Lacybourne Manor (Ghosts and Reincarnation #3)(47)

“And you are the most heartless man I’ve ever met,” she returned.

They stared at each other and, even though they’d barely moved, both were breathing heavily.

Sibyl had the bizarre desire to scratch his eyes out and throw her arms around him and say she was sorry, both at the same time.

“You’re mine for five months,” he bit out, eyes blazing, face hard.

Gone was the desire to say she was sorry. Instead, she just glared.

“Is that understood?” he asked.

She continued to glare.

What would he do if she said no?

She really didn’t want to find out. Therefore, she nodded but she did it while still glaring.

Colin wasn’t finished. “And Sibyl, I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. Is that clear?”

She bit her bottom lip so hard, she tasted blood.

She wanted to say it, just because he hated it. Just because she needed to remind herself that it was true. Just because it made her feel she had a modicum of power, even though it was simply to goad him, even though she lost more every time the words left her mouth.

She counted to ten and struggled for control.

Then she nodded.

She was already in enough trouble as it was, all of her own doing and she hated that too.

“I’ll be back tonight at the same time,” he declared and then he was gone, shoving her off his body angrily, he left the bed and stalked, naked, out of the room.

The moment she lost sight of him, Mallory loped in and woofed.

“Well, that didn’t go very well,” she whispered to her dog brokenly.

And then, for what had to be the hundredth time in a week and a half, she cried.

It was then she realised that she’d agreed to five months of Colin and not only that, he wanted five months of her.

And she didn’t know what to make of that at all.

* * * * *

Colin was still furious with Sibyl when he parked in front of her house that evening.

He was angry because he didn’t like hearing her call herself a whore, in fact, he loathed it. Even though, for all intents and purposes, that was what she was, he vastly preferred not thinking about it and he certainly wasn’t going to allow her to throw it in his face.

It annoyed the hell out of him that she took his fifty thousand pounds and managed to make him feel guilty about it.

And he didn’t like that, in listening to her affectionate but obviously frustrated phone conversation with her mother, he became even more intrigued at the puzzle that was Sibyl.

Not to mention, he had the bizarre desire to meet her mother.

He didn’t like that she’d announced she “needed the money” which made him wonder what the money was for in the first place. She didn’t appear to lead a life of luxury and didn’t look or act the sort of woman who aspired to it. So, why did she need it?

He further didn’t like that after only one (albeit satisfyingly active) night, he, apparently, couldn’t get enough of her. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her and her incredible body all day. Even so, she wanted nothing to do with him and he had to take further advantage in order to force her to spend more time with him.

This, particularly, was a concept with which Colin was unfamiliar and he detested it.

What he did like was that he’d succeeded in securing three more months of last night out of her very poorly controlled temper.

He wasn’t entirely up on the code of practice of con artists and mercenaries, but he couldn’t imagine it included throwing enough attitude at your mark to make them want to toss you screaming from a window.

But Colin wasn’t about to argue with something that worked in his favour.

He knocked on the door and, within five seconds, heard Mallory careening towards it. Colin also knew when the dog arrived because he heard the loud thud and saw the door shake when the dog smashed into it.

This was so ridiculous, and humorous, it nearly made Colin smile.

However, he was so annoyed, he did not.

“Mallory! You’ll give yourself a head injury!” He heard Sibyl shout and, again, he nearly smiled. The dog was a menace (to himself) and Sibyl’s affectionate acceptance of it was one of the many pieces of what Colin considered Sibyl’s mystery. An mystery he spent a great deal of his day attempting, and failing, to solve.

The door swung open and she stood there not made up like last night but wearing a pair of tan cowboy boots, brown tweed trousers, a cream, long-sleeved, scoop-necked t-shirt, some kind of elaborate silver necklace, complicated, dangling silver earrings and her shining hair was tumbling about her face.

And she was just as stunning as she was in the magnificently sexy silk camisole and dramatic makeup of the night before

He looked at her carefully and couldn’t read her mood, her eyes were simply hazel.

“I’ll need a key,” he said by way of greeting.

What he wanted to do was scoop her in his arms and carry her up to her bed but he felt the need to control himself, felt the inexplicable need to control the situation in its entirety which included controlling Sibyl. He felt unprecedentedly out-of-control when it came to Sibyl and he wasn’t used to that.

At all.

And he didn’t like that either.

She stood, her hand on the door, regarding him warily. Then she nodded.

Then something perverse, something that didn’t even feel a part of him drove him to make that demand, “And I expect you to greet me with a kiss when you see me.”