He was not a man who dealt well in uncertainties.
But what he did know was passion. Sex and desire. He had built his life around what he wanted. He knew want. And much as she claimed to hate him, much as she threw words or shoes at his head, he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could see it. He'd always seen it, if he was honest with himself. And he was tired of fighting off the only thing that made sense in all of this.
"Consequences are for lesser men," he said.
He'd already decided. When he'd walked away from her last night despite the way he burned to take her, when he'd found himself handling his own brutal need alone in his shower, he'd known he was done with this. She was leaving him anyway. There was only so much complication that could occur in the time she had left. Why was he denying himself? He was not the kind of man who did without the things he wanted.
She blinked at his arrogance, but that was better. He didn't want the threat of tears, the sting of her temper. And he certainly didn't want that neutral wall of hers, designed to keep the world at an icy remove. He wanted heat. He wanted that fire again, and who cared anymore what burned?
"Come," he said. It was an order. He didn't pretend otherwise. "Kiss me."
Drusilla's eyes flew wide. One hand went to her throat. He imagined he could feel her pulse there, imagined it kicking against his own hand instead of hers. He wanted to press his mouth to her skin and taste her excitement for himself.
"What did you say?" Her voice was no more than a whisper.
"You heard me."
"I am not going to kiss you," she said, coming over all flustered and something like prim then, her gray eyes brimming with outrage.
Yet behind it, mixed in with it, that consuming, distracting heat that matched his. That called to him. That meant, he knew, that he already had her. It was only a matter of time.
"But you will, Drusilla," he promised her. "Trust me."
* * *
Dru didn't know why she wasn't running away from him.
Her heart pounded so hard it made her feel faint, everything inside her seemed to be in revolt, and yet she only stood there. Gazing back at him, while uncertainty and longing howled and fought and pooled between her legs in a hot pulse of desire.
"Don't call me that," she said instead of all the other things she could have said-should have said. What was the matter with her? Why couldn't she seem to summon the will to protect herself the way she should?
"Your name?" His eyes gleamed like gold. He was so close, so arrogant and sure, and it was harder and harder to remember all the reasons she shouldn't let herself fall over this particular cliff. All the reasons she shouldn't jump headfirst, for that matter.
"My mother is the only person who ever called me Drusilla," she found herself telling him as if she were not standing in this doorway torn apart by tension, while her body clamored for things she was afraid to look at too closely. And far more afraid to do. Or not do. She wasn't sure which scared her more. "And I have not laid eyes on that woman in at least ten years."
"Dru, then," he said, and it moved through her like honey, her name in his mouth. It set fires in her in places she hardly knew existed. It felt like a lock falling open, but she knew better than to give in to that. She knew better than to trust herself around this man. Look at what a kiss had wrought! "And I think you want to be on my leash, after all. Don't you?"
There was no denying the sensual intent behind that question. Or the frank appraisal in his eyes.
Or what it did to her.
The hall fell away. The world with it. There was only him. Only Cayo. Nothing but the exquisite tautness that wound around them, stealing her breath, making his eyes seem to glow. There were scarcely two feet between them and yet all she could focus on was his mouth and that carnal knowledge, that masculine certainty, in the way he looked at her.
She should have said something. Anything.
When she only gazed at him, fighting for breath, unable to speak, his eyes went dark with a need she was afraid she recognized all too well.
"Then come." Another order, which should have enraged her. His mouth curved into something sardonic-and impossibly sexy. Those wicked brows rose in challenge. "Heel."
She felt the words sizzle through her, white-hot and life-altering, and that was when she knew with a sharp burst of clarity that there was only one way this would end. She knew him, didn't she? Cayo's attention span when it came to the women who shared his bed was famously short. If she really wanted to leave him, if she really wanted to be free of this hold he seemed to have on her, then this was the way to do it. This was a one-way street. No turning back.
No matter what it cost her.
"Well?" he asked softly, taunting her.
Dru swallowed, hard. She held his gaze for a long moment, understanding that this was a line she could never uncross. That she had no idea, really, what giving in to this kind of inferno might do to her-the damage it might cause. She'd spent three years recovering from a kiss, after all. She couldn't imagine what this would do.
But it didn't matter now. He looked at her with that certainty in his eyes, that sheer male confidence and stark carnal promise, and she knew that she didn't have it in her to walk away from this. Not when she'd spent so long imagining it, fantasizing about it. Yearning for it with everything she had.
Who cares how you have him, so long as you do? a greedy voice inside her asked, and she didn't have it in her to disagree. She'd lost her will to fight somewhere high above the Pacific Ocean. She didn't have to lose herself, too. She wouldn't, she promised herself. This was a strategy, not a surrender.
She closed the distance between them, watching the light in his fascinating eyes burn ever brighter the closer she came. She slid her hands over the taut planes of his chest, reveling in his heat, his bold strength. There was no going back-but there was no way forward, either, without this. And the truth was that she wanted him. She always had. This way she could have everything-she could have Cayo in the way she'd dreamed of since Cadiz, and then her freedom in a little over a week. In every way that mattered, this was a victory.
It was, she assured herself, her gaze searching his. It was. But what she felt was that wild flame searing into her, burning through her, making all these things she clung to, all these things she told herself, so much ash.
"Please do not tell me that you intend to do all of this in tedious slow motion," Cayo said, that curve in his mouth telling her he was teasing her again and connecting hard to all the places that longed for him like this, for his touch, turning her fever for him ever higher. "I believe that is far more entertaining in films than in real life."
"For God's sake," she said, no longer his assistant, not in a moment like this. Not when they were changing everything, no doubt for the worse, and she couldn't even pretend to care about that as she should. "Shut up."
And then Dru stretched up onto her toes, plastered herself against the length of him, and doomed herself forever by pressing her mouth to his.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE TASTED THE way he remembered. Better. So hot and good and his.
Cayo's arms came around her, pulling her against him, into him, needing to feel the weight of her breasts against his chest, the softness of her belly against the thrust of his hardness, the gentle swell of her hips against his. He kissed her again and again, reveling in the punch of it. The kick.