A Baby to Bind His Bride

There had been no small part of him that had worried he was damaged forever by that damned Count.

He blew out a breath now, and kept his gaze on Susannah. “It’s possible I’ll never recall the actual plane crash, but I imagine that is something of a blessing. The doctor was confident that more and more memories will come back with time, until there is very little, if anything, missing. But I don’t have time.”

A faint line appeared between her brows. “You have all the time you need, surely.”

“Only as long as no one suspects the truth.” He eyed her. “You are the only one who knows, Susannah. You and one doctor who I very much doubt would dare to disobey my order of silence. Not when his livelihood depends on me.”

She no longer clasped her hands together in front of her like a latter-day nun. One had risen to her collarbone and she pressed against it, as if she was trying to leave her fingerprints against her own skin. There was no particular reason Leonidas should find that so maddeningly sexy. So alluring. It was as if he was helpless against the need to taste her. Just one more time. That’s what he told himself, night and day when this craving hit him: one more time.

But not now.

“I need you,” he said baldly. Starkly.

Leonidas didn’t think he imagined the faint jerk of her body then. She flinched, then obviously worked to repress it.

“It’s clear to me that you spent the past four years learning everything there is to know about this company,” he said, as much to cover his own admission as anything else.

“I had no choice.” Her blue gaze had gone stormy. “It was that or be swallowed whole.”

“Then you will guide me,” he told her, and he wasn’t sure he was entirely concealing his relief. “You will cover for things I cannot remember.”

The strangest expression flitted across her face. “Will I?”

He moved toward the sofa then, as if admitting what he needed had loosened his feet. “Under normal circumstances it would be strange to bring my wife wherever I went, but you have already served as a quasi-CEO. No one will think anything of it.”

“And how will this work? Will we develop a system of touch? Will we rely on sign language? Or, I know, I will alert you to things you should know in Morse code. Using my eyelashes.”

Her hands were back in her lap. It occurred to him that she did that when she was anything but serene. When she only wished to appear calm.

That shouldn’t have felt like an electrical current inside him, but it did.

“Or you could simply greet the person in front of you, using the correct name, and I will follow suit.” She didn’t say anything. And yet somehow he had the distinct impression that that expression he couldn’t quite read on her face was mutinous. “Will this be a problem for you?”

“It would be helpful if you knew the time frame for your memory to return.”

“I’m told the human mind does what it will,” he said coolly. Through his teeth. “I assure you, however inconvenient my memory loss is for you, I feel it more keenly.” She nodded with that, and then swallowed, visibly. And something like foreboding wound its way through him. “What was it you wished to speak to me about?”

“Well,” Susannah said quietly, her face calm. Serene. And yet Leonidas didn’t believe it this time. “This feels awkward. But I want a divorce.”

CHAPTER FIVE

SUSANNAH WAS CERTAIN that Leonidas could see how she shook where she sat, as his usual arrogant, haughty expression shifted to something far more lethal and dark.

He stood there, more beautiful than any man should have been, a dark and bold thrust of impossible masculinity in the middle of this glass office with the mellow gold of Rome behind him. She’d be lying if she said he didn’t affect her. If she didn’t shiver every time she was near him as if she was still that overwhelmed teenage bride from four years ago.

And it had been bad enough on that mountain. She’d been beating herself up for the way she’d succumbed to him ever since it happened. What had she been thinking? How had she toppled so quickly to a man she hardly knew? She’d called it her wedding night, but it hadn’t been. The Leonidas she’d found in that compound, leading that cult, was more of a stranger than the convenient husband she’d barely known years before.

She had no excuse for her behavior. She knew that. Just as she knew that she could never let him know about the dreams that woke her with their potency, night after night, until she’d had to lock herself in her own bedroom in the penthouse they shared to make sure she stayed away from him in those dark, dangerous hours when she woke up alone and so very hungry.