Page 4 of Contractually Wed

“What do you want?” he said, wanting nothing more than to get rid of her.

“I came here to make you a proposal.”

“About?” he said, his heart suddenly pounding in his chest as if he were once again standing in line for an interview as a junior draftsman in a big architecture firm, nothing but dreams and goals in his wallet.

“An exchange of sorts. You release my sister from your engagement in return for...”

He waited, knowing that the flash of panic in her eyes was all too real. And yet like a predator hungry for a slice of flesh—her flesh—some unknown thing in his stomach grew. It wanted to eat up all her fear and taste the wildness writhing beneath. It wanted to pull away all that attitude, all those things she covered her skin in and reveal the real her to his gaze.

Seconds piled into minutes and the tip of her tongue flicked out to lick her wide lower lip. “In return for me,” she said, her chest rising and falling. “I came here to sell you on the idea that I would make a far better wife to you than my sister.” A harsh, self-deprecating laugh escaped her lips. “I broke into this maximum-security gilded cage, risked another woman’s livelihood, risked more than your usual contempt, to sell myself to the devil. That’s my evil plan.”

CHAPTER TWO

CALLINGHIMTHEdevil was probably not the best way to convince Apollo Galanis that she was a better prospect than her sister but then when had Jia’s plans ever gone according to script? Her entire life, including her conception into this world, had been ruled by Murphy’s Law.

This brilliant scheme to impress her sister’s fiancé with her smarts and cunning and guts had looked different in her head. He was a ruthless, ambitious billionaire who was determined to cut her father’s small architecture firm into pieces. She’d convinced herself that a man like that would appreciate her taking this initiative.

Of course, she’d fallen asleep in his favorite lounger. And now as he watched her with those intense gray eyes, she realized what she’d left out in her calculations and it was a biggie.

Apollo Galanis was not some manageable, ordinary man she kept reducing him to in her head. It was both delusional and dangerous.

There had been this...sparkling, tense energy between them from the first moment. She’d pretended to be her sister, Rina, and chatted away about her intense and scorching sex life, hoping to put him off, while he had known that she wasn’t Rina and played along.

At the end, after she’d made a flaming fool of herself by comprehensively describing the foursome she’d just walked out of, his mouth had twitched and her gaze had gone to the sudden, blinding beauty of his lips and he’d caught her watching and that had been that.

Since then, as much as Jia had tried to fill the space between them with her loathing of him and he with his contempt for her, there had been something more volatile in the mix. Something she had refused to acknowledge in the beginning, something that had kept her awake later, the very something that had finally led to this madcap plan. That the basis of her proposal was “this energy” between them made her face and neck hot, even with her skin damp and sticky.

At least, he hadn’t laughed at her.

But as the seconds and his silence stretched, being laughed at felt better than his scrutiny.

“Show me your skills, then. Sell yourself to me,” he said, walking away.

Jia blinked as bright lights came on, her body suddenly flush with humming energy, her brain chugging along painfully slow to the fact that he wasn’t throwing her out.

When she turned around, he was sitting on the white leather couch, one arm spread out over the back of it, one leg over the other, his expression one of smooth, wicked humor that Jia wanted to slap off his face. He looked like he was the lord of something,everything, and she, a poor peasant come to present her pathetic case.

“I’m waiting. Clearly, you think yourself a better candidate than your sister. Sell me on it.”

If his gaze had moved down her neck in that condescending way of his, that told her she was nothing but amusing entertainment, she might have lost it. Instead, he looked at her with that conviction that nothing,nothing, in the world could convince him to take her on.

And that...that arrogance filled her with renewed resolve. All her life, she had known little kindness and love and the little she had, had come from her sister. She’d do anything to stop Rina’s ruin at his hands. Even if it meant courting her own.

“My sister is gentle, kind and...in love with our ex-con chauffeur. As heartless as you are, I’m assuming you would hate a woman whose affections for you are in doubt.”

“Your sister’s too nice to cheat on me once we’re married and too gentle, just like you said, to give her marriage vows anything but full commitment. As for affections, those are fickle and I have no use for them.”

Jia’s mouth fell open.

“That’s what you based this whole escapade on?” he said, mouth twitching.

“Partly, yes,” Jia said, refusing to let him get to her. “I mean, I knew you were a ruthless, unemotional robot but hearing the proof from your own mouth...” She made a show of ticking off an item on her imaginary checklist. “I also took a little nice detour down your dating history on the good old web and from all the women you’ve dated—kudos to the diversity in your playing ground BTW—it’s clear—”

“BTW?”

“By the way,” she said, sighing. “Moving on, it’s clear that you like bold, adventurous, dare I say, even ballsy women for your...partners. Rina’s nothing like them. She won’t even fight back if you...”

“Careful, Ms. Shetty. Just because I let you insult me doesn’t mean you can attribute weaknesses to my character.”

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