LITMIR.BIZ

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panted slightly, as if that had been her in vicious flight. As if he now held her like that, captured against his hard palm. That same current of wild, hot heat that she wished was simple fury seemed to coil within her and then pulse low, the way it always did when he was near.

      “Next time,” she told him from between her teeth, her other hand clenching her remaining shoe, heel first, “I won’t miss.”

      Once again, she’d surprised him. And he liked it as little as he had in London.

      Her gray gaze was alert and intent and he didn’t like all the things he could see in it, none of which he understood or wanted to try to understand. He didn’t like the faint flush on her cheeks, or the way she looked with her feet bare and her hair something other than perfect for the first time in as long as he’d known her. Sexy.

      He had to jerk his gaze from hers and when he did, he found himself looking down at the vicious little stiletto she’d flung at his throat. It was a weapon, certainly, but it was also one of those delicate, wickedly feminine shoes that he did not want to think about in reference to his personal assistant. He did not want to imagine her slipping the sleek little shoe on over those elegant feet of hers that he’d never noticed before, or think about what the saucy height of the heel would do to her hips as she walked—

       Damn her.

      Cayo rose to his feet slowly, not taking his eyes from hers.

      “What am I going to do with you?” he asked, impatient with her defiance. And equally impatient with his own failure to end this distracting and disruptive situation that was already well out of hand. But those errant strands of silky dark hair teased at the curve of her lips, her chin, and he could not seem to look away.

      “You have had a number of options of things to do with me over the years,” she pointed out, in something less than her usual crisp tone. As if she was boiling over with fury, which he should not find as compelling as he did. “You could have let me move to a different position in your company, for example. You could have let me go today. You opted to kidnap me instead.”

      Abruptly, Cayo remembered that they were not alone. He dismissed the clingy blonde with a careless wave of his hand and ignored the sulky expression that followed it. The woman huffed and muttered as she exited the salon, irritating him far more than she should have. Could not one female in his usually carefully controlled existence do as he wished today? Must everything be a trial?

      He tossed Drusilla’s stiletto down on the seat where the blonde had been, and wondered why he was even having this conversation in the first place. Why was he encouraging Drusilla further by allowing her to speak to him in that decidedly disrespectful tone?

      And why on earth did he have the wholly uncharacteristic urge to explain the reasons he’d shot down her bid for that promotion three years ago? What was the matter with him? The last time he’d defended or justified his behavior was … never.

      “I don’t share my things,” he said then, coolly, purely to put her in her place. She stiffened, and then what could only be hurt washed through her gray eyes. And for the first time in years, Cayo felt the faintest hint of something that might have been shame move through him. He ignored it.

      “I’d ask you what kind of man you are to say something so deliberately insulting and borderline sociopathic, but please.” Drusilla sniffed, her eyes still wounded, which he hated more than he should have. “We both already know exactly what kind of man you are, don’t we?”

      “The papers call me a force of nature,” he replied, his voice light if cold, and it was a reminder. The last one he planned to give her. He was not a man who suffered insubordination, and yet he’d been tolerating hers for hours, up to and including an attempted attack on his person. Had she been a man, he would have responded in kind.

      Basta ya! he thought, impatiently. Enough was enough.

      He found himself moving toward her, tracking the nervous swallow she took as he came closer, as if she was neither as disgusted nor as impassive as she appeared. That same, seductive memory rolled over then inside him, and shook itself awake. Dangerously awake.

      She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other, reminding him as she did so that she was, in fact, a woman. Not a perfect robot built only to serve his needs as any good assistant should. That she was made of smooth, soft flesh and that her legs were perfectly formed beneath that sleek skirt. That she was not the ice sculpture of his imagination, nor a shadow. And that he’d tasted her heat himself.

      He didn’t like that, either. But he let his gaze fall over her anyway, noting as if for the first time that her trim figure boasted lush curves in all the right places, had he only let himself pay closer attention to them. Something about her disheveled hair, the temper in her gaze, the complete lack of her usual calm expression was getting under his skin. His heart began to beat in a rhythm that boded only ill, and made him think of things he knew he shouldn’t. Those sleek legs wrapped around his waist as he held her against a wall in the old city. That mouth of hers hot and wet beneath his. That cool competence of hers he’d depended upon all these years, melting all around him …

      Unacceptable. There was a reason he never let himself think of that night, damn it. Damn her.

      “Calling you a force of nature rather takes away from your responsibility, doesn’t it?” she asked, as if she didn’t notice or care that he was bearing down on her, though he saw her fingers tighten around the shoe she still clutched in one hand. “You’re not a deadly hurricane or an earthquake, Mr. Vila. You’re an insulated, selfish man with too much money and too few social skills.”

      “I believe I preferred you the way you were before,” he observed then, his voice like a blade, though she didn’t flinch.

      “Subservient?”

      “Quiet.”

      Her lips crooked into something much too cold to be a smile. “If you don’t wish to hear my voice or my opinions, you need only let me go,” she reminded him. “You are so good at dismissing people, aren’t you? Didn’t I watch you do it to that poor girl not five minutes ago?”

      He took advantage of his superior height and leaned over her, putting his face entirely too close to hers. He could smell the faintest hint of something sweet—soap or perfume, he couldn’t tell. But desire curled through him, kicking up flames. He remembered burying his face in her neck, and the need to do it again, now, howled through him, shocking in its intensity. And he didn’t know if he admired her or wanted to throttle her when she didn’t move so much as an inch. When she showed no regard at all for her own safety. When, instead, she all but bristled in further defiance.

      He had the strangest feeling—he wouldn’t call it a premonition—that this woman might very well be the death of him. He shook it off, annoyed at himself and the kind of superstitious silliness he thought he’d left behind in his unhappy childhood.

      “Why are you so concerned with the fate of ‘that poor girl’?” he asked, his voice dipping lower the more furious he became. “Do you even know her name?”

      “Do you?” she threw back at him, even angling closer in outraged emphasis, as if she was seconds away from poking at him with something more than her words. “I’m sure I drew up the usual nondisclosure agreement whenever and wherever you picked her up—”

      “Why do you care how I treat my women, Miss Bennett?” he asked icily. Dangerously. In a tone that should have silenced her for days.

      “Why don’t you?” she countered, scowling at him, notably unsilenced.

      And suddenly, he understood what was happening. It was all too obvious, and what concerned him was that he hadn’t seen this boiling in her, as it must have done for years. He hadn’t let a single meaningless night, deliberately ignored almost as soon as it had happened, haunt him or affect their working relationship. He’d thought she hadn’t, either.

      “Perhaps,” he suggested in a tone that brooked

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