Page 7 of Billion-Dollar Dating Game

He nodded and reached above her head. ‘It doesn’t exist any more.’

She took a quick, sharp breath. She’d not been back to their village since her father had passed. She hadn’t known the building had been demolished. ‘A lot has changed.’

‘A lot certainly has,’ he agreed with that mocking edge.

He’d been handsome then and he was stunning now. It was severely unfair for one person to get everything—extreme brains and extreme beauty. And she was just like every other woman who came close to him—unable to resist drinking in the sight of his sleek, fit body as he ran his fingers along the length of her hair, trying to smooth it free from the branch. She quelled her shiver but now her pulse thundered. This was way too intimate.

‘Your ponytail is very long,’ he said. ‘Is it all your own?’

‘What?’ She jerked and her hair tightened again. ‘Of course it’s mine.’

He laughed beneath his breath. Her mood sharpened. Retaliation was required.

‘I’ve thought you’d manage this more quickly,’ she murmured saltily. ‘Given you’re supposed to be good with your hands.’

He stilled, mere millimetres away from her. Skylar took a second to replay what she’d just said and realised how stupid it was. How incendiary. How easily it would be interpreted as a tragic attempt at flirtation. But before she could backpedal he leaned closer still and resumed his effort to detangle her.

‘Oh, I’m very good with my hands,’ he drawled softly right near her ear. ‘And slow is better, don’t you agree?’

No, she didnotagree. Because the century-length seconds had slowed even more and she wasn’t coping.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he muttered into the thickened silence. ‘I should have remembered that you prefer things fast...’

She couldn’t reply and he bent to look into her face. There was that mockery in his eyes, but there was heat too—heat that made that fizzing inside even more intense. If she were normal, she’d laugh this off with some flippant comment. But she wasn’t normal. She couldn’t think of anything flippant. She couldn’t think of anything at all except—

‘Just hurry up and finish,’ she whispered, unable to believe what both her brain and body wanted.

‘Wow,’ he breathed back. ‘There’s a first.’

She clenched her fists and battled to hold herself back. ‘You’re not used to your attentions being unwanted?’

His smile of disbelief spread wider. ‘But you’re the one who asked me to help,’ he pointed out. ‘I’m being gentlemanly here, rescuing you from the evil clutches of a cherry tree.’

She couldn’t laugh. Quicksilver, not blood, flowed in her veins. Handsome in pictures, devastating in the flesh, Zane deMarco embodied sensual vitality, and every breath, every glance, every moment basking in his attention sent Skylar further along the path towards total brainlessness.

His dilating pupils were the only movement he made. ‘It really bothers you that I’m this close?’

Dynamite, meet detonator. His mere proximity provided the shock wave to ignite something within her that had long been—well—dead. He wasn’t just hard to handle, he was impossible to ignore, and unfathomably that ancient crush just...resurged. Even when she knew what a callous lump of a heart he had, her body didn’t care. Her body simply sizzled.

He suddenly moved. She felt loosening at her scalp and his fingers finally ran the full length of her hair and when they hit the end her ponytail fell back to rest against the bared skin of her back.

‘There you go—free of me at last. Quick, get away while you can,’ he jeered huskily. Bitterness glittered in his eyes. ‘There’s no one here to rescue you this time. You’d better run inside for safety.’

That was what she’d done almost a decade ago. Run inside and shut the curtains and not peeked out.

But she still couldn’t move. She watched that flicker in his eyes and the sardonic curve of his full lips and decided shewouldn’tgive him the satisfaction of running scared. Because when she’d run all those years ago it hadn’t been from him.

In truth, right now she was more scared of herself. But she’d come here for information, and while this was hardly the ideal interaction, at least she’d made contact. And suddenly there was an imp within that simply spoke for her.

‘Oh, no.’ She flicked her hand through her hair and the swish of her ponytail basically hit him in the nose. ‘I’m not going anywhere. That would be far too easy for you.’

‘You’re here to make things hard for me?’ Zane jammed his tingling hands into his pockets. He was hard already in a shockingly instant reaction to this unexpected encounter. He hadn’t been going to bother with Danielle’s party. He’d flown up later than intended and been late to cut across the garden, and as he had he’d glimpsed a nymph in the orchard and investigated only to find—

Skylar Bennet.

Hers was a face from the past that he preferred to keep well behind him, and he’d certainly not expected to see her here and looking like this. Not all glossy hair, glossy lips, glossy dress...not the perfectly polite, dutifully docile, completely irritating swot he knew Skylar was.

So he could do nothing but stare. The white silk clung to her slender curves, and a high split in the skirt teased flashes of skin while a thin ribbon at her neck secured the dress. He wanted to tug on the ends and watch it all slip from her silky-looking skin. He wanted to see the secrets beneath. He wanted to free her hair and feel it trail and tease his skin—and all but whip him in the face again.

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