279 Proposal (2)
“Yes. Would you like to move in with us? I’m sure Rosaly will be overjoyed to have you here too.” He added.
She playfully pinched him. “You are using your daughter to lure me into saying yes, aren’t you?”
He didn’t deny the claim. “It’s not my fault that she is too cute for you to want to turn her down.”
He was right. Rosaly could get anything she wanted from her by merely batting her lashes, but that was not the only reason why she agreed to move in with him. She accepted the key and joined it with the bunch she had in her bag.
“Do you have any house rules?” She asked.
He thought deeply about it. “I don’t think so. You don’t need to worry about the chores and you can sleep in any room you want. Of course, I would prefer it if you slept here with me.” He then looked at her. “Actually, I do have some bedroom rules.”
Her lips twitched. “I can’t sleep on your side of the bed, touch your side of the wardrobe or change anything, and I have to live here as if I don’t really exist?”
He tipped his head back, laughing. “On the contrary, I love seeing traces of you around. I would like to enter the shower and either feel the scent of your body wash or join you. You can keep your clothes wherever you want and now that you mention it, you have to sleep on my side of the bed so I can hold you and you can’t wear any clothes to bed.”
“Huh?” She was taken aback by how fast that escalated.
.....
He grinned. “Not even your underwear.”
Her jaw dropped. “That’s just your way of getting me to sleep naked!”
He didn’t deny it. “If you want to.” He cupped her face and tucked her hair behind her ear. “The only thing you shouldn’t do is well... everything you don’t want to do. Do you have any rules? Anything you wouldn’t like me to do?”
“Actually, yes. Don’t go anywhere near the kitchen. I still can’t get over the kind of disaster that happened when you tried to bake a pizza last week.” She laughed. He had nearly made the oven explode before he finally admitted that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing and she had laughed at him for half an hour before they finally ordered pizza.
He was thinking about the same incident as well as another where he had made the worst pancakes he had ever tasted. “Yeah, I’ll stay ten meters away from the kitchen. Except, of course, when you are there.”
His meaning couldn’t be any clearer. She caught herself licking her lower lip and as soon as he caught on, he leaned over and kissed her.
She hugged his shoulders and inched closer to him, moulding her body into his. The kiss started off slow at first but when she ran a hand down his body, it became more and more heated as their hands hungrily explored each other’s skin.
He slid his hand between her thighs and she parted them, arching her back and moaning when he rubbed her core.
“You have no idea how crazy you drive me.” He said against her lips.
“Show me.” She let herself fall onto the bed, pulling him down with her. He slotted himself between her legs as their lips once again clashed.
___
Later at night, Zaria took out her work tablet to check on the information that Zeus had gotten for her after coaxing him for ages and promising to introduce him to a pretty, single girl. Where the hell she would get one, she had no idea but he had agreed to help and she could take care of that later.
He had sent an email with an attachment of information she didn’t expect.
“Gabriel West doesn’t actually love his family?” She exclaimed when she saw it.
Desmond placed the plate of fruits that he prepared for her on the right side of the desk. “Are you still investigating the West family?”
“I need to know exactly what I’m getting myself and Preston and Fort Group into.” She picked up the fork and placed a piece of pineapple between her teeth. He swooped in fast and bit the other end of it. She was taken aback but he acted like nothing had happened.
“If you want to know everything about The West family, we know someone who can tell us if we ask nicely.”
She narrowed her gaze on him. She knew her fiance too well to believe that there would actually be anything nice about the way he would ask Evan for the information. Besides, Evan hated talking about his family so the only way to make him talk without using violence was to offer him a deal he couldn’t say no to.
“He owes me a life.” He let it spill.
She looked up at him in shock before the pieces slowly started to connect. “Is it the scar on your lower back?”
It was his turn to be shocked. “You pay so much attention to my body. It’s barely noticeable. And you never asked or acted like you had seen it.”
“I saw it the first night we were together. I didn’t want to poke at your wounds.” She searched his face for any sign that she had said something wrong.
He leaned against the desk. “Gabriel wanted Evan to marry the granddaughter of his best friend. She was madly in love with him and it was his chance to redeem his image in the West family. Her grandfather is a tycoon with more influence than the West family could ever hope for, you know. And their partnership would be sealed for life if the two got married.”
” Evan didn’t want to?” She guessed.
He shook his head. “He was in love with another woman. He would do anything to see her smile. When he said this to his grandfather, he threatened her life. That was actually expected but what we didn’t expect was for Gabriel to want to kill Evan too. Just because his friend rejected the partnership following his granddaughter’s heartbreak. ”
Zaria cringed. “If he has that kind of influence, there is no freaking way he cancelled their collaboration over a few golden tears from a pampered princess. Gabriel must have done something to deserve such a consequence.”
“Say that to him.” He and Evan knew that too, but Gabriel was adamant to pin the blame on his grandson.
“He tried to shoot Evan while we were on our way out of his house. No, I didn’t take the bullet for Evan. Gabriel just has a really poor aim and he shot me instead. So although I assured him many times that I don’t blame him, he still believes it’s his fault I was there in the first place.”
He was aiming at using Evan’s conscience to get answers. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Knowing what she was thinking, he kissed the top of her head. “What matters is that we get the answers we want, right?”
“Yes.” She glanced back at her screen and felt bummed when she saw Zeus’s message.
“Where the hell am I going to get a beautiful, single woman who is willing to go on a date with my brother?” She slapped her forehead.
“Post a picture of him like an advertisement. I’m sure there will be lots of women willing to go out with him.” He suggested.
He was right. Zeus was handsome, but the point was that he had to admit that the girl was pretty for it to be considered done.
“I swear, I’m never asking my brother for help again.” She gritted her teeth as she took out her phone to sign her death sentence.
She texted a woman in her contacts list to ask her out for coffee at Reynold’s in the evening, and then sent Zeus the address and refused to answer any questions about the woman.
When she was done, she grabbed Desmond’s shirt. “Ximena will kill me.”
____
AN
If you love fantasy romance, you will definitely love my new book, The Helio’s Bride. Do check it out!
If you prefer contemporary romance instead, check out Taming The Villainess. Spoiler: The leads are cameos in this book. > O
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