LITMIR.BIZ

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black cashmere sweater deliberately, knowing that while her team might choose to dress more casually while away from the conservative head office, she could only allow herself to unwind so far. Her version of casual involved dry cleaning and clothes she would be comfortable wearing to business meetings with her superiors.

      Was she really thinking about her clothes? With this man so near? So unpredictable? Did she think that would work?

      He ignored her, and prowled closer, peering at the clothes stacked in her open suitcase and beside it on the thick white duvet. Grace felt frozen in place. She did not dare to move. He was much too close, so close she could smell him, heat and man and something expensively spicy. So close she could seem to do nothing at all but think of how his mouth had fit against hers—how demanding, how sure. Or recall how warm his skin was to the touch, or think about how she felt so shivery now, so hot and cold.

      And he knew everything. There were no secrets.

      Why should that make her feel even weaker? Even more aroused?

      He leaned back against the bed, far too close to where she stood, crossing his long legs at the ankle and tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His green eyes were hooded as he gazed at her for a long, hot moment while Grace could do nothing but panic. Her heart sped up and her pulse pounded. Her eyes seemed to glaze over with heat, while her mouth stayed far too dry. The very air in the room seemed to crackle.

      “Will we talk about it?” he asked, that dark edge to his voice, as if he fought the same demons that Grace did. “Or will we continue this game of cat and mouse until we end up in bed? I love to verbally spar with you, Grace, do not doubt it. And I intend to take you to my bed. But I rather think there is more to this than that.”

      “More?” She did not quite stammer. Not quite, though her voice went up an octave or two, and she flushed.

      “I am afraid you’ve seen behind the curtain,” he said in a low voice, with that odd, stirring current beneath. The corner of his mouth flirted with a smile, though his gaze was far too direct, too disconcerting. Too dark. Was this the real Lucas? The man behind the mask? Because Grace knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was not joking. Not this time. “There are penalties for that. Taxes that must be levied. Those are the rules.”

      She could not breathe. She moistened her lips and then clenched against a shocking flood of heat when his gaze dropped to her mouth and a stark, purely sexual hunger cast his face into wickedness. The kind of wickedness she wanted to taste, despite everything.

      “I came to find you yesterday, after meeting with Charlie Winthrop,” he said, coiled there, just out of reach, about to pounce. And still, Grace could not bring herself to move away as she knew she should. His head tilted slightly to the side, his gaze measuring her. “But you’d gone.”

      “I had a meeting,” she said faintly. An electric current was buzzing through her, skimming along her skin, burning through her veins. She felt almost light-headed. Almost dizzy.

      “I do not understand this,” he said in the same quiet, serious tone he’d used yesterday. The same stark, brutal honesty. The same directness, with the same undercurrent of something like despair. The room seemed to contract, trapping them both in the same tight, bright grip. “I do not understand why I feel compelled to tell you things I normally do not speak of to anyone. I do not understand why I cannot stop thinking about you. I can’t seem to stay away from you.” His smile turned wry. “And the truth is, I do not want to.”

      “You must,” she said, but her voice was insubstantial, the barest breath, and he ignored it, anyway.

      “I have never been very good at doing what I must,” he said, a hard amusement flashing through those smoky green eyes. “It is among my many and varied character flaws.”

      Grace did not want this. She could not want this—it was too much. He was too much. She felt as if the world shook, as if she shook with it, though nothing moved.

      “I am not interested in your flaws, many though they may be,” she said, fighting desperately to return to familiar ground. She could not do this. “We have a job to do. Nothing more.”

      “Yes,” he said. “Our job. That has brought us here, to this village of the damned I vowed I would burn to the ground before I’d return to it, and all I can seem to do is wonder.”

      His voice was deceptively light, completely at odds with the intensity and fire in his gaze.

      “Wonder?” she echoed, as if she did not take his meaning, but she knew.

      She wondered the same things. She wondered so much and so heatedly, so breathlessly, that she had barely slept in days. Even the invocation of her past, of what had happened to her, had not changed the wondering, the imagining. And that was only the physical part of this. The easy part. The only part she planned to acknowledge. The inn seemed to spin and tilt wildly at the corners of her eyes, but at the center of it all stood Lucas.

      And an uncomfortably reasonable voice inside of her whispered, Why not?

      Grace fought to keep her breath even. She had told Lucas the truth and he had not looked at her differently. He had not reacted like a long-ago almost-lover in college had: he had not looked at her in that calculating way and asked if, in fact, she had been seducing her mother’s boyfriend that day. If she had that scarlet letter blazoned upon her face, the way she’d always believed, Lucas had not seemed to see it. And if he already knew the worst but didn’t believe the worst of her—what was the point in denying herself the pleasure that might go with that kind of uncomfortable honesty? The spoonful of sugar to sweep away the taste of the bitter pill?

      And who was to say that this time she couldn’t be the one to take control—to beat the player at his own game? Why not be the seducer instead of the seduced? Why not call the shots? Why not, indeed?

      She blinked, dazed by her own trail of thought. And all too aware of the heat and sleek beauty of him, standing near enough to touch, watching her so closely.

      If she’d learned anything from her mistakes, from her mother, from her own hard-won successes, Grace thought with a dawning sense of certainty, it was this: it was always better to be the one in control.

      So if she was already doomed, she might as well dance.

      It was as if a great weight fell from her then, and disappeared into the tense air between them.

      “If you keep looking at me like that,” Lucas warned, his expression hard with hunger, “I will not be held accountable for what happens next.”

      “I already know what will happen next,” she said. She faced him—and herself—head-on, clear-eyed and somehow completely ready for what had been, only moments before he’d walked in this room, unthinkable. He’d had no compunction about throwing those photos in her face, so why should she worry about using his own weakness against him now? She raised her brows at him in deliberate challenge. “I only hope that after all of this talk and all these promises, you can live up to your reputation.”

      He was not in the least bit fazed. His eyes seemed to see straight through her, to all the places where she ached for him, yearned for him, dreamed of him at night. All the places where she was made of nothing save the want of him. And she would use that against him, she thought. She would get her own back. She would be the one to laugh when it was done, and leave, too.

      He did not move from his position at the bedside, lounging there, watching her as if cataloging her every move, her every thought. It was almost too much. It was almost too real. He was quite obviously not a fantasy at all, as someone who looked like him should be—he was a man.

      “I have to check in with the team,” she said, teasing him, feeling the tension and electricity roll through her. It made her feel powerful. As if it really was hers. To wield. To use. To enjoy.

      But he only laughed.

      “The team is in the pub, and the last thing they need is the intrusion of their ice queen boss to force them into tediously

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