She nodded, closing her eyes and twisting her head away so he couldn’t see the threatening tears. She didn’t want to mar the beauty of their night, but the pain cut deep.
He held himself still inside her.
“You can’t be,” he said hoarsely. “How, after all these years?”
Letty looked up at him, her throat aching. And she said the only thing she could say. The words that she’d repressed for ten years, but that had never stopped burning inside her.
“Because I love you, Darius,” she whispered.
CHAPTER TWO
DARIUS STARED DOWN at her. Letitia Spencer, a virgin?
Impossible. Not in a million years.
But her words shocked him even more.
“What do you mean, you love me?” he choked out.
Her dark eyelashes trembled against her pale skin. Then those big, beautiful hazel eyes shone up at him from the shadows of the bed as she whispered, “I never stopped loving you.”
Looking down at her beautiful heart-shaped face, Darius was overwhelmed by emotion. Not the good kind, either.
He felt the cold burn of slow-rising rage.
Once, he’d loved Letty Spencer so much he’d thought he’d die without her. She’d been his angel. His goddess. He’d put her on such a pedestal, he’d even insisted they wait to make love. He’d wanted to marry her.
The memory made him writhe with shame.
How far she’d fallen. Today, she’d sent him a message—her first direct communication with him since she’d dumped him so coldly ten years before—offering him her body. For money.
All afternoon, Darius had tried to ignore her message, to laugh it off. He’d gotten over Letty years ago. He wasn’t interested in paying a hundred thousand dollars to have her in his bed tonight. He didn’t pay for sex. Women fought for his attention now. Supermodels fell into his bed for the price of a phone call.
But the part of him that still couldn’t completely forget the past relished the idea of seeing her one last time.
Only this time, she’d be the one begging. He’d be the one to reject her.
As he’d signed the contracts that afternoon to formally sell his company, built on a mobile messaging app with five hundred million users worldwide, to a massive tech conglomerate for the price of twenty billion dollars, he’d barely listened to his lawyers droning on. Holding 90 percent of equity in the company made him the beneficiary of an eighteen-billion-dollar fortune, minus taxes.
But instead of rejoicing in the triumphant payoff of ten years of relentless work, he’d been picturing Letitia, the woman who’d once betrayed him. Imagining her trying to seduce him with an exotic dance of the seven veils. Picturing her wearing nothing but a black negligee. Begging him to take her to bed, so she could perform Olympic-level sexual feats for his pleasure.
After the papers were signed, he practically ran out of the office, away from all the congratulations and celebrations. All he could think about was Letty and her offer.
He’d spent hours trying to talk himself out of it. Then, gritting his teeth, he’d driven to the Brooklyn diner when the message said she’d be getting off work.
He didn’t intend to actually sleep with her, he told himself. He’d only wanted to make her feel as small and ashamed as he’d once felt. To see her humiliated. To see her beg to give him pleasure.
Then he’d planned to tell her he no longer found her attractive, and toss the money in her face. He’d watch her take it and slink away in shame. And for the rest of his life he’d know that he’d won.
What did he care about a hundred thousand dollars? It was nothing. It would be worth it to see her abject humiliation. After her savagely calculated betrayal, he craved vengeance far more than sex.
Or so he’d thought.
But so far nothing had gone according to plan. Seeing her outside the diner, he’d been shocked at her appearance. She didn’t look like a gold digger. She looked as if she were trying to be invisible, with no makeup, wearing that ridiculous white diner uniform.
But even then, he’d been drawn to her. She managed to be so damn sexy, so sweetly feminine and warm, that any man would want to help her, to take care of her. To possess her.
Bringing her back to the penthouse to enjoy his vengeance, Darius had allowed himself a single kiss.