“Nine years ago, in court.”
Shock rendered her speechless for a few seconds. That explained why he had frozen like that. “But you knew they were in Paris?”
“I knew she was. I’ve heard rumors that she means to sue me for custody of Emily.”
A heaviness gathered low in her stomach. It was almost as if a curtain fell away from her eyes. His insistence on her accompanying him to Paris, the check, his shock at seeing Isabella with his father, everything neatly slotted into place like pieces of a puzzle. She walked circles around him, her mind grappling to understand.
With a possible custody battle coming, of course he couldn’t risk a scandal. “Is this why you dragged me to Paris?”
His silence was answer enough.
“She wouldn’t really engage you in a custody battle, could she? I mean, they could just be rumors.” Even as she said that she couldn’t shake off the utter lack of emotion she had spied in Isabella’s eyes.
He laughed, a harsh sound that sent ripples of fear skating over her skin. He roamed the huge room, which seemed to be swallowed up by his restless energy. He seemed surrounded by a fortress of emotion, like a bellowing volcano struggling to contain itself, nothing like the man she had known so far. Or was this the true him? “My mother? She’s capable of anything. Except being a mother.”
He reached her before she could blink, invading her personal space. The heat from his body sent tingles up and down her skin, his scent sending her heart into overdrive. “Is your curiosity satisfied now? Are you happy that after all, I’m a flawed man, no better than you?”
Something had changed in him at the party. The suave, heartless businessman was gone. He was seething, his emotions tangible in his aggressive stance, in the way every muscle in him bunched tight, ready to strike. And she was in the direct line of fire. Still, Olivia couldn’t force herself to move. He was in pain. Her heart contracted with ache. She didn’t know why or how she knew that, but she did.
“I’m not.” She forced her throat to work past the fear. “The idiot that I’m, I want to be here, with you.” She licked her lips, and he moved another step closer.
His gaze narrowed on her lips. “Why?”
She shrugged, unwilling to look into the whys of it. “You just don’t seem like yourself. You need to let it out, Alexander. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do something, anything. Throw that glass at the wall. I swear you’ll feel much better.”
His thumb flicked her lower lip, and his gaze drilled into hers. He was thinking about their kiss. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know what he was thinking, not in this strange mood. “You want to know what I want to do, what would make me feel infinitely better?”
Her knees turned into jelly. Before she could even frame a response, he pulled her hard into his body, his hand curled around her nape. A ragged sound escaped her as his arousal rubbed against her belly, his other hand shaping her hip. The flimsy silk of her dress was no barrier between his hard body and hers. Pangs of desire shot through to the apex of her thighs, only his hand on her keeping her upright. “Do you have an idea now?”
Every nerve ending within her screamed with tightening need as his hands moved up her bare arms. “I want to kiss you again. I want to rip that dress off you, throw you onto my bed and bury myself inside you. Until I can’t move or think anymore, until every cell in me is so numb that I don’t feel anymore.”
A tremor traveled from her nape to her toes, her skin was on fire with need.
“Unless you’re up for that, get out.”
She pushed him back with her hand, feeling a sudden chill. Like a concrete wall, he didn’t even budge an inch. “You don’t want me, you want Kim.” She wasn’t sure who needed the reminder more, him or her.
“There isn’t a single moment that I confuse you for Kim anymore.”
Her gaze flew to his. There was no disdain or the scorn she had become so used to seeing. Only naked desire. And it messed with what little sense she had left.
* * *
Alexander stared at Olivia, at the shadow that fell over her expressive face as she uttered Kim’s name. But it didn’t have the intended effect. Nothing could puncture the potency of his desire for her now, of the fury, the grief raging through his blood, seeking an outlet.
And what an outlet it would be.
She stood out like a siren in her red dress against the backdrop of his black sheets. The exposed skin at the neckline shimmered brighter than the silk of her dress, her silky hair fighting the confines of its style, every rise and dip of her curves enticing him into temptation.