Page 8 of Marriage Bargain With Her Brazilian Boss (Billion-Dollar Fairy Tales)

And yet now, it felt as if she’d been sleeping like one of those princesses in the fairy tales. Hiding behind computer fandoms. Letting life pass her by.

“Princesa...look at me.”

She looked up, every cell in her immediately responding to his tone. The impact of those thickly lashed deep-set eyes hit her hard. A sharp nose, rugged mouth...there was a sensuousness to him that drew her like no other man could.

Could he see he was the reason she was miserable? Could he hear the thundering of her heart when he stood so close? Could he feel the prickle of heat across her skin when he focused all that energy on her?

Standing this close to him, she could see the imperfections in his face too. She catalogued them, as if they’d help puncture her awareness of him.

The three-inch-long scar that cut across his upper lip that he’d told her he’d acquired in a fight with his older brother as unruly teenagers. The crooked tilt of his lips to one side when he smiled. The small nick under his jaw, which told her he must have cut himself recently.

“I think you should stop calling me that,” she said, swallowing away the longing that rose through her.

His chin drew down, his expression taking on that hard quality that he used in the boardrooms. “That’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said to me.”

A steeliness had crept into his voice that made a knot tighten in her chest. He was a master of his emotions but she heard the crack in his temper. Well, that’s what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? For him to treat her like he did everyone else.

“You don’t think I should have a choice in what you call me?”

His eyes swept over her, as if she was someone new. As if, if he looked hard enough, he should be able to see through her sudden resentment. “Why is what I call you a problem when it was never before?” His tone gentled immediately. “Is it because Rao called you that?”

“No. Because it’s condescending and infantilizing and—”

“I have never condescended to you.” There was anger in his tone now, and that it excited her was a sorry truth of her life. “And the second word...” he thrust a hand through his hair, “I don’t think I even know what it means.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter what you call me anyway because... I’m quitting.”

He stilled and Nush could no more stop taking him in than she could stop breathing. It was like when she watched one of his old soccer games and then pressed play when he was midleap. The economy, the pure animal grace of his movements, the sudden explosion from a deceiving stillness...it had always captivated her. And it happened now, live.

All of that simmering physical energy focused on her like a laser beam. Digging. Probing. Searching. “Quitting what, Princesa?” The silky smoothness of his voice only served to betray his cold fury.

Nush swallowed but forced the words out. “The job. The company. The city even.”You.“I can’t do this anymore.”

Yana was right. She had to quit him like an addiction—cold turkey. Now. Before it was too late. Nothing else had worked.

He was fully turned toward her now, shielding her from the room and curious eyes. Even now, even when she was fighting with him for no good reason as far as he knew, he sought to make sure she wasn’t exposed. One hand on his hip, he rubbed at his forehead with another, a vertical ridge between his brows. “You’re not making sense.”

Nush’s gaze drifted to his mouth set in an uncompromising flat line, to his chin with the perfect little dimple, to the corded column of his neck. To the tattoo peeking out from under the undone collar of his shirt. The tattoo she wanted to see and touch and...lick.

“I don’t have to make sense to you, Caio, or do anything in my life with your permission... I don’t owe you an explanation.”

His fingers wrapped around her wrist as Nush attempted to move past him and she stumbled into his body. She gasped at the contact but when she looked into his eyes, pure frost looked down at her. His grip on her bare arm was firm but not tight. “That’s where you’re wrong,querida. You can rant and rave at me, you can use me as a punching bag to vent your grief if you wish, you can hide from your sisters and the entire world but at the end of day, at the end of the year...at the end of all this, you and I are in it together, Nush. You and I will make or break OneTech. That’s what Rao meant for this to be even when he’s gone—a partnership for the ages.”

“A partnership for the ages—that sounds like a curse to me. A punishment.”

His chin reared down, his mouth flattening. Nush regretted the words instantly.

Eyes searching his, she wondered at the taut mask he wore, at the unflinching sacrifices he made for his ambition. She’d never seen him with a steady girlfriend. Never heard him talk about marriage or a future. And yet he was ready to settle down with Laura. Another merger in his goal of...what?

What did Caio truly want?

“You don’t need me around anymore. You’ve never really needed me, Caio. As for my brain, OneTech owns the patent on all my work anyway. I signed a noncompete clause years ago.”

“Is that what you think, Nush? That I only value your brain and what it can make for me next?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Nush said, cutting her gaze away from him. “Thaata’s gone and it’s a good time as any for me to evaluate my life. See where I want to be in five years. I have to move on before you...”

His fingers tightened on her arm as he zoomed in on that like a predator pouncing. “Before I what?”

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