Page 28 of Beauty and the Daddy

I fall back on the couch, the towel riding up my thighs.

My body reacts before I can scold it—heart up in my throat, breath acting shy, skin tightening like it wants to be touched.

Traitor. Every cell is a chorus:we remember you; we want more.

I swallow hard and pretend it's not obvious.

"I know it's an engagement ring," I snap. "What I don't understand is why it was on my bed."

He stops just close enough that I can feelheat.The kind you don't get from radiators.

I look up, and his eyes cut to the box, back to my face.

"Because you're going to wear it," he says simply.

I laugh, a high, slightly hysterical sound. "I'm sorry, I must have missed the part where you asked me to marry you. Or, you know, the part where we've known each other for more than forty-eight hours."

"I'm not asking."

Three words. Three simple words that make my blood run cold and hot at the same time.

"That's not how this works." I stand back up again. "You can't just?—"

"Your father owes me seven million dollars," Luca cuts in. "Money he doesn't have and will never be able to repay."

The number hits me like a physical blow. Seven million?

My father, who drives a ten-year-old sedan, owes this man seven million dollars?

"That's impossible," I whisper.

"It's the truth." One of his eyebrows lifts a millimeter. "Marriage will clear your father's debt."

The sentence is a trap door. I tumble through it fast enough to get airless. "What?"

"Your father owed men much worse than me," he says, and there's no gloat in it, only fact. "I bought his mess. I kept blood off your family's steps. I kept a roof over his head when it wasn't… efficient to do so."

I go very still. The room shrinks to the space between us and the box in my hand. "Y…you kept the roof over our heads?"

His jaw ticks. "All I'm saying is, he was out of moves."

He takes one more step. I feel it. My knees go weird.

He doesn't touch me, but he doesn't have to. Theideaof him touching me moves through my body like a whisper that has hands.

"Here's the deal." He moves closer, and I hate how my body leans toward him like a plant to poisoned sun. "Your father's debt vanishes. Every cent. Every threat from every man he owes. Gone."

"In exchange for?"

His hand comes up, thumb ghosting over my pulse point where last night he bit down hard enough to brand. "You. Legal. Binding. Mine."

The word 'mine' hits different when the man saying it has his hand at your throat and you're wet from it.

"When?" I manage.

"Tomorrow. Nine a.m. Judge owes me a favor."

Of course he does.