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Not Just the Boss's Plaything(45)

By:Caitlin Crews

       
           



       

You are fast approaching your expiration date, Dru seethed uncharitably    at the other woman, but then caught herself. This was not a cat fight.    It wasn't even a competition.

Dru had spent entirely too long telling herself that it was all    perfectly fine with her, that she didn't mind at all that this man who    had kissed her with so much heat and longing in an ancient city, and  who   had looked at her as if she were the only person in the world who   could  ever matter to him, slaked his various lusts with all of these    anonymous women. Why should it matter? she'd argued with herself a    thousand times in the middle of the night while she lay alone and he was    off tending to his companion du jour. What we have is so much deeper    than sex...

It was all so desperate. So delusional and terribly, gut-wrenchingly pathetic.

She held a shoe in each hand now, like potential weapons, and she    allowed herself a grim moment of amusement as she watched Cayo's    ever-calculating gaze move to the sharp stiletto heels immediately, as    if he joined her in imagining her sinking them deep into his jugular.  He   smirked and returned his attention to the television and the  almighty   scroll of the New York Stock Exchange across the bottom of  the screen,   as if he'd assessed the threat that quickly and dismissed  it that   easily.

And her. Again. As ever.

"Have you finished having your little fit?" he asked. She felt her heart    race, that same anger-at him and, worse, at herself-shaking through    her, making her very nearly tremble.

"I want to know what you think is going to happen now that you've    stranded me on this boat," Dru replied, biting the words out. "Will you    simply keep me imprisoned here forever? That seems impractical, at the    very least. Boats eventually dock, and I can swim."

"I suggest you take a deep breath, Miss Bennett," he said in that    obnoxiously patronizing tone, not even bothering to glance at her again,    his entire lean body insulting in its disinterest. "You are becoming    hysterical."

It was too much, finally. She didn't even think.

She cocked one arm back in a moment of searing, possibly insane, mind-numbing rage and threw a shoe.

At his head.

It sliced through the air, the wicked heel seeming almost to glow, and    she pictured it spearing him directly between the mocking, impossible    eyes-

But then he reached up and snatched it out of its flight at the last    moment, his hand too large and masculine against the delicate point of    the heel.

When he looked at her then, his dark golden stare burned with outrage.    And something else-something that seemed to echo in her, hard and loud.    Anticipation? The shared memory of an old street, that explosive  kiss?   But no, that was impossible. Nothing more than her desperate  fantasies   in action yet again.

Dru panted slightly, as if that had been her in vicious flight. As if he    now held her like that, captured against his hard palm. That same    current of wild, hot heat that she wished was simple fury seemed to coil    within her and then pulse low, the way it always did when he was  near.

"Next time," she told him from between her teeth, her other hand clenching her remaining shoe, heel first, "I won't miss."

* * *

Once again, she'd surprised him. And he liked it as little as he had in London.

Her gray gaze was alert and intent and he didn't like all the things he    could see in it, none of which he understood or wanted to try to    understand. He didn't like the faint flush on her cheeks, or the way she    looked with her feet bare and her hair something other than perfect   for  the first time in as long as he'd known her. Sexy.

He had to jerk his gaze from hers and when he did, he found himself    looking down at the vicious little stiletto she'd flung at his throat.    It was a weapon, certainly, but it was also one of those delicate,    wickedly feminine shoes that he did not want to think about in reference    to his personal assistant. He did not want to imagine her slipping  the   sleek little shoe on over those elegant feet of hers that he'd  never   noticed before, or think about what the saucy height of the heel  would   do to her hips as she walked-                       
       
           



       

Damn her.

Cayo rose to his feet slowly, not taking his eyes from hers.

"What am I going to do with you?" he asked, impatient with her defiance.    And equally impatient with his own failure to end this distracting  and   disruptive situation that was already well out of hand. But those   errant  strands of silky dark hair teased at the curve of her lips, her   chin,  and he could not seem to look away.

"You have had a number of options of things to do with me over the    years," she pointed out, in something less than her usual crisp tone. As    if she was boiling over with fury, which he should not find as    compelling as he did. "You could have let me move to a different    position in your company, for example. You could have let me go today.    You opted to kidnap me instead."

Abruptly, Cayo remembered that they were not alone. He dismissed the    clingy blonde with a careless wave of his hand and ignored the sulky    expression that followed it. The woman huffed and muttered as she exited    the salon, irritating him far more than she should have. Could not  one   female in his usually carefully controlled existence do as he  wished   today? Must everything be a trial?

He tossed Drusilla's stiletto down on the seat where the blonde had    been, and wondered why he was even having this conversation in the first    place. Why was he encouraging Drusilla further by allowing her to   speak  to him in that decidedly disrespectful tone?

And why on earth did he have the wholly uncharacteristic urge to explain    the reasons he'd shot down her bid for that promotion three years  ago?   What was the matter with him? The last time he'd defended or  justified   his behavior was...never.

"I don't share my things," he said then, coolly, purely to put her in    her place. She stiffened, and then what could only be hurt washed    through her gray eyes. And for the first time in years, Cayo felt the    faintest hint of something that might have been shame move through him.    He ignored it.

"I'd ask you what kind of man you are to say something so deliberately    insulting and borderline sociopathic, but please." Drusilla sniffed,  her   eyes still wounded, which he hated more than he should have. "We  both   already know exactly what kind of man you are, don't we?"

"The papers call me a force of nature," he replied, his voice light if    cold, and it was a reminder. The last one he planned to give her. He  was   not a man who suffered insubordination, and yet he'd been  tolerating   hers for hours, up to and including an attempted attack on  his person.   Had she been a man, he would have responded in kind.

Basta ya! he thought, impatiently. Enough was enough.

He found himself moving toward her, tracking the nervous swallow she    took as he came closer, as if she was neither as disgusted nor as    impassive as she appeared. That same, seductive memory rolled over then    inside him, and shook itself awake. Dangerously awake.

She shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other, reminding him as    she did so that she was, in fact, a woman. Not a perfect robot built    only to serve his needs as any good assistant should. That she was  made   of smooth, soft flesh and that her legs were perfectly formed  beneath   that sleek skirt. That she was not the ice sculpture of his  imagination,   nor a shadow. And that he'd tasted her heat himself.

He didn't like that, either. But he let his gaze fall over her anyway,    noting as if for the first time that her trim figure boasted lush  curves   in all the right places, had he only let himself pay closer  attention   to them. Something about her disheveled hair, the temper in  her gaze,   the complete lack of her usual calm expression was getting  under his   skin. His heart began to beat in a rhythm that boded only  ill, and made   him think of things he knew he shouldn't. Those sleek  legs wrapped   around his waist as he held her against a wall in the old  city. That   mouth of hers hot and wet beneath his. That cool  competence of hers he'd   depended upon all these years, melting all  around him...