The Billionaire's Forced Alliance

Chapter Seventeen

Sarah felt weird the second Ben held her hand and then jerked it away to rush into the bathroom. What was wrong with him? He had been acting strange since the moment they had sat on opposite to each other on the bed. He had looked her as if he had been devouring every inch of her and she had squirmed under his hot gaze. Then he had looked at her again and again until she had grown so uncomfortable that she had wanted to run away from him.

She had never been in contact with any other man except for her father, who wasn't really a role model. She had always been instructed to stay as far as possible from boys. Her father had put her in a class in the university where there were lesser boys and more girls so that she wouldn't be surrounded by the opposite gender. She had never experienced how a man looked at a woman, or a man's touch. No high school romances, no proms, no parties and no study sessions. All her life, she had been alone.

And now, she had a full-grown man looking at her like he was gonna pounce on her. The feeling was so alien to her; she had always convinced herself that all men were same as her father and that had given her the strength to control her attraction towards them. But she knew that Ben wasn't an inch like her father and that information seemed to jinx all the self-control she had been pestering herself with.

"Sarah?" His voice came from the bathroom and for some weird reason, she knew what he was gonna ask next.

"You want a towel?" She asked him before he could.

There was silence. "No---uh, a t-shirt, if you could..." He stammered.

She panicked. T-shirt? He wanted a t-shirt, now? "Uh--a shirt? What---which--which one?"

"Just--go through my suitcase and pick anyone of it,"

She wanted to throw the whole suitcase on his face. She wasn't angry but she was hell annoyed, she didn't know what shirt to give him, it was just like a duty of a wife. She opened his suitcase that was just tousled beside the bed, and sighed. God, he was quite a dapper, wasn't he? The amount of clothes he had fitted inside that small vacuum of Polypropylene was commendable. He sure loved to dress up.

"Uh--which colour would you like?" Sarah was coerced to question after resting her eyes on the blast of colours that seemed to blind.

"Anything neutral," He said surely, making her feel the need to throttle him.

Neutral? She silently yelled at herself. There were more than six variants of neutral tops in the suitcase; fruity peach, nude pink, pure tan, coffee cream and off-white, brick rogue and one or two more she didn't know the names of. Gosh, this man was a perfectionist.

"Okay, wait." She calmed her mind, deciding on which one to give him. She didn't know why but her instincts propelled her to give him the nude pink t-shirt. Something told her that he would look the best in it. "Here it is," She said, approaching the washroom and knocking on the door. "take it."

The door latched open and he emerged his face out, taking the shirt from her and then looking at her. Her heart did weird somersaults, if that was possible. His hair was soaking wet and the messy curls were tousled carelessly on his head like curled strings of guitar. Water was trickling down his hair and his face and through his neck, it was journeying down. . .She decided not to think any longer. Or look any down. Moving her eyes far away, she turned around.

"Thank you. Nice choice." There was a hint of amusement in his voice, and she felt extremely satisfied.

"There's nothing not nice in your suitcase. Everything's just--"

"What?"

"Perfect."

There was no reply from him, instead she heard the door close again. She felt weird staying in the room by herself while Jean and Faith were downstairs, so battling with her mind and her sane sense for a long time, she trod down, taking her steps ever so slowly. She took a deep breath, nervousness filling her.