I ignored the command for the simple reason that I couldn’t move, couldn’t force my brain to stop repeating those three damning words on a loop.
‘I... What?’ I finally managed.
‘Cover yourself,’ he repeated tersely.
‘Why? My nakedness didn’t cause the condom to fail,’ I flung back, and then compounded my words with a furious blush as his eyebrows hiked upward in flaying mockery.
I turned my back on him, a much more earth-shaking tremble seizing me as the ramifications landed home. While he’d listed everything I may have deprived him of, Neo hadn’t definitely confirmed his inability to father children. So did I face a possible pregnancy on top of everything else?
Dear God...
Motherhood? When my own blueprint of childhood was so flawed?
Somehow, through sheer will to fight this battle on somewhere-near-equal footing, I straightened my clothes, slid my feet into my shoes.
There was nothing I could do about my hair, what with the cheap band I’d used nowhere in sight and my refusal to dig around for it under Neo’s heavy, brooding stare. So I took a deep breath, and turned around to face the consequences of yet another wrong turn.
CHAPTER FOUR
MISTAKE.
Big, colossal mistake.
Disbelief, raw and searing, tunnelled deep, bedded down into my bones with unstoppable force until I had no choice but to acknowledge its presence. To accept that I’d simply compounded one problem with not one but two further mistakes.
For the first time in my life I wanted to find the nearest sand dune. Bury my head in it. But I couldn’t.
Because there she stood, a flaming hot testament to the temptation I’d given in to when I should’ve walked away. Should have heeded my own agency to retreat and regroup instead of arrogantly imagining I could handle this—handle her—like a normal business challenge, to be ruthlessly and efficiently dismantled before moving on to the next problem.
The chaos she’d brought upon me wasn’t a business problem or even a wider family problem, to be accommodated only so far until it could be slotted under someone else’s problem when in reality it was deeply, straight-to-the-core personal.
It had needed addressing, sure. But only once I’d thought things through. Executed a solution with military precision, as I did with everything in my life.
Not losing myself in the very object of my misery. Not letting go of the reins of my sanity so thoroughly and completely that the world could’ve burned to the ground and I wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if it meant I could continue to enjoy her silken warmth, the intoxicating clutch of her tight heat. To hear those spellbinding gasps and cries fall from her lips as she begged for more.
Acid seared my throat, flooded my mouth, bringing with it a recollection of the only other time I’d let blind lust get the better of me.
An invitation to some faceless heiress’s birthday party in Gstaad I’d almost refused—until a possible business opportunity had been thrown in to sweeten the invitation.
A big deal bagged, followed by a night of hedonistic revelry.
A mistaken conclusion that I’d found a worthy soulmate, even though I’d never truly believed in that sort of flighty fantasy.
When that illusion had seemed to hold true in the clear light of day, for weeks and months, I’d congratulated myself for a wise choice made even in the midst of frivolity and decadence.
A proposal in Neostros, before friends and family, an engagement party to trump them all, and I was all set to buck the Xenakis family trend of backstabbing and buckling underneath the smallest pressure.
Even when suspicions arose...even when I allowed Anneka to talk me into another visit to Gstaad and a reluctant turn on the black ski run ended with me being launched twenty feet into the air and descending via a jagged aspen tree...she hadn’t bailed.
Unlike most, who barely remembered their trauma, mine still played out in excruciating detail. I heard her cries as she held my hand and urged me
to hold on. And I held on, remaining alert right until the doctors were forced to put me in a medical coma. I embraced even that, knowing she would be waiting for me when I woke.
But those fervent wishes for me to hold on had been born not of love but of callous greed and an unconscionable disregard for loyalty and integrity.
She calculated every move, right up until my eyes opened—literally and figuratively—to the betrayal and falsehoods so deeply ingrained she wore them like a second skin. One she attempted to hide with tears and cajoling until she’d learned that she couldn’t fool a Xenakis twice.
I’d made a vow never to be caught in another traitorous web ever again.