A Game Of Vows. Maisey Yates

man she saw was darker, more intense. The man she saw was Eduardo. His hands on her skin, his lips on her throat …

      She flopped backward and covered her face with her hands. “Stop it,” she admonished herself. She rolled onto her side and grabbed a pillow, hugging it tightly to her chest. She hadn’t done that since high school. Comforting then, even when the world was crumbling around her, and just as comforting now.

      Eduardo had always been handsome. He’d always appealed to her. That was nothing new. But she’d never once been tempted to act on any kind of attraction while they’d lived together. It hadn’t been part of her plan. And she didn’t deviate from her plans. Plans, control, being the one in charge of her life, that was everything. The most important thing.

      Not Eduardo’s handsome face and sexy physique.

      “Feeling all right?” Eduardo asked from the doorway.

      She snapped back into a sitting position, pillow still locked tightly against her breasts. “Fine.”

      Eduardo couldn’t hold back the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. Hannah Weston, flopped on her bed like a teenage girl. A show of softness, a show of humanity, he hadn’t expected from an ice queen like her. Like her reaction when he mentioned her fiancé. Like when she’d given back the other man’s ring.

      It suited him to think of Hannah as being above human emotion. It always had. He needed her. He didn’t know all the reasons why, but he did. And that meant it was easier to believe that she would simply go with the option that benefited her most and feel no regret over leaving the inferior choice behind.

      But that wasn’t how she was behaving. And it gave him a strange twinge in his chest that seemed completely foreign.

      Hannah stood up from the bed and put the pillow gingerly back in its place. She cleared her throat and straightened. She looked … soft for a moment. Different than he’d ever seen her before. She was beautiful, no question, more so now than she’d been as a too-thin college student.

      She was still thin, but her angles had softened into curves, her cheekbones less sharp, her breasts small but round.

      Instantly, an image of him pushing her on the bed, tugging her shirt up, filled his mind. He could take those breasts into his hands … suck her nipple between his lips, his teeth …

      A rush of blood roared through his body, south of his belt. How long had it been since that had happened? Since he’d been aroused by an actual woman. In solitude, with a fantasy, he could certainly find release. But with a woman? One he had to somehow seduce and charm when he had no more seduction and charm left in him? That had been beyond him for quite some time.

      “I can see that. You epitomize ‘fine.’”

      “I’m ready to find out what your game plan is, Vega,” she said, crossing her arms beneath those small, gorgeous breasts.

      “My game plan?”

      “Yes. I don’t like not knowing the score. I want to know exactly what you have planned and why.”

      “Tomorrow, I plan to take you to the office, to let you look at things and get a feel for the state of the company.”

      “All right. What else?”

      He felt the need to goad her. To shake her icy composure. As she was shaking his. He took a step forward, extended his hand and brushed his knuckles over her cheek. Her skin was like a rose petal, soft and delicate. “Well, tonight, my darling bride, we dine out.” Her eyes darkened, blush-pink lips parting. She was not unaffected by him. His body celebrated the victory even as his mind reminded him that this had no place in their arrangement. “I intend to show all of Barcelona that Señora Vega has returned to her husband.”