Zane bent toward her, his head dipped. Her pulse rate rocketed.
For two years she had tortured herself about her loss of control. Now, finally, she was being offered the chance to examine what, exactly, had gone wrong.
She caught another enticing whiff of clean skin and exotic cologne. Dimly, she noted that the concept of her ruination had receded, a dangerous sign, although she was still in control. She had time to shift in her seat. If she wanted she could turn her head—
Warm fingers gripped her chin. The pressure of his mouth on hers almost stopped her heart.
Suddenly, the electrical hum every time he looked at her coalesced into stunning truth. The double whammy of her ticking biological clock combined with prolonged celibacy was the reason she was having such a difficult time controlling her responses to Zane.
Relief surged through her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t thought about that two years ago. It was the logical explanation. Zane had caught her at a vulnerable moment at the charity ball. She simply hadn’t had the resources to resist him.
Jerking back from the seductive softness of the kiss, Lilah gulped in air.
The experience had been so riveting that the harder she had tried to suppress the memories, the more aggressively they had surfaced—in her dreams, her painting.
She had to get a grip on herself. She could not afford to take him seriously. According to the tabloids, the youngest Atraeus brother was the dark side of the mega wealthy Atraeus family, wild and dangerous to know, the bad as opposed to the good.
Which only went to prove that her judgment when it came to men was no better than her mother’s or her grandmother’s before her.
A little wildly she decided that the attraction was no bigger a deal for Zane than it had been two years ago. But that didn’t change the disturbing knowledge that, if anything, she was in an even more vulnerable position now. The sensations already coursing through her body had the potential to destroy the future she had mapped out for herself.
She could not let that happen.
She was strong-willed. She had steered clear of intense emotions and casual flings all of her adult life. She was not going to mess up now.
With a younger man.
Zane was twenty-four, twenty-five at most, and with no sign of tempering his fast, edgy lifestyle with the encumbrances of a wife and family. He could say what he liked about his brother, but on paper, Lucas was perfect. He was older, more mature, ready to commit and without the wild reputation.
Those minutes on the couch with Zane and the experience of losing control and almost giving herself to a man who had demonstrated that he did not care for her had been salutary.
She knew the danger of her weakness now. On top of the healthy sex drive that came with her Cole genes, her biological clock was ticking loudly in both ears.
The thought that Zane could make her pregnant sent a hot flash through her that momentarily welded her to the seat before she managed to dismiss the notion.
Zane was not husband material. All she had to do was ignore the magnetic power of the attraction and her raging hormones, ignore the destructive impulse to throw her wedding plan away.
And throw herself beneath Zane’s naked body.
Three
After a formal family dinner at the Atraeus family’s Medinian castello the following evening, Lilah excused herself from the table while coffee was being served. Lucas had left some twenty minutes earlier, during dessert. His defection had been no great surprise because through the course of the evening she had become grimly certain that he was involved with another woman.
After obtaining directions from one of the kitchen staff, she paused by the door to Lucas’s private suite. Stiffening her shoulders against the chill of the Mediterranean fortress walls, she rapped on the imposing door.
Lean brown fingers manacled her wrist. “I wouldn’t go in there if I were you.”
Lilah spun, shocked by the deep, cool voice and the knowledge that Zane had left the dinner table and followed her.
Snatching her wrist back, she rubbed at the bare skin, which still tingled and burned from his grip.
She dragged her gaze from his overlong jet-black hair and the trio of studs glinting in one lobe. An unwanted surge of awareness added to the tension that had gripped her ever since she had arrived at the castello that evening and seen Lucas in the arms of Carla Ambrosi.
Lucas and Carla had a short but well-publicized past, which Lilah had mistakenly believed to be invented media hype. To further complicate things, Carla was Lilah’s immediate boss.
Zane indicated the closed door. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? Lucas is … busy.”
The startling notion that, beneath the casual facade, Zane was quietly angry was shattered by the distant sound of laughter and the tap of high heels. More guests leaving the dining table, no doubt in search of one of the castello’s bathrooms.
Suddenly, the stunning risk Lilah had taken in traveling thousands of miles for a first date with an extremely wealthy man whose love life was of interest to the tabloids came back to haunt her. He had fulfilled all of the criteria of her system. Now things were going disastrously wrong.
Zane jerked his head in the direction of the approaching guests. “I take it you don’t want to be discovered knocking on Lucas’s bedroom door?”
A wave of embarrassed heat decimated the chill. “No.”
“Finally, some sense.” Zane’s fingers curled around her wrist again.
The startling intimacy of the hold sent another tingling jolt through her. A split second later, heart pounding with nerves, she found herself crushed against Zane’s side and flattened against the cold stone of an alcove. She inhaled, bracing herself against the effect of the sandalwood and the sudden, nervous desire to laugh.
As unpleasant as the evening had been she couldn’t suppress a small thrill that Zane had come to her rescue. Now they were hiding like a couple of kids.
Zane leaned out and peered around a corner. When he settled back into place she discovered that she had missed the warmth of his body.
His dark gaze touched on hers. “What I don’t get is why Lucas asked you.”
Lilah stiffened at the implication that she was the last person Lucas should have asked to partner him at a family wedding.
Determinedly, she stamped on the soft core of hurt that had haunted her since she was a kid—that her illegitimate birth and the poverty of her background made her less than respectable. “You certainly know how to make a girl feel special.”
He frowned. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Don’t worry.” She dragged her gaze free from the dangerous, too-knowing sympathy in his. “I have no problems with the reality check.”
She just wished she had thought things through before she had left home. Labeled “Catch of the Year” in a prominent women’s magazine, Lucas had been too good to be true.
Somewhere in the distance a door snapped shut, cutting off the sound of footsteps and laughter. The abrupt return to silence made Lilah doubly aware of the masculine heat emanating from Zane’s body and that the pale pearlized silk of her gown suddenly seemed too thin, the scooped neckline too revealing.
Hot color flooded her cheeks as the stressed uncertainty that had driven her to go in search of Lucas, and the truth, gave way to the searing memory of the kiss on the flight out.
The sedatives she had taken had kicked in shortly afterward. She had not seen Zane again until they had landed in Singapore, where two more passengers, clients of The Atraeus Group, had boarded the jet. Courtesy