Bound by a One-Night Vow Read online

  Anger curdled cold and hard and heavy in Izzy’s belly—a festering, simmering stew of wrath. How dare he make a fool of her in front of the celebrant and witnesses? Damn it. She would make him kiss her. She softened her expression to that of a dewy-eyed bride. ‘But, darling, I was so looking forward to that part of the ceremony. I know you’re stuffy and uptight about public displays of affection, but surely just this once will be okay? You don’t want everyone to think you don’t love me, do you?’

  His gaze held hers for a beat then went to her mouth and his eyes darkened to coal. His hands took hers, bringing her closer so their bodies were touching from chest to thigh. His fingers interlocked with hers in a way that contained a hint of spine-tingling eroticism. She tried to ignore the reaction in her body—the contraction of her core, the increase of her heart rate, the wings flapping sensation in her stomach. His eyes became hooded, his head bending down so his mouth was within reach of hers. She felt the warm breeze of his mint-scented breath against her lips, every nerve in her lips tingling in anticipation of his touchdown. She suddenly felt as if she would die if he didn’t kiss her. Not from any sense of loss of pride, but because she needed to feel his mouth like she needed air to breathe.

  His mouth connected with hers with a brush as soft as a floating feather. He lifted off but his lips were dry against her lipstick and clung to hers for an infinitesimal moment. He came back down and pressed a little harder, sealing her mouth and drawing her closer with a hand at the small of her back, the other moving up to cradle the side of her face.

  Izzy had enjoyed and, yes, even endured many kisses. But nothing had ever felt like Andrea’s mouth. It was electric. Exhilarating. Erotic. His lips moved against hers in a soft, exploratory way, as if he were testing and tasting the surface of her lips, storing the feel and texture of them deep in his muscle memory. She breathed in his clean male scent, her senses overloaded with sun-warmed citrus and dark, cool wood. She could feel the graze of his stubble against her face, the sexy rasp of hard male against soft female that sent a tumultuous wave of longing through her body. Even the spread of his fingers where they cradled her face made her aware of every whorl of his skin, every muscle and tendon and finger pad like her skin was reading his code.

  He opened his mouth over her lower lip, stroking his tongue along its contours with such slowness, such exquisite, almost torturous slowness her legs threatened to give way. She had to cling to the front of his jacket to keep upright, pressing her body even closer. But that only made her want him more, the hungry need clawing at her, making her aware of her breasts where they were crushed so intimately against his chest, the nipples hard and tight, sensitive, aching for his touch.

  She told herself she was only reacting this way because it had been so long since she’d had a lover. But she had a feeling making love with Andrea would be completely different from making love with another man. Her body recognised his touch. Reacted to it. Revelled in it. Rejoiced in it. She couldn’t bear the thought of him ending the kiss. She wanted it to go on and on and on, giving her time to explore the secrets of his mouth and body, the delicious ridges and contours she could feel jutting against her body.

  He sucked on her lower lip and then gently nipped at it in little tugs and releases that made her senses sing like an opera star. His tongue moved against hers in teasing little stabs that were so shockingly sexual she could feel her lower body intimately preparing itself.

  Izzy heard herself whimper, those most betraying of sounds that showed she was not as immune to him as she’d wanted him to think. Her only consolation was he seemed just as undone by their kiss. She could feel the tension of his lower body, the surge of his male flesh against her, ramping up her need to an unbearable level. His breathing rate changed, so did the way he was holding her. His hand at her back pressed her more firmly against him as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.

  But then suddenly it was over.

  He dropped his hands from her and stepped back, his expression shuttered. ‘We’ll lose that table if we don’t get going.’ His words were a slap down to her ego, making her wonder if she had imagined what had just transpired between their mouths. But then she noticed the way he ran his tongue over his lips when he thought she wasn’t looking as if he was still savouring the taste of her.

  Izzy followed him out of the room with her senses still spinning like circus plates on sticks. She felt dazed, drugged, disordered. Her mouth felt swollen. She could taste him on her lips. Inside her mouth. Her body was tingling from head to foot, her insides twisted and tight with unrelieved lust. For years she had wondered what it would be like to be kissed by him.

  Now she knew.

  But even more mortifying...she wanted him to do it again.

  * * *

  Izzy waited until they were inside a cab on their way back to the restaurant before she turned to look at Andrea. ‘What was all that about?’

  He was scrolling through his messages on his phone and didn’t even glance up. ‘What was all what about?’ His tone sounded bored, disinterested, as if he’d been forced to share a cab with a stranger and couldn’t be bothered making small talk.

  She snatched his phone out of his hands and glared at him. ‘Will you at least look at me when I’m talking to you?’

  His expression showed no tension but she could sense it all the same. He was a master at cloaking his feelings, but something about the way he was holding his body suggested he wasn’t quite as in control as he would like. ‘The kiss, you mean?’ His eyes drifted to her mouth as if he were remembering every pulse-racing second of when it had been crushed beneath his. His eyes came back to hers but they now had a hard sheen as if an internal screen had come up. His top lip curled over a slow but cynical smile. ‘I thought we agreed our marriage was a paper one. Or are you keen to shift the goalposts?’

  Izzy affected a laugh but even to her ears it didn’t sound convincing—kind of like a mortician trying to be a clown. She handed him back his phone, careful not to touch him in the process. ‘In your dreams, Vaccaro.’

  ‘You will address me by my Christian name or a term of endearment when we’re in public.’ His voice had a note of stern authority that made her bristle like a cornered cat. ‘I will not have you imply to anyone that our relationship is not a normal one. Do you understand?’

  Izzy glanced at the driver, who was behind a glass soundproof screen. She turned back to look at Andrea, anger a bubbling, blistering brew in her belly. ‘You think you can make me do what you want? Think again. You didn’t marry a doormat.’

  ‘No. I married a spoilt brat who doesn’t know how to behave like a grown woman of twenty-five.’ His smile had gone and in its place was a white line of tension. ‘We can fight all we like in private, but in public we will behave as any other married couple who love and are committed to each other.’

  Izzy folded her arms to stop herself from slapping that stern schoolmasterly expression off his face. ‘And what if I don’t?’

  He held her gaze for a long beat. ‘If either of us walks out of this marriage before the six months is up, you will be the one to lose. It’s in your interests to keep me invested in this. I have much less at stake.’

  Izzy frowned so hard she would have frightened off a dose of Botox. ‘What exactly do you get out of this marriage? You’ve never actually told me your motivations.’ It shamed her that she hadn’t asked before now. Not that there had been much time to do so, but still. It made her look foolish and naïve. And the last thing she wanted to appear in front of him was foolish and naïve.

  He slipped his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘My reasons are quite simple. It suits my ends to be married for a few months.’ He gave her a tight no-teeth smile that wasn’t quite a smile. ‘Your situation was timely. We both needed to be temporarily married and here we are.’

  ‘But...but why me?’

  He shrugged one broad sh
oulder. ‘Better the devil you know.’

  You don’t know me. Izzy swallowed back the words. She didn’t want him to know her... Did she? She shook off the thought and refocused. ‘What do you think people are going to think of us being married? The press and so on? It’s not like we’ve been seen together other than at some of my father’s functions. And his funeral hardly counts. You barely spoke a word to me.’

  ‘I’ve already informed the press.’ He patted his phone in his pocket. ‘They’ll be waiting for us when we get back to the restaurant.’

  Izzy’s mouth dropped open, panic gouging a hole in her chest. ‘But I can’t face them dressed like this! What will everyone think?’

  His smile had a hint of malice. ‘You should have thought of that before.’

  She sat forward on her seat and tapped at the glass separating the driver from the back. ‘Pull over, please.’

  The uniformed driver looked to Andrea for verification. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Drive on,’ Andrea said, leaning forward to close the panel.

  ‘No. You will not drive on.’ Izzy reached for the panel again but Andrea caught her arm. ‘Let go of me. I want to get out. This is kidnap. This is abduction. This is—’

  ‘This is the bed you made and now you’ll lie on it.’ His fingers were like a steel bracelet around her wrist, but his thumb found her pulse and moved over it in mesmerising little circles that made it hard for her to think. His eyes were dark—impossibly, impenetrably dark.

  Izzy wet her bone-dry lips, her heart thumping as if she were having some sort of medical event. Even her legs felt woolly and useless. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t allow him to make a fool of her. She would have to try another tactic. She pulled out of his hold and put a hand to her head, rubbing at her tight temples. ‘Please, Andrea. Could I go home and change first? Henri’s is such an upmarket restaurant. I didn’t realise tonight would end like this. It’s all happened so quickly and I—’

  ‘You’ve had three months to find yourself a husband.’

  She steepled her hands against her nose and mouth, taking a deep calming breath. She didn’t want to disgrace herself in front of him. To show how vulnerable she really was. She had to be strong. Strong and invincible, otherwise she would break and she wouldn’t be able to put herself together again.

  She had skated too close to the abyss before.

  Terrifyingly close.

  She had worked hard to get herself strong again.

  Must not cry. Must not cry. Must not cry.

  ‘I know...but I kept putting it off,’ Izzy said. ‘I was frightened of making a mistake...marrying the wrong man or something, one who wouldn’t agree to the six-month time limit and make things even more impossible than they already are.’ She lowered her hands and looked at him again. ‘I mean, it’s not exactly a normal situation, is it? How many fathers would do this to their only daughter? Their only remaining child?’

  He studied her for a moment. ‘Your father loved you but you constantly disappointed him. It grieved him terribly that you didn’t make more of an effort with all the opportunities he gave you.’

  Izzy closed her eyes in a slow blink and sat back heavily against her seat. ‘That’s me all right. One big disgusting disappointment.’ She released a shuddering sigh. ‘Go me.’

  There was a long silence.

  Andrea leaned forward again and slid open the glass panel. ‘Driver. Change of plans.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANDREA WAITED IN Izzy’s sitting room while she changed her outfit. He tried not to think about their kiss at the ceremony—the kiss that had almost got out of his control. For years he’d thought about kissing her and he hadn’t been one bit disappointed. Her mouth was as soft and yielding and as passionate as he’d dreamed. More so. It had been like tasting delicious nectar, finding his tastes so attuned to its sweetness he couldn’t stop the desperate craving for more.

  Even now he could still taste her. He could still recall the pillowy softness of her lips moving under his. Could still feel the darting flickers of her tongue and her beautiful breasts crushed against his chest. His body was aching with need—a need she had stirred in his flesh, making him feel like a horny teenager. He’d prided himself on his control and yet one press of those soft lips against his and he’d been tempted to change the terms of their agreement.

  Sorely tempted.

  Dangerously tempted.

  Why was it Izzy who made him feel so close to the edge of his control? During that kiss he’d all but forgotten they were in a registry office in front of witnesses. His senses had been so tuned in to her, every thought had flown from his head other than how much he’d wanted her. His blood had pounded with it.

  Damn it, it was still pounding.

  He needed more than a cold shower. He needed an ice bath. He needed to stay in control. He wanted her, wanted her desperately, but it didn’t mean he would act on it. Acting on it would complicate things. Make their relationship even trickier than it already was.

  Andrea swept his gaze around the room, wondering how a young woman from such a wealthy background could live in such a cramped space. The furniture looked second-hand and, while it was shabby chic, it seemed strange she hadn’t decorated in the manner to which she had been born. She had stubbornly refused to live in the Hampstead flat her father bought her for her twenty-first birthday. It was now part of her inheritance, having been rented out for the last four years.

  Had this been her way to snub her father? To live like an impoverished student? But then his gaze went to a stack of textbooks on a table next to the sofa. A laptop was perched nearby. He looked at the social work titles and frowned. Did the books belong to her flatmate or was Izzy studying online? Perhaps the impoverished student atmosphere of the flat was a reality. But she’d enrolled in courses before and spectacularly failed.

  Andrea had always struggled to understand her attitude to her father. While he had never considered Benedict Byrne to be a perfect father, he still didn’t think Benedict had deserved how Izzy had behaved towards him. Her rebellious streak had caused her father so much shame and heartache. Her behaviour throughout her teens and early adulthood had been outrageous at times. Underage drinking, hard partying, mixing with the wrong people—all of it orchestrated to draw as much negative attention to herself as possible. Andrea found it hard to have any sympathy for her because the only father figure he’d known had been a cruel sadistic bastard of a stepfather who had beaten his mother, and when Andrea had tried to defend her he’d been kicked out on the streets.

  He’d been fourteen years old.

  Andrea hated thinking about his past. He was no longer that terrified boy who had no roof over his head. The boy who had been sick-to-his-guts worried about his mother, but when he came back the next day to help her escape, to his shock and despair, she had asked him to go away. Told him she didn’t want him any more. His mother had chosen to stay with her violent partner rather than have Andrea help her get away. He had bled for days from the wound on his face from the backhand from his stepfather and to this day carried the scar. It was a permanent reminder of how ugly relationships could get, and how even people who you thought loved you most in the world could still turn against you when you least expected it.

  If it hadn’t been for Izzy’s father crossing paths with Andrea a few months later, who knew what would have become of him? He had gone from begging for food outside hotels and restaurants to owning some of the most luxurious hotels in Europe. With Benedict’s help he had chosen a different path, a different life, a different future.

  And for the next six months that future included Izzy as his temporary wife.

  Izzy came out dressed in a navy blue knee-length dress with three-quarter sleeves with velvet-covered heels to match. The colour of her outfit intensified the blue of her eyes, but a shutter had come up in her gaze, reminding him of unreac
hable galaxies in a midnight sky. Her mouth was shiny with lip gloss and he couldn’t stop thinking about how it felt beneath his own. How she tasted. How she responded. The fire in her had struck a match to the simmering coals of his desire.

  Her gaze moved out of reach of his. ‘I’m ready.’

  He pointed to the books and the laptop. ‘Are these yours?’

  Her chin came up. ‘Yes. What of it?’

  ‘You’re studying for a degree?’

  Her eyes moved away from his. ‘What if I am?’

  ‘Isabella.’ Andrea touched the back of her hand and she raised her gaze to meet his. He knew he should try not to touch her so much but the temptation, the need was always there. She was like a potent drug he couldn’t summon the willpower to resist. And now he’d fed the desire to touch her by kissing her and holding her in his arms, he was going to have to work a lot harder to keep his desire under control.

  She pulled her hand away as if his touch disturbed her. ‘Yes?’ Her voice had a coating of frost around the edges.

  ‘It’s great that you’re studying. Really great.’ He opened and closed his fingers to stop them from tingling from her touch. ‘You’re doing a Social Work degree?’

  ‘I had to do some extra night classes to get in but I’m scraping through so far.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re doing much more than scraping through,’ Andrea said, wondering if she had failed in the past by choice rather than lack of academic ability. ‘We need to talk about our living arrangements. Or, more to the point, yours.’

  Her eyes widened to pools of startled blue ink. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘We will be expected to live under the same roof now that we’re—’

  ‘I’m not living with you.’ She flung away to the other side of the room, spinning back around to glare at him. ‘You planned this, didn’t you? You tricked me into marrying you and now you’re insisting on ridiculous living arrangements. I won’t do it. I won’t live with you.’