Page 12 of Contractually Wed

Jia flushed at the idea of the entire flight knowing what they were up to, and when dampness bloomed between her thighs, she flushed a little more. God, a one-word command from him and she was melting like an ice cream cone on a summer day.

You told yourself you’d enjoy this, remember, a voice whispered and she scoffed. She had done that. Out of this whole miserable deal—for which one party hated her and the other didn’t trust her—hot, fun sex with the sexiest man she’d ever known was the one highlight she’d imagined could happen.

Theory was one thing and reality a whole other.

She was trembling by the time he closed the privacy curtains on them. What if she didn’t please him? What if he was...?

“Take off your clothes,” he said, once they were inside the luxurious rear cabin.

“What?” she said, whispering the word past the deafening pounding in her ears.

“Your clothes, I want them off. Do you need help?”

A sliver of mockery had crept into his voice and it made her spine straighten. That little twitch at the corner of his mouth...it reduced him to earthly dimension, made him look deceptively adorable.

Rolling her shoulders back in a conscious movement, Jia shook her head. “No, I don’t.”

She licked her lips, searching for a reason to ask for the lights to be dimmed or to just put this off for now. The twinkle in his eyes said he was expecting her to do just that and damned if she was going to let him box her like that.

“I thought you were very excited for all the sex we were going to have,” he added, sitting down at the edge of the bed and loosely caging her between his legs. With his hands pressing into the bed, head tilted up, he looked like an emperor assessing his latest gift. “Don’t tell me all of that was a pretense to trap me.”

Jia’s heart gave a thud against her rib cage. “Of course not,” she said, swallowing past a swarm of butterflies in her throat. It was so much easier to make bold statements than actually be bold in front of him in such an intimate setting. “But I was expecting some foreplay at least.”

“My eyes on you won’t turn you on?”

Heat streaked her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she said, opting not to lie.

“You’re of the generation that likes to try everything,ne? So let’s see if stripping for me does anything for you.”

Her mouth twitched at how cleverly he used her own words against her. She played with the lacy hem of her tank top, without meaning to be coy. His gaze slid there and away. “And you? Ordering me around turns you on?”

He grinned then, and somehow it felt more real than anything she’d seen in his expressions. As if she’d caught him by surprise once again and he liked that. A lot. “Not simply ordering you, Jia. But seeing you fight the instinct to give in definitely turns me on. It’s quite...alluring.”

How easily he read her...

He raised a brow, his arctic gray eyes sparkling. “But I don’t want to develop a reputation as a miserly husband. I’ll give you as much foreplay as you need, if this doesn’t work.”

Jia took her blouse off and then shimmied out of her jeans, which was quite the feat with him looking on, because they were tight and she wasn’t full of grace, like him. She stood in front of him in a strapless bra that pushed her small breasts up and matching panties in blush pink, her pulse going haywire all through her body. His gazed moved over her like some kind of laser pointer, with such leisure that she felt swirls of heat everywhere it landed.

A tiny flare of heat in his eyes when it stayed on her tattoos—her half sleeve with a bird flying out of a cage, the one on her lower belly, right above her pubic bone, of a heart, was the only sign that he liked what he saw.

Goose bumps erupted on her skin.

“Turn around,” he said, packing a catch and a command, in just those two words.

She wished she didn’t like how it pinged over her skin, how it made dampness bloom between her thighs. But God help her, she did. She liked the little lick of heat in his eyes, how his gaze lingered over her tattoos, the way the space around him seemed to crackle with tension. She even liked the taut set of his shoulders as if he was stopping himself from pouncing on her.

Pounce away, she wanted to say, but the words never left her throat.

When she didn’t budge, he did a rotating motion with his index finger, his nostrils flaring.

Legs trembling, she turned. When his fingers landed on her hip bones, and he gently tugged her back, she thought she might faint at the dizzy pleasure that claimed her. His warm breath coasted over her back in arousing trails. She could feel his gaze run up every dip and curve of her flesh, up the long, toned length of her legs to her buttocks barely covered in pink panties, lingering on the butterfly tattoo over her lower back and then up toward her shoulder blades where she had a small one of a starling. His scrutiny was thorough and intense enough that her breath shallowed out.

Slowly, she turned back, her own skin feeling two sizes too tight, anticipation inflating her chest.

Another sweep from beneath his lashes and then he gave her a nod. When she met his gaze, whatever desire she’d imagined seemed to have melted away, leaving a cold indifference. “Glad to know you aren’t hurt anywhere else.”

“What?” she murmured inanely, past the pinprick of hurt ensnaring all her senses. Then goose bumps rolled all over her bare skin. Her arms shook as she managed to stop herself from wrapping her arms around herself. She was not ashamed, of her body or of the desire she felt for him.

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