The Most Expensive Lie of All by Michelle Conder Read Free Book Online

and skin right now and get off my property,’ she said tightly.
    His nostrils flared as he breathed deeply and she suddenly realised how close he was, how far she had to tilt her head back to look up at him. ‘And for your information,’ she began, wanting to stamp all over his supersized ego, ‘I would never have said yes to you.’
    ‘Really?’
    He stepped even closer and Aspen felt the harsh bite of wood at her back. Caged, she could only stare as Cruz lifted one of her spiral curls again; this time carrying it to his nose. Her hands rose to shove him back but he didn’t budge, and almost immediately her senses tuned in to the warm packed muscle beneath the thin cotton of his shirt, to the fast beat of his heart that seemed to mirror her own racing pulse.
    A flash of memory took her back eight years to the feel of his mouth on hers. The feel of his tongue rubbing hers. The feel of his hands spanning her waist. Heat pooled inside her and made her breasts heavy, her legs unsteady. She remembered that after they’d been caught she had been so shocked by her physical reaction to him and so scared of her grandfather’s wrath she’d fallen utterly silent—ashamed of herself for considering one man’s marriage proposal while losing herself in the arms of another. Cruz hadn’t raised one word of denial the whole time and she still wondered why.
    Not that she had time to consider that now... He leant forward as if her staying hands were nothing more than crepe paper. His breath brushed her ear.
    ‘Let me tell you what I remember, gatita . I remember the way your curvy backside filled out those tight jodhpurs. I remember the purple bikini top you used to wear riding your horse along the beach. And I remember the way you used to watch me. A bit like the way you were watching me stroke the mare before.’ His hand tightened in her hair. ‘You were thinking about how it would feel if I put my hands on you again, weren’t you? How it would feel if I kissed you?’
    Aspen made a half coughing noise in instant denial and tried to catch her breath. There was no way he could have known she’d been thinking exactly that.
    ‘Have you turned into a dreamer, Cruz?’ she mocked with false bravado, frightened beyond belief at how vulnerable she suddenly felt. ‘Because really a dream would be the only place I would ever want something like that from you.’
    Dreamer?
    Cruz felt his jaw knot at her insolent tone. How dared she accuse him of being a dreamer when she was clearly the dreamer here if she thought she could buy and hold onto the rundown estate Ocean Haven had become?
    Memories of the past swirled around him and bit deep. Memories of how she had felt in his arms. How she had tasted. Memories of how she had stood there, all dazed innocence, and listened to her grandfather rail at him. He’d been accused of ruining her that night but it was her—her and that slimy fiancé of hers, Chad Anderson—who had tried to ruin him. She and her lover who had set him up for a fall to clear the way for Chad to take over as captain of Charles Carmichael’s dream team.
    There’d been no other explanation for it, and he’d always wondered how far she would have taken things if her grandfather had turned up five minutes later. Because that was all it would have taken for him to twist her nightie up past her hips and thrust deep into her velveteen warmth.
    His eyes took her in now. Her defiant expression and flushed face. Her rapidly beating pulse and her moist lips where her pink tongue had just lashed them. Her hands were burning a hole in his shirt and he was already as hard as stone—and, by God, he’d had enough of her holier-than-thou attitude.
    ‘You would have loved it.’ Cruz twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her head and pulled her roughly up against him. ‘ Will love it,’ he promised thickly, wrapping his other arm around her waist and staunching her shocked cry with his mouth.
    Her lips immediately