His fingers felt like fire against her skin, searing straight through the bodice of her gown. Her breasts tingled, her senses responding to him just as they’d always responded to him. He could turn her into puddles of need in no time flat.

Kahlil tipped her backwards just enough to knock her off her feet, and sent her heart racing. “How could you possibly think I’d let you marry another man? How could you think I’d give you up?”

“Because the divorce—” she choked, beginning to feel genuinely frightened, not by him but by the idea of still being married to him. Their marriage was over; it had to be over.

“What divorce?” he demanded.

“The divorce…our divorce.”

The dark hallway threw sinister shadows across his face. “There was no divorce. You never returned the last of the paperwork, and with documents unsigned the divorce was dropped.”

Her mouth dried. Her heart hammered harder. She could feel every ragged beat, every quick painful surge of blood. “Documents?” she stuttered, repeating the word as though it were foreign.

“I contested the divorce, refused to accept that you’d left me. It wasn’t desertion, I told the judge, but a temporary leave of absence. The judge sent you paperwork and you never filled it out. Therefore the divorce wasn’t granted.”

“You bought the judge. You gave him money—”

“Don’t get carried away. Your legal system isn’t all that corrupt. If you want to place blame, place it on your shoulders.”

He’d rendered her speechless, stole her breath, her words, her anger.

Could he be possibly right? Had she somehow let paperwork slip?

Her brain raced, struggling to remember that first year, those horrible months of struggling with the baby on her own. She’d moved a half-dozen times in as many months, did temp jobs on top of her regular job just to pay her bills. Swallowing hard Bryn found her voice. “I didn’t know you could contest a divorce in Texas.”

“In Texas, anything’s possible.”

She suddenly saw him scooping Ben into his arms, boarding his private jet and taking off. He’d have Ben. She’d never see him again. The vision was so awful, so vivid and real, it felt as though he’d thrust his dagger, the one he wore beneath his robes, straight through her heart. “Why are you doing this?”

His gold-flecked gaze slowly moved across her face, scrutinizing. “You married me. You understand the vows. I’m keeping the vows. And so are you.”

“I’ll never live with you again, Kahlil.”

“But you are my wife. You’ll remain my wife.”

She crossed her arms over her chest chilled to the bone. A life tied to him. It would be a life in chains.