Page 11 of Bound by a One-Night Vow

‘I’m not living with you.’ She flung away to the other side of the room, spinning back around to glare at him. ‘You planned this, didn’t you? You tricked me into marrying you and now you’re insisting on ridiculous living arrangements. I won’t do it. I won’t live with you.’

‘I said under the same roof, not in the same bed,’ Andrea said with measured cool. ‘But if you change your mind I’m more than willing to see to your needs.’ What are you doing? But he didn’t want to listen to the voice of his conscience. His conscience could get the hell out of his head. He wanted Izzy and she wanted him. He could feel her desire for him like a current in the air. The same current that was moving through his body in ripples and tingles that left no part of him unaffected.

Her cheeks were fire-engine red, her hands in tight fists by her sides. ‘I will not change my mind. I loathe you. You disgust me.’

‘That wasn’t the message I was getting when you were kissing me back at the celebrant’s office.’

Her eyes flashed with vivid blue venom. ‘You kissed me.’

‘You asked for it, remember? You practically begged me to—’

She picked up a scatter cushion and threw it at him but it missed and knocked over a photo frame instead. Andrea bent down to pick up the cushion and the frame, setting the frame on the lamp table and then placing the cushion back on the sofa with measured calm. ‘Rule number one. No violence. Ever. Not under any circumstances.’

Her expression was a road map of resentment. ‘You provoked me.’

‘Doesn’t matter. No amount of provocation makes it acceptable to throw something at someone, even if it’s just a cushion. You have the same assurance from me. You’re entitled to feel safe at all times with me. I give you that promise.’

She began to chew at her lower lip, glancing at him from beneath lowered lashes. ‘Okay...but I still don’t want to live with you.’

‘That is not negotiable, I’m afraid,’ Andrea said. ‘I’ll send packers to collect your things in the morning. We will spend the night in my hotel in Mayfair. Tomorrow we will fly to my villa in Positano in Italy.’

‘But what about my lease here?’ Her brow was troubled with a frown. ‘I’ll have to pay the rent even if I’m not here because my flatmate—’

‘I’ll settle it with your landlord and your flatmate.’

‘What about my job?’

‘You can hand in your notice tomorrow and concentrate on your studies instead. You’ll have no need to work unless you particularly want to. Your full inheritance won’t be available until the six months is up but, along with the sum your father stipulated you receive upon your marriage, I’ll pay you an allowance in the meantime, a generous one, so you’ll want for nothing.’

Her eyes flashed another round of fire at him. ‘Except my freedom.’

‘Isabella.’ Andrea released a long-suffering sigh. ‘Your future freedom depends on you abiding by the terms of your father’s will. I’m making that possible for you so the least you can do is be grateful.’

Her plump lips thinned to a sneer. ‘Would you like me to drop to my knees in front of you and demonstrate my gratitude right now?’

Andrea’s groin twitched at the sultry challenge in her eyes. He considered calling her bluff. He could think of nothing he wanted more than to have his lust for her satisfied by her lush mouth and hot little tongue. Had he ever wanted a woman more than this one? She stirred in him the most primal urges—urges he could only just control when he was around her. His desire for her was growing, swelling, expanding in his blood and rocketing through his body like a virulent virus. He was hot for her. There wasn’t a part of his body that didn’t want her to crawl all over it and suck and lick and stroke and, yes, even to bite.

‘Pack an overnight bag,’ he said, doing everything in his power to keep his gaze away from her mouth. ‘I’ll wait in the cab.’

* * *

Izzy stuffed a few things in a bag with such anger barrelling through her system she thought the top of her head would explode. How had she allowed herself to be so blindsided by Andrea? She’d foolishly assumed they would marry and that would be it. He would go one way and she would go the other.

But no.

He wanted a wife. It suited him to have a wife. But why her? She was the most unsuitable wife in London. You didn’t have to look too far back online to see some of the things that had been reported about her. Not all of them true, but ‘once a tart, always a tart’ as far as the press and the public were concerned.

Izzy hadn’t done herself any favours in that regard. Deliberately inciting negative press, making her nights out clubbing look far more incriminating than they were. She had relished the shame it had brought to her father’s door. She had enjoyed every cringeworthy second of her payback for all the disappointment and hurt and despair he’d inflicted.

But she hadn’t been mature enough back then to realise the shame would stick like mud on her door far longer than it would on his. She couldn’t apply for a job these days without someone finding an oftentimes ambiguous but no less damning shot of her on social media.

Once that stuff was online it was always online.

Why had Andrea waited until now to force her hand? Why not approach her three months ago? Why leave it until the midnight hour when all her other options were gone?

Not that she’d had any other options. And, truth be told, she hadn’t looked as hard as she should have to find a husband. She’d only just enrolled in her course and juggling work and study had been more than enough to handle. She’d been so angry at the way her father had engineered things that she’d wasted two months seething. And then the sick, sinking feeling every time she thought about finding a man to marry her had made it impossible to do much other than search through the list of contacts on her phone and break out into a prickly sweat because no one was suitable or, even if they had been, they would never have been agreeable.

But, strangely, Andrea Vaccaro was agreeable. More than agreeable. He’d made it all but impossible for her to say no. He’d made sure she wouldn’t be able to say no. He’d covered all the bases, tied up all the loose ends, ensnaring her so cleverly in his web like a spider did an unsuspecting fly. That self-congratulatory glint in his eyes at the ceremony proved how much he was enjoying having her in his power. Grrr. Under his command.

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