Page 6 of Cinderella's Fling with the Off-Limits Billionaire

She blinked away, the compliment one she rarely welcomed. “The carpet,” she reminded him, wondering at her urge to say something else back to him. Like, ‘you are too’.

“You must get told that all the time.”

Her smile was wry. She didn’t answer. If she told him that yes, she was, it would run the risk of sounding immodest. What she wanted to say to him was that she was sick of hearing it. Sick of the way her looks had ruined her life. It was one of the first things Jay had said to her, something he’d never been able to stop saying to her, something that had eventually come to be like a form of torture for him. He had become so convinced that she was being hit on by all and sundry that he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. He’d hated that men looked when she walked down the street, hated that she got flirted with by random guys in coffee shops. His jealousy had become the bane of her life.

“But you don’t like it.”

Her eyes zipped back to Leandro’s. “How do you know that?”

“You’re very beautiful and very expressive. Your eyes are telling me everything you wish to keep secret.”

“Everything?” She repeated, in a panic. Her pulse skyrocketed at the very idea that this guy might be able to see just how hard she was finding it to concentrate on anything other than his stunningly symmetrical face, his strong, masculine body.

“Everything,” he growled, and her heart skipped a beat. Her cheeks flushed pink.

“The carpet,” she whispered, like an incantation, a plea to return to sanity and common sense.

“Screw the carpet,” he muttered, and then he was leaning all the way forward, his lips brushing hers in the simplest, smallest gesture of an inquiry. Not a kiss, so much as a question: may I kiss you?

The answer was no. Or it should have been no. He was a guest. An expensive, handsome, successful, rich guest, and it was completely forbidden for Skye to be up here getting kissed by him. Completely forbidden. Plus, she could taste whisky and wine on his breath. He’d obviously been drinking, but she hadn’t. He had an excuse, she didn’t.

Not to mention, Skye didn’t do things like this. Skye didn’t let random men kiss her. She was so guarded with this stuff, so careful. That had been true even before Jay, but afterwards, she’d become so much more careful. Because now she had Harper to think about, and Jay’s ever-present threat that he’d sue for custody if he thought she was seeing someone else.

He'd done everything he could to make sure that his control over her life continued, despite the fact they’d broken up more than two years earlier.

She needed to say no.

But her mind and body were in a state of total disconnect. Something had snapped inside of her, and she was struggling to remember anything of who she was and what she wanted.

“Skye?” His voice was imperious. Demanding. It sent hot shivers down her spine. Her eyes widened. It was impossible to mistake what he was asking.

Think of your job. Your debt. Your pride.

But something wild and hungry was spinning inside of Skye. The last man to kiss her had been Jay. She shuddered to remember the way she’d hated that, his thick lips against hers, his kisses had become something she’d dreaded. He’d controlled so much of her life, and she’d let him, and she was still letting him call the shots.

Well, what if she didn’t? What if right here, right now, she let this guest kiss her properly. Only she would know, but it would bring her one step closer to removing Jay’s power over her. Her breath snagged in her throat a little and she nodded once, a quick, urgent gesture, because having made this decision, she wanted him to kiss her before she lost her nerve completely.

And she didn’t need to ask twice. On the hint of a groan, he brought himself closer again, this time, kissing her in a way that was far more answer than question, his lips mashing to hers as his tongue pressed into her mouth, and his body came further forward, powerful, just as she’d known it would be. She tasted wine in his mouth and briefly wondered if he’d had too much to drink for her to be doing this, but he didn’t seem drunk. He just tasted wonderfully of spices and fruit, and when he moved his body again, she did likewise, shifting first to kneel fully, their upper bodies entwined and then, at his subtle shifting, repositioning her legs so she could flop backwards onto the carpet, never once breaking the kiss.

She’d thought yawning was unprofessional. Well, this was something else. And then, she did it. She pulled away just enough to say, “No one can know about this.”

Guilt flushed through her. Because nothing said ‘something you won’t regret’ like a plea for secrecy.

“No problems,” he muttered, kissing her once more, this time, his whole body came down on hers, so he was all hard planes and too-bigness against her soft curves, his hands positioned on either side of her at first before one hand moved to her hips, his fingers fanned wide as he connected with her.

She shivered, a tingle of longing running over her body. The kiss felt like something dangerous and explosive, needs she couldn’t explain and had never really known seemed to be completely overtaking her.

The last time she’d been with Jay had been the night Harper had been conceived. She knew because for a long time before and a long time after, she’d resisted sleeping with him. She’d known even then that they were breaking up. But that weekend had been like a crack into the past, his smiles like something from the beginning of their relationship, and the hope she’d nurtured that maybe, just maybe, he’d changed, had ended up with Skye letting her guard down. They’d had sex. He hadn’t changed. And worse, she’d ended up pregnant.

Oh, she didn’t regret Harper. Not for one single, tiny second. How could she? But Skye wasn’t the only one who’d realized things between them were all but over. Jay had known it too, and he’d wanted it not to be the case. So much so, she was almost certain he’d screwed with her birth control. She didn’t know how, but she didn’t buy his explanation that ‘these things happened’. Going from the way he’d arranged every aspect of her life to keep her under his control, it just made sense that he’d done that too.

Had he thought it would make her stay?

He’d been wrong.

So wrong.

The idea of bringing a child into his orbit had been the trigger that had finally forced her to leave. She’d put up with so much—too much—but no way could she put a child through his sadistic, bullying, emotionally manipulative BS.

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