Heat suffused my face, as if chasing his touch. But his gaze wouldn’t release me. Not until the words trembling on my lips fell free.

‘I want to consummate this agreement. I want you to...take me.’

The full force of the words powered through me, shaking me from head to foot. Dear God, this wasn’t how I’d imagined losing my virginity. None of this was how I’d dreamed it. So why did my insides twist themselves with...excitement?

For the longest time he simply stared at me, a myriad of emotions crossing his face. Eventually that dark gleam returned in full force, his presence filling the room as he turned his hand and brushed a thumb over my lips.

‘Are you sure you don’t wish to discuss...art?’

The thickness of his voice displaced any levity his words attempted. And it drove home that this was happening. My wedding night. No, it wasn’t the one I’d dreamed about, but really, if life was fair, would my father have tossed me in as part of a hundred-million-euro deal?

That thought was buried beneath the turbulent need climbing through me as he dragged his digit back and forth over my lip.

‘I’m sure,’ I answered, in a voice that sounded nothing like mine.

He tilted my gaze to his, making a gruff sound at whatever it was he saw on my face. His head started to lower—just as the other delicate subject raced to the forefront of my mind.

Tell him. He’s going to find out soon enough.

‘There’s something you should know.’

One eyebrow rose in silent question.

‘I’m a virgin.’

His fingers froze beneath my chin, his whole body turning to marble. ‘What did you say?’

I swallowed the knot in my throat, praying the shivers would stop coursing through my body. ‘I’ve never done...never been with a—’

A curse fell from his lips, raw and stunned. ‘Why?’

Finally—finally—that burst of hysteria filtered through. ‘You’re asking why your wife is a virgin? Isn’t that an odd question?’

‘Ne—and it is precisely why I want to know why a twenty-four-year-old who looks the way you do is still untouched.’

Heat flowed through me. ‘Looks the way I do...?’

The faintest colour washed his cheekbones. ‘You must be aware of your beauty, Calypso,’ he rasped, and his deep, husky voice set fire to my belly.

I blushed at the raw intensity in his words that reached into a secret part of me and took control of it. Hot tingles raced over my skin, warming me from the inside, tightening low in my belly and hardening my nipples. A gasp tore from my throat. His gaze dropped to my parted lips, his eyes darkening with each charged second that ticked by.

Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Surely Petras didn’t keep you under lock and key simply for this possibility?’ Incredulity racked his voice.

Pain lashed through me, because the same thought had occurred to me. My father might not have visited the ultimate indignity upon me by spelling it out in black and white, but by thwarting all my previous attempts at a relationship he’d ensured his deal would be sweetened with my virginity. Another indication as to how little he cared for me.