Elvie stood by the door, ready to sprint any second.Zander smirked. He loved how he made her relentless. "I understand you’re a little apprehensive about sex, but I can assure you, I’m excellent at it," he winked. "You moaned my name earlier, remember?" Twin pools of bright pink flared on her cheeks. "I am not apprehensive about sex. I have sex—I have it all the time. I just don’t care to have it with you again." It was the biggest lie in the century, and her husband’s eyes knew about it. But Elvie didn't care anymore, she just wanted to get rid of the silly grin on his face.However, he wanted to make her eat every one of those words and lick them away with that hot little tongue of hers. He wanted that tongue all over his body. He wanted to taste every inch of her again. His desire pulsed through him like an ache. He’d been too long between relationships. It had been weeks—no, months—since he’d had decent sex, and earlier was beyond amazing. He’d been too busy, distracted by work
Later that night at Zander’s mansion, Elvie didn’t know how she got through the rest of the evening, with Zander and her brother, Joey, chatting away over dinner like two good friends who’d just nailed a successful business deal. Damn it. She was the business deal. How could this be happening? Married to her worst enemy! And it was happening so quickly. Her phone hadn’t stopped buzzing with incoming messages because Zander had taken the liberty of announcing their marriage on social media and in the press. She thought he wanted their marriage to be private—out of the media’s eyes.Her friends and colleagues had been calling her since earlier, and even though she ignored their messages, her phone hadn't stopped ringing.And Joey? Her brother? She didn't even know what happened to him that made him surrender himself to the mental institution, and now that his doctor said that he was clear to get out and was now cured of whatever was happening to him, She had so many questions that her h
Zander turned and saw her looking at him, and before she could put any distance between them, he lifted a finger to her face and tucked a breeze-teased tendril of her hair back behind her ear."You are my wife, Elvie. Mine. You need to remember that."His face was mostly in shadow, but she could see the moonlight reflected in his gaze like a glint of quartz in black marble.Elvie knew she should step away; she also knew she should brush his hand aside, frown at him, and tell him to back off in her sharp, schoolmistress-y tone. But it seemed her mind and body had other ideas. Wicked ideas. Dangerous ideas. Ideas that made her picture her body crushed beneath his, his mouth clamped to hers, their bodies writhing in mutual, skin-shivering ecstasy. She drew closer to him as if someone had a hand in the small of her back, her hips brushing against his. The shock of the erotic contact made her insides twist and coil with lust, her breath hitch, and her heart race. She saw her hands slide up
Zander bit her lips in a sensual way that made Elvie want to just kiss his lips again. "Are you sure, wife?" One side of his mouth came up in a slanted smile. "You seriously think you can maintain that, even if by some remote possibility I agreed to it?""Of course," she said with much more conviction than a person who would have then lied about having botox. "What happened in the closet stays in the closet and must never be repeated ever ever ever again.""Wow! That's a lot of EVER."Elvie raised her chin. "I'm serious, Zander. Those are my rules.""Are you sure, wife? I can be persuaded, you know.""What the hell are you doing? You hate me, and I hate you. The feeling is mutual. Can we just get this over with like two civilised people?"He raised his brow. "Here’s what I think of your rules." He stepped back into her body space, standing close enough for her to feel the tug of attraction pulling at every one of her organs like invisible silken cords. His eyes moved back and forth be
All through the recital the following day, she found out that her brother left at dawn, and she didn't even have the chance to talk, which made her confused as to why her brother was in a hurry. She planned to ask Zander about it. However, Elvie couldn’t stop thinking about THE EX, who had spurned Zander’s proposal. If it wasn't Kristal, the whore, then who could that be? She’d tried searching for information on the net, but there was nothing about him having been in a long-term relationship. How many years had it been? Had it been long before he’d risen to the top, while he’d been still making his mark on the world?Before their marriage?Was that why he had never fallen in love and insisted he never would? Was that why he only ever hooked up with women for short periods of time—because developing an attachment would make him too vulnerable? If he had truly loved the woman, then Elvie could understand how hurt he must have felt—especially when his ex had supposedly chosen someone bec
Zander took his child, holding her slightly aloft as if not wanting to get too close. But then Thea smiled and gurgled up at him, and Zander brought him against his chest and gently rocked her in his arms, looking down at the smiling kid. Elvie hadn’t expected the sight of him with Thea in his arms to stir her so much."I think she is really tired," he said after a moment."A nap will do, and she'll be back into a bomb," Elvie said."Don’t we all?"She angled her gaze at him.He gave her a self-deprecating smile. "With a baby, it's like having a meeting with a client.""Seriously?""Yeah. Uncontrollable. You'd be surprised. It took me a long time to get control of my life. I almost lost my way a few times." He looked down at the child again, his smile dimming slightly. "Especially after my parents were killed, I suddenly found myself all alone in the world." His expression reminded her of a suit of armour. She could see the outline of his face, but only through a mask of steel.She fr
"Shut it up, old man," Zander growled.Matheo smirked. "Not as good as things are going for you, I’ll wager," the SVP said with a wide grin. "So, you two finally got together. He’s a good catch, eh, Elvie? You must be feeling pretty pleased with yourself for landing a man like him."Why’s that? Because I was rabid-dog ugly and left on the shelf, and no one in their right mind would ever have offered for me in a thousand, million years? She thought to herself.Elvie ground her teeth so hard behind her smile that she thought she would have to be tube-fed for the rest of her life. "Actually, Matheo, Zander is the one who got the prize catch, aren’t you, dear?"Zander’s smile set off a smouldering glint in his eyes. "But of course, wife, I’m the hands-down winner in this union."Elvie’s back teeth went down another centimetre. But thankfully, Matheo moved on to chat with his secretary, who had come out to the garden to enjoy the shade and light breeze coming in from the ocean."What is he
Once the legal team and the rest of the crew had been seen during the week, Elvie didn’t see Zander again until the day before the scheduled honeymoon, when she arrived at his private retreat via a helicopter he had chartered to meet her at the airport. Her week had been a nightmare of juggling work, Thea’s never-ending questions about her dad, and arranging and packing for their ‘honeymoon’. Every time she even thought of the word, much less said it, it made her pulse gallop. She knew he wasn’t the sort of man to force himself on her. It was her own uncontrollable desires that she was worried about. But yeah, they talked about what happened in the closet and agreed to never let it happen again.Yeah, full of bull, because she knew it would eventually happen again.Soon…Bella was right. How on earth was she going to resist him? Spending a week on a yacht with Zander was going to test her resolve like a chocolate addict standing in the middle of a chocolate fountain with her mouth ope