Chapter Five #3
He frowned. This was not going as he thought it would.
Of course, he’d not intended to bother with a prenup because there wouldn’t, in fact, be a marriage.
His plan was to leave her at the altar, to expose her as a gold-digger, and use her as a deterrent to anyone in future attempting to fleece him in such a way.
He considered those who would abuse the finer, softer feelings for financial purposes the highest of criminals.
And as such, they deserved swift and harsh judgement.
But this seemed to suggest that she wasn’t after his money?
As for the no sex rule, that he had expected. She had said as much before. Personally, he’d thought the na?ve virgin shtick a bit much, but she was playing her game and he was playing his. Returning to the more pressing matter, he shook his head decisively.
‘I don’t see a need for a prenup,’ he announced.
She blinked. ‘ I would like one,’ she said, a hint of steel unexpected, but welcome in her tone.
Really?
‘Can I ask why?’ he probed.
She opened her mouth, and closed it again. She really did have a very pretty mouth.
‘Well, so that you know I don’t want you for your money,’ she said with a little frown.
He let loose the laugh that had built in his chest.
‘Woman have wanted me for a lot of things, cara . Money is only one of them.’
Once again she blushed and his respect for her art, her craft , only increased.
‘But okay, I will have my lawyer draw up a prenup,’ he agreed. It would be a waste of his money and the other man’s time, but if it would make her happy, then he would do it.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘So, now that we have that out of the way, may I continue?’ he asked.
Her eyes widened with something like an apology as she nodded, and widened her eyes even more when he got back on to his knee.
Really, this was a formality on the way for him to get her where he wanted her—at the top of the aisle, but he waited until her curacao-coloured gaze landed on his before delivering the speech he had prepared.
‘Erin Carter. Meeting you has been truly unexpected and utterly remarkable to a man like me who was just beginning to feel that he had seen all there was to see.’ Of the lengths that some people would go to , he mentally added with a growl.
‘You have shown me that there is so much more beauty to see in the world,’ he continued, and caused me to wonder if there is anything real behind the mask you wear so carefully .
‘I am utterly, and completely enchanted,’ by the skills of your deception .
‘I would have you by my side until the very end,’ he said, of the aisle, at which point you will find yourself unceremoniously dumped and you will be removed from my life with nothing but the clothes you came in with .
‘I will give you your heart’s desire,’ he swore, when hell freezes over .
His internal accompaniment seemed all the more perfect with the look of ecstatic happiness painted across her delicate features. He rose from the floor and drew her to him, his index finger lifting her chin slightly so that he could look deep into her eyes.
‘You would make me the happiest man in the world,’ he said, prising the box open and holding it up to her, ‘if you would just say yes .’
She blinked, her gaze on his, holding it, and for a single, strange, suspended heartbeat, he thought that perhaps she might say no.
Was startled, in fact, to discover the leap of his own heart, the thud of his own pulse as he wanted it, wanted her to say ‘yes’ more than he could remember wanting something in a very long time.
‘Oh, Enzo. Yes! Yes, absolutely, yes,’ she cried, reaching for him.
He swallowed. Of course they had to kiss.
And no, the Playboy of Amalfi was most categorically not scared of a silly little thing like a kiss.
Besides, he was forewarned now, and very much over whatever hormone-driven haze had ridden him so hard in Positano.
So when he pulled her into his arms and took her mouth with his he was ready for her, he told himself.
But when her lips softened beneath his, hesitantly opening for him, offering him hints of honey and oranges that lulled him into a false sense of security, he struggled to hold onto his restraint.
The feel of her beneath him, welcoming him, breathed life into the wildfire that had been momentarily banked and he was caught in a backdraft of lust like he’d never experienced before.
Her fingers, pressing against his chest, tensed and for a moment he thought she might push him away, as if she too were struggling with the same burning inferno.
Until they unfurled and sank against his heart, a sensual surrender of sorts, far less X-rated than what he was used to, but no less heady.
Good god, she’d been holding back on him. The power she had. If she only knew, he would have succumbed far more quickly than this.
But it didn’t strike him until much later, how strange it was that Rin—a gold-digger hell-bent on taking him for every penny he owned—didn’t even look at the five-carat pink diamond solitaire engagement ring.
Not once.