Why was that foolish bubble of hope rising back up her torso? Because that was even more delusional than the volcano in her panties.
His gaze raked over her, the heat as caustic as the disdain. Then he shrugged. ‘Obviously it would be your choice, but I see no reason not to
explore the chemistry between us while we’re there. There’ll be little else to do, and that much at least was real.’
She stared back at him. She should tell him where he could stick his insulting offer. She should demand to know where he got off treating her like a disobedient child on the one hand, then suggesting a seven-day booty call on the other.
But the outrage and the anger got stuck in her throat, trapped behind that foolish bubble of hope. And something else entirely came out of her mouth. Something that had tormented her ever since last night.
‘Why didn’t you use a condom?’
The muscle in his jaw flexed, but his eyes widened.
‘Was it deliberate?’ she asked. ‘Were you trying to get me pregnant so you could force me to marry you, when you thought I was Jade?’ The accusation was so atrocious, she wasn’t sure she even believed it herself, but something about his failure to use contraception didn’t make any sense.
He was a cautious man. How could he have made that mistake?
Guilt flashed across his features, but it was accompanied by a wary tension that only confused her more.
‘No,’ he said. ‘By the time I got my hands on you I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. I would never do something so...’ He stopped abruptly, his eyes narrowing. And then swore softly under his breath. ‘Point taken,’ he said.
‘What point?’ she asked. She hadn’t intended to make a point.
‘I guess you weren’t the only one who got carried away last night,’ he said grudgingly.
The bubble of hope under her breastbone pressed against her chest.
Perhaps he didn’t totally hate her after all. Relief flooded through her. It felt like progress of a sort.
She tried to swallow down the bubble of hope but it wasn’t going anywhere.
Hope was not her friend.
Things had got hot and heavy with Leo over the last week because he had believed she was a queen, and with majesty came great responsibility in Leo’s world. But now he knew she wasn’t, the pressure was off. Did that mean...?
‘Okay, I’ll go with you,’ she said, the heat spreading into her cheeks as his intense gaze darkened.
‘Excuse me?’ he said, with the supreme arrogance that had always been a major turn-on.
‘I can hack seven days alone in a cabin if you can.’
She could see she’d surprised him again when his brows launched up his forehead. But then he laughed. The sound husky enough to scrape over her nerve endings.
His lips twisted in a sensual smile that had the heat pulsating into her panties.
It was probably nuts to agree to go with him—she wasn’t entirely convinced he didn’t still detest her—but she didn’t want things to end like this. She wanted a chance to show him the real her. And that the real her wasn’t really that different from the fake her. That was all. Perhaps it was super self-serving, wanting to make up for the mistakes she’d made, wanting him to like her, at least a little, but so be it.
‘You make it sound as if I was giving you a choice, Princess,’ he said.
She’d begun to realise Leo always liked to have the last word.
He had given her a choice, though. The choice to jump him or not to jump him. And more importantly the choice to have this mean something, or not mean something.
This time she intended to make the right choice, on both counts, by sticking to one simple rule.
Hot was allowed, heavy never.
CHAPTER TEN