Page 70 of Rival to the Billionaire

What we've been hiding from.

I take a deep breath and turn back to him. "Ryder, listen…"

"Forget it," he says, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter anymore. Nothing matters anymore."

"You're right. Nothing matters," I sputter, feeling the adrenaline rush through my body. I walk towards him, tension, anger, and embarrassment all boiling up inside me like lava. "Nothing matters to me…except us."

My arms wrap around his neck and I pull him close, so there's no space between us. And with my hands on the back of his neck and my fingers wrapped around the base of his hair, I kiss Ryder, my lips moving across his firmly, my eyes still wide open, burning into his.

He doesn't match my intensity, at first, his lips frozen against mine, his body unmoving. But as I push myself against him, as my tongue seeks his, I feel his firm resolve soften, his body give in to my touch.

Until, at last, Ryder Anderson—the man against whom I've been fighting for at least twenty years—wraps his strong arms around me and kisses me back, my fears scattering like pieces of a broken mirror turning in the wind.

ChapterTwenty

JENNY

I couldn't have dreamed of a better kiss than this.

The truth is that I didn't need this argument with Ryder.

Didn't need the angry words, the shouting, the accusations.

Didn't need him to open up to me.

A part of me already knew. Knew from the second we kissed not much more than a day ago that I was not just caught up in some irresistible attraction to him. That it was more.

Titanic could not shift into reverse, and neither can I.

Our bodies against one another are a perfect fusion, the joining of two opposite elements, of yin and yang, of gravity and the law of nature. Two bound-together, astral bodies, no longer separate, no longer able to push at each other or to harm, or to exist without the other.

It's not just a physical connection. It's not just the timing.

It's us.

We have the kind of interconnection that comes with a lifetime together. With a history, a collective understanding of what the other is thinking, what they want to do, what they want to say.

And we use it now. To lean on each other now, without reserve. To let our bodies speak for us, the way that even words cannot express.

In the barely-lit darkness of the hotel suite that we share, I allow my hands to explore him as our mouths meld, my fingertips sinking into the silky skin of his jawline and following the contours of his chest, up to the ridges of his neck and his face.

His stubble is rough against my touch, and I feel the roughness of his fingers against my waist.

Chills run down my spine as his hands slide over me, as if he’s been waiting to touch me. As if he’s been waiting for this moment too.

“Jen,” he whispers against my ear, his tenor deep, his breath hot against my skin. “I—Fuck.”

The sound of my name on his lips is like a drug. Addicting. Entrancing. Powerful. A curse and a blessing all at once.

My voice is a whisper against his lips. “I-I didn’t mean to—I—What I wanted to say was?—“

“Shh.” Ryder’s voice is soft, his hands slipping up underneath my shirt and around to my back. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispers.

It doesn’t matter. Because whatever my feelings had been, they’re irrelevant now.

In Ryder’s arms. Against his body. As he moves us backwards, leading us towards the massive, canopied bed.

"It doesn't matter," he says again, his lips brushing against my ear as his hands find their way back to my face and into my hair, a hundred tingles shooting through my body at once.

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