Contractually Wed

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

C ALLING HIM THE devil was probably not the best way to convince Apollo Galanis that she was a better prospect than her sister but then when had Jia’s plans ever gone according to script? Her entire life, including her conception into this world, had been ruled by Murphy’s Law.

This brilliant scheme to impress her sister’s fiancé with her smarts and cunning and guts had looked different in her head. He was a ruthless, ambitious billionaire who was determined to cut her father’s small architecture firm into pieces. She’d convinced herself that a man like that would appreciate her taking this initiative.

Of course, she’d fallen asleep in his favorite lounger. And now as he watched her with those intense gray eyes, she realized what she’d left out in her calculations and it was a biggie.

Apollo Galanis was not some manageable, ordinary man she kept reducing him to in her head. It was both delusional and dangerous.

There had been this...sparkling, tense energy between them from the first moment. She’d pretended to be her sister, Rina, and chatted away about her intense and scorching sex life, hoping to put him off, while he had known that she wasn’t Rina and played along.

At the end, after she’d made a flaming fool of herself by comprehensively describing the foursome she’d just walked out of, his mouth had twitched and her gaze had gone to the sudden, blinding beauty of his lips and he’d caught her watching and that had been that.

Since then, as much as Jia had tried to fill the space between them with her loathing of him and he with his contempt for her, there had been something more volatile in the mix. Something she had refused to acknowledge in the beginning, something that had kept her awake later, the very something that had finally led to this madcap plan. That the basis of her proposal was “this energy” between them made her face and neck hot, even with her skin damp and sticky.

At least, he hadn’t laughed at her.

But as the seconds and his silence stretched, being laughed at felt better than his scrutiny.

“Show me your skills, then. Sell yourself to me,” he said, walking away.

Jia blinked as bright lights came on, her body suddenly flush with humming energy, her brain chugging along painfully slow to the fact that he wasn’t throwing her out.

When she turned around, he was sitting on the white leather couch, one arm spread out over the back of it, one leg over the other, his expression one of smooth, wicked humor that Jia wanted to slap off his face. He looked like he was the lord of something, everything , and she, a poor peasant come to present her pathetic case.

“I’m waiting. Clearly, you think yourself a better candidate than your sister. Sell me on it.”

If his gaze had moved down her neck in that condescending way of his, that told her she was nothing but amusing entertainment, she might have lost it. Instead, he looked at her with that conviction that nothing, nothing , in the world could convince him to take her on.

And that...that arrogance filled her with renewed resolve. All her life, she had known little kindness and love and the little she had, had come from her sister. She’d do anything to stop Rina’s ruin at his hands. Even if it meant courting her own.

“My sister is gentle, kind and...in love with our ex-con chauffeur. As heartless as you are, I’m assuming you would hate a woman whose affections for you are in doubt.”

“Your sister’s too nice to cheat on me once we’re married and too gentle, just like you said, to give her marriage vows anything but full commitment. As for affections, those are fickle and I have no use for them.”

Jia’s mouth fell open.

“That’s what you based this whole escapade on?” he said, mouth twitching.

“Partly, yes,” Jia said, refusing to let him get to her. “I mean, I knew you were a ruthless, unemotional robot but hearing the proof from your own mouth...” She made a show of ticking off an item on her imaginary checklist. “I also took a little nice detour down your dating history on the good old web and from all the women you’ve dated—kudos to the diversity in your playing ground BTW—it’s clear—”

“BTW?”

“By the way,” she said, sighing. “Moving on, it’s clear that you like bold, adventurous, dare I say, even ballsy women for your...partners. Rina’s nothing like them. She won’t even fight back if you...”

“Careful, Ms. Shetty. Just because I let you insult me doesn’t mean you can attribute weaknesses to my character.”

“You’ll be bored within two days. Why are you so intent on having the most boring marriage in the world?”

“Boring marriages last.”

“Wow, so you’re really only going for quantity, not quality?”

“I still haven’t heard one word about how you’re a better candidate. Only disparagement of your sister.”

She gasped, feeling outraged. “I’m trying to protect Rina and you from—”

“Tell me,” he said, leaning forward, for the first time showing a sliver of curiosity. “Did Rina ask you to save her from this predicament or is this all an elaborately spun lie so that you could have me for yourself?”

“Of course she asked me. Like multiple times. In fact, she’s been...” Jia let out an angry breath, realizing the blasted man had tricked her into admitting it.

Something almost like distaste curled his upper lip. But then, his lips always seemed to greet the world with that lick of contempt. “Look, my sister is...” she began, wanting to defend Rina but he raised a hand.

She was so shocked he was engaging in dialogue that her brain stupidly followed his commands. “Why are you a better bet? You and I both know you have something bigger for you to drop.”

Jia shouldn’t have been surprised that he had figured her out. But she couldn’t play her ace just yet. “You and I have chemistry. And your plan to punish my father would yield a thousand percent more results if it was me you—”

He shot to his feet and moved toward her, and Jia’s synapses gave out. That lizard part of her brain seemed to come awake, screaming, Hot sexy man at twelve o’clock .

She craned her neck, just slightly, to look up into his face when he left only a foot or so between them. God, he smelled like cinnamon and pine and reminded her of decadent winter evenings spent near her mom’s feet while she knitted.

This close, she could see the lines of tiredness fanning out from Apollo’s eyes. And even as it reduced him from that larger-than-life figure in her head, Jia didn’t like seeing them. Didn’t like knowing him at this level.

“That’s an interesting observation. Care to prove it?”

“Prove it...how?” she said, her throat suddenly dry, and hating herself for taking a step back. She should have known the beast would play with her.

“Kiss me. Then we will know if you’re really a better proposition than—”

She pressed her hand to his mouth. Something hot and feral came awake in his gray eyes, something she hadn’t even been sure he was capable of feeling.

“Please don’t—”

“You should know, Jia,” he said, wrapping long fingers around her wrist and tugging her hand away from his mouth. “Every game you begin, I will play, and play to win.”

Her name on his lips was a sweet threat. A reminder that she was playing a dangerous game, that she was letting this attraction go to her head. And maybe even handing him a weapon. And he was right. He was a master at this. “Fine. I’ll show you my ace. But you have to promise that you’ll grant me three wishes in the aftermath. Whatever I ask for.”

“You’re so sure you’ll win me over?”

“Give me your word, Apollo. Three conditions for our deal in your language.”

“How do you know I won’t go back on them?”

“Because I just know,” she said, hating the fact that she trusted him. How had that happened?

That little flicker of heat again in his eyes and then a nod.

Jia drew in a deep breath, even as fear spread its tentacles wide and far in her body. If she did this, there was no turning back. If she did this, she was tying her future—at least half a decade in the best-case scenario—to this man, who was bent on ruining her family. If she did this, her father was never going to give her what she’d desperately craved for years.

But it was the only way to protect Rina and the only way to stop her father from getting hurt by this man who would not hesitate when he discovered her father’s lies. And while the thought of settling into unholy matrimony, even for a temporary period, with this man turned her inside out, it would at least serve as a break from her own life. Especially if Rina summoned the courage to stand up to their father and leave home.

“The plans for the new wing of that private library in Seattle, the low-income apartments out in Brooklyn, my brother, Vik...didn’t design any of that stuff.”

“It’s his name on the blueprints,” Apollo said, thunder in his eyes. “He accepted a bloody award for it. His face was on a magazine cover for...who? Who’s the architect?”

“Me. I drew the initial plans. And the revisions after you requested them. And... I did all of them. So, there you have it. I’m the asset you want. You take me out of Dad’s company and...it loses its prestige faster than you can cut it up. It won’t win any more contacts moving forward.” Something thick and sticky coated her throat and Jia had to swallow to speak past it. “You marry me, and take me away from the company, and you truly have won.”

Apollo took one look into those big, brown eyes, saw the tears she blinked away in a quick flash and knew she was telling the truth. Fury gripped him, even as his usual rationale tried to wrangle it into control.

He shouldn’t be surprised by further proof of Jay Shetty’s duplicitous nature. Suddenly, all of the older man’s attempts to keep his younger daughter away from Apollo made sense. He had assumed Jay was attached to Jia and he’d had no interest in the woman with her rough edges and vulgar stories and her constant attempts to draw him into a fight.

Now he realized how perfectly Jay had played him by dangling his beautiful, perfect, dull-as-cardboard firstborn in front of Apollo. But why rob his own daughter of her name and her accolades...why pass it on as his son’s talent...?

“You studied architecture. Your brother on the other hand was thrown out of college,” he said, having cast a cursory glance at her records when the PI he’d hired had dug up everything on the Shetty family.

Usually, he would never overlook the details just because it was a woman. But from the first moment she’d walked into the restaurant pretending to be her sister and let herself loose on him, Apollo had decided that she was of no significance to him, that she was no more than a buzzing fly.

She shrugged, her mouth clamped, all of that dark humor and the teasing taunts gone. Her admission had clearly come at a high price and she’d still done it.

Her claim was that she wanted to save her sister from the horrible fate of being married to him? But why put herself in his sights, then? Nothing about Jia Shetty made sense to his logical brain.

“Is this another game your father’s playing?” he said, his voice full of irritation at himself.

She went to sit on the couch. Tucking her feet under her knees, she leaned back and let out a loud exhale. The maid uniform rode up on her thighs, revealing smooth skin on top of the stockings and another button popped on the bodice, revealing the curve of a breast. She thrummed with an artless sensuality he found irresistible. “He’s going to hate me for spilling the family’s dirty secret.” He heard the slight quiver in her words. “You can be sure of that.”

“Why are you going against your own family, then? Or is lack of loyalty a family trait, passed down in blood?”

Her bow-shaped lips flinched. “My father is playing a foolish game, thinking he can change your mind in three years. Thinking he can impress you with my talent at the helm. He doesn’t realize how many things could be ruined by continuing this...feud. I’m trying to save everyone.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why? You’re here, having maneuvered yourself onto the board, because my father stole something from yours more than two decades ago, aren’t you?”

“Not a small something,” Apollo said, gritting his jaw. The die was cast and yet some part of him wanted to understand her. “Your family doesn’t deserve—”

“That’s my decision.”

She looked up at him as he moved toward her, the lamplight throwing the long line of her neck into relief. Everything about her was achingly lovely, perfection stitched together painfully with a multitude of imperfections.

He should turn away from her and her proposal, turn back on the entire idea of ruining Jay Shetty, and yet, Apollo had never been so aroused, his interest engaged on many levels. Everything about her was a challenge, a lure and a promise and the extreme achiever in him wanted to unravel her on every level. And conquer her.

“Maybe all this is a scheme to tie you to myself?” She let out a throaty laugh, and the collar of her uniform shifted to reveal a little more of her tattoo. “Maybe I’m stealing you from Rina because of my uncontrollable lust for you?”

For all her flippant taunts, she stiffened when he sat down on the coffee table in front of her, caging her between his legs. Elbows on his knees, he leaned forward until he could see the browns of her eyes widen into large pools.

“What are your conditions?”

Her soft gasp was a whistle through the gap between those front teeth, tiny beads of sweat over her bow-shaped upper lip. It took her several more breaths to focus on his words and he suppressed a smile at that. Maybe the lust thing wasn’t just a bluff. Her gaze met his finally, a steely resolve in it. “You will not retaliate against my father for this.”

“And?”

“You will divorce me after two years, after you’ve exploited everything you can out of me.”

“I intend to marry only once in my life, Tornado,” he said, making it crystal clear that he wasn’t giving her up. Not when he was just discovering what a treasure she was on multiple levels. “Whether that’s your spineless sister or prickly you, I will make it work. I’ll relish your father’s—”

“I’m already aware of your elaborate revenge scheme. But believe me, you aren’t going to want me anywhere near you in a year, tops. I’m generously granting you two.”

He didn’t hide his smile then. And when her gaze skidded to his mouth with a near-comical helplessness, he felt punch-drunk with desire. “No.”

“You promised,” she said, almost stomping those combat boots on the floor, in something akin to a tantrum.

He raised a brow, thoroughly unsure of what to make of this woman-child creature. If his assessment of those designs was right, and he was always right, she was not only brilliant but innovative in her field at a young age. There was the fact that she was writing her life away into the enemy’s hands to protect her undeserving family. Then this...outward toughness she projected—from how she dressed to how she talked and acted—then there was the quicksilver flash of fear coursing through her body and her trust in him. And he felt as if he was standing at the door of either his biggest victory or his doom. The excitement in his blood though, the sudden hum in his veins...it seemed to not care.

“You should have specified that it was about the marriage itself.”

“Ugh, you’re...”

“You think I can’t tolerate you, ne ?” he said, softening without wanting to or seeming like he was. “Leave it to time.”

“Fine.”

“You’ll be expected to spend a little time in Greece every year,” he said, purposefully making it vague.

Apprehension filled her eyes.

“Is that a problem, Jia?” he asked softly, pressing down hard on his curiosity. Now that he had her, a true asset if he’d ever known one, nearly locked up, he didn’t want to spook her.

“My entire life is in New York.”

“But you’re willing to give it up for Rina, no? And to be honest, it doesn’t look like much of a life to me.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she said, the protest without fire.

Instantly, he felt the need to soothe her, for more than the obvious reason. “And your last condition for me?”

“Oh, I’m saving that one for later. It’s more in the lines of a wedding present,” she said, feathery eyebrows wriggling up and down.

Apollo felt the most insane urge to grab her and kiss the insouciance out of her. He wanted to reduce her to nothing but sounds and gasps, to wrest some kind of control from her, to prove to himself that she and her sister were interchangeable.

Christos , the thought of a kiss had never aroused or riled him so.

When he didn’t say anything, she stood up, even though there was little space between his legs. “The wedding,” she said, looking down at him now, “has to be a quiet, city hall affair. I can do Thursday and—”

He shot to his feet too. “No, absolutely not.”

They were standing close enough that her chest grazed his just so. “This is an arrangement, a boardroom deal. Do we have to dress it up as some big romantic affair?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. Don’t blame me if I disappear the day before the wedding and you find Rina walking toward you.”

“Are you planning to?”

“My family isn’t going to be happy about this. Not just not happy . They might do anything to stop me.”

“Because you’re your father’s golden goose,” he finished, finally understanding her point. She seemed to have no illusions about her value to them. And yet, every time she talked about them, something sad and desperate filled her eyes.

“And I come with the same stock options as Rina. You can have them after two years of blissfully wedded life.”

Apollo had never sought to punish the man’s children for his sins. Marrying Rina after Jay had dangled the stock in his face, especially after he’d discovered that she had the spine of a noodle and would serve well as a wife, had been simply another step toward his goal. But with this woman, it felt like she was turning herself into a willing victim for her family.

It left a bitter taste at the back of his throat.

She waved her phone in his face, the action and her general irreverence and her body language all nearly alien to him. “Text me when you have the license.”

“I have the license. Only the name needs to be changed.”

She pressed a palm to her chest, her eyelashes fluttering. “Oh, how romantic.”

Just as she bypassed him, Apollo reached for her. She fell into him with a soft oomph, her thighs pressing into his. “I have agreed to all your conditions, ne ? I have one too.”

“I’m not giving you any more dirt on my father.”

He grinned then and cupped her cheek slowly. “What a diabolical mind you have, Jia. I have something more personal in mind.”

Her eyelashes fluttered rapidly, like butterfly wings, and her lips too. “What?”

“All this chemistry you claim there is between us, this uncontrollable lust you have for me... I would like a taste of it. After all, I switched my choice to you pretty fast. I need a reminder as to why.”

“Why? You didn’t kiss Rina after all.”

He grinned. “And how would you know if I kissed your sister or not?”

Color rose to her too-sharp cheeks and she shrugged. But she didn’t shy her gaze away. “I...asked her.”

“Why, Jia?”

Her gaze flicked to his mouth like a liquid caress, going straight to his groin. “Every time I saw you together, it was like pairing a wolf with an adorable baby chick. I kept waiting for you to realize she was too sweet and good and docile for you, and I was...curious about how a man could burn up for one sister and kiss the other. So I asked her, again and again.”

“I was burning up for you? Your confidence is interesting, if nothing else.”

“It’s a fact.”

“That your attraction to me is real,” he said, satisfaction strumming through him like an unchecked river.

“Yes,” she said, an edge of defensiveness to the word. “It’s chemistry. I won’t be made to feel shame over it.”

He wondered who had made her feel shame over it and how he could reduce them to ash. “I am beginning to see one big advantage to this union, then. And getting quite excited about it too.”

Her gaze flicked to his crotch and then back up. Christos , the woman was bold. “You sure your...hard-on isn’t because of what I can do for you?”

He threw his head back and laughed, true enjoyment coursing through him. And her eyes on him, tracking everything, drinking everything in...was a shot of desire injected straight into his veins. “I do believe we have one thing in common, Jia. Refusing to believe in delusions.”

“So admit the truth, then. Power is the thing that gets you off.”

“In this case, no. I should very much like to fuck you, as soon as possible. Is that clear enough?”

Her only reaction was the slight widening of her eyes and the heavy rise and fall of her chest. “Pleasure before World Domination for Apollo Galanis? That’s...an unexpected turn.”

“Well, you are quite the package.”

“If we do this...” she said, her palm coming to rest on his chest with a boldness that set his muscles to curl with need “...if you really want us to have an actual marriage with sex and all that, for however long it lasts, you have to get rid of your other...girlfriends or flings or whatever you call them. You have to get rid of Portia Wentworth, like tonight.” Her palm slammed into his chest in emphasis, his latest convenient partner’s name gritted out. “I won’t share you, even if you’re not actually mine in the true sense...”

Apollo caught her mouth with his, her fierce claim as much of an aphrodisiac as the rough pants of her breaths. She was midsentence and her mouth was open and he swooped in, his want as raw and visceral as he’d ever known it to be. Dios mio , her lips were incredibly soft and she tasted sweet and tart.

She made a soft sound into his mouth, both complaining and eager, when he grazed her lower lip with his teeth, didn’t back away. If anything, her fingers wound tighter around his neck and she leaned into him a little more.

Apollo pulled her closer, the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips as he moved his hands lower a lush invitation. He grabbed her bottom, deepening the kiss. She pushed onto her toes and bit his lip. A rough groan escaped him, as her belly rubbed against his hard shaft. Christos , he couldn’t wait to taste her everywhere, couldn’t wait to reduce her to nothing but his name and her pleasure at his hands.

After what felt like no more than a few seconds, he pulled back, eager to see lust paint its fingers over her sharp features. Still clinging to him, Jia buried her face in his neck, in a gesture that made him feel...something. Her little hot pants pinging over his skin like music notes.

Then she was pulling away, running her palm over her belly, her chest rising and falling, her gaze rapidly scanning everything around them but barely touching his.

Arms folded, amused despite the deafening thud of desire in his blood, Apollo watched her with growing fascination. The woman was a puzzle and a present wrapped in one and he couldn’t wait to unwrap her and unravel her.

She collected her cap, her handbag that had fallen under the lounger, and after what felt like an eternity, faced him. Brown eyes danced with lust-heavy brightness. “So this is on?”

He grinned, tucking his hands in his trouser pockets to stop himself from reaching for her again. “Are you waiting for a romantic proposal?”

She made a face at him but there was something very practiced about it. Apollo wondered at how much of her toughness was armor and what it hid. “Given I proposed to you, that will just be another farce, no? At least, we have a good story to tell when it all burns down.”

He refused to argue the point with her. “There will be a car downstairs to take you home. It’s past eleven.”

She looked surprised. “Don’t need it. I’m used to taking care of myself.”

“And I’m used to taking very good care of my assets,” he said, without missing a beat.

Her shoulders rounded, even as she gave him a two-fingered salute. “Of course you do.”

Standing in the empty lounge, Apollo stared after the elevator doors, twin pulses of excitement and unease knotting in his stomach. More emotion than he had felt in a long, long time.