Nibbling on her lower lip, she lifted a shoulder. “You make me feel alive, and so feminine and sexy. I like you, and I want to hang out with you, but it can’t be anything public for lots of reasons. People don’t even know you’re back yet, for one. And then there’s the merger…”

“Shit.” I ran my hands over my head. “You’re actually debating marrying a guy who will never fuck you like that.”

Her cheeks went even redder. “You don’t know that. Derek and I could learn to rub along together tolerably well. And it’s only marriage. It’s not forever. What marriage is these days?”

Mine would be. I refused to be like my mother and get remarried every year. When I married, if I ever married, it would be forever. “True. I’m shocked as shit my mother still has the capacity to put up with your father. I would have thought she’d dumped him a long time ago.”

She glowered at me. “What are you trying to get me to admit? That I’m upset? That I don’t want to do it? Because even if I was, and even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. If I decide it’s for the best, then I’d do it, anyway.”

Hell, I didn’t even really know what I wanted from her.

Maybe I wanted her to claim her life as her own. To refuse to enter a loveless, passionless marriage with a man who would never desire her the way she should be desired. Or perhaps she could refuse to be a pawn on the chessboard of life. To…to…shit, to take what she wanted, and fight like hell to keep it. “That you aren’t going to do it. Tell Walt to go to hell.”

“I can’t say that yet.” She shook her head. “I won’t, until I make sure—”

The irony of this situation wasn’t lost on me. I’d never wanted more from a lover before, so I hadn’t been prepared for this feeling now. But here it was; there was nothing I could do to ignore it. And the worst part was, I damn well knew I couldn’t have more. Not only was she engaged to another man, but there was the small fact that Lilly was my stepsister. No one would accept us together.

Going public with our relationship would be a scandal of epic proportions.

I held a hand up, and she cut herself off immediately, like a good girl always should. Walt had trained her well. It made me sick. “We can’t tell people about this. No one can ever know.”

“I know. I just said that.” She avoided looking at me. “But we can keep seeing one another, like this. Be together secretly. No one has to know what’s going on. It can be our little secret. No one would ever guess.”

So she wanted to be a good little girl in public…but also the girl who fucked her stepbrother in private. I couldn’t do that. I refused to be her dirty little secret. I was too damn old for that. “So you want to sleep with me, while planning your wedding to Preppy Prick.”

“Yes.” She shrugged. “If I actually marry him, I wouldn’t break my marriage vows. Even if we never consummated it, I wouldn’t go there. I know it doesn’t make sense, given the situation, but I won’t cross that line.”

I blinked, unable to follow her logic. “But beforehand is okay?”

“Yes.” She frowned. “He’s with other people, too. I’ve seen it. So yes, to me, it’s okay. But only until the wedding—if there is a wedding.”

“After which you’ll be the ever-dutiful, loyal wife, even if he’s not loyal to you.” I fisted my hands. “Correction. Even when he’s not loyal to you, since he, you know, prefers men. Last time I checked, you didn’t have a cock.”

She shrank into herself at that. Her revulsion at committing herself to years of celibacy was physically clear to see, but at the same time, I saw her determination to do it, anyway. It was insane. “If that’s what it comes to…yes.”

If she told me she had a doubt—even a single, tiny one—about going through with it, maybe I’d feel differently. Maybe I’d try to convince her that she deserved to be happy with a man who could actually love her. I couldn’t be that man, but I knew the guy that could make her blissfully happy, who could stand by her side as they faced the world together, he existed. But if she was willing to commit herself to a loveless marriage that would make her miserable for a few years; if she actually thought that this was something she had to do, then so be it. Lilly could make her own choices.

But I refused to make it any easier on her. I wouldn’t be her buffer on the side. Her distraction from reality. Sex was off the table. Knowing my luck, I would end up falling for her—because, damn, if anyone could make me care, it was her—and she would still marry Preppy Prick.

And I would be stuck being his brother-in-law for God knows how long.

Hell, no.

It was best to call it off now, before anyone got too attached. Best to chalk it up to one night of stupidity, and move on like adults. I could do that. So could she. “We’re going to pretend this never happened. And it will never happen again.”

Blanching, she shook her head. “Jackson—”

“No.” I picked up my clothes, fury pumping through me. “If you think I’m gonna sit by quietly and let you marry a guy who you don’t even like, while having you in my bed every night, without ever giving a damn about you or how your life is going to end up, you’re out of your mind. What kind of guy do you think I am?”

And with that, I stormed out of the room, determined to forget about how wonderful Lilly Hastings felt naked in my arms….

Or how walking away from her felt worse than being shot.

Chapter 12

Lilly

The next morning, I pulled the covers over my head to shut out the sunlight illuminating my room. All night long, I tossed and turned, and my mind hadn’t shut off even for one second. I was going on two nights without a wink of sleep, and my brain felt sluggish and fogged up. All I could think and feel was Jackson, and all the orgasms he had given me, but now he wanted me to pretend it never happened.

Not freaking likely.

He might be experienced enough to put the past behind him, but I sure as hell wasn’t. I had had one actual sexual encounter—one—in my entire life, and it was with him. There was no way I could just shove his memory to the back of my mind behind the others, because there were no other memories. It was just him. And me. Naked.

That was it.

I closed my eyes, trying to forget about our fight, or how disappointed he seemed when I defended marrying Derek. But the thing was, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew if I ended up marrying him, that it was never going to be some fairy-tale marriage, no matter how it looked from the outside.

But it didn’t matter.

If I didn’t find a way that could save Daddy’s company, and Derek’s, without the marriage, then I would do it. I might not want to, but I would. It was my happiness versus thousands of other people’s happiness—and there was no way I could win that battle.

If I didn’t marry Derek because I didn’t want to be tied down to someone I didn’t love, our fathers’ companies would fail. Companies that employed thousands of people. Those thousands of people had families. Kids. Parents. Spouses. All those people would be left without jobs and money and food on their tables because…what?

Because I couldn’t suck it up and marry a man who was a dick on a good day?

All because I wanted another orgasm?

I wasn’t that selfish, and I refused to let our employees down. If push came to shove, and there was no other way to save the companies, then I would do it. I’d bite the bullet and marry him. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one. That was that. Derek and I had grown up together; he’d been my escort to my sweet sixteen and our senior prom. Our parents had naturally hoped we’d unite the families at some vague point in the future, but when the companies started to flounder, vagueness became certainty.