"Why are you so determined I should stay?" she asked quietly. "You think so little of me. You believe I am good for nothing but a position as your assistant forever."
His hard mouth moved, though it was not a smile. "There are those who would kill for that privilege."
He was so close, the sheer masculine poetry of his beautiful torso right there and seemingly impervious to the chill, and it was astonishingly hard for Dru to keep her attention where it belonged.
And the fact that she still couldn't control her response to him-that it was as powerful now as it had been all along, as it had been three years ago-made her shiver, as if her body could no longer pretend it was unaffected. How else would she destroy herself, she wondered then in a kind of anguish, before this was done? How else would she sacrifice what mattered to her, her very self, on the altar of this man?
"I assume it was a punishment?" She searched his face, her heart plummeting as she saw what she always saw and nothing more. That implacable ruthlessness of his, that fierce beauty. As unreachable as the stars above her, concealed tonight by the clouds.
He frowned. "Why would I punish you?"
She felt her brows rise in disbelief. "Cadiz. Of course."
He made an impatient noise.
"Surely we have enough to discuss without beckoning in every last ghost," he said, but there was that odd note in his voice again. As if he did not believe himself, either.
"Just the one ghost." Her eyes never left his. "It was one little kiss, didn't we agree? And yet you punished me for it."
"Don't be absurd."
"You punished me," she repeated, firmly, despite the scratchiness she could hear in her voice. "And you were the one who started it."
He had done more than start it. He had ignited them both, set them afire. He'd had his arm thrown around her, and she'd been pleasantly full of tortitas de camarones and calamares en su tinta, Spanish sherry, and the heady knowledge that after the two years she'd been working for him, Cayo had finally shown her that there was more to him than his ruthless demands, his take-no-prisoners style of doing business. She'd smelled the hint of his expensive scent, like leather and spice, felt the incredible, hard heat that emanated from his skin beneath his clothes, and the combination had made her light-headed. She'd felt for him, and that heartbreaking scene with his grandfather. She'd ached for what he'd been through, what it had done to him. He'd talked to her that night, really talked to her, as if they were both simply people. As if there was more to them than the roles they played, the duties they performed.
It had been magical.
And then Cayo had swung her around, backing her up against the nearest wall. She'd seemed to explode into him, as if she'd been waiting for exactly that moment. He'd muttered words she didn't understand and then his mouth had been on hers, as uncompromising as anything else he did. All of that fire, all of that need, had rolled through her like a tempest, and she'd lost herself. She'd lost her head. It had been slick and dizzy and terrifyingly right and she'd found herself wrapped around him, her legs around his hips as he pressed that marvelous body of his against hers, his mouth plundering hers, taking and taking and taking-
It kept her up at night. Still.
"There was no punishment." Cayo's low voice snapped Dru back into the present.
His clever eyes probed hers in the dark, as if he could see straight into her memory, as if he knew exactly what it did to her even at three years' distance. As if he felt the same heat, the same longing.
As if he, too, wished they hadn't been interrupted three years ago.
The laughing group of strangers further down the walkway had drawn near. He'd set her down on her feet, gently. Almost too gently. They'd stared at each other, both breathing hard, both dazed, before continuing on to their hotel, where they'd parted in the hall outside their rooms without a word.
And they'd never discussed it again.
"Then why...?"
He raked a hand through his hair. "I didn't want you to leave," he said, his voice gruff. "There was no hidden agenda. I told you, I don't like to share." He blew out a breath, and when he spoke again, it was with an edge. "You are an integral part of what I do. Surely you know it."
She shook her head, unable to process that. The layers of it. What she knew he meant and, harder to bear, what she so desperately wanted him to mean instead. He was talking about work, she reminded herself fiercely, even as he looked at her with that fire in his dark amber eyes. He was always talking about work. For Cayo, there was nothing else. Why couldn't she accept it?
It was too much. It hurt.
"What are you so afraid of?" she asked before she could think better of it. Before she could question whether she wanted to hear the answer. "Why can't you just admit what you did?"
He scowled at her, and she thought he might snap something back at her, but he didn't. For a moment he looked torn, almost tortured, however little sense that made. The city was so quiet around them, as if they were the only people alive in the world, and Dru found herself biting down on her lower lip as if that smallest hint of pain could keep her anchored-and keep her from saying the things she knew she shouldn't.
This time, when he reached for her, he used the back of his hand and brushed it with aching gentleness over her cheek, soft and impossibly light, sending the hint of fire searing through her like the faintest kiss, until Dru's next breath felt like a sob.
"You're cold," he said, again in that gruff voice. That stranger's voice that nevertheless made her feel weak.
And she was chilly, it was true. She was trembling slightly. Uncontrollably.
If he wanted to think that was the cold, she wouldn't argue.
"Get some sleep," he ordered her, his eyes too dark, his mouth too grim.
And when he left her there, shaky and on the verge of more tears she hardly understood, her mind spinning as wildly as it had so long ago in Cadiz, it almost felt as if she'd dreamed it, after all.
Almost.
CHAPTER FIVE
CAYO WAS IN A FOUL temper. He sipped his espresso, as harsh and black as his current mood, and eyed Drusilla over the top of it when she appeared at breakfast the next morning.
He had spent what was left of the night chasing the ghosts of his past out of his head, and failing miserably. Now, in the bright morning light, the opulence of the suite's great room like a halo all around her, Drusilla looked her usual, sleekly professional self-and he found it profoundly irritating. Gone was the woman he'd been unable to keep from touching on the terrace in the dark, her hair out of that ubiquitous twist she favored and so soft across her shoulder, wrapped up like a sweet-smelling gift in silk and soft cashmere. Gone as if she had been no more than a particularly haunting dream.
And still, he wanted her. Then. Now. In whatever incarnation she happened to present him with.
"We are going to Bora Bora," Cayo announced without preamble. "Have the butler order you the appropriate wardrobe."
He might have panicked, he thought with something like black humor, if he knew how. If he'd ever experienced something this confounding before. As it was, he only watched her walk toward him, and told himself that the pounding desire that poured through him was nothing more than resentment. Lack of sleep. Anything but what he knew it was.
She paused before dropping gracefully into the seat opposite him at the small table near the windows where he'd taken his breakfast, and he saw a host of emotions he couldn't quite identify chase across her face in a single instant before she smoothed it out into her customary neutrality.