A Hint of Scandal

She stood up on her toes and hugged him for all she was worth. She peppered kisses over his granite jaw, touching him greedily, wishing she could take some of his pain away. His muscles shifted and shuddered beneath her hands, the emotion in him a minefield.

Alexander tugged Olivia to him and crushed her mouth. He didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to feel and it seemed only the taste of her could numb him, could close the gaping void he felt inside.

He didn’t let her breathe. His hands in her hair, he kissed, nipped, bit her mouth until there was no more breath left in him, until he could feel nothing but the taste of her. But she didn’t back off. She gave as good as she got, her ragged breathing a soothing sound to his ears. He laughed against her throat, as she ripped his shirt open, the buttons flying around them.

Olivia sighed. His skin felt like velvet coating hard rock to her touch, the muscles shifting and shuddering under her hands. She moved her hands lower and cupped him through his trousers, her mouth drying up.

He jerked back, his features set into stone. He leaned her forehead against hers and smiled. “God, it’s going to kill me to stop this now, Liv, but I have to. I have to make sure Emily’s okay. Wait up for me, okay?”

Olivia nodded, trying to even her breathing. She ran her hands over his chest again before pulling his shirt together. There was such an intimacy around the simple act that it cut through the sensual haze around her, straight to the matter that had her heart thumping. What were they doing? She swallowed and locked the question inside. “Maybe I could talk to Emily. She’ll be angry with you, in fact, she’ll hate you right now. I can talk to her and convince her that —”

“No,” he said, his mouth wreaking havoc over her neck. “Don’t interfere in this. Don’t talk to Emily about Isabella, or yourself. In fact, I would appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to Emily at all. I’m already taking a big risk by—” He licked where her pulse fluttered and she held on to him to stay upright. Risk? Thinking became hard when he touched her. “I can’t risk anything else going wrong on top of Kim’s news.”

“I understand that but—”

“No, Liv. You need to stay out of this. If we want to see this crazy thing between us through, I need you to behave.”

She flinched and stepped back. “Or what? You won’t screw me?” Hurt seethed and boiled inside her, her stomach falling. “This is a first even for me, conditional sex.”

Color swam into those razor sharp cheeks. “Don’t cheapen it. That’s not what I meant.”

“No?”

A hard glint appeared in his eyes. “You have to know it can be nothing more than a fling, Liv, whatever this is between us.”

“No, I don’t know that. ‘No casual sex for Alexander King.’ Wasn’t that the headline when they voted you the perfect man? Every woman you dated, you did because you thought she could be the perfect woman, you had an equal relationship with them. Whereas with me, it seems you have automatically lowered your standards. Why’s that, I wonder?”

He grabbed her and forced her to look into his blue eyes, scorching her with his gaze. “This is different. I’ve never done anything like—”

“Of course it is. Because I’m not good enough for anything other than sex and the pretense that I’m Kim, right?”

She tried to push him off but he didn’t let her. “That’s not what I think,” he said hoarsely.

His grip on her was relentless until she gave up the fight and sagged against him, tears pooling in her eyes. Her gut felt as if it was turning on itself. “What were you thinking? Have me pretend to be Kim and screw me on the side until you had Emily’s custody and then go looking for another perfect woman?”

His utter silence cut her open like a whiplash. Her chest hurt with every breath.

“You really are a heartless bastard. Only I forgot that for a while.” She scrubbed her cheeks bitterly. “You know what? I’m actually going to take your advice. Take control and walk away. Because of all the mistakes I’ve made in my life, you would be the worst.”

Alexander stood stunned as Olivia walked away, her spine ramrod straight. The raw pain in her eyes knocked the breath out of him, rendering him silent.

Would he have touched her, kissed her, if he had known that beneath that self-sufficiency, that defiant determination, Olivia was hurting? Was she right? Had he broken his own rules because somehow he had assumed that Olivia didn’t deserve better?