Bound to the Rival CEO: The Bound Series, page 7
“That sounds like the beginning of a cliche romance novel.” She tangled her fingers with his. Something he was getting used to. She did it so often he didn’t think she knew she was doing it.
He chuckled. “If my brothers could see me now, I’d never live it down.”
She stiffened then went to pull away. “Why? Because it’s me?”
He caught the pinch in her voice and pulled her closer. “Because I’ve got the company enemy right where I want her, and nothing’s going to happen.”
“Kill me in my sleep, and I will haunt you, and not like a friendly ghost.” She yawned and tucked her back into his front. His arm brushed against her breasts, her nipples hardening. Against the backdrop of the wind, he thought her breath hitched.
Cocooned in their own little oven. Did she want him? He sure as hell wanted her. She challenged him, and he hadn’t been tested in a long time. Holding her somehow felt right and wrong.
“Daisy?”
Her breathing quietened. He wasn’t convinced she was asleep, but he wasn’t going to push the matter tonight.
Tomorrow was a whole different ballgame.
He woke a few times in the night when Daisy thrashed out, but with his arm around her waist she couldn’t move. He did wake when dawn cracked through the window.
She’d turned in his arms, their limbs tangled. She wiggled closer, and a throaty moan tore from her mouth. She said something that he couldn’t catch.
“Daisy?” he whispered.
The wriggling continued. She moaned again, arched, then smiled against his chest.
Jesus.
He’d give his left ball, which he was quite fond of, to know what she was dreaming about. Had she said his name? It sounded like it, but when she was muffled against his chest he couldn’t be sure.
Damn.
She burrowed into his chest and sighed, leaving him with blue balls, a raging boner, and that smile branded against his heart. He’d stayed awake a long time, staring at the ceiling, trying to ignore her hand clamped around his waist, her gorgeous, scented hair like a blanket across his chest or the way her head fit perfectly into his shoulder.
With their fucked-up family history, there could be nothing between them.
He stared over her head. It was time to give himself a reality check. He was here for the Levi resort bid only. Tomorrow he’d be working on her confession, because they’d be back to being enemies, which was way easier than dealing with the weird arrhythmia in his heart when she was in his arms.
CHAPTER NINE
Daisy sat across from Zan, who’d barely looked at her since she’d woken alone in the hut this morning. When he did, his eyes were distant. She’d become a watery fart on his favorite pair of white pants. Earlier she’d woken on her own to a powder-blue sky and whisper-calm turquoise ocean.
Best night’s sleep ever.
She’d had a hot dream, and she’d woken relaxed and smiling, for once not stressed about work or their tumbling share price. She’d woken alone, missing Zan’s heat, but he’d returned a couple of minutes later. She’d said a sunny good morning, and his response was curt, delivered in a detached tone.
“What’s wrong with you?” she’d demanded, hands on her hips.
“Nothing,” he’d barked. “Got shit to do and want to get it done.” Cold green eyes swept over her.
Wow.
It was as if their shared conversations of last night had never happened.
Back to being enemies.
Whoever the man was last night had gone, and instead sat the man she’d always thought he was.
What had she been thinking? They’d be best friends? No, but she thought they’d reached some sort of truce.
Clearly they hadn’t.
She tilted her chin. Back to being enemies. Fine by her.
“I am not going on the kayak with you. I’ll wait for the staff to arrive. Your chips have malfunctioned, or you haven’t fully recharged,” Daisy said after Zan had dictated the morning’s weather forecast and the resort’s response to their being stranded, like she had no say in her life. The hairs on the back of her neck bristled.
She’d be here for another six to eight hours.
Fine by her.
“Daisy, get in the kayak,” he said with exaggerated slowness.
“I’m not getting in there with you. You flip on a dime. All nice one moment and the next you’re Darth Vader. Who knows if you’ll flip out there and toss me into the sea to be eaten by sharks.” She stared him straight in the eye. “Not on a train, a plane, a boat, or the back of a goat.”
Dark brows pulled in. “Did you, Dr.…Never mind. I would never intentionally flip the kayak and dump you into the ocean. I thought we’d established that yesterday.”
They entered another standoff. Green clashed with brown before he huffed out a breath.
“I apologize for this morning. I was maybe a bit short with you. I want to get back to the resort.”
He could probably recite the recipe for pickling turnips with more enthusiasm.
She studied him. “Do you mean it or are you just trying to get me back into the kayak?”
“Bit of both.” He shrugged a shoulder that Thor wanted back.
She gave a short nod. She didn’t want to sit here alone for six hours.
“God, you’re stubborn.” He dragged the kayak down the beach. Daisy followed, stopping to collect pretty shells. She clipped on her lifejacket and stepped into the warm water that lapped around her ankles.
“Back at ya, sunshine,” she said sweetly, shooting him a smile that stopped him in his tracks for a second before he frowned and dragged the kayak fully into the ocean.
She started her list for the day.
Get back without being eaten by sharks, including the one in the kayak
Have a shower for an hour
Get Zan to want to swap me out
Figure out how we can do the challenges without killing each other
Oh, I know. Avoid Zan
The sea was calm, and they made it back without mishap by midmorning. His shoulders were not relaxed like yesterday when the oar had glided through the ocean. The coiled muscles under his golden skin stabbed the water in short jerks, the trip back bursting with silence.
Zan had left as soon as the kayak was secured, leaving Daisy to have a long shower, trying to iron some of the tension from her body. Afterward, she walked around the resort, smiling at the couples who had the bloom of love about them, feeling empty. With wistfulness like snowflakes falling over her, she smiled at the hands brushing, hair twirling, couples heading toward bungalows with anticipation written on their faces. Maybe the four-day rule worked. Maybe she’d come here as a single and see if the equation worked.
Her throat tightened, and her eyes stung.
Because I want someone to want me. I want to see a man’s face light up when I walk into a room. I want…I want…I want to be loved and love him with my soul.
She was here for an entirely different purpose with a man who barely tolerated her. This morning, she’d like to know him a lot more. He’d been open and gentle, and anchored to his body she’d had the best night’s sleep she’d had in ages. They’d been Zan and Daisy. This morning that man had vanished, and now it was Alexander who sat across from her, attacking his food with short, vicious movements like it had somehow harmed him.
“A change in the cuff challenge. The couple who stays handcuffed together for the length of the rest of the challenge, morning and night, will take a bonus prize.” He sounded bored, as if the idea of being cuffed to her was about as much fun as joining the knitting circle and making hats for squirrels.
She stiffened.
Oh no. This most definitely was not on a list.
“Cuffed to you?” Her mouth dried.
Predatory dark-green eyes captured hers. “Worried about spending a lot of time plastered to my side? Afraid you’ll jump me?”
She jerked back. His words, invisible knives, cut deep. “I thought…I thought last night…” She let the words trail off. The words were out of her mouth before she’d consulted her brain.
Her face heated, and anger shot through her veins.
He leaned forward, his green eyes as cold as the deepest ocean where giant man-eating squid lived. “You thought what, that after spending a night sharing Skittles we’d be best friends and I’d forget how your sister tried to take down our company?”
If she could, she’d fling her plate at him. “I can’t believe you. You’re such a dick.” Heat pounded her cheeks, her blood steaming. She leaned forward until his breath scorched her cheek. “Alexander, if you were the last man on the planet and there was a sperm clinic, to ensure the future of the human race I’d buy a baster.”
“Is that so?” A smile curled his mouth. She thought she caught him shudder when she’d said his full name.
“Yeah. That’s so.” Her voice was expressionless. She had read this man wrong. Last night she thought she’d glimpsed the real Zan Gillard, the man behind the mogul.
Guess I was wrong. So very, very wrong.
“So the cuff challenge?” He leaned back all loose-limbed.
She smiled, pretty sure she looked like a homicidal clown.
A thought burrowed into her brain.
Surely they could be exempt if she had a medical issue.
“I’m coming down with something.” She laid her hand on her forehead. “Fever. Thready pulse. The urgent need to vomit.” She stared at him hard. “I’m going to find a clinic.”
He stood. “Let me accompany you. I’d hate for you to faint.”
“Oh, please, you’d throw me off a cliff.”
He stuffed his hands into his pockets and watched her.
“Are you really coming down with something?”
Is that concern in his voice or does he have gas?
“No.” She couldn’t fake Ebola for the next few days. Besides, that wasn’t her way. She was going to win this challenge, bring home the soy bacon, so to speak, and win the bid for the resorts. There had to be another way to get out of this mess.
What if…
What if she got him to swap her out? She wasn’t apologizing for something her sister didn’t do, and there was no way she was confessing that she’d pay in Monopoly money.
An idea germinated in Daisy’s mind. He didn’t like public displays of affection. The way he stiffened when she’d grabbed his hand. Attached to him, with her hand in his, pressed against his side, he’d be begging her to swap out. She’d funnel his fifty thousand into the company. She couldn’t wait to hear his very public apology. “Why don’t we start early? I can’t wait.” She unclenched her jaw and held out her arm. “Cuff me.”
CHAPTER TEN
Zan stuffed the paper into his back pocket. So he’d elaborated on the note, which said nothing about being cuffed at night. That came sailing into his head on a genius idea after last night with Daisy snuggled into him like she belonged. The rules had changed. He’d seen the hurt flash in her beautiful eyes when he’d been an ass to her, but she couldn’t know how much she affected him. They were both here as business professionals, which was why he’d had to level the playing field. And he hated she was back to calling him Alexander, but that bridge was a smoldering mass after being hit with a missile. A missile with the name Daisy Carter stamped on it.
Now she wasn’t a CEO. Now she was a pissed off woman–more lethal than pitting religious zealots against each other debating whose God was the best.
She pulled a tube from her pocket and, with her eyes on him and with deliberate slowness, outlined her lips in gloss. His body went solid when she puckered her mouth and sent a kiss in his direction. The scent of vanilla lingered in the air.
“The one and only kiss you’ll get from me.”
Fuck.
He shifted in his seat, his cock being the soldier that it was punched into action at her perfectly puckered lips.
“I don’t want anything from you,” he ground out.
“Good, because you’ll get nothing from me, Alexander, especially not my fifty grand, but if you want to swap out, cut me a check, and apologize about Poppy, this will all be a distant memory. I will then find a man who wants to spend time with me, who wants me cuffed by his side. A man who wants to know me.”
He pushed back on the headache building inside his skull. “Not swapping you out,” he barked
He fought the flinch at the way she said his name with ice hanging from every letter. He wished he was anywhere but here with her. But here he was with an infuriating woman with her ridiculous rules for every challenge, and her vanilla-soaked lips were killing him.
I’m done.
They were now going to play by his rules.
Cuffed together, she wouldn’t have the choice to debate everything and muttering about rules. Wouldn’t worry him if he were forced to put her over his shoulder with his hand on her lush butt.
His mouth watered at the thought.
Besides, when she coughed up her side of the bet all the better.
He chugged a mouthful of beer, while Daisy gazed out at the resort, a dreamy expression now on her face that had replaced the hard one of a few minutes ago.
For a single, ridiculous second, he wondered what it would be like to have her look at him like that.
For scientific purposes only.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know, and it pissed him off that he did.
A smile teased her lips. “Wondering if the whole four-day thing works. Wondering if maybe my guy is here.” She cut him with a smile. “Wondering if I should start looking for him.”
A darkness formed on his horizon. “We agreed we’re not swapping out unless you’re logging on to PayPal now. Let me know when you’re done so I can check the balance.”
She leaned forward and tangled his fingers in hers, a teasing smile on her lips that did not make it to her eyes. Her gentle touch sent a tremor down his arm and arrowed into his heart, which he promptly threw out.
“I’m not swapping out. I’m not giving you fifty thousand of my hard-earned cash, and I don’t take Monopoly money, plus I suspect your credit rating is poor. Maybe my man is at Lovers Beach right now. It only fits two people apparently. He might be there waiting for me. I should swing by and give him my number.”
Like fuck she would.
“You’re up for the challenge?” He dangled the metal cuffs between them. Plastered to his side, no man would come close enough to give her his number or vice versa. The mixed messages he was sending to himself were confusing the crap out of him.
“As I said, bring it unless you want to swap out. I don’t mind if you do. I think it could be quite refreshing to find a man who listens to me.” She paused a beat. “And just think, you could pick up a silent woman who’d do everything you said.” She widened her eyes. “Got to be tempting.”
The tension had now moved to his jaw. “I agree. Working with a like-minded person would be refreshing, but I love keeping my enemy closer. So unless you’re bailing…”
Pissed, angry, and steaming she was arresting, but when she smiled, his heart threw in an extra beat.
God, that mouth.
They’d have to work something out in the sleeping department, but he guessed with the way she looked now, with flat lips and tension lines digging between her eyes, there’d barely be body contact. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he occasionally liked her smart mouth, challenging him at every turn. He’d never had a woman who challenged him. Most stepped back when he stepped forward. He especially loved it when she got in his space, with her hands on her hips, spitting fire.
You’ve woken the dragon, baby.
He drained his beer.
“We need strict rules.” Daisy crossed her legs that would fit snuggly around his hips.
He dragged his gaze up her body. In another lifetime. Yes to the legs, no to the rules.
She caught his gaze, one brow arched.
He leaned forward in his chair.
“One challenge we do my way. The next yours.” That wasn’t even remotely in his rulebook and was not how the rest of the challenges would be played out, but she wouldn’t know that. He waited for the fireworks.
She studied him. Her dark eyebrows drawn, no doubt trying to work out his angle.
You won’t, baby.
“We’ll have boundaries that neither will cross.” Again, she uncrossed her legs then crossed them. He tried hard to keep his eyes on her, but the traitorous bastards couldn’t help but take in the sweep of smooth muscle over tanned legs. He could still feel the weight of her leg thrown over his last night.
His eyes narrowed. Was she playing him?
Of course she is.
Her eyes widened, and she leaned forward, and he fought not to stare at the lace of her white bra.
“We need a safe word,” he said, eyes drinking in the swell of her breast cupped by the white lace.
“Oh, the last book I read had spanking…” Her face flushed. Was she running a scene in her head? She squirmed, her bottom lip between her teeth.
Jesus. H. Christ.
His palm on her smooth butt as she moaned underneath him, begging for more. He’d kiss the red palm print… Sweat trailed down his chest, and it wasn’t from the sun.
“Think up a safe word and let me know,” he said harder than he meant to.
She blinked. Her face was red, and she sucked back the last of her drink, avoiding his eye.
“Virgil. What’s yours?”
His eyebrows rose. “Your safe word is you yelling another man’s name? No.”
“I won’t be yelling my cat’s name, and I won’t be needing a safe word, so I don’t see the problem.” She leaned forward, hooking him and trying to reel him in. “What about you? What’s your word?”
“Won’t need one.”
