MARRYING A RUTHLESS BILLIONAIRE

"Are you absolutely sure you want to kiss me? Do you even know who I am?"

The memory hit Emaline Knight through the heavy, throbbing haze of a vicious hangover. She remembered blinking up at the man in the dim, amber light of the hotel suite, her voice slurred from too much cheap tequila. "Who are you?"

His features were brutally handsome, sharp and predatory, with a faint, wicked scar cutting through the edge of his right eyebrow that gave him a dangerous, untamed edge. "I'm Alastair's uncle. Abdiel Sharpe," his voice had rumbled, darker than the midnight storm rattling the windows.

Alastair Hayes. The coward of a fiancé who had abruptly dumped her via text the very moment her family's bankruptcy hit the news cycle.

And Abdiel Sharpe? He was the apex predator of Manhattan's elite, the billionaire titan everyone bowed to.

"Well," she had giggled, the alcohol making her reckless and vindictive. "If I can't be his wife, becoming his aunt to piss him off sounds like a solid backup plan. Think you can help me out, Mr. Sharpe?"

"You're asking for trouble," he had growled, his eyes flashing with a raw, primal heat. And then, he had taken her mouth, kissing her with a savage intensity that erased every coherent thought in her brain. They fit together perfectly, a collision of heat and desperation. She remembered her hands tracing the hard, scarred muscle of his shoulder, the relentless, exhausting rhythm of their tangled bodies...

She gasped, her dry throat burning as morning sunlight pierced through a narrow gap in heavy velvet drapes. She was in his bed. The thousand-thread-count Egyptian silk was tangled around her bare legs, carrying the undeniable, musky scent of their wild night. Her muscles ached with a deep, unfamiliar soreness.

Abdiel was already up. He wore only a dark gray towel slung low around his narrow hips. Droplets of water glistened on the sculpted ridges of his broad back and the tight muscles along his spine. He walked toward a floating mahogany console, picking up a custom Audemars Piguet watch and fastening the platinum bracelet around his wrist with practiced, effortless indifference.

He turned. His eyes were a piercing, glacial gray, set beneath dark, straight brows. But instead of the cold, flawless statue she expected, he looked rugged, radiating a dominant, unapologetic masculine energy that made her breath catch.

Emaline pulled the sheet up to her collarbones, her cheeks burning hot. "So," she started, trying to mask her vulnerability with a forced, sassy smirk. "About that whole 'becoming Alastair's aunt' thing... does the offer still stand?"

Abdiel didn't even blink as he pulled on a crisp white dress shirt. "No."

His rejection was blunt, a brutal reminder that last night was nothing but a drunken mistake. A one-off. He buttoned his cuffs, treating her presence as nothing more substantial than dust in the air.

"Right," Emaline swallowed the heavy lump of humiliation in her throat, forcing a breezy tone. "Thanks for the ride home, anyway."