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Not Just the Boss's Plaything(58)



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.