“Jaak?”
He was still smiling, his tone light as he asked, “How much do you know?”
Oh.
“Everything, I suppose?” The billionaire’s gaze narrowed on her face as she slowly nodded, but nothing changed. Her eyes still looked at him like he was...
Ah, God.
She was still looking at him like he was someone strong and brave.
An urge – a blind powerful ache – to kiss her seized him, and if he had been the old Jaak, he would have. If she had been any other girl, he probably would still have. After all, fucking inpublic was nothing to him, so what was a mere kiss compared to that?
But he was not the old Jaak, and Ilse was not any other girl.
The billionaire yanked her to him, and as she stumbled against his chest, he said thickly, “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for.” Her voice was muffled against his chest.
His arms tightened around her as feelings he had never thought he would allow himself to feel drowned his world. “Give me a moment...” A moment to get past this feeling that was making his heart clench like it had too much to beat for. “Just give me a moment to hold you close.”
Just give me a moment to exist solely to love you.
A moment, he needed this one moment, before he gave her his last secrets.
Chapter Sixteen
Nostalgia struck the billionaire as he carefully led a blindfolded Ilse onto the polo field. A silvery path snaked on the grass, streaking from the same moon that had witnessed his fall from grace. Looking around him, he could only remember flashes of emotions and visions—-
The way his hands shook as he clasped the woman’s hips...
The sound of his pants mingling with the sultry laugh of his first lover...
The shuddering exhilaration that had run through his body the moment he realized he had lost his virginity, his distended cock impaling a tight, wet pussy for the first time...
“Are we there yet?”
Not quite,the billionaire thought grimly, but he wasn’t thinking literally. Everything around him should be familiar, and it was,barely. So many damn years, this moment of his life had tormented him, defined him.
He had thought that he would only have to come here, and he would know exactly where it happened, would know that one spot which had changed his life for good. He had thought the moment he came, his memories would crucify him.
And perhaps they still could, if only he remembered enough.
“Jaak?”
Ilse’s uncertain voice broke through his thoughts, and he slowly lowered his hands. He watched her blink as she turned around to take her surroundings in. When she glanced back at him, the bemusement in her brown eyes had only deepened. “I don’t understand.”
A crooked smile formed on his lips. “I thought you wouldn’t.”
Ilse crossed her arms over her chest. “I still don’t understand.”
“Willem made you think he’s told you everything, but he didn’t.”
Oh.Ilse’s gaze swept her surroundings once more, this time more slowly and thoroughly, but the significance of the place was still lost on her. “Could you give me a clue at least?”
“My last visit here was when I was ten years old.” The billionaire’s tone was casual, but there was something about the way he looked at her that made Ilse frown.
Ten,she thought to herself musingly. He was ten. What could be so special about a boy’s tenth year? He would still have been in middle school, but so what? Ten...ten...
