They weren’t the only reason I was annoyed. The night had started out well—Caine was attentive and funny as he made dry remarks about some of the snootier people we met. However, as the evening wore on, he began to treat me with a familiar aloofness that was driving me insane. I had no idea what had happened in the space of an hour, but I was biding my time until the end of the party to let him have it.
“You’ve been noticeably absent from society lately, Caine,” some woman whose name I couldn’t remember purred to him as she cut me off from his side by insinuating herself between us. She ran a perfectly manicured nail along his shoulder and pressed her breasts against his arm. “There are rumors that you’re hiding some kind of forbidden dalliance.”
Forbidden dalliance? I rolled my eyes. Who talks like that?
Caine extricated himself from her and looked away in boredom. “There are always rumors, Kitty.”
She fluffed her hair, seeming perturbed by Caine’s aloofness with her.
Yeah, I could relate.
“True.” She shrugged. “People talk. Well …” She stared at him a moment, waiting for him to pay her some attention. When he didn’t she finally glanced at me questioningly. I merely raised an eyebrow at her. She gave a little huff. “Well, if you’ll excuse me …” She sashayed away from us, her elegant figure wrapped up tight in a pale gold dress.
“The women around here certainly like you,” I noted dryly, wishing I didn’t feel that curl of jealousy in my belly. I’d never been a jealous woman until Caine, and I didn’t particularly like that he provoked that aspect of my personality. I did my best to keep it under wraps, using humor to hide behind.
Caine didn’t reply.
“You know, you might have them fooled, but you don’t fool me.”
He slanted a look at me out of the corner of his eye and I could tell he sensed the dark undercurrent of my mood. “Is that right?” he murmured.
“Mmm. They all whisper behind your back that you’re dangerous, ruthless, exciting, giggling like titillated morons. But I know something they don’t.”
Turning fully now to face me, Caine practically dared, “And what’s that?”
Melancholy coiled around my heart like an iron fist. “You seem dangerous because you are dangerous. You walk among them like a surly tiger, and they’re all just prey caught in your paws. They’re so busy looking up at you, oohing and aahing over how beautiful you are, they have no idea that you’re mere seconds from eating them. That you’re just going to chew them up and spit them out.” I looked away, taking a sip of my drink and willing my hands not to shake as I did so.
The tension we’d felt between us all week seemed to expand into this suffocating thing that wrapped around us, shutting everyone else out.
Finally I found the courage to look at him.
He was staring out at the crowd, seemingly bored. Only the tightness of his jaw gave away his irritation.
A grim-faced gentleman nodded at him from across the room and Caine lifted his drink in acknowledgment.
“Who’s that?” I said curiously, trying to draw focus away from the bad mood between us.
“Leonard Kipling. Pharmaceuticals giant.”
“You know everyone, don’t you? I didn’t think Kipling was the kind of man you wanted to get into bed with.”
“He’s powerful. I don’t rule out anyone with his kind of influence. Who knows where the future may take me, or if there’ll come a day when an acquaintance with him will benefit us both?”
I eyed the stranger, noting that behind his grim expression was actually the handsome face of a fit man. He looked to be in his late forties. A number of women were shooting him come-hither looks. “Is he married?”
“Divorced,” Caine replied, his tone cool with affected ennui. “Why? Thinking of asking him to replace me when we’re done fucking?”
The ugly suggestion hit me from left field. I stilled, shocked by the hurtful insinuation.
I couldn’t even look at him.
It was true that in the beginning of our acquaintance Caine had been cutting sometimes, but he’d never been outright disrespectful. He’d never sought to be deliberately cruel. Only once … when he was on the defensive.
But never since then.
And never had he made what we were doing feel so cheap … Never had he made me feel so inconsequential.
“Alexa …,” he murmured.
I edged slightly away from him, taking a long gulp of my champagne. Thankfully more people I didn’t recognize came over to talk to Caine and he was distracted while I attempted to regain control of my emotions.