Authors: Tara Pammi
Fisting his hands, Alexander let out a curse that resonated around him. Fury ran rampant through him as every word Kim had ever said to him flashed in his mind. The veneer of perfection, the unblemished reputation...he had bought it all.
He stood frozen, his anger swirling around him, pounding through his blood. The depth of her lies and deception blazed a tidal wave through his gut.
He had trusted her with everything, and she had done what?
Risked exposing them both to a huge scandal. She had even put Emily’s custody at risk. Everything he had worked for could have been jeopardized.
For a moment, all he could think of was to punch the nearest wall, to give into his baser impulses for once. To let every control mechanism he had developed go to hell.
“Alexander?”
Olivia.
He uncurled his fingers and counted to ten, trying to regain control over himself. Her scent, familiar yet arousing, fluttered through him as she neared him. Her fingers clamped over his wrist, she pulled him toward her while her anxious gaze searched his. “Is everything okay?”
Perverse laughter choked up his throat as he gazed into her beautiful eyes, the haze of anger and something else lifting from his eyes. It was a moment he would never forget in his life.
The woman he had thought perfection personified hadn’t had the decency to tell him the truth that could have plunged him into the biggest scandal of his life—on the scale of his own parents’ indignities and into committing bigamy whereas the woman he had mocked and insulted, whose very irreverence had grated on him, had stood by him, again and again, concern lighting up her gaze.
So much for his absolute arrogant belief in his judgment, for his carefully thought-out plans.
His gaze fell to Olivia, to the stubborn tilt of her mouth and his hands tightened around her waist. Pure, scorching emotion, something he didn’t want to analyze, engulfed him. “You’re not going out with him,” he said stiffly, nodding in Mike’s direction.
“Watch me,” she threw back challengingly. “And anyway, who died and made you lord and master of me?”
It was like striking a spark to dry cinder. Without hesitation, without second thought, Alexander dipped his head and kissed her. He swallowed her protest, the taste of her lips, the warmth from her body, what he had once considered a trivial temptation that was beneath him, stole through him, rooting him once again back to his sanity.
Only when she opened his eyes did he see the shadows of hurt in her gaze. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her mouth a bitter slant.
He stood frozen, watching her as she walked back to their table. What the hell was he doing, kissing her like that? Especially now.
He needed to consult his lawyers with regards to Kim, he needed to sort out the mess his life had become. With the judge agreeing to an initial custody hearing, and now with Kim’s announcement, he needed Olivia to continue the pretense as his wife more than ever.
Which meant, he needed to stop winding her up, he needed to...
And yet...look at the way he had kissed her just now. As though it was the most natural thing to do, as if it had been more important than his next breath. Every muscle in him tightened to a rigid mass as something shifted within him.
Had he trained himself so well that he was impervious to the whispers of his own heart? How had he assumed to continue with Kim and their marriage as though the firestorm that Olivia was hadn’t blazed through his life? Had he really become that heartless?
* * *
Throwing her scarf into her suitcase, Olivia closed her suitcase with a satisfying thump. Sighing, she walked into the attached balcony.
Her gaze took in the beautiful star-studded night around her. The glittering lights, the light breeze, it was a beautiful Paris night. Yet she had never felt so wretched. Despite hating his unemotional attitude toward life, she had still given Alexander power over her. Why else would his disbelief about Vincent hurt so much, why would she feel as though a void was opening up inside her at the thought of leaving?
Tomorrow, they would be back in New York. The next time she saw him, he would be with Kim. Her chest hurt with every breath she took.
But it had to be this way. Alexander could so easily....
No
. She wasn’t going to indulge in self-pity.
She grabbed her BlackBerry and scrolled through it.
A missed call from Kim.
She clicked Call, every nerve in her tuned so tight that she thought she might snap, come apart at the seams.
She forced herself to pull the crisp evening air into her lungs as Kim picked up on the other line. “Liv...I’m sorry you got stuck there. I—”
Olivia fought to keep her tone normal. “That’s fine. Now, what’s going on and when are you retuning?”
“God, he hasn’t told you yet...”
Olivia swallowed. Her stomach lurched. A cold chill settled over her skin. “Tell me what?”
“It’s over, Liv, between me and Alexander. He—”
Olivia stood shaking from head to toe, incapable of forming a response. “What? Why? I—”
“I left before the wedding because...” Kim’s words broke on a catch. “I’m married, Liv, something I did years ago. And just after you arrived the morning of the wedding, my divorce papers came back unsigned.”
Shock rendered Olivia incoherent for a few seconds. “What? Who is he? When did you... I mean, why have you never even talked about this?”
“I... It was the summer after you had left, Liv. I—”
“You mean after dad threw me out,” Olivia couldn’t help correcting. Of course, Kim could have walked out with her, except, doing something her father didn’t approve of was fundamentally impossible for Kim. Even though she had done everything in her power to help Liv.
“I met him on a cruise and I...fell for him.”
“Hard enough that you married him?” Her shock made her words hard. Olivia couldn’t even continue as another thought stuck her. “If you’re already married, why did you... Where does Alexander come into this? You said you didn’t want to lose him. And yet knowing him, you put everything he considers important at risk.”
When had she become the sensible Stanton twin? If she wasn’t consumed by confusion and sadness on top of so much else that she couldn’t even identify, Liv would have laughed out loud at the irony of the situation.
“It’s just that after so many years, I wanted a new start.” The wretchedness in her twin’s words did nothing to alleviate Olivia’s confusion. “And Alex was so perfect. He appreciated me, he never asked for more than I could give. I never intended going back on my promise to Alex, Liv. Except the past fortnight has been—”
Liv clutched the metal railing, her legs threatening to give out under her. “Wait. Are you staying with this man?”
“I just feel so much, Liv. I think he...”
A knot twisted up in Liv’s gut. She was glad that Kim was okay.
She really was.
Except...even after everything, her twin had her perfect ending, another man who loved her. “Of course he does. You’re the perfect woman. How could any man not fall in love with you?”
How could any man who had known that perfection want a flawed fake instead?
“But I couldn’t bear it if you were mad at me.”
“I’m not, I want you to be happy,” Olivia said, trying to soften her tone. For the first time in her life, her sister had done something she wanted, not because their father had deemed it right. And yet, Liv couldn’t drown out the rapid tattoo of her heart, couldn’t help feeling as though she was the one paying the price, even for Kim’s indecision. “I just wish you had told us earlier, Kim.”
“I intended to return—”
“Even after a week?” Olivia said, clutching her phone tight. “Were you still figuring out who the better option was?”
“I’m not like you, Liv. I’m... I know what I have with Alex is not the real thing.”
Her throat choking up, Olivia listened in silence as Kim apologized again and hung up with promises to catch up in New York. Only one thought ran circles in her head.
Kim and Alexander were over
.
Her knees were shaking, her hands clammy. She grabbed her handbag and jerked it over her shoulder. She needed to get out of here, needed to get a grip on herself before she...
She ran straight into Alexander. Every inch of her tightened, thrumming with awareness.
His gaze raked her, a frown on his forehead. “Olivia, are you okay?”
She turned toward him, her internal balance instantly toppled by his consuming gaze. The light blue dress shirt made his eyes light up. Dear God, he was gorgeous, he was sexy and he was
not
her twin’s man. She swallowed and stepped back.
“I just spoke to Kim,” she whispered, staring absently at her phone. “She said it’s over...” She frowned, struggling to breathe. He looked as calm as ever, his gaze eating her up. “How long have you known?”
“Since yesterday.”
The news had toppled her entire world. Alexander hadn’t even betrayed himself by a flicker of an eyelid. “And yet you didn’t say a single word. Are you so incapable of feeling anything?”
CHAPTER NINE
A
LEXANDER
POURED
A
shot of whiskey from the decanter and gulped it straight down. He had spent the whole day telling himself why giving into what he wanted was not a good idea.
At that moment, he had absolutely no idea why.
He turned around to face her and felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. She looked glorious. He wanted Olivia, the intensity of that want, of that desire was feral, robbing any good sense from him.
Her breasts fell and rose with her anger. Color slashed those angular cheekbones at his thorough appraisal. “I don’t want to talk about Kim.”
Her chin lifted. “I don’t care what you—”
“I spoke to Vincent. I know you were—”
She blinked. “And you decided to believe me
after
speaking to him?”
“He denied it, said you were the one who came on to him. But I know he’s lying.” Paradoxically, Vincent’s defensive denial, the very tone of his words had done it. In the end, he hadn’t needed proof. So much for not trusting his heart. “I made a huge mistake. But there’s nothing I can do about it, Liv. The terms of his employment contract require proof. It’s your word against his.”
Olivia stepped back, her mind reeling. With every word he uttered, he was swallowing up the distance she wanted to keep. She could fight his arrogant accusations, even his low opinions of her, but when he was like this—a man who could admit to his mistakes, a man who wasn’t perfect, she was utterly lost, defenseless.
Panic bubbled up through her. She felt as if she was split in half, one half greedily drinking in every word he said, every look he leveled at her, reveling in it while the other half whispered constant warnings to stop this, to run as far from him as possible. And the worst part was she had twenty five years of experience ignoring the second half.
She searched for reason, for sanity, for anything that could scatter the web spinning around them. “Why aren’t you angry at Kim, at this whole thing? You were angrier with me for stepping into her place than you are with her. You hate scandal, remember, and this is only going to make you more interesting to the media.”
“Kim’s not eager to advertise her ‘marriage’. And, until I have Emily’s custody locked tight, I have you. Don’t I?”
She couldn’t understand how blithely he was handling the emotional aspect of this mess. He had to have felt something for Kim.
Didn’t he?
“She left you for another man. Even for a man who rarely allows himself to feel anything, she did throw a kink in your plans for a perfect life.”
A vein pulsed threateningly at his temple. “Why are you always so eager to find a weakness in me?”
“Anything is better than this unfeeling, ruthless man whom nothing touches. I hate that man.”
His jaw clamped down. “Fine. I
am
angry with her. She risked everything I value. But, Kim and I, I think, were over long before I learned of her
wonderful
news.”
Olivia couldn’t control the shiver running through her. She licked her lips, and his gaze moved to her mouth, a gleam of something in it. Suddenly, he seemed feral, dangerous in a way she hadn’t realized until now.
Being so drawn to her twin’s man had been gut wrenchingly cruel, but there had been one strand of sanity that had shielded her from toppling all the way. Now there was nothing. Nothing to stop the deceitful hope mushrooming inside her. Nothing between her stupid heart and an abyss of pain.
The light blue dress shirt hugged the contours of his chest, the glimpse of curling chest hair through the opening drawing her gaze. She breathed and his tangy scent filled her.
When had he moved so unbearably close?
She dragged her gaze upward, the sexy slant to his mouth knocking the breath out of her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His thumb moved over her jaw, toward her mouth. His upper lip curled. “Because I wanted to hold on to the illusion of control for a little longer.”
Her breath hitched somewhere in her throat. She clasped his wrists to push him away, only he pulled her closer. Her breasts grazed his chest and she jerked, frissons of awareness coating her skin.
His gaze came alive with a lick of desire. And she shuddered from top to toe. Every breath she drew felt ragged, demanding, her whole body in a state of utter anticipation. “Alexander? Please don’t.”
His hand snaked around her waist, moved over her hip. He buried his mouth in the crook of her neck and smiled. “You minx,” he breathed into her skin. “You deserve it for all the times you taunted me.”
She moaned and threw her head back, the whisper of his hot mouth driving her wild. Her legs gave out under her. He dragged his lips upward in an openmouthed kiss that sent bolts of fiery need to her core.
She stared at him, at the tight, angular jaw, at the desire darkening his eyes to a dusky blue, arousal stamped onto every inch of his arresting features. His mouth descended on hers as her breath halted in her throat. Waves upon waves of sensation piled up inside as his lips brushed hers, soft and warm, testing, exploring. The taste of him sent erotic tingles through her body, all the way to her toes.
It was a moment she had imagined so many times, dreamed of, waking up tangled in her sweat-soaked sheets, aching and throbbing. But more than that, she had craved Alexander conceding to the desire between them, his dismissal of the attraction as something beneath him grating on her, while she absolutely lacked any kind of defense mechanism.
Her body thrummed with arousal, her nerves finely tuned strings, but she pushed him back, a monumental feat given her body craved only what he could give. “Why?”
He licked the seam of her mouth and she groaned.
“God, that’s all I’ve wanted to do—”
His words were as potent as his kiss.
“Why was it over?” she said loudly, as if her words could pierce the haze of need enveloping her.
His lashes fanned down over his expression. His hands moved over her back, setting a fire over her bare skin. He gripped her hips and pulled her closer so that his erection rubbed against her belly. Her stomach quivered, her sex was clenched and tight, ready for what lay against her belly. She groaned as his hands moved over her breasts, his fingers brushing against their tight tips. “I need to look at you. I’m going to taste every inch of you.”
It was blatant seduction to shut her up.
It felt unbearably good. His words sent erotic tingles rolling over her skin. Not that he didn’t want her. The hard ridge of manhood under her palm, the groan that fell from his mouth as she rubbed herself against it was enough proof. But he was also using it to evade her...
She threw her head back as he kissed the birthmark on the slope of her breast, his tongue licking it, drawing circles around it. Her nipples tightened into almost-painful points, crying for the hot slide of his tongue. “That birthmark has been driving me crazy.”
She fought the spiral of desire sucking her downward, pushed her fingers up his nape into his hair and tugged hard. Until he was gazing into her eyes. The sculpted lines of his face more pronounced, his breathing harsh, he smiled, the dark amusement in his gaze winding her up. “If you like it rough,” he rasped, his fingers equally tight on her nape. “I’ll give it you, Liv. I will drive you to the edge until you’re begging for release.”
It felt so good to hold him like that, to feel her need mirrored in his tight, hard body. Because with every ragged breath, she knew that he was letting her do that, letting her hold on to the illusion that she was driving this, whatever it was that was blazing between them. She shivered. She had never been so out of depth with a man as she was with Alexander. He could so easily unravel her. And the realization only spurred her on. “I want the truth,” she said, and groaned as he cupped her butt and ground his arousal into her.
He tugged her lower lip with his teeth, sending frissons of sensations down her spine. She pushed him with the little strength she could muster. “Is it because she made a mistake? Because she disrupted your plans? Because—”
An almost pained sound erupted from his throat, a cross between a groan and a growl.
“Because you ruined everything.”
She wanted the truth and it blazed out of his glittering gaze. It glided over her skin, drowning every inch of her in it. “She’s your twin. She
looks
like you. I can’t look at her and not think of you. If I stayed with her, I would have to take her to my bed, have sex with her while all I can think of would be
you.
” It was as if he was forcing himself to utter the very words he found so distasteful. “You think I’m so immune to everything that I’d have no problem with that?”
His admission spun around them, cocooning them in their own desires. It blasted the last of her defenses, rendering her immobile. There it was, everything she wanted to hear from him from the minute she had faced the inevitable truth of her own attraction. The words seeped into her blood, exploded behind her eyes, clogged her thinking.
His grip tightened over her hips and he lifted her onto the glass table. If there was even a semblance of control before, it was all gone now. She had asked for the truth and she had to pay the price now.
His gaze glittering with desire, he bent his head while his hand at her back held her. And sucked her nipple through the thin cotton. Her knees jelly, Liv sunk her hands into his hair, as he repeated the action. Arrows of pleasure zoomed straight to her sex and she clenched her thighs together.
He didn’t let her. As though he could read her mind, his hands crept up her thighs under her dress, pushed the ridiculous thong she was wearing out of the way. She opened her mouth and gasped as his fingers parted her, and rubbed against her clitoris.
“Open your eyes and look at me,” he ordered, his words gravelly.
She did. She would have done anything he asked of her at that moment. Need glittered in his blue gaze. He crushed her mouth with his again, his tongue caressing the insides. Putty in his hands, she didn’t realize he had undone the knot at her neck until his tongue swiped over one rigid nipple while his fingers moved with sure intent over her sex, slow and fast. A million nerve endings stroked to life, she let out a throaty moan, her skin too hot and too tight. His clever fingers pulled, and stroked, and rubbed her tender flesh, she felt her muscles tighten, her breath stuck in her...
And suddenly he stopped.
She thought she would die. Until his long fingers teased her throbbing flesh again.
Every time she was close to her climax, every time she thought she would come apart, he slowed the pressure of his fingers, dragged his mouth upward to her neck until she fell from the dizzying heights he drove her to, frustrated and in sheer agony. Pleasure sizzled on her skin, quivered in her sex muscles, was so close that she could taste it on her tongue yet so far that she wondered if she would jump out of her skin. It was incredibly unfair, she thought in a haze, in a minute she would straighten, she would walk away...
Until he pushed a finger into her wet center and started the torment all over again. A swipe of his tongue over her nipple, there and yet gone in a second, a smooth glide of his thumb over her clit, enough but not enough...
“Oh...” she moaned, a sob rising in her throat. “You’re...”
He laughed against the curve of her breast, his tongue licking erotic paths around the hard nipples aching for his touch. “Ask nicely, Olivia,” he said, his words rolling over each other, his voice sounding drunk and hoarse.
She palmed his face and kissed him, the sinuous taste of him pulling her deeper. “Please, Alexander, I can’t bear it...”
Just when she thought he would never stop punishing her, he pulled her nipple deep into his mouth. His teeth tugged at the hard nub while his fingers tightened on the exact place she needed them to.
She cried his name as her muscles contracted tight and released, her skin sizzled. Lights exploded behind her eyes, her body quaking and trembling.
He pulled her closer and pushed her hair from her forehead. He gently held her boneless body. His lips curved into a tight smile against her temple, his muscles under her hands bunched incredibly tight. “Now that I’ve touched you, I need to see you, taste you.”
The most delicious shiver climbed up her spine at the dark promise in his words. She knew what he was doing. He was driving her crazy, pushing her to the edge, tormenting her for demanding the truth. She pulled his shirt out of his trousers and snuck her hands in. “No. I want touch you, too, I want to...”
Her words faltered as a knock sounded on the main door. A curse fell from his mouth and she laughed. His breathing rough and shallow, he leaned his forehead against her bare shoulder. The heat from his mouth singed her skin as he pressed an openmouthed kiss.
“Only Carlos could come knocking at the door right now. And he won’t go away until I—” he said, regret lacing his words.
Liv nodded, her cheeks heating up, shying her gaze away from him. Suddenly, she felt inexplicably nervous.
She tugged the edges of her top upward and tied the knot at her nape. She jumped off the table just as Alexander returned with Carlos. His forehead creased into a frown, he looked anything but the man that had driven her to ecstasy mere minutes ago.
His hand over his nape, he walked around the living room, his movements anything but smooth. Did he even remember she was there? “How did she know where Emily was?”
“Who are you talking about?” Olivia said, before she could curb her tongue.
He glared at her, and she wondered if he would tell her to leave. He didn’t. It was a measure of how much he had changed toward her. “Isabella persuaded Emily to leave with her from her vacation. But I had Carlos plant 24-7 security around Emily.”
Sweat beaded on Olivia’s brow as his words sunk in. He hadn’t said
tried to...
he had said
persuaded
like Emily had been ready to go. “Emily had been ready to leave?” she shot at Carlos.
Carlos remained silent. His silence said everything he didn’t.