“Wanted more. Funny thing, how much you can want someone you shouldn’t have.”
“Shouldn’t or couldn’t?” he smiles. “This man... did he fight it as hard as you?”
“No,” I sigh. “There, I said it. How liberating. He didn’t want me. Only my brain. We make money together. He wants that. Just that.”
Warm fingers brush the hair from my bare shoulders. His breath on my neck. Vincent Blackthorne’s breath on my neck. My fucking God. How fucking surreal.
“This man must be an idiot,” he says.
“He is,” I laugh. “He’s such a prick. He’s uptight, and controlling, and difficult, and a workaholic. He always has to be right. All the fucking time. He’s an idiot.”
“His loss is another man’s gain.” Vincent’s voice is like satin. His touch, too. “I, too, want your brain.” His lips touch my neck, and I shiver. He feels so good. “But I also want your body... I want your laugh... I want your soul, my sweet bird.”
Shit. I’m drunk. So drunk. And his words sound like heaven.
“Stay with me... stay here...” He turns my face to his. “Say you will stay with me. I need a muse, my beautiful magpie. A beautiful creature to inspire my beautiful words. You will be her. You will be my muse.”
“Stay? On holiday? My flight goes tomorrow...”
Dark eyes capture me. Solid hands take mine. I’m floating on air, high in the Prealps, in the gaze of a master. “No holiday,” he breathes. “Just stay…”
I’m nodding. I can’t even believe that I’m nodding, but I am.
He smiles, perfect white teeth. “And what about this man? What about the man who could have meant something?”
I hold out my glass for more Prosecco. “Fuck him.”
***
Andy
“And what about this man? What about the man who could have meant something?”
My magpie dazzles me with her beautiful eyes. They sparkle like the bubbles of Prosecco in the lamplight. She holds out her glass for more. A toast, her smile says, before she answers my question about that man. The man waiting for her back home. That stupid man who let his beautiful bird flutter into my open arms.
“Fuck him,” she says.
And I know my pretty bird is here to stay.
Fuck him.
The words jumped off the fucking screen at me. Who’d have fucking thought the Look Inside option on Amazon would give you such a perfect fucking snippet.
Infuriating, snotty fucking cow, waltzing back in, wanting everything on a silver platter without so much as the courtesy of a straight fucking answer. Turns out I was finding my own. Fuck him. He’s a prick. He’s an idiot. I flicked my lawyer’s card around my fingers over and over. I should make the call, man up and start sorting out my fucking mess. Maybe I could own up to my oversights. Offer her a deal to be gone and finished and out of my fucking business, once and for all.
We’d never make it any length of time in the same airspace. Especially not now I knew how things really fucking went down in Venice. Not without killing each other.
Or at least causing each other grievous bodily harm.
My cock betrayed me at the thought, totally and utterly. Un-fucking-real.
Fuck him. He’s such a fucking prick. Such an idiot.
I slammed the card back in the drawer, and dialled the bar extension.
***
Chapter Seven
Faye
Summoned like a schoolgirl to the headmaster’s office. It could have been horny if I wasn’t already at the end of my tether with his self-righteous, aggrieved shit. I hadn’t even had a chance to argue. My office, Faye, right now. Then the flat, dull bleep of the call-ended tone.
“What have you done now?” Topaz asked, catching my scowl.
“Fuck knows,” I groaned. “Breathed? Put my pen in the wrong place? Dared to exist in the same air space as him? Guess I’ll find out soon enough.”
I smoothed down my skirt and blouse before I opened the door to face the music. My clothes felt stiff and starchy, not quite imbuing me with the sexy CEO confidence I’d been hoping for when I’d picked out a blouse in corporate-bitch scarlet.
Andy was already standing, cutting an imposing stance in his black pinstripe tailoring. His tie was the richest deep purple, stark against the perfect white of his shirt, and his stubble was just a shadow, pairing with his ever-so-slightly messy hair to present an immaculate display of manhood.
His expression screamed pissed off, but as much as I wanted to slap him across his sanctimonious face, I couldn’t deny he looked ridiculously hot. Ridiculously, annoyingly, insanely fucking hot. Pissed off really suited Andy Morgan.