Page 48 of A Diamond for My Forbidden Bride

‘I know I don’t need to.’ His lips brushed over mine. ‘But I want to.’

So I let him and, when he found some protection in the top drawer of his desk and dealt with it, sliding inside me at last, all I felt was relief.

I wound my legs around his lean waist and put my arms around his neck, clinging on to him as he moved, a hard, driving rhythm that had me gasping against his mouth. He took me hard and fierce, and it didn’t take long before the pleasure inside me burst apart and there were cascading stars everywhere.

‘Val,’ I whispered against his neck as I shuddered in his arms. ‘Oh, Val...’

And, whether I’d said it just for the joy of saying his name, or whether it was a prayer, a request for more or something else, I didn’t know.

But it felt as if something had shifted inside me, something momentous.

As if all the barriers had gone and the two halves of my soul had finally become one.

Because of him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Valentin

WEDECIDEDTOgive ourselves a week.

A week of nothing but long, leisurely dinners on the end of the jetty and lazing about on sun-loungers, diving into the sea when we got too hot. I organised a couple of trips in my yacht, sightseeing around the islands and having picnic lunches on pristine, white sandy beaches.

We talked a lot, catching up on the changes in each other’s lives and what we’d been doing for the past fifteen years. I gave her the brutal truth about some of the darker moments in my past, while she confided in me the doubt she had that the Wintergreen board would ever accept her.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. We had a minor argument when I tried to insist on no sex, since our chemistry was a powerful force and I couldn’t trust myself not to take advantage of it every chance I got. But then she said I was perfectly welcome to use it against her, if she could also use it against me.

Naturally enough, that was an argument that ended in bed, both of us using each other to our mutual satisfaction. And after that, since it was clearly pointless for me to insist otherwise, she’d joined me in my bed every night and we’d explored each other in other ways.

And as the days passed a strange feeling grew in me...something unfamiliar that I couldn’t quite describe. Until one day I was watching her swim, her body tanned golden by the sun, and she came up out of the water, naked and dripping wet, and she smiled at me as if I was the best thing she’d seen all day.

And then I realised what the feeling was. Happiness.

It wasn’t all sunbathing and sex, of course. We had to deal with Constantine. Olivia had tried contacting him to talk to him, but he remained stubbornly off-grid, so I tried too.

It was frustrating, especially in combination with my continued lack of progress with his lawyers. The will was clear, though. I was the eldest, and therefore everything came to me, which would make removing him as CEO easy.

However, his lawyers continued to stone-wall my efforts to take control. It was true that my former deceased status represented some legal challenges, but I was determined. The company would be mine and Constantine removed for his own good and that of his staff.

Since Constantine wouldn’t answer his phone, and my staff was coming up against a lot of dead ends—apparently no one knew where he’d gone—I had to settle for leaving a message on his voicemail, informing him that he was no longer engaged. Olivia and I had decided in one of our talks that, while we weren’t quite at marriage yet, she definitely didn’t want to remain engaged to him.

We’d discussed what alternatives she could use to help pay Wintergreen’s debts that wouldn’t involve her giving up her power and, while I had offered some no-strings financial help, I also made it clear she didn’t have to take it.

Even though a part of me was desperate to find a way to make her. Yes, my ability to compromise and not take control all the time was still a work in progress.

Then, just as a week had passed, I was supervising deliveries of certain items from the seaplane on the jetty when my phone vibrated.

Staff were carrying bags and boxes from the plane, and I waved them in the direction of the villa as I pulled my phone out of my pocket. I didn’t bother looking at the screen to see who it was, hitting the ‘answer’ button automatically.

‘Valentin,’ a deep, cold voice said.

My entire body tightened, a pulse of adrenaline going through me.

Constantine.

‘Con,’ I said, keeping it casual. ‘Thought you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.’

‘No.’

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