The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart

together. He watched her pull that smooth, cool mask into place again. “I imagine you think this is something else I’m likely to balk at. Well, guess again. I can’t say my ambitions have ever extended to becoming some man’s live-in fuck toy, but if that’s what it takes.” She lifted her shoulder, then dropped it, her gaze defiant on his. “I’ll do it.”

      “Then it sounds like we have a deal.”

      “That cottage would be a perfect place to make my base of operations,” Lucinda said, musingly. “When you feel the need to go fishing around in the international model pool, as you tend to do so often, that’s fine. There will be beds aplenty and no need to overlap in any of them. And I’m sure there are hotel bars aplenty in all those resorts on Fiji should I need to scratch an itch.”

      Jason opted not to think too hard on how she’d go about scratching that itch, because if he did he was likely to shatter all that glass that hemmed them in. He considered shattering it anyway, but restrained himself.

      Barely.

      And who knew he had all that greedy possessiveness in him?

      “That’s not how this is going to work, baby,” Jason said instead, his gaze so intent on her that he was surprised she didn’t bow beneath the pressure. “I’m not going to share. Neither are you.”

      Lucinda stared back at him for what felt like a small eternity. Maybe two. He watched that pulse in her throat go nuts. He watched those knuckles get even whiter.

      “Jason. You do realize that what you’re suggesting sounds an awful lot like...”

      She didn’t finish.

      “A relationship?” He laughed. “It does sound like that, doesn’t it? But don’t worry, Lucinda. You don’t have to call it that if it scares you.”

      He expected her to jump on that word and insist that nothing scared her, but she didn’t. Her gaze wheeled around the room and yet he knew, somehow, that she wasn’t seeing a thing.

      “I can’t possibly imagine why you would want such a thing,” she said, sounding something like panicked. “I don’t believe you do.”

      “Believe it.”

      Her mouth actually fell open again, her eyes coming back to his and fixing there in confusion. She started to say something but stopped, almost as if the words weren’t forming the way she wanted them to.

      And all of these were victories, Jason knew. But not the one he wanted.

      “But...” She shook her head. “You don’t do relationships. Ever.”

      “And look where that got me. I might as well be following the Daniel St. George playbook, step by asshole step. It all led to the same place. That’s not the life I want.”

      “If what you want is a relationship, I’m quite sure you can find any number of women to oblige you. All you need do is swan out into the street and stand still a moment. You don’t need me to facilitate any of it.”

      “I want you.”

      Lucinda blew out a breath, and suddenly she didn’t look like a fighter. She looked shaky and uncertain, and that made his chest hurt even more. “No. You can’t. It doesn’t make any sense.”

      Jason moved toward her then. And he considered himself a martyr of the highest order when he didn’t simply put his hands on her and throw her on the table that took up most of the space in this fishbowl. He stopped when he was close—close enough to cause a little comment out there on the other side of the glass, maybe.

      Let them stare, he thought.

      “It’s like this, Scotland,” he rumbled at her, trying to keep his hold on himself intact. Trying to ignore the hundreds of ways he could feel it fraying. “I know why you ran off the way you did. Feelings are messy. That’s why I spent my whole life avoiding them, but guess what? They caught up to me anyway when you sauntered into my crumbling-ass hotel. And I could have come here, and made pretty speeches, but that’s not the way to your heart.”

      “My heart?” she echoed, looking appalled. She looked around as if she wanted to back up, but the table was behind her. She frowned at him. “This is about business, Jason. It’s all very unorthodox, I grant you, but still business.”

      “Call it business if you want,” he said, easily enough. “I don’t really care. If an island is what it takes to buy some time with you? I’m going to call it cheap. Because I think what really scares you is that you can’t maintain this business bullshit. You could do it after one night, sure. You could crawl out of my bed, run away in the dark and put your armor back on. But you won’t be able to do that month after month. Year after year. Then what?”

      Her lips trembled. “You’re insane.”

      “That’s not the word I’d use. But the one that fits would freak you out, so sure, I’m insane. The question is, are you willing to put yourself on the line or are you too afraid? It’s a simple choice, Lucinda.”

      “There’s nothing simple about this!”

      “You know that I can make you come,” Jason said, calmly. “Over and over again. So what’s the harm? You get to live in a beautiful house, come so hard it makes you cry regularly, and work on building the resort of your dreams. It seems to me the only reason you wouldn’t jump at the chance is if, deep down, you know that the reason you left in the first place is that you can’t have that kind of sex, with me, without getting your heart involved after all.”

      And he reached over and pressed two fingers over her heart, as punctuation.

      This time, she flinched. She swatted at his hand, but ended up hooking his fingers with her palm.

      And he was almost surprised that she didn’t take a swing at him, the way she was looking up at him then, like she wanted to kill him with her own hands. But he could see that there was something almost desolate behind the flash of fury.

      If he could, he’d let her kill him if that would take the desolation away.

      “The joke’s on you, Jason,” she threw at him, fury and despair in her voice and all over her face, and he got it then. She’d already killed him. The man he’d been before she showed up on his island was good and dead, and here he was instead. Ready and willing to do whatever it took to make her happy instead of...whatever this was. “Because I don’t have a heart. And I could live with you for the rest of my life, and that’s not going to change.”

      He wanted to grab her up in his arms and kiss her until that darkness lifted. But he knew his way around armor, so he grinned instead.

      “Great,” he said, and even shrugged lazily. “Then you have nothing to lose.”