One Night to Risk It All

Nothing like the way he’d grown up.

It was part of what he found so enticing. That prim little exoskeleton of hers. Perfect hair and makeup, even just after finding out she was pregnant and running out on her wedding. But he’d cracked all that open. Had seen her skin flushed pinker than that top she was wearing. Had seen her hair in disarray, her skin glistening with sweat...

He’d had those expertly polished nails dug deep into his shoulders, and that was something he couldn’t forget.

He shifted and tried to ease the pressure caused by his growing arousal. Nothing helped. Not when he had the back of Rachel Holt as his view. The rest of the island just didn’t seem to matter. And neither did anything else.

“And why is that?” he asked.

“Because I...don’t think I like you.” She looked up and around at the cypress trees that spread around them to create a canopy of green, and at the white sand beaches beyond them.

“There are some incredible ruins on this island. Colonial and Ottoman.”

“I was just in Greece. Ruins, we have them.”

“I am aware,” he said. “I was trying to make conversation.”

“Do you live in a ruin? Or do you have an actual house?”

“I have a house, but some people would argue I live in ruin.”

She snorted. “At this point, some people would argue that I do, too.”

“You are giving off a bit of a fallen-woman vibe,” he said dryly.

“Am I?” She sniffed her wrist. “I don’t feel any different.”

He turned and looked at her. “Not at all?”

Her cheeks flushed a deep rose. “No.”

“Interesting. Would you like to walk to the house or drive?”

“You’re in a tux,” she said. “You’re hardly dressed to walk.”

He looked down. “Indeed not. I’m a little disoriented. Could be because in New York it’s early morning. Which means I’ve technically been up all night.”

“You came from New York?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He looked at her, at those cheeks, still flushed from the sun and from...from whatever memories had come into her mind when he’d looked at her. “I came for you.”

“That simple?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you come for me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and it was the honest truth. “Because I don’t want him to have you. Because I want you for myself. Because I think you’re beautiful and as of now you’re the only woman I can imagine having in my bed, and considering I would like to have sex sometime soon that’s very inconvenient, and even more so if you were to marry another man.”

She blinked. “That’s almost flattering.”