Bound by Him (The Billionaire's Club 3)

Andrew was home.

Excitement barraged through her at the realization. She sat up, and with a frantic tapping on the Creston screen sitting on the nightstand, the drapes rolled open.

Her gaze darted across the room for evidence, and her spirit soared when she saw a half-full glass of water on his nightstand, his shoes of yesterday scattered on the floor. Her stomach fluttered uncontrollably as yesterday replayed itself in her head, and for a moment she lay back on the pillow and lovingly surveyed both her wrists, as had become habit.

She closed her eyes and kissed each one, her lips lingering on his name, then she sighed as she remembered yesterday, their desperate lovemaking, how good it felt to sleep next to him. Her body felt sore in all of her most sensitive places. Deliciously sore. Impulsively, she bent to smell his pillow, and her pussy watered.

But her heart.

God, her heart was breaking.

She just couldn’t do this to herself.

Act like three years hadn’t happened.

Pick up where they left off.

She was too vulnerable with him. Too hurt.

A heaviness settled in her chest as a vivid recollection of the past three years without him swept through her, then she realized the shower water had just shut off. Her pulse fluttered as the significance of that sunk in.

She jerked up in the bed as the door rolled open and quickly clutched the sheet to her chest, her heart sinking.

Oh no.

The sunlight only made him look darker.

Sinfully. Sensually. Darker.

It was a struggle to contain her response to him when he spotted her on the bed, with her hair undone and falling past her shoulders, and those liquid oil-field eyes acquired a mysterious new shine while his lips pulled sensually at the corners.

How could she ever protect herself from him when he was so close again?

His torso gleamed from his shower. With his wet, dark hair slicked back from his smooth forehead, his manly features sharpened to levels that surpassed the sexiest centerfold. Every pore and inch of his body was hard and rugged, and the white towel draped around his hips was a stark contrast to his hard muscles and deep tan.

Her body came alive with a vengeance. She wanted to take off that towel and take him in her hands, her mouth, her body again. She wanted to feel his piercing rasping against her sheath and know that she hadn’t made him up. Suddenly she knew, without even the tiniest hesitation, that she would never willingly let this man go without a fight first.

Never.

No man in the world would ever make her respond like this. No hands would know her body, pleasure her, tame and control her passions, like he did. No one would ever own her heart when she had never been able to take it back from him. She had been waiting three years. For this man.

No. She wasn’t going to let him go.

But she wasn’t going to make it easy, either.

She’d endured too much, had come too far along to hand her heart over as if she was worth nothing.

“You have no idea,” she began, because he really didn’t, and couldn’t know, how much she had missed and ached for him daily, “how glad I am that you’re back.”

The tenderness that warmed his dark eyes crammed her chest with emotion. “And you have no idea,” he answered, and meaningfully added, “how good it is to be back. With you.”

Smiling softly, she tugged the sheet from the bed corners and started wrapping it around herself. “Andrew, I really need to make sure we’re clear on what happened last night.”

Propping a shoulder on the threshold, he crossed his arms as he watched her. “I’m all yours,” he said, looking very much like he was thoroughly enjoying the sight of her in his bed.

“That’s exactly my point; I don’t want you thinking that we’re back together, because we aren’t. We’re just old lovers having an affair. Old lovers who may be interested in pursuing something more in the future. But this will take time. Time and diligence from you. In the meantime, you have your apartment, and I have mine, and only on special occasions might we . . . mix.”

And you’re going to have to fight for me if you ever want me back.