His dick thickened. “I will spank your pretty little ass until you beg me to take them off.”
“Promises, promises.”
Andros watched her walk away. She sashayed her hips as she moved, and several men turned to get a good look. He would not be bringing her here again, he decided. Another rush of anger and possessiveness filling him. In fact, he would cease these social occasions altogether. Had she not said that she did not require them? Far simpler to simply keep her in the apartment, away from men like Ainsley, men who could so easily have been him.
It was then that Andros realized where the anger had come from, and he inhaled sharply, the realization flooding him with a force he did not like. Lyra had picked him out for a very specific purpose. She had her list of what she expected, what she wanted, and he simply happened to fit it. Fact was, though, any of these other men could have been on that list if they were a little richer, looked a little different. She could be any of these men’s mistress if she desired…Dios, perhaps in the future she would be. When the time came for them to part ways.
That thought was unacceptable but inescapable.
Ten minutes later Andros completed a circle of the room, arrived at the desk where all those weeks ago he’d pried information about her from the doorman, and waited for Lyra to re-emerge. A moment later and he saw her, that bright red hair of hers a beacon for anyone looking. Andros made to step forward, intending to meet her at the bar, when a voice intruded.
“A beautiful girl.”
He growled and turned to look into a pair of eyes he had always considered to be distinctly reptilian. “Mainwright.”
The elderly Peer nodded. “Seems you’re punching above your weight with that one. A bit too feisty for the likes of you.”
“If I require your thoughts on my personal life I will ask for them.”
Mainwright grinned. “I’m sure you will, but humor an old man.”
“I would hardly call you that.”
“Perhaps not, so let us say instead that I make it my business to know about my competitors.”
“Is that what I am?” Andros asked, frowning hard as Lyra halted at the bar. What was she doing?
“It seems so,” Mainwright agreed. “You moved in on Ainsley’s deal.”
“He invited me in,” Andros grated. Lyra was talking to someone. Who the hell was it? “And I have no interest in discussing my business dealings with you.”
“Then let us discuss something else,” Mainwright said, his tone taking on a whole new meaning, that even in his distracted state Andros picked up on. “Have you met that young lady’s sisters yet?”
Shock hit, enough so that Andros tore his gaze away from Lyra. Lyra who was talking to the fucking bar man it seemed! “Her sisters?”
“Equally as beautiful,” Mainwright said, the gloating in his voice obvious. “It seems they too like their…companions…foreign and rich.”
So Mainwright had investigated Lyra, knew what her sisters were doing, and by the sounds of it whatever it was it wasn’t far from what Lyra was up to. Only Mainwright had no way to know that Lyra had already told him about her circumstances. Had no way to know about the deal they had agreed.#p#分页标题#e#
“We have an advantage over the homegrown wealth,” Andros snapped. “As you have no doubt become aware.”
“And yet…” Mainwright nodded in Lyra’s direction. “They always turn closer to home in the end. Take care, Casstellini, you may be in deeper than you know.”
Andros did not pause to answer the other man, but strode over to the bar where Lyra was laughing at something the fucking bartender was saying. He couldn’t be any older than twenty-five. Lyra’s age. Fuck. If the anger he’d felt as she laughed at Ainsley’s jokes had been bad, this was way beyond it.
Andros paused just by them, and watched with mounting rage, as the bartender leaned forward and said something that made Lyra laugh again, her hair flicking behind her shoulders as she did so.
Closer to home. Any man’s mistress. Just happened to be you.
The thoughts tumbled through his mind one after the other, and Andros clenched his jaw tight. Was it because they were back at the scene of their very first meeting? That here he could not forget how it had all started, that Lyra had tied him in knots so fucking hard for a very specific purpose.
She was his and yet…
“Lyra,” he growled, stepping forward. “We’re leaving.”
She turned with a start. “Of course.”
He practically dragged her from the room. Andros knew it, knew that people were probably staring, wondering why he was making such a hasty departure, but at that moment he did not give a fuck.