wasn’t he looking at her? Why did the wreckage of the table setting—and all the delicious food, which had been sweptonto the sand—feel as destructive now as the soreness in her sex, the feel of his seed on her thighs?

‘We will have to return to the villa to eat,’ he said, his voice gruff.

‘Okay,’ she said, not hungry at all, because the fist was punching her chest now in double time.

As they returned to the villa in the Jeep he’d taken to the beach he spoke of the arrangements for the wedding tomorrow. She listened in a daze, the damning evidence of how he’d manipulated her echoing in her head with every word.

How long had he been planning this? Why hadn’t he included her in any of the arrangements? Was this why he’d avoided talking to her about their future plans—because he’d always intended to ambush her with marriage?

When they arrived at the villa, he helped her out of the Jeep. But when he went to press his lips to hers, she shifted away from his kiss, suddenly brutally aware of how easily she’d let herself be used.