The Marriage Dare

I need to get a hold of myself.

“Are you comfortable?”

The question throws me off guard, because it’s soft. His tone seems…almost normal, and it doesn’t reflect the heat in his eyes that I can practically feel spilling over onto my skin. “What?”

“Do you have everything you need? Do I need to send people to your room to get your things?”

I shake my head. “I don’t have a room here.”

“Your car then?”

Taking a deep breath, I swallow. “No car. I sold it.”

Daniel’s eyebrows rise into his hairline. “What?”

“You guessed I needed money, and you were right. But you didn’t know how much. I’m broke. That money that I lost on poker was my last, desperate attempt. I have nothing.” No sense in not being honest now. “I suppose I should thank you for wanting revenge on me. You may have saved my life. I lose my apartment at the end of the week. I would have been in a shelter.”

“And I imagine you have debt racked up, credit cards that Daddy used to pay off?” The words are swift and decisive and take my breath away.

I stand, nearly bumping against him. “You think you know so much, don’t you Daniel Argent. Fine, judge me all you like. You don’t know me. You never knew me, even though everyone knew you wanted to. Little poor boy who wanted to fuck the rich girl.” I want the words to sting. I want him to remember what it was like when I tore him down and pushed him to the ground. I want to see fire in his eyes.

And I do see that fire. A flare of interest and pleasure that I’m fighting back.

“You know,” he says, “when you used to talk to me that way, you were taller than me. Things have changed a bit.” He towers over me now. “You also used to be powerful. And conceited. Guess you haven’t gotten over the conceited thing yet, have you, if telling you the truth makes you that angry.”

I lash out to strike him, to wipe that cruel grin off his face, and he catches my wrist before I can make contact, backs me against the nearby window. His body is pressed up against mine and oh my God he feels good. The strength in him holding my wrist shows me just how much he’s holding back. His entire body is potential power, nothing making it more obvious than how hard he is.

I want him. I can’t deny that, and neither can my body, dampening beneath my dress and my nipples tightening against his chest. His knee slips between my legs, throwing me off balance, and he presses me harder against the glass. I can’t breathe, but I don’t need to as long as I can feel all of him like this.

“You’re not behaving as a good wife should, Monica,” he whispers, lips brushing my cheek. Goosebumps run across my skin. God, I hate this man so much and I need him so much I can’t remember my own name.

“That’s because I’m not your wife.” I say, voice raw.

“That’s right. You’re not. We’ll get the paperwork tomorrow. And then you can decide what you want.”

I shake my head again, because he’s smiling at me as if he hadn’t just trapped me in a corner. He still has my wrist caught in an almost bruising pressure. “What I want?”

“For the wedding. You usually only get the one, so if you want the huge deal, Princess, we’ll do that. Whatever your dream wedding is, you’ll get to have that.”

Confusion fizzles in my brain, added to by his closeness and the alcohol. “Why would you do that?”

Daniel releases my wrist, drawing his fingers down my arm and down the side of my back where my skin is exposed, and I shudder. “Did you think I was going to marry you and keep you in a cage? Or make you eat bread and water? No. I’m not that kind of monster. And right now, I like the idea of making you love me. So you can have whatever you want, Princess, if that’s the kind of life that you want to go back to.”

There’s a catch. There’s always a catch. He’s not showing his hand, I know that, but the idea of slipping back into luxury is undeniably appealing. Even if there is an inevitable catch.

“I want to kiss you,” Daniel says. The words are soft like velvet, and his fingers are still moving on my skin. Up and down, hypnotizing. So slowly, sending tingles up my spine. “And you haven’t pulled away yet.”

“Well? What’s stopping you?” I ask him. I want him to kiss me. I like that he’s telling me what he wants. That it sets up the clear expectation, since our history is complicated and everything about it is vague.