“To force Växborg to give me what I want.”
“And that is?”
“If he loves you like you think,” he said the word scornfully, “he will agree to a trade.”
“Trade?” She stared at him. “What trade?”
“You. For her.” Taking another sip of Scotch, he set the tumbler down on the table and looked at her evenly. “I will use you to force him to divorce his wife. His real wife.”
Rose stared at him. Slowly, she lifted her chin.
“I am his real wife,” she said quietly. “And nothing you can say will convince me otherwise.”
Xerxes frowned. “Is it really possible—” he searched her gaze with narrowed eyes “—that you did not know?”
She shook her head. “There is nothing to know! You’ve made a horrible mistake!”
“I couldn’t understand why he would pretend to marry you like this. But if you didn’t know he already had a wife…” His eyes traced her face, her breasts, her body. He tilted his head curiously. “Did you give him some kind of ultimatum? Did he think pretending to marry you was the only way he could keep you in his bed?”
To keep her in Lars’s bed? Rose gaped at him. She’d never been in his bed—or any man’s! She was saving her virginity for her wedding night!
The thought made her suck in her breath.
Surely Lars wouldn’t have gone through such an elaborate wedding pretense just to get her into his bed…?
“I will do anything for you,” Lars had said urgently last week, his pale blue eyes boring into hers. “Anything, petal. This is torture. You must be mine.”
With a ragged breath, Rose pushed the memory aside. “Our marriage was real,” she said. “There is no other wife.”
Abruptly, Xerxes moved to the chair directly across from her. He leaned forward, and the knees of his long legs brushed the wide skirts of her wedding gown.
“I am telling you the truth, Rose,” he said quietly.
She stared up at him. His face was too brutally masculine to be conventionally handsome like Lars’s sleek blond features. Instead, Xerxes had a hard, square jawline that was already dark with shadow. He had an aquiline nose and dark eyebrows above black eyes as endless and luminous as the night. His hair was cut short, above his ear, but with a slightly mussed, wild wave.
As he leaned forward, looking into her eyes, she was aware of the warmth and strength of his body. Against her will, she was suddenly aware of the rhythm of his breath, deep and in time with hers. She was aware of his scent, the masculine combination of some kind of woodsy cologne and musk and leather.
He was so close to her. So close.
With a ragged breath, she looked away.
“Who is she, then?” Rose said in a small voice. “His supposed first wife?”
“Laetitia Van Reyn.”
“Van Reyn?”
“You know the name?”
“There’s a wealthy family in San Francisco, mentioned often in the newspapers…”
“The same,” he said grimly.
“But the parents are dead,” Rose recalled. “Their only child is barely out of high school. I read she left for college.”
“She’s in a coma,” he said brutally. “No one knows she needs help. And I can’t find her and get her to a hospital.” His black gaze traced over her. “But you are his weakness. He will trade her. For you.”
She shook her head, dazed.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Except for…that.” He frowned as his eyes narrowed. “Take that off.”
“What?”
“Your dress. Take it off.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The wedding dress is an insult. To her. To me. Take it off. You are not a bride.”
“I was—am!”
“Take off that dress,” he growled. “Or I will take it off for you.”
“I have nothing else to wear!”
He gave her a cold smile. “That is not my problem.”
She rose to her feet in fury, lifting her chin. “I have the right to wear this. I am a bride, a married woman. You’re a liar!”
He swiftly rose to his feet, like a predator. “Call me that again, princess,” he said dangerously.
“Baroness,” she corrected fiercely. She tossed her hair, glaring up at him with all the fury of her five feet, four inches. Her eyes glittered as she met him toe to toe. “And you, Xerxes Novros, are a liar!”
Chapter Four
“YOU’RE a liar!”
Young and dark-haired, Laetitia Van Reyn had gripped the gilded arms of her chair as she stared at Xerxes in her family’s mansion with views of the Golden Gate Bridge. She’d remained home from boarding school after her father’s death to support her fragile mother, who had collapsed at his funeral. “No!” Laetitia had jumped to her feet at Xerxes’s news. Her hands flew to her ears as she backed away. “You’re a liar! Get out of my house! Never come back!”
Xerxes blinked. Liar. Same accusation. Very different woman.
He stared now at the young blonde who stood before him in the cabin of his private jet. Rose Linden was magnificent. A little too thin, perhaps, but it was hard to notice that when her full breasts swelled up against the bodice with every angry breath. Her waist was tiny, the perfect span for a man’s hands. Her honey-blond hair fell back in waves as she tossed her head, her chignon now completely collapsed, exposing her swanlike throat. Her aquamarine eyes glittered at him in fury.
“You are a liar,” Rose cried. “I don’t believe a word you say!”
A liar. To Xerxes, the integrity of a man’s promise equaled his worth as a man. It was the one accusation he could not endure. In cold rage, he gripped her shoulders.
“I’m selfish,” he ground out. “Ruthless. Even cruel. But not a liar. Never that.”
His gaze fell to her mouth, where she was chewing on her lower lip. He saw her lick her lips with her wet pink tongue, and his body tightened.
He wanted her. And in this moment, the layers of her wedding dress were all that separated them.
The wedding dress.
She was continuing to defiantly wear it, as a visual, physical insult both to Xerxes and to Växborg’s real wife. As if Laetitia were already forgotten. As if she were already dead!
Xerxes’s hands slowly moved down her arms, against the see-through lace of her sleeves. His lips turned down grimly.
“I told you to take that dress off.”
He felt her shiver, even as she stuck out her chin and glared at him with her beautiful turquoise eyes.
“No.”
“Then I will take it off for you.”
Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t dare to—”
With a rough motion, he ripped apart the shoulders of her wedding dress, tearing through the layers of white lace and popping the line of tiny white buttons off the back. He yanked the sleeves down her arms with such force that she staggered forward, nearly falling