Название: The Dare Collection March 2019
Автор: Rachael Stewart
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon Series Collections
isbn: 9781474095563
isbn:
Jason moved toward her then. And he considered himself a martyr of the highest order when he didn’t simply put his hands on her and throw her on the table that took up most of the space in this fishbowl. He stopped when he was close—close enough to cause a little comment out there on the other side of the glass, maybe.
Let them stare, he thought.
“It’s like this, Scotland,” he rumbled at her, trying to keep his hold on himself intact. Trying to ignore the hundreds of ways he could feel it fraying. “I know why you ran off the way you did. Feelings are messy. That’s why I spent my whole life avoiding them, but guess what? They caught up to me anyway when you sauntered into my crumbling-ass hotel. And I could have come here, and made pretty speeches, but that’s not the way to your heart.”
“My heart?” she echoed, looking appalled. She looked around as if she wanted to back up, but the table was behind her. She frowned at him. “This is about business, Jason. It’s all very unorthodox, I grant you, but still business.”
“Call it business if you want,” he said, easily enough. “I don’t really care. If an island is what it takes to buy some time with you? I’m going to call it cheap. Because I think what really scares you is that you can’t maintain this business bullshit. You could do it after one night, sure. You could crawl out of my bed, run away in the dark and put your armor back on. But you won’t be able to do that month after month. Year after year. Then what?”
Her lips trembled. “You’re insane.”
“That’s not the word I’d use. But the one that fits would freak you out, so sure, I’m insane. The question is, are you willing to put yourself on the line or are you too afraid? It’s a simple choice, Lucinda.”
“There’s nothing simple about this!”
“You know that I can make you come,” Jason said, calmly. “Over and over again. So what’s the harm? You get to live in a beautiful house, come so hard it makes you cry regularly, and work on building the resort of your dreams. It seems to me the only reason you wouldn’t jump at the chance is if, deep down, you know that the reason you left in the first place is that you can’t have that kind of sex, with me, without getting your heart involved after all.”
And he reached over and pressed two fingers over her heart, as punctuation.
This time, she flinched. She swatted at his hand, but ended up hooking his fingers with her palm.
And he was almost surprised that she didn’t take a swing at him, the way she was looking up at him then, like she wanted to kill him with her own hands. But he could see that there was something almost desolate behind the flash of fury.
If he could, he’d let her kill him if that would take the desolation away.
“The joke’s on you, Jason,” she threw at him, fury and despair in her voice and all over her face, and he got it then. She’d already killed him. The man he’d been before she showed up on his island was good and dead, and here he was instead. Ready and willing to do whatever it took to make her happy instead of...whatever this was. “Because I don’t have a heart. And I could live with you for the rest of my life, and that’s not going to change.”
He wanted to grab her up in his arms and kiss her until that darkness lifted. But he knew his way around armor, so he grinned instead.
“Great,” he said, and even shrugged lazily. “Then you have nothing to lose.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.