Page 26 of The Billionaire's Accidental Legacy

She had been like liquid fire in his hands. And she’d begged for everything. And he had given it. Over and over again.

He had left no part of her without his brand. She might have been a virgin when she came to his bed, but she had left with no more firsts to be given. They all belonged to him.

Even now, sitting there thinking of it he grew hard.

Even now, she was the only thing that made him feel.

And that was a strange thing, given he had not managed to find excitement for a woman standing right in front of him in the months since.

This was, without a doubt, the longest stretch of celibacy he’d ever endured.

And he had certainly never imagined that he would endure it simply because of his own lack of interest.

But maybe that was to do with the death of his father.

The way it hadn’t fixed the cracks inside him. The way he wasn’t restored, and everything from the past was still past.

Nothing was changed.

He sat there in his office, a billionaire in his own right, free of the man who’d poisoned him, and asked himself what the hell he had expected.

That he was fixable? Now, after all this time?

He knew better than that.

Or perhaps he hadn’t.

Perhaps somewhere inside him a scared little boy had thought he was slaying a dragon, when in reality a bastard of a human being had died and his death didn’t erase the scars he’d left with his existence.

Idly, he found himself looking up the articles on when she had won the estate.

It had been quite the headline. Tabloid fodder, to be sure, but that was exactly what he’d wanted it to be.

Jessica Lockwood. Kincaid estate.

But what he saw was not what he had expected. As he sat there in his gleaming office, he felt fire ignite in his chest.

There was a brand-new article. Just from yesterday.

And there she was. His beauty. Jessie. Round with a pregnancy.

He curled his fingers into fists. It had to be his baby. It had to be.

They’d made love countless times that night, and he knew that there had been a point when desire had taken over everything, and condoms had become an afterthought.

Because she had ruined him.

Changed him.

She had made him into a man who didn’t care about consequences or anything that happened beyond that night.

Was he more than the playboy that night—a man given over to hedonism without a care for how it impacted anyone?

Or less? A man who felt it down deep, who wanted it, needed it. Who wasn’t easily succumbing to temptation for the hell of it, but who had been beyond himself in the moment. Beyond anything but the need he felt for it.

And it had felt incredible.

But there was the consequence of incredible. Right there in front of him. A magazine article that could not be denied.

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