‘I thought that you wanted to stay.’
His voice was soft but there was a hint of steel threaded through it, and something in his eyes sent a warning that made her shiver. Did she want to stay? A moment ago she had been so sure. Now she was forced to wonder …
‘I think perhaps—’
‘I think perhaps not,’ Santos cut in, not letting her complete the sentence. ‘They didn’t ask you to go with them. So you have no need to leave—not until I say so.’
But that was just too much, and hearing the arrogant declaration, Alexa brought up her head, eyes widening as she glared her defiance into his handsome face.
‘What gives you the right to say when I can come and go?’
No, he’d made a wrong move there, taken the wrong tone with her, Santos told himself. She was not going to let him get away with that. An unexpected sense of admiration tugged at his mind as he acknowledged the glare of defiance in her eyes, the way her head had gone back. If he was not careful he would lose her and he didn’t want to let her get away, not until he was sure that she was his. Right now she looked like a nervous mare, one of the thoroughbreds he bred at his stud, when something had spooked her. Even her nostrils flared.
He was going to have more of a challenge with this sister than he had ever expected. And the truth was that he liked the idea of that. He anticipated the prospect of having to work to win her over. She was already so much more intriguing than her sister. The end result would be worth the effort.
‘It’s not that I have the right.’
The faint twitch of Santos’s mouth at the corners was either amusement or an admiring acknowledgement of her boldness in defying him, Alexa couldn’t decide which.
‘Maybe I’m not ready to let you go.’
Which was so far from the response that she had expected that it had her gaping in stunned silence, unable to believe that she had heard him right. Had he really said …?
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I told you. You’re here because I want you here.’
And he always got what he wanted. But why did he want her here? What did he want from her?
‘So you stay until I say you can go.’
And with a sudden movement he reached out and kicked the door closed, shutting off the way out and shutting her in with him. But even as the heavy wood slammed into place, that smile was still there, curving his lips, warming his eyes unexpectedly.
‘Come, now, Alexa,’ he mocked when he heard her gasp of shocked horror. ‘What do you think that I am going to do to you? Ravish you right here on the floor in front of all my guests?’
The hand that held hers moved slightly, twisting until his thumb was curved into her palm, smoothing the sensitive skin with a gentle touch. A touch that sent pulses of fire prickling like an electrical current along every nerve.
‘I am simply asking you to stay—to dance with me—to share the evening with me.’
I’m not ready to let you go … The words that she still couldn’t quite believe that Santos had actually spoken—to her—swung round and round in her head until she felt dizzy just to think of them.
You’re here because I want you here.
Oh, who was she trying to kid? She wanted to stay, she might as well admit it. Cinderella wanted to stay at the ball—and she wanted to spend more time with this man who, if he wasn’t actually Prince Charming, was certainly the most exciting, most glamorous, most devastating male she had ever seen in her whole life.
The hollow, empty feeling that had been left behind when the fizzing excitement evaporated was now filled with a sensation like the frantic fluttering of a million butterfly wings. She was no longer as worried and fearful as she had been just moments before, but her stomach clenched in apprehension and uncertainty at the thought of the evening ahead of her.
Could she handle this? Could she cope with a man like Santos? The sort of man who was light years away from any man she had ever met before and who lived the sort of life that she had never experienced. Could she cope with even one evening in his company? But could she live with herself if she chickened out now?
Now everything was changed. And it seemed, impossibly, that Santos felt something too. But with a man like him she was in out of her depth and she knew it. Everything that was sensible in her make-up, every shred of self-preservation was screaming at her to go now, leave while she still could. But at the same time every essential and most fundamental feminine cell in her body was begging her to stay. And the resulting tension, the tug of war between them, threatened to tear her in two.
Beside her, Santos moved again, lifting her hand and letting it rest against the hard warmth of his chest, so that she could count every regular, heavy beat of his heart as he looked deep into her eyes.