Page 24 of Seduced by Her Billionaire Fake Fiancé

“You don’t know that.”

“It was an accident,” she said, again, gently, dropping her hand to his chest, pressing it there. “Your guilt is misplaced.” She lifted up on tiptoes, brushed her lips over his. “But understandable.”

He closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, his nostrils flaring, chest puffing out. The sunlight filtered behind him, casting them both in a golden glow.

“I should have told you,” he said, the words dredged from deep in his gut. “You should have been prepared for that.”

“She didn’t find it strange that I didn’t know.”

He frowned. “I’m sure she didn’t.” His hand came around her waist, pulling her against him with a gentle thud. “But I meant for your sake. You’ve been through so much loss yourself, I’m sure it’s not possible to have heard those details without feeling your own grief wrapping around you again.”

Her lips parted without sound coming out. She was floored by his understanding of her and overwhelmed by his compassion. Neither had been expected.

“It’s not that,” she said, frowning. “Not exactly. It’s more that my own experiences make grief so…accessible. I felt like I was living out your feelings. I could imagine how awful it had been for you.”

“Usually, I would dismiss that. No one can know what I went through. But actually, with you, Andie, I sort of feel like you might get it after all.”

It was a conversation every bit as intimate, if not more so, as what they’d done in the back of his car. This was a different kind of connection, moving and important somehow.

And it terrified her.

“Max,” she said softly, his name carried away by the light afternoon breeze. What had she been going to say, anyway?

He dropped his head lower, his eyes skimming hers, asking a question, reading her, wondering, challenging her to say something, to stop this, but Andie wouldn’t, couldn’t. She was transfixed.

“I request an amnesty,” he murmured, mouth only a hair’s breadth from hers.

“An amnesty?”

“Of our agreement. I want to kiss you.”

A smile twitched her lips, but in her heart, she knew this was a moment to consider carefully. They needed boundaries, they needed to remember this was just for show, and conversations like this made it so much harder to remember what they were doing, and why…

“Andie?” He groaned her name, but she was too deep in thought, going one way first and then another, to work out how to explain that maybe they should stick to the rules after all.

And when he kissed her, she was glad. So glad. Because in that kiss, she felt a shot of strength and adrenaline and magic that bolstered her in a way she hadn’t known she’d needed.

He was right. She understood his grief and it occurred to Andie, as she lost herself in Max completely, that maybe he understood hers too. Maybe that was the thing she needed most in her life right now, for someone just togetwhat she’d been through.

Seven

“ANDIE?” BLEARY-EYED, SHE lifted her head from the pillow, staring at the bedside clock. Disorientation hit her in the face, so it took a moment for her to remember where and when she was.

Finally, the events of the day before came back to her. Meeting Max’s family, the conversation about Antonio, the kiss in the citrus grove that ended as abruptly as it had begun, launching them back into a strange state of acting one way around people and another when they were alone.

But his voice sounded insistent, as though something might be wrong, so she pushed back the covers and moved quickly from her bedroom into the lounge area of the suite, towards the main double doors that joined it to the corridor of his villa.

She wrenched them inwards, belatedly forgetting that she was wearing only the flimsiest of silk negligees.

It was impossible to forget for long though, when his gaze raked over her body, his lips parting in surprise and undisguised admiration.

“It’s hot in here,” she explained quickly. “I couldn’t work the heater out.”

He continued to stare, his Adam’s apple jerking as he swallowed.

“Max, please,” she groaned, because her body was responding to his, her nipples tightening beneath the silk, hurting her with the way they were tingling, and her insides were hot and clenching, desire flushing her body. “Stop.”

Unless you plan to come in andnotstop,she added mentally.

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