Not Just the Boss's Plaything(55)

"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.