Читать книгу Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 11

DOMINIK JAMES HAD spent his entire life looking for his place in the world.

They had told him his parents were dead. That he was an orphan in truth, and he had believed that. At first. It certainly explained his circumstances in life, and as a child, he’d liked explanations that made sense of the orphanage he called home.

But when he was ten, the meanest of the nuns had dropped a different truth on him when she’d caught him in some or other mischief.

Your mother didn’t want you, she had told him. And who could blame her with you such a dirty, nasty sneak of a boy. Who could want you?

Who indeed? Dominik had spent the next ten years proving to everyone’s satisfaction that his mother, whoever she was, had been perfectly justified in ridding herself of him. He had lived down to any and all expectations. He’d run away from the orphanage and found himself in Spain, roaming where he pleased and stealing what he needed to live. He’d considered that happiness compared to the nuns’ version of corporal punishment mixed in with vicious piety.

He had eventually gone back to Italy and joined the army, more to punish himself than as any display of latent patriotism. He’d hoped that he would be sent off to some terrible war where he could die in service to Italy rather than from his own nihilistic urges. He certainly hadn’t expected to find discipline instead. Respect. A place in the world, and the tools to make himself the kind of man who deserved that place.

He had given Italy his twenties. After he left the service, he’d spent years doing what the army had taught him on a private civilian level until he’d gotten restless. He’d then sold the security company he’d built for a tidy fortune.

Left to his own devices as a grown man with means, he had bettered himself significantly. He had gotten a degree to expand his thinking. His mind. And, not inconsiderably, to make sure he could manage his newfound fortune the way he wanted to do.

He didn’t need his long-lost family’s money. He had his own. The computer security company he had built up almost by accident had made him a very wealthy man. Selling it had made him a billionaire. And he’d enjoyed building on that foundation ever since, expanding his financial reach as he pleased.

He just happened to enjoy pretending he was a hermit in the Hungarian woods, because he could. And because, in truth, he liked to keep a wall or a forest between him and whatever else was out there. He liked to stay arm’s length, at the very least, from the world that had always treated him with such indifference. The world that had made him nothing but bright with rage and sharp with fury, even when he was making it his.

Dominik preferred cool shadows and quiet trees these days. The comfort of his own company. Nothing brighter than the sun as it filtered down through the trees, and no fury at all.

Sharp-edged blondes with eyes like caramel who tasted like magic made him...greedy and hot. It made him feel like a long-lost version of himself that he had never meant to see resurrected.

He should have sent her away at once.

Instead, he’d invited her in.

She walked in front of him, those absurd and absurdly loud shoes of hers making it clear that she was not the sort of woman who ever expected to sneak up on a person, especially when they hit the wood of his porch. And he regretted letting her precede him almost at once, because while the cloak she wore—so bright and red it was almost as if she was having a joke at his expense—hid most of that lush and lean body from his view, it couldn’t conceal the way her hips swung back and forth like a metronome.

Dominik had never been so interested in keeping the beat before in his life. He couldn’t look away. Then again, he didn’t try that hard.

When she got to his front door, a heavy wood that he’d fashioned himself with iron accents because perhaps he really had always thought of himself as the Big Bad Wolf, he reached past her. He pushed the door open with the flat of one hand, inviting her in.

But that was a mistake, too.

Because he had already tasted her, and leaning in close made him...needy. He wanted his mouth right there on the nape of her neck. He wanted his hands on the full breasts he’d glimpsed beneath that sheer blouse she wore. He wanted to bury his face between her legs, then lose himself completely in all her sweet heat.

Instead, all he did was hold the door for her. Meekly, as if he was some other man. Someone tamed. Civilized.

A hermit in a hut, just as he pretended to be.

He watched her walk inside, noting how stiff and straight she held herself as if she was terrified that something might leap out at her. But this cabin had been made to Dominik’s precise specifications. It existed to be cozy. Homey.

It was the retreat he had never had as a boy, and he had absolutely no idea why he had allowed this particular woman to come inside. When no one else ever had.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that too closely.

“This is a bit of a shock,” she said into the silence that stretched taut between them, her gaze moving from the thick rugs on the floor to the deep leather chairs before the fire. “I expected something more like a hovel, if I’m honest.”

“A hovel.”

“I mean no disrespect,” she said, which he thought was a lie. She did that thing with her hand again, waving at him in a manner he could only call dismissive. It was...new, at least. “No one really expects a long-haired hermit to live in any kind of splendor, do they?”

“I am already regretting my hospitality,” Dominik murmured.

He looked around at the cabin, trying to see it through the eyes of someone like Lauren, all urban chic and London snootiness. He knew the type, of course, though he’d gone to some lengths to distance himself from such people. The shoes were a dead giveaway. Expensive and pointless, because they were a statement. She wanted everyone who saw them to wonder how she walked in them, or wonder how much they cost, or drift away in a sea of their own jealousy.

Dominik merely wondered what it said about her that her primary form of expression was her shoes.

He also wondered what she was gleaning about him from this cabin that was his only real home. He didn’t know what she saw, only what he’d intended. The soaring high ceilings, because he had long since grown tired of stooping and making himself fit into spaces not meant for him. The warm rugs, because he was tired of being cold and uncomfortable. The sense of airiness that made the cottage feel as if it was twice its actual size, because he had done his time in huts and hovels and he wasn’t going back. The main room boasted a stone fireplace on one end and his efficient kitchen on the other, and he’d fashioned a bedchamber that matched it in size, outfitted with a bed that could fit two of him—because he never forgot those tiny cots he’d had to pretend to be grateful for in the orphanage.

“It’s actually quite lovely,” she said after a moment, a note of reluctant surprise in her voice. “Very...comfortable, yet male.”

Dominik jerked his chin toward one of the heavy chairs that sat before his fire. Why there were two, he would never know, since he never had guests. But when he’d imagined the perfect cabin and the fireplace that would dominate it, he had always envisioned two cozy leather chairs, just like these. So here they were.

And he had the strangest sensation, as Lauren went and settled herself into one of them, that he had anticipated this moment. It was almost as if the chair had been waiting for her all this time.

He shook that off, not sure where such a fanciful notion had come from. But very sure that he didn’t like it. At all.

He dropped into the chair opposite hers, and lounged there, doing absolutely nothing at all to accommodate her when he let his long legs take over the space between them. He watched her swallow, as if her throat was dry, and he could have offered her a drink.

But he didn’t.

“I thought you intended to convince me to do your bidding,” he said after a moment, when the air between them seemed to get thick. Fraught. Filled with premonition and meaning, when he wanted neither. “Perhaps things are different where you’re from, but I would not begin an attempt at persuasion by insulting the very person I most wanted to come around to my way of thinking. Your mileage may vary, of course.”

She blinked at him, and it was almost as if she’d forgotten why they were there. She shrugged out of that wrap at last, then folded her hands in her lap, and Dominik let his gaze fall all over her. Greedily. As if he’d never seen a woman before in all his days.

She was sweet and stacked, curvy in all the right places. Her hair gleamed like gold in the firelight, the sleek ponytail at her nape pulled forward over one shoulder. There was a hint of real gold at her throat, precisely where he wanted to use his teeth—gently, so gently, until she shuddered. Her breasts begged for a man’s hands and his face between them, and it would take so little. He could shift forward, onto his knees, and take her in hand that easily.

He entertained a few delicious images of himself doing just that.

And she didn’t exactly help matters when she pulled that plump lower lip of hers between her teeth, the way he’d like to do.

But Dominik merely sank deeper into his chair, propped his head up with his fist, and ignored the demands of the hardest, greediest part of him as he gazed at her.

“I would be delighted to persuade you,” she said, and did he imagine a certain huskiness in her voice? He didn’t think he did. “I expected to walk in here and find you living on a pallet on the floor. But you clearly like your creature comforts. That tells me that while you might like your solitude, you aren’t exactly hiding from the world. Or not completely. So what would it take to convince you to step back into it?”

“You have yet to explain to me why that is something I should want, much less consider doing.”

“You could buy a hundred cabins and litter them about all the forests of Europe, for a start.”

He lifted one shoulder, then let it fall. “I already have a cabin.”

And properties across the globe, but he didn’t mention that.

“You could outfit this cabin in style,” she suggested brightly. “Make it modern and accessible. Imagine the opportunities!”

“I never claimed to live off the grid, did I? I believe you are the one who seems to think this cabin belongs in the Stone Age. I assure you, I have as much access to the modern world as I require.”

Not to mention his other little shack that wasn’t a shack at all, set farther up the mountainside and outfitted with the very latest in satellite technology. But that was yet another thing that could remain his little secret.

“You could buy yourself anything you wanted.”

“All you have to offer me is money,” he said after a moment. “I already told you, I have my own. But the fact that you continue to focus on it tells me a great deal about you, I think. Does this brother of mine not pay you well?”

She stiffened at that, and a crease appeared between her brows. “Mr. Combe has always been remarkably generous to me.”

He found the color on her cheeks...interesting. “I cannot tell if that means he does or does not pay you what you deserve. What’s the going rate for the kind of loyalty that would lead a woman clearly uncomfortable with the outdoors to march off into the forest primeval, deep into the very lair of a dangerous stranger?”

Her chin tipped up at that, which he should not have found as fascinating as he did. “I fail to see how my salary is your business.”

“You have made anything and everything my business by delivering yourself to my door.” And if he was overly intrigued by her, to the point his fingers itched with the need to touch her all over that curvy body until she sounded significantly less cool, that was his burden to carry. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”

The color on her cheeks darkened. The crease between her brows deepened. And it shouldn’t have been possible to sit any straighter in that chair, but she managed it.

“I have already told you why I’m here, Mr. James.”

“I’m sure they told you in the village that I come in at least once a week for supplies. You could have waited for me there, surrounded by creature comforts and room service. There was no need at all to walk through the woods to find me, particularly not in those shoes.”

She looked almost smug then. As if he’d failed some kind of test.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with my shoes,” she said, and crossed her legs, which had the immediate effect of drawing his attention to the shoes in question. Just as she’d intended, he assumed. “I find them remarkably comfortable, actually.”

“That you find them comfortable, or want me to think you do, doesn’t mean they are. And it certainly doesn’t make them practical for a brisk hike on a dirt path.”

That gaze of hers was the color of a sweet, sticky dessert, and he wanted to indulge. Oh, how he wanted to indulge. Especially when her eyes flashed at him, once again letting him know that she felt superior to him.

Little did she know, he found that entertaining.

Even as it made him harder.

“In my experience, anyone who is concerned with the practicality of my footwear is casting about in desperation for some way to discount what I have to say,” she told him. “Focus on my shoes and we can make sweeping generalizations about what sort of person I am, correct? Here’s a little secret. I like pretty shoes. They don’t say anything about me except that.”

Dominik grinned, taking his time with it and enjoying it when she swallowed. Hard.

“Let me hasten to assure you that I’m in no way desperate. And I would love nothing more than to discount what you say, but you have said very little.” He held her gaze. “Make your case, if you can. Explain to me why I should leave the comfort of my home to embrace this family who have ignored me for a lifetime already. I’m assuming it would be convenient for them in some way. But you’ll understand that’s not a compelling argument for me.”

“I already told you. The paparazzi—”

He shook his head. “I think we both know that it is not I who would dislike it if your reporters found me here. I am perfectly content to deal with trespassers in my own way.” He could see by the way her lips pressed together that she was imagining exactly how he might handle trespassers, and grinned wider. “But this rich boss of yours would not care for the exposure, I imagine. Is that not why you have made your way here, after searching for me so diligently? To convince me that his sudden, surpassing concern for my privacy is a genuine display of heretofore unknown brotherly love rather than his own self-interest?”

“Mr. Combe was unaware that he had a brother until recently,” she replied, but her voice had gone cool. Careful, perhaps. “If anything should convince you about his intentions, it should be the fact that he reached out to find you as soon as he knew you existed.”

“I must remember to applaud.”

She didn’t sigh or roll her eyes at that, though the tightness of her smile suggested both nonetheless. “Mr. Combe—”

“Little red. Please. What did you imagine I meant when I asked you to convince me? I’ve already had my mouth on you. Do you really think I invited you in here for a lecture?”

He didn’t know what he expected. Outrage, perhaps. Righteous indignation, then a huffy flounce out of the cabin and out of his life. That was what he wanted, he assured himself.

Because her being here was an intrusion. He’d invited her in to make certain she’d never come back.

Of course you did, a sardonic voice inside him chimed in.

But Lauren wasn’t flouncing away in high dudgeon. Instead, she stared back at him with a dumbfounded expression on her face. Not as if she was offended by his suggestion. But more as if...such a thing had never occurred to her.

“I beg your pardon. Is this some kind of cultural divide I’m unfamiliar with? Or do you simply inject sex into conversations whenever you get bored?”

“Whenever possible.”

She laughed, and what surprised him was that it sounded real. Not part of this game at all.

“You’re wasting your time with me.” Her smile was bland. But there was a challenge in her gaze, he thought. “I regret to tell you, as I have told every man before you who imagined they could get to my boss through me, that I have no sexual impulses.”

If she had pulled a grenade out of her pocket and lobbed it onto the floor between them, Dominik could not have been more surprised.

He could not possibly have heard her correctly. “What did you just say?”

There before him, his very own Little Red Riding Hood...relaxed back against the leather of her armchair. Something he also would have thought impossible moments before. And when she smiled, she looked like nothing so much as an oversatisfied cat.

“I’m not a sexual person,” she told him, and Dominik was sure he wasn’t mistaking the relish in her voice. It was at odds with the sheen of something a whole lot like vulnerability in her gaze, reminding him of how she’d melted into his kiss. “It’s a spectrum, isn’t it? Some people’s whole lives are completely taken over by the endless drive for sex, but not me. I’ve never understood all the fuss, to be honest.”

He was half convinced he’d gone slack-jawed in astonishment, but he couldn’t seem to snap out of it long enough to check. Not when she was sitting there talking such absolute nonsense with an expression that suggested to him that she, at least, believed every word she was saying.

Or, if he looked closer, wanted to believe it, anyway.

“You are aware that a kiss is a sexual act, are you not?”

“I’ve kissed before,” Lauren said, and even shook her head at him, wrinkling up her nose as if he was...silly. Him. Silly.