Page 33 of The Billionaire's Seduction Revenge

She could hardly remember what she’d said and what he was replying to; Emma concentrated to bring her focus back to their conversation.

“We hardly know each other,” she pointed out.

“Don’t we?” Beneath the table, his hand touched her leg gently and she startled, shivered, eyes hooking to his, hanging there because there was nowhere else she wanted to look. The magnetism of his face almost overpowered Emma.

“That’s just sex,” she whispered.

His lips twisted in an enigmatic smile. “It’s one of the most intimate things two people can do together. Does keeping secrets from me serve any purpose?”

She shook her head slowly, confused and stirred up. He was right, but somehow this also seemed wrong. It felt like a surrendering of something important, something valuable to Emma’s sense of self-preservation.

“Do you share all of your inner-most thoughts with every woman you sleep with?”

His expression gave nothing away and his eyes continued to bore into hers for several beats before he answered. “I don’t make a habit of keeping secrets from anyone,” he said eventually.

“Nor do you go out of your way to share everything that goes on in your mind,” she persisted.

“No,” he responded with a shrug. “I’m rarely asked to reveal anything of importance. Generally, the women I’m with aren’t interested in my inner-workings.”

Emma tilted her head to the side. “So you generally have superficial relationships?”

“Didn’t we agree not to discuss past lovers?”

She waved a hand through the air. “I’m not talking about specifics,” she said. “I just mean generally. What do you usually want from a partner?”

“I like things—all things—to be black and white,” he said quietly. “I like to know where I stand, and I like the women I see to have the same insights.”

“That seems fair,” she murmured. “Just like how we understand each other now.”

“There are many things about you I don’t understand,” he corrected softly. “But I know what you want from me—and what you don’t.”

“You still don’t trust me,” she challenged.

Vasilios’s nostrils flared when he breathed out. “I no longer believe you are sleeping with my grandfather.”

“Gee, great. Thanks so much,” she couldn’t help responding acerbically. “I’m so delighted you’ve let me off the hook there.”

“With his past, you cannot blame me for going there.”

“His past has nothing to do with me.”

“Easier to believe now that I know you a little better.”

She didn’t respond. That his grandfather had been a womaniser wasn’t in dispute, but none of that was Emma’s business.

“I didn’t come here hoping to convince you that your grandfather is perfect. But there’s nothing going on between us and never has been—never will be.”

His eyes flared to hers. “I know that now,” he said with quiet heat.

At first, Emma took the words at face value, but as the waitress returned to clear their plates, an unpleasant suspicion occurred to her, an idea she found impossible to let go of.

“Vasilios?”

He arched a dark brow.

“Tell me you didn’t have sex with me because you wanted—,”

He topped up their champagne flutes, not finishing her sentence for her. Eventually, he looked at Emma’s face.

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