Ivy shook her head. “It would never work.”
“Of course it would.” Impatience roughened his voice. “Look at what we already have in common. A child we both love.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I want my son,” he said bluntly. “And I intend to have him. You can become my wife and his mother—or I’ll take him from you. I don’t want to hurt you but if I must, I will.”
He was right, never mind all her pie-in-the-sky scheming this morning. Damian would win in a custody battle, even if she told the court her secret. He was the prince of a respected royal house. She was nobody.
Worse than nobody.
“What will it be? A courtroom? Or marriage?”
Ivy bowed her head, took a steadying breath, then looked up and met Damian’s eyes.
“I can’t marry you, Damian, even if—even if I wanted to. The thing is—the thing is—”
“For God’s sake, what?”
“I don’t like…” Her voice fell to a shaky whisper. “I don’t like sex.”
She didn’t know what reaction she’d expected. Laughter? Anger? Disbelief? Surely not his sudden stillness. The muscle, knotting in his jaw. The way he looked at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time.
“You don’t like—”
“No.”
“Is that why you stopped me the other night?”
Ivy nodded. She would never tell him everything but he was entitled, at least, to know this.
He nodded, too. Then he got out of the Jeep, opened her door, drew her gently to her feet and into his arms.
“It’s late,” he said gruffly. “Much too late an hour of the night for truths and secrets like this. I’m going to take you to your room and put you to bed.”
He believed her. She was stunned. Men who came on to her, who called her frigid when she turned them away, never did.
He lifted her into his arms and she let him do it, loving the strength of his embrace, the warmth of his body, wishing with all her heart that things were different. That she was different.
And realized, too late, that the door
he shouldered open, the bed he brought her to, was not hers.
It was his.
She began to protest. He silenced her with a kiss that left her breathless.
CHAPTER NINE
MOONLIGHT washed through the French doors and lit Ivy in its creamy spill.
Damian wanted to see her face but when he tried to lift her chin, she shook her head.
Was it true? Did this stunning, sensual woman dislike sex?
Earlier in the day, sitting on a too-small sofa in one of the boutiques, trying not to look as conspicuous as he felt, trying, as well, to figure out how in hell he’d gotten himself into this because he’d never, not once in his life, gone shopping with a woman—sitting there, arms folded, while Ivy changed into a dress in the fitting room, the salesclerk had bent down and whispered how flattered the shop was to have Ivy Madison as a customer.
Damian had frowned. How did the clerk know Ivy? Then he’d happened to glance at a glossy magazine on a table beside him and there was Ivy, smiling seductively from the cover.
In the days since she’d walked into his life, he’d thought of her as a lot of different things, all the way from scam artist to mother of his child. And, yes, gorgeous, too.
What man wouldn’t notice that?