Inevitable

“He said it didn’t work properly.”

“Oh, it’s working, all right. I can feel it right now.” He rubbed his temples again.

Her entire body felt flushed. Maybe she was having an allergic reaction to it. “Do I have to get violent to make you spit out what you know?”

Ryan hissed out a breath through his teeth. “It’s a lust potion, Emma. An old one from the British Isles. There’s a legend that says that this is the potion that Guinevere was given to make her fall in love with King Arthur, but it didn’t work quite that smoothly. You know what happened with Lancelot, right? She fell for him instead. It’s this potion’s fault. And, no, it doesn’t work on everyone which is why Franklin thought it was a dud. Some mood enhancer. He has no idea.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Guinevere and Lancelot?”

“You got it.”

A lust potion. That would explain why she suddenly felt so warm. Why her body had begun to tingle. Why her nipples had tightened. Why her belly twisted with a strange and difficult to ignore need. Why she desperately wanted Ryan’s hands on her as soon as possible. “Lustful for…?”

He smiled, but it was shaky. “Well, I guess that would be me.”

“You?”

“We were together when it spilled on us.” His gaze, now heated, swept her body as he drew closer. “It’s rare and dangerous stuff.”

A shiver went down her spine. “There’s some left. If you stole it, you could get a lot of money for something like this.”

“I could. If I stole it.”

Her breath came quick, and Ryan’s mouth was suddenly the main focus of her entire world. “I feel an irresistible need to kiss you right now. Which is incredibly inconvenient considering how much I hate you,” she whispered.

“I thought you said you were indifferent to me. Put down the bottle before you break it. If any more of that stuff spills, we might have a larger problem to deal with here.”

Instead of arguing, she placed the green glass bottle down on a table next to the couch and dropped her purse to the floor. “So…now what do we do?”

She felt his gaze on her like a brand. It slid over her breasts and stomach, and her insides tightened with desire.

“Kiss me,” he suggested.

Her heart pounded hard. “Bad idea.”

“You’re afraid what might happen?”

“Yes.”

He had the audacity to smile at her. “See, I knew you knew words other than no, Em.”

“I need to get out of here.” But she didn’t move. They were alone in the library of Xavier Franklin’s mansion with a party going on outside the heavy closed doors. She could hear it—the voices, the laughter, the band playing some up-tempo but classical number.

“So despite you telling me a minute ago that you’re indifferent to me,” Ryan said, “what you’re now saying is that you hate me.”

She nodded. “I can’t stand you.”

“But you still want to kiss me.”

Yes. She needed to kiss him, to do more than just kiss him. To feel Ryan’s hands on her, his hot skin beneath her fingertips. To feel him sliding inside of her, filling her the way she’d always fantasized about. Even in the months that he’d been out of her life, she’d still dreamed about having him in her bed.

Damn.

It was Emma who closed the distance between them first. Her mind was foggy, but her body knew what it wanted. It wanted Ryan. It had always wanted Ryan since the moment she’d met him. And the Desidero potion, just a small splash of it, had heightened that need inside of her to an uncontrollable level.

Just because it was inconvenient didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Ryan looked concerned. “Emma, we need to—”

“Shut up.” She took his face between her hands to pull him closer and crushed her mouth against his.

3

EMMA BLACK, a woman who proclaimed to hate his guts, was kissing him more passionately than he’d ever been kissed. He could feel her desire like it was a palpable thing. It sank into him, making his cock harder than it had ever been a day in his life.

Ryan filled his hands with her thick, silky red hair, letting it slide through his fingers. Her grip tightened on him, pulling him even closer to her.

He’d wanted her from the moment he’d seen her in the middle of the party earlier, rescuing him from some random socialite who’d wanted to get into his pants. His desire for Emma had been immediate—at least, after he’d gotten over his initial shock at seeing her again after all this time. The potion simply took that desire and increased it to a level that was impossible to ignore.

He’d sought her out, hoping to talk to her, to tell her the truth—that he’d been set up, that he wasn’t a thief and had been wrongfully fired—and see if that made any difference to her. See if she believed him.

He’d wanted her to believe him.

When he’d seen that horny old bastard pawing her, his blood began to boil. If Franklin had been thirty years younger, he might have received more than a glare and a lie about being Emma’s fiancé.

“You taste like champagne,” he whispered against her lips when she pulled back an inch, her breath coming fast and deep.

“I had a glass earlier.”

“You taste so good.”

“So do you.”

Emma slid her hands down the front of his shirt, over his chest to his abdomen. Her touch felt like fire. He saw the same aching desire he felt reflected in her eyes.

Proof.

The proof he needed that she didn’t hate him. This was it.

Franklin said the potion didn’t work for him. Likely he’d tried it on many women, hoping they’d throw themselves into his arms and bed. Dirty old man.

But the Desidero potion didn’t work like that.

It didn’t make Guinevere desire King Arthur. Instead, she fell hard for Lancelot. It meant that she’d wanted the knight over the king all along, but had resisted due to her situation.

Once the potion worked its special magic, she’d had no choice but to give in to her true desires. The potion simply acted as a push against any control its victim might have.

If Emma had truly hated Ryan—or even if she’d been indifferent to him as she claimed—the potion wouldn’t work at all.