Not Just the Boss's Plaything(61)

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.