"If that's what you want."
Sheesh. What did he mean by that? Was he putting this back on her? Did he want to pick up where they'd left off? Sex without strings? A fake marriage without emotional investment?
She would've settled for those things once, and she had. Before she'd made the mistake of falling in love.
"What do you want, Jax?”
"You," he said, a second before dragging her into his arms and crushing her mouth with his.
He didn't give her time to resist, didn't give her time to breathe as she lost all rational thought the moment his tongue touched hers.
She reached for him, clung to him, as they made up for a week's worth of lost contact with a kiss to end all kisses.
He ravaged her and she let him. Revelling in his frantic hands, his demanding lips, his hunger that called to her on an intrinsic level.
As they eased apart, dazed and clamouring for more, reality hit.
She couldn't do this, not when she had to walk away.
She pressed her palms to his chest to push him away, but unable to resist the last, fleeting contact.
"Jax, we had a deal and I'm willing to stick to it. We keep up the marriage pretence until your mine is global and my company is in the black, that's it."
He stiffened. "You want out?"
She gnawed on her bottom lip, willing her tears away. "Were we ever in it together to begin with?"
He didn't answer, his probing gaze sweeping her face, searching for answers. Pity she didn't know the questions.
"Bull."
She gaped, uncomprehending as he pressed her hands to his chest and held them there.
"We were both in this marriage from the beginning."
"Physically—"
"And the rest." He snagged her hand and dragged her to the front of the showroom, to the spot where they'd met. "From theminute you strutted up to me here, all sass and smart mouth, you had me."
"Had you?" She parroted, sounding inane but increasingly captivated by his revelations.
"Yeah. I didn't want to feel anything for you, couldn't feel anything, but I visited my dad today and maybe I'm not such a lost cause after all—"
"You visited your dad? That's great," she said, his nervous rambling endearing him to her as much as his disclosures.
"I did it for us," he blurted, releasing her hand to start pacing. "You were right about me needing to see him to face the past, deal with it and move on. I needed to get things straight in my head before I saw you, because I didn't want to mess up like I did with the promise ring."
She winced. "Sorry, I didn't expect it and it came out of the blue."
He stopped in front of her to tilt up her chin. “I think you expected a ring, just not an imitation of the real thing."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a navy box. ASeabornbox, and her heart stalled.
"That promise ring was exactly that. A promise I'd wait for you. I didn't want to rush you, didn't want to scare you with my feelings, so I gave you an interim ring, giving you space until you made up your mind if you wanted this marriage to work for real."
He inched open the lid with his thumb and her heart kick-started again, racing a million beats a minute.
"Besides, this one wasn't finished and I wanted to give you something—"
