Page 69 of The Billionaire's Fake Fiancée

Her neck pinkens. Her words, when they come out, are breathy. “Something very fishy is going on.”

I say, “You’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“Is that so, Captain Sternpants?” Her eyes flare, like she can’t believe she just said that. “I mean…umm…”

Captain Sternpants?I narrow my eyes. “What did you just call me?”

“Nothing.”

But her cheeks are all rosy suddenly. “Didn’t sound like nothing to me.”

“Uh…”

I take a step closer. “I’m in the business of knowing when something is nothing or not.”

Her gaze is hot and hectic. She doesn’t want to repeat it for whatever reason, which makes me want to make her repeat it—several times over, just to see it coming out of her lips, up close and personal.

She steps back and hits the wall. I cage her against it, palms flat against the textured plaster, forearms brushing against the terrycloth tips of her robe. I have to make her say it again; I don’t know why, I just do. I’m out of control. Obsessed, even. It’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

And I want her. I can’t see anything else but her.

I lower my voice to the deep register that she seems to respond to. “Now, what did you just call me?”

She fixes her gaze on mine, lips parted. “Captain,” she says with dramatic enunciation. “Stern.Pants.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I rumble.

“Just a name.”

“Is it your name for me?”

She clearly doesn’t want to tell. I don’t give a shit about the name, but I like making her confess things.

“Is it?” I ask.

She twists her lips as if that will ward off the smile that’s pressing at the gates. “Fine. It’s me and my roommate’s name…for you.”

“You talk about me with your roommate? And that’s what you call me?”

She swallows, searching my face. I’m overwhelmed by her girly scent. Her heat. This is everything I was trying to avoid, and there’s nothing else that I want. “Sternpants? Why?”

Her lips part—it’s her turned-on tell. “I don’t know,” she whispers huskily.

“I think you do.”

Her eyes twinkle, the little vixen. She says nothing.

“Is it how you imagine me?” I lean in closer, lips grazing the shell of her ear. “Like some stern control freak?”

She sucks in a ragged breath. In a hoarse whisper, she says one word: “Yeah.”

Heat licks over my skin. “Do you think that’s how I fuck? Is that what you think?”

“Yes,” she rasps, cheeks glowing dusky rose.

Images of taking her right against the wall crowd my mind. They morph into images of bending her over my bed, ass bare. “That’s what you think?” I repeat senselessly.

“Uh-huh,” she says.

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