‘Why not?’ he said. ‘When you can clearly use it.’
‘Because it would make me feel compromised,’ she said, finally finding the horror she’d been looking for.
Hadn’t his father bought her mother for that one summer? Monica Jones had been Pierre LeGrand’s mistress. Maybe Ally would never be gullible enough to misconstrue such an arrangement for love, but she wasn’t about to offer herself for sale either. Not after she’d seen what it had done to her mother.
‘How would you be compromised?’ he
asked, sounding genuinely confused.
‘Well, because we’d be sleeping together, wouldn’t we?’ she asked.
He chuckled, and lifted his hand to run his thumb down the side of her face. The flare of desire in his dark chocolate gaze was intense and searing. ‘I certainly hope so. Yes.’
She captured his finger, and dragged it away from her face, resisting the urge to give into the fierce rush of need dampening her panties.
‘Then, that’s why,’ she said, not sure where the prickle of disappointment was coming from. ‘I refuse to become any man’s mistress, the way my mother was. Your father bought and paid for her that summer. I know it was her fault she allowed herself to believe he felt more for her than he did, and that’s why it broke her when he kicked us both out. I’d never make a mistake like that. But I still don’t want to put myself in that position. With you or anyone else. It’s demeaning.’
* * *
Dominic stared at the flushed and wary expression of the woman in front of him, which only made her face—the soft skin of her jaw rouged in places by the ferocity of his kisses the night before—more beautiful.
And wanted to punch a wall.
How could he have screwed up this negotiation, so fundamentally? He was an expert in the art of the deal; he knew how to get exactly what he wanted when hashing out a contract.
But as soon as he’d got everything straight in his head last night, then put in a call to his legal team, his emotions had been more engaged in this process than he would have liked—which was probably why he had made so many fundamental errors.
He couldn’t risk Alison walking away from this proposal. He was running out of time and she was the perfect candidate to be his wife. She was smart and sensible and a realist. She’d had to live in the real world, unlike Mira, and, as she’d just stated, despite her inexperience she was not a romantic. And he still wanted her, even dressed in the muddy torn clothing; he would have quite happily lifted her up onto the countertop and started up where they had left off last night. In fact, as soon as he’d spotted her making a beeline for the back door, he had briefly considered trying to seduce her into agreeing to this marriage. The only reason he hadn’t was that he knew she had to still be recovering from last night’s excesses and he couldn’t guarantee he could be gentle with her now any more than he had been able to last night.
And then there was the fact of her virginity. The more he’d thought about that last night, the more it had come to seem like a massive benefit instead of a complication.
One of the biggest problems with marrying Mira had been the thought of how hard it was going to be to persuade anyone he was in love with her. Helping Ally discover the limits of her own pleasure, showing her how much she had been missing, was a project he could get behind one hundred and one per cent—making it a great deal easier to pretend he loved her. Passion was often confused for love, after all.
He’d never slept with a virgin before, because he didn’t want the responsibility, but he had never considered what it might be like to initiate a woman as innately passionate and responsive as Ally.
She had no idea how much fun they could have together. Hell, fun was too tame a word for what they could do together. On the basis of what they had shared last night, fun didn’t even begin to cover it.
But he couldn’t seduce her again until he’d got her to accept this deal. And he could see that what had happened between his pig of a father and her sweet, gentle, hopelessly vulnerable mother was going to be a major stumbling block. He should have figured that out sooner.
Luckily, he was good at thinking on his feet.
‘To be clear, Alison,’ he said, ‘I won’t be paying you for the sex. And you’re certainly under no obligation to sleep with me. My hope was that you would want to. Last night demonstrated we have a rare chemistry...’ Being a virgin, she probably didn’t realise that. ‘I’d love to explore that in the months ahead, making this a business arrangement with considerable benefits for both of us. But if that makes you feel demeaned, I won’t press the point.’
He smiled, determined to put her at ease if it killed him.
‘I certainly wouldn’t expect you to sleep with me against your will.’ That much at least he could be very clear on. ‘And the divorce settlement I’m offering...’ he placed his palm on the sheaf of papers he’d had his legal team and his accountants up all night preparing ‘...which includes a generous allowance and all your other expenses during the marriage plus a one-off alimony payment of a million pounds sterling when we part, is compensation for your time and your agreement to act as my devoted wife. But only in public. What we do in private is entirely up to you.’
‘A m-million pounds!’ she stuttered, her pale skin flushing a deep dark pink. ‘Seriously?’
She looked so shell-shocked, he found his lips quirking, despite all the missteps he’d made.
He still had the upper hand in this negotiation. Of course he did. Alison was an innocent. She’d never had another lover, and from the peaks of her nipples thrusting provocatively through the soft cotton of her cycling shirt it was clear she was no more immune to him than he was to her. Plus she could definitely use the money.
‘I want you to marry me, Alison,’ he said, while she struggled to close her mouth again. ‘It would be a mutually beneficial agreement. I travel quite a lot and if the Waterfront deal goes ahead...’ which it would as soon as he had this woman on his arm, because her integrity and honesty were as visible and beguiling as those thrusting nipples ‘...I’ll be living in Manhattan, mostly,’ he added. ‘While I assume you’d want to continue attending college here? So I wouldn’t require too much of your time once we have established the narrative. I would just require you to be available for events my wife would be expected to attend with me.’
He’d thought it all through. This relationship would be run on his terms and his timetable. Them having mostly separate living arrangements made sense. He would need to spend the majority of his time in Manhattan once this deal got the green light. And she could continue attending college in London. He didn’t want this marriage to impact her life too much as it would only complicate things when they parted. And, in the unlikely event he did get bored with her, he would be able to control the amount of time they spent together.
‘The narrative?’ she asked. ‘What narrative?’