“And the baby?”
“I lost it not long after. Probably from all the stress. I never told my mom. It was too hard.”
“So you retreated into yourself,” he murmurs.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that I did.”
Pane takes my hand and pulls me back on top of him. His heart drums beneath my ear, and his chest slowly rises and falls as he quietly breathes.
He smooths a hand down my hair. “He never deserved you.”
“No, he didn’t.” I kiss his chest. “They deserve each other.”
“They do.”
I lift my head and rest my chin on top of my folded hands. “Your turn. What’s your horror story?”
He traces a finger along my cheekbone, studying me as if he’s about to sculpt me to life. “At the end of college, I dated a girl from Georgia, surprisingly, who told me that she was pregnant.”
“What?” This is worth sitting up for. I pull the sheet with me, keeping my breasts covered as I straddle him, admiring his naked chest all the way to the ridges of his nibble-worthy hip bones. “My goodness.”
Pane’s gaze is as cold as diamonds as he stares into the dark, but it softens when his eyes land on me. “My mother hated her.”
“NotSylvia.”
He chuckles. “Yes, Sylvia. She said that if I wanted to be a dad and stay with my girlfriend, I’d be cut off from the family.”
“What? That’s brutal.” How could his mother be so ruthless to her own flesh and blood?
“That’s Sylvia Maddox,” he replies, as if hearing my silent question. “She will protect the Maddox brand no matter what, and me knocking up my college girlfriend wasn’t in the cards.”
“Oh. So then what happened?”
Pane sweeps my bangs to one side of my head, keeping his eyes focused there briefly before looking me in the eyes. “I told my mother that I didn’t want to be a Maddox, that I was giving it all up. When I told my girlfriend, she confessed that she wasn’t pregnant. Said that she’d lied. If I didn’t have money, then she didn’t want me.”
My heart cracks in two. Who could be so evil? Sylvia being ruthless was one thing, but for a person to only date Pane because of his wealth, to lie about a baby—to attempt to trap him into marriage—and then dump him when he gave everything up? What sort of person does that?
And then suddenly, I understand him. I get why he only dated women in his social circle, why he pegged me for a fortune hunter: Because the last woman he lovedwasa fortune hunter. Money was all that mattered to her—not this beautiful man.
I run my fingers through his silky locks, and he closes his eyes at my touch. As I’m stretching forward, my grip on the sheet loosens. It begins to slip, but I gather it back up, wadding it at my throat.
When Pane opens his eyes, I say, “Just so you know, I would never be with you for your money.”
He smiles sadly. “It’s what I like best about you.”
“I know. Because I’d be dating you for yourjet, instead.”
His eyes flare in surprise, and before I have a chance to stop him, he flings the sheet away from me, exposing my breasts.
I gasp at the cold that sweeps over my flesh, making it prickle. My nipples harden from the chill and Pane sits up, taking one of them in his mouth.
I drop my head back and moan with pleasure. Underneath me, his cock hardens.
When he lets my pebbled nipple fall from his mouth, he says in a husky voice, “You’re going to pay for that.”
I laugh. “Please, punish me.”
