Not Just the Boss's Plaything(41)

"That is a charming idea," Dru said, something dark and destructive    churning inside her, through lips that felt pale with rage, "and I    appreciate the offer, naturally. But I am not you, Mr. Vila." She let    everything she felt about him-all these years of longing and sacrifice,    all the things she'd thought and hoped, all the foolish dreams she'd   had  no idea he'd crushed in their infancy until today, even that one    complicated and emotional night in Cadiz three years ago they never    discussed and never would-burn through her as she stared at him. "I do    not 'scratch the itch' with indiscriminate abandon, leaving masses in  my   wake, like some kind of oversexed Godzilla. I have standards."

He blinked. He did not move a single other muscle and yet Dru had to    order herself to stay in place, so powerfully did she feel the lash of    his temper, the kick of those amber eyes as they bored into her.

"Are you unwell?" he asked with soft menace, only the granite set of his    jaw and the deepening of his accent hinting at his mounting fury. But    Dru knew him. She knew the danger signs when she saw them. "Or have  you   taken complete leave of your senses?"                       
       
           



       

"This is called honesty, Mr. Vila," she replied with a crispness that    completely belied the alarms ringing wildly inside her, screaming at her    to run, to leave at once, to stop taunting him, for God's sake, as if    that would prod him into being who she'd imagined he was! "I  understand   that it's not something you're familiar with, particularly  not from  me.  But that's what happens when one is as carelessly  domineering and   impossible as you pride yourself on being. You are  surrounded by an   obsequious echo chamber of minions and acolytes, too  afraid of you to   speak the truth. I should know. I've been pretending  to be one among   them for years."

He went terrifyingly still. She could feel his temper expand to fill the    room, all but rattling the windows. She could see that lean, muscled    body of his seem to hum with the effort she imagined it took him to  keep   from exploding along with it. His gaze locked on hers, dark and    furious. Infinitely more lethal than she wanted to admit to herself.

Or maybe it was that she was simply too susceptible to him. Still.    Always, something inside her whispered, making her despair of herself    anew.

"I suggest you think very carefully about the next thing that comes out    of your mouth," he said in that deceptively measured way, the cruelty   he  was famous for rich in his voice then, casting his fierce face into    iron. "You may otherwise live to regret it."

This time, Dru's laugh was real. If, she could admit to herself, a little bit nervous.

"That's what you don't understand," she said, grief and satisfaction and    too many other things stampeding through her, making her feel wild  and   dangerously close to a certain kind of fierce, possibly unhinged  joy.   That she was defying him? That she was actually getting to him,  for   once? She had no idea anymore. "I don't care. I'm essentially    bulletproof. What are you going to do? Sack me? Blacklist me? Refuse me a    reference? Go right ahead. I've already quit."

And then, at long last, fulfilling the dream she'd cherished in one form    or another since she'd taken this horribly all-consuming job in the    first place purely to pay for Dominic's assorted bills-because she    couldn't help but love her brother, despite everything and because she    was all he'd had, and that had meant something to her even when she'd    wished it didn't-Dru turned her back on Cayo Vila, her own personal    demon and the greatest bane of her existence, and walked out of his life    forever.

Just as she'd originally planned she would someday.

There really should have been trumpets, at the very least. And certainly    no trace of that hard sort of anguish that swam in her and made this    much, much more difficult than it should have been.

She was almost to the far door of the outer office, where her desk sat    as guardian of this most inner sanctum, when he snapped out her name.  It   was a stark command, and she had been too well trained to ignore  it.   She stopped, hating herself for obeying him, but it was only this  last   time, she told herself. What could it hurt?

When she looked over her shoulder, she felt a chill of surprise that he    was so close behind her without her having heard him move, but she    couldn't think about that-it was that look on his face that struck her,    all thunder and warning, and her heart began to pound, hard.

"If memory serves," he said in a cool tone that was at complete odds    with that dark savagery in his burnished gold gaze, "your contract    states that you must give me two weeks following the tendering of your    notice."

It was Dru's turn to blink. "You're not serious."

"I may be an 'oversexed Godzilla,' Miss Bennett..." He bit out each word    like a bullet she shouldn't have been able to feel, and yet it  hurt-it   hurt-and all the while the gold in his gaze seemed to sear  into her,   making her remember all the things she'd rather forget. "But  that has   yet to impede my ability to read a contract. Two weeks,  which, if I am   not mistaken, includes the investor dinner in Milan  we've spent months   planning."                       
       
           



       

"Why would you want that?" Dru found she'd turned to face him without    meaning to move, and her hands had become fists at her sides. "Are you    that perverse?"

"I'm surprised you haven't already found the answer to that from my    ex-lovers, with whom you are so close, apparently," he threw at her, his    voice a sardonic lash. "Didn't you spend all of those hours of your    wasted life placating them?"

He folded his arms over his chest, and Dru found herself noticing, as    always, the sheer, lean perfection of his athletic form. It was part of    what made him so deadly. So dizzyingly unmanageable. Every inch of him    was a finely honed weapon, and he was not averse to using whatever  part   of that weapon would best serve him. That was why, she  understood, he   was standing over her like this, intimidating her with  the fact of his   height, the breadth of his shoulders, the inexorable  force and power of   his relentless masculinity. Even in a bespoke suit  which should have   made him look like some kind of dandy, he looked  capable of anything.   There was that hint of wildness about him, that  constant, underlying   threat he wore proudly. Deliberately.

She didn't want to see him as a man. She didn't want to remember the    heat of his hands against her skin, his mouth so demanding on hers. She    would die before she gave him the satisfaction of seeing that he got  to   her now. Even if she still felt the burn of it, the searing fire.

"You know what they say," she murmured, sounding almost entirely calm to    her own ears. Almost blasé. "Those who sleep with someone for the   money  earn every penny."

He didn't appear to react to that at all, and yet she felt something    hard and hot flare between them, almost making her step back, almost    making her show him exactly how nervous he made her. But she was done    with that. With him. She refused to cower before him. And she was    finished with quiet obedience, too. Look what it had got her.

"Take the rest of the day off," he suggested then, a certain hoarseness    in his voice the only hint of the fury she couldn't quite see but had   no  doubt was close to liquefying them both. And perhaps the whole of   the  office building they stood in as well, if not the entire City of   London  besides. "I suggest you do something to curb your newfound urge   toward  candid commentary. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Half-seven,  as  usual,  Miss Bennett."