Tara Pammi - A Touch of Temptation

He fisted his hands. But it would prove nothing new—to him or to her. Self-disgust boiled through him for even thinking it. He had let her get to him on the island, burrow under his skin until the past six years had fallen away and he’d been standing there with her letter in hand.

Never again.

He needed a new beginning without being haunted by memories of this woman. He needed to do what he had come for and leave—now.

“I realized what I had done wrong the moment I left the island,” he said, unable to stop himself from wringing out the last drop of satisfaction. He had never claimed to be a great man. He had been born a bastard, and to this day he was one. “I’ve come to rectify that mistake.”

Kim trembled all over, an almighty buzz filling up her ears.

“A mistake?” Her throat ached as it pushed that word out.

His golden gaze gleamed, a knowing smile curving his upper lip. “I forgot a tiny detail, although it was the most important of all.”

He plucked a sheaf of papers from his coat pocket and slid them on to her desk. Every inch of her tensed. The words on those familiar papers blurred.

“I need your signature on the divorce papers.”

She struggled to get her synapses to fire again, to get her lungs to breathe again.

The innocuous-looking papers pierced through her defenses, inviting pain she had long ago learned not to feel. This was what she had wanted for six long years—to be able to correct the mistake she had made, to be able to forget the foolish dream that had never stood a chance.

Her palms were clammy as she picked up the papers.

“My staff at the villa were never able to locate the copies you brought.”

She shivered uncontrollably at the slight curiosity in his words. Because she had torn them up after that first night when Diego had made love to her.

No, not love. Sex. Revenge sex. The this-is-what-you-walked-away-from kind. For a woman with an above average IQ, she had repeated the same mistake when it came to Diego.

She turned the papers over and over in her hands. This was it.

Diego would walk out of her life. She would never again have to see the foolishness she had indulged in in the name of love. What she had wanted for so long was within her grasp. Yet she couldn’t perform the simple task of picking up the pen.

“You could have sent this through your lawyer,” she said softly, the shock and confusion she had held in check all evening by the skin of her teeth slithering their way into her. Her stomach heaved. “You didn’t have to come yourself.”

He leaned against the table, all cool arrogance and casual charm. But nothing could belie the cruel satisfaction in the curve of his mouth. He wanted blood and he was circling her like a hungry shark now that he could smell it.

“And miss the chance to say goodbye for the final time?”

“You mean you wanted to see the fallout from your twisted seduction?”

“Seduction?” he said, a dark shadow falling over his features. The force of his anger slammed into her like a gale. “Why don’t you own it, like you do everything else? There was no seduction.” He reached her before she could blink. “What does it say about us that even after six years it took us mere hours after laying eyes on each other to end up in bed? Or rather against the wall...”

Her stomach somersaulted. Her skin sizzled. He was right. Sex was all she could think of when he was close. Hot, sweltering, out-of-control, mind-blowing, biggest-mistake-of-your-life-that-you-made-twice sex.

She would die before she admitted how much truth there was in his words, how much more he didn’t know.

She grabbed her pen and signed the first paper, her fingers shaking.

She lifted her chin and looked up at him, gathering every ugly emotion simmering beneath the surface and pouring it into her words. “It’s nothing more than a stimulus and response—like Pavlov’s dog. No matter how many years pass, I see you and I think of sex. Maybe because you were my first. Maybe because you are so damn good at it.”

The papers slithered to the floor with a dangerous rustle. She felt his fury crackling around them. He tugged her hard against him, his body a smoldering furnace of desire.

She had angered him with her cold analogy. But it only made the void inside her deepen.

His mouth curled into a sneer. “Of course. I forgot that the cruise, those couple of months you spent with me, were nothing but a rich princess’s wild, dirty rebellion, weren’t they?”

She felt a strange constriction in her chest, a tightness she had nothing to fight against. A sob clawed its way up her throat.

She hated him for ruining the most precious moments of her life. For reducing them to nothing. She hated herself for thinking he had loved her six years ago, for losing her mind the moment she had seen him again four weeks ago.

For someone who had been emotionally stunted for so long, the upsurge of emotion was blinding—pulling her under, driving reason from her mind.

She bunched her fingers in his jacket, his heart thundering beneath her touch. “It’s good that you’re so greedy you came back for more. Because I have news for you.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU HAVE NEWS...?” He frowned, his fingers locked in a tight grip over hers. “What, princesa? Do you have a new man lined up now that your sister has stolen the last one? Do you think I give a damn?”

“I’m pregnant.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. Not even a muscle twitched in his mobile face.

Hot satisfaction fueled her. She had wanted to shake his infuriating arrogance. She had. On its heels followed raking guilt.

Her knees buckled under her. Only Diego’s hold on her was keeping her upright.

God, she hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that. She hadn’t even dealt with what it meant to her, what it implied...

What did it say about her that the only positive thing she felt about the pregnancy was that it could shock Diego like nothing else could?

After the way he had treated her she owed him nothing. And yet keeping him in the dark required a price higher than she was willing to pay.

He had provided her with the best opportunity to tell him, to get it done with. For all she knew he wouldn’t even care. He had wanted revenge, he’d got it—with little scruples—and now he had divorce papers ready. And he would keep on walking.

His gaze sliced to her, searching her face. Her composure unraveled at his silence.

The roguish arrogance was gone from his face, replaced by a resolute calm. Every inch of her quaked.

“Is it mine?”

Her gut started that dangerous fall again. She needed to get herself under control. Because Diego was a master at reading her. Whatever she wished, he would do the opposite. Just to make her life harder.

She needed to play it cool. “Why do you think I’m giving you the good news?”

“You slept with me mere hours after laying eyes on me again,” he said, his golden gaze betraying his fury, “while the man you were ready to marry still had his lapdog out looking for you and your twin was being your damned placeholder in his life.”

She trembled as he walked away from her, as though he couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as her.

“And you went back to him as soon as I left you. Except he was two-timing you just as you were doing him. So I repeat: is the baby mine?”

“That’s not true. Alex and I—”

She shut her mouth with a snap, leaned back against the soft leather, trembling from head to toe. Guilt hung heavy in her stomach. The media, her father—the whole world had crucified Liv, while Kim was the one responsible for it all.

Except Diego knew where she had been and what she had been up to while Liv had pretended to be her. And of course Diego thought Kim had quietly crawled back to Alex, that nothing had changed for her. That she had jumped into his bed from Alex’s and then jumped straight back.