And suddenly he was too close, though she hadn't seen him move. He loomed above her, his shoulders wider than they should have been and his chest too broad, and he was too close for Dru to breathe, too close for her to do anything but lose herself in the dangerous amber of his gaze.
Her pulse went crazy beneath her skin. Her mouth went dry. And she felt that long, low ache between her legs.
His hard gaze slammed into hers, as if he meant to hold her there with the force of it. And sure enough, Dru found she couldn't move.
"Don't speak to me like I'm another one of those investors," he said fiercely. Almost angrily. "Don't expect me to dance to your tune simply because you make a bit of cocktail conversation."
He was right, she had been doing exactly that-and she hated that he'd seen it so clearly. That he'd seen her. She'd always thought she'd wanted that but the truth of it terrified her. It was her job to read him, not the other way around. Never the other way around!
"My apologies," she bit out. "I won't point out your lack of imagination again."
He didn't speak. He only reached over and dragged his thumb across her lips, testing their shape, and it wasn't a soft touch, a lover's caress. It was starkly, undeniably sexual. If she hadn't known better, if it hadn't been impossible and unthinkable, Dru would have said he was staking his claim. Imprinting her with his touch, as he might brand cattle or stamp a logo onto a product. Leaving his mark.
She should have slapped his hand away. Instead, she burned. Long and slow and deep.
The way she always had. The way she always would.
"Believe me," he said, and his voice was so soft and still so demanding. So consuming. A thread of sound in the sultry night, surrounded by flickering golden light and the wild, incapacitating staccato of her own heartbeat. "My imagination grows more vivid by the hour."
Dru's lips felt as if they were on fire, and she could feel his touch all through her body, coursing through her veins, even after he dropped his hand and eased away. Her heart didn't stop its frantic beating. Her mouth was still so dry, her stomach in a knot. She felt him everywhere. And for a long moment, he only looked at her, his dark eyes hot and shrewd and that cruel mouth impassive.
And even that felt like a touch, and with the same result.
Cayo turned then to greet the smiling man who approached them, from inside the villa Dru realized she'd forgot about entirely. When he looked back at her, his gaze was too dark to read.
I didn't want you to leave, he'd said on the terrace in Milan, half a world away now. And still it rang in her, through her, like a bell. I still don't.
She wanted that to mean something. She wanted. And she could still feel his touch moving through her, making her his as surely as if he'd tattooed his name on her skin in the blackest ink.
You're tired and overwrought, she told herself, fighting back another surge of heat behind her eyes. Nothing will feel like this in the morning. It can't.
"You look exhausted," Cayo said, his gaze moving over her face, making her imagine he could read her every thought that easily. He nodded, as if coming to some kind of decision, and the way his mouth curved then looked self-mocking. "Frederic will show you to your rooms."
And then he walked away, disappearing into the thick night.
Leaving her to make sense of what was happening to her-to them-on her own.
Fighting off emotions she couldn't understand, much less process, Dru obediently followed Frederic through the villa. There were tall, vaulted ceilings and the same rich, dark wood she'd seen outside. Airy, spacious rooms without proper windows, simply cut-out spaces in the walls to let in paradise on all sides. Bright-colored wall hangings, low and inviting sofas in magentas and creams. Polynesian artifacts on built-in shelves in the walls, and glorious flowers scattered across ornamental tables. She followed Frederic down a level and then outside again. They walked along another, far shorter path that delivered her to a private bungalow splayed out over its own private pier. Here, too, the walls were open to the night, letting the softest of breezes into the expansive suite. Dru couldn't seem to breathe deeply enough to take it all in.
And again-still-all she wanted to do was dissolve into the tears she knew were waiting for her and cry herself dry. Cry until she couldn't feel this anymore, whatever this was: Cayo and the dark and that touch, imprinted on her skin. Claiming her.
With a smile, Frederic showed her the glass floor hidden away beneath a rug in the sitting area.
"In the day," he promised, "you will see many fish. Even turtles."
"Thank you," she whispered, summoning her smile from somewhere.
"Sleep now," the man said kindly. "It will be better when you sleep."
And she wanted to believe him. She did.
Everything felt too huge, too unwieldy, she thought when he left. Her own head. This place. Cayo, of course. Cayo most of all. It all felt impossible, and painful. It hurt from the inside out. She moved over to the opening across from the four-poster bed draped in filmy mosquito netting from high above, and looked out at the water and the smudge of orange light behind the mountain in the distance. Daybreak was coming. And she was in paradise with the devil, and she burned for him as if she'd already fallen. Perhaps she had. Perhaps that was why this had hurt so much from the start.
There was no reason at all she should cry now. She wiped away the tear that tracked its way down her cheek. And then all the ones that followed. She felt her face crumple in on itself, and had to pull on reserves she hadn't known she had to breathe through it-to fight back the sobs that she knew lurked just there and would be the end of her.
She must not give in. She must not start. It was only two weeks, and less than that now. She needed to be strong only a little while longer.
Oh, Dominic, she thought as she crawled on to the bed, not even bothering to change out of the clothes she'd been wearing across several continents and more time zones than she could count. I wish you could see this place. It's even better than you dreamed.
Her last thought as she drifted off into blessed unconsciousness was of Cayo. That mesmerizing curve of his hard, impossible mouth. The touch of his hand in the cold, wet dark, so hot against her chilled skin. That unquenchable fire that burned ever hotter, ever brighter by the day, no matter how she tried to deny it. No matter how hard she fought. He would destroy her. She knew it. She'd always known it-it was one of the foremost reasons she had to leave him.
So there was no reason at all that she should be smiling against the soft white pillows as she drifted off into oblivion.
CHAPTER SIX
DRU WOKE TO sunshine on all sides. It streamed in the open windows of her room, bathing her in light and the sweet, fragrant breeze. It felt like some kind of blessing, chasing away what shadows remained from the long night before. She stretched luxuriously on the soft mattress and told herself she was fine now. Fully restored. Cayo's touch, his talk of debauchery, that fire that only seemed to build between them-it was all part of a darkness dispelled. She was sure of it.
She rose from her bed and dressed slowly, in deference to the sultry weather. She pulled on a loose and flowing pair of linen trousers and paired them with a strappy black vest. Then she swept all of her hair up into as sleek a ponytail as was possible in this climate. The result, she thought, frowning at herself in the mirror, was as close to tropical and yet professional as she was likely to get. She slipped on a pair of thonged sandals and stepped outside, where it appeared to be well into a perfect afternoon.