Not Just the Boss's Plaything(72)

"Tell me," he said in that soft, supremely dangerous voice of his. "What    would possess you to reapply for this job you wanted so desperately  to   leave? What will it look like the next time you decide you hate me,  do   you think? What will you throw at me then?"

"Perhaps I was hasty," she managed to say, before she lost what remained    of her sense and begged him to take her, however he wanted her. "I  may   have let my grief over the loss of my brother affect my better    judgment."

He eyed her for a long, chilly moment.

"The position is already filled." Cold. Harsh. Absolute. "You were    correct," he continued, and there was so much Spanish in his voice that    her breath caught. "It was ridiculously easy to replace you. It took a    single phone call."

"Oh, I see," she said then, pretending she was as strong as she made    herself sound. "You feel I deserve you at your scariest. Vicious and    cutting. Is this my latest punishment?"                       
       
           



       

"What would I possibly punish you for?" he demanded, his voice low and    dark. It connected hard with her belly. "It seems that I was nothing    more than a convenient way for you to scratch that itch. Just as I told    you to do." His smile then should have drawn blood. "What happened,    exactly, that I should feel you need punishing?"

Maybe he had drawn blood. Maybe this was her, unable to move, bleeding    out where she stood and all too aware it was her own fault. She should    have left well enough alone. She should have figured out how to  survive   it-after all, she'd known going into it that getting closer to  Cayo   would end like this. Exactly like this. Perhaps she shouldn't  have been   so cavalier.

"Nothing," she said, and it was just as well that she was already so    close to numb, already so worn out from all the heartbreak and the    grief, that it was only a quiet sort of storm that shook through her    then. Only a little bit of rain and another gray sky. No need for any    commotion. "Nothing happened at all."

She inclined her head at him and then she turned and started for the    door. It had been a mistake to come here. Cayo was a bell that could    never be unrung. She had to move on, no matter how much it hurt. In    time, she'd recover sufficiently from all of this. Of course she would.    She'd stop thinking about him. People recovered from heartbreak all  the   time, all the world over.

She would, too, she vowed. She would.

"There is still one position that remains open, however," he said from    behind her, and the dark, almost satisfied tone he used made goose  bumps   break out all over her skin.

Dru stopped walking, and hated herself for it. You are no better than a    junkie, her inner voice castigated. No better than your brother-and   just  like your mother. You'd take any punishment he doled out. The   masochist  inside preened, and she did nothing to prove either one   wrong.

"What position is that?" she asked, her voice cool. Disembodied,    perhaps, as if she was somewhere else, far from here. Watching from a    distance while people other than her were cut to pieces. "Your personal    punching bag?"

"My wife."

It was another slap, just as it had been on his island, and this time,    she was already so weak. She had already broken down enough to come    here. This was just another blow. For a moment she thought she might    succumb to the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes-but she    blinked them away, furiously, and then turned back to him.

They stared at each other. His dark, wicked brows were raised high,    challenge and command. All of the tension and pain, all of the hurt and    longing, everything he was to her no matter how she fought against it    seemed to hang there and draw tight between them. He looked like    thunder. His eyes blazed. And she couldn't seem to summon the pride or    self-preservation that might have let her laugh at his twisted version    of a proposal. She could only endeavor to keep her tears at bay just a    little while longer.

He didn't say that he needed her, that he wanted her. That he longed for    her. He didn't say that this was hard for him. He looked the way he    always looked. Untouchable. Impossibly ruthless. And the most dangerous    man she'd ever met.

"Your wife," she said, as if she barely recognized the word. She could    hardly speak past the lump in her throat. "And what would that position    entail, exactly?"

That predatory gleam shone in his gaze, and his lean body was so tense,    rippling with tension, that she thought he really might pounce. Behind    him, rain began to lash at the windows and the sky was dark, and  there   he stood in the middle of all that, more elemental by far.

"I'm sure we'll think of something," he said, in a voice that made her    imagine him thrusting into her: that slick, perfect fit. The    electricity. The wildness that made her forget herself completely.

"And when that fades?" she asked, her voice thick. "You are not known for your attention span, are you?"

He pushed away from the desk and started toward her, like a lethal    weapon aimed directly at her, and Dru had to fight herself to stand    still. Not to run in the opposite direction. Or toward him.                       
       
           



       

"I have thought of very little else but you since the day you walked in    here and quit," he said, moving far too close, forcing her to look up   at  him. "I never wanted you to leave in the first place. It's not my    attention span that's at issue here, is it?"

"I can't marry you." She bit that out, final and sure. Desperate.

His dark brows lowered. "Are you holding out for someone richer, Dru?    More powerful?" He didn't laugh as he said it. He didn't have to. His    voice dropped, even as his mouth curved into that cold, mocking    facsimile of a smile. "Better in bed?"

"Love," she heard herself say, to her utter horror. But there was no    unsaying it, even when he looked at her as if she'd thrown another shoe    at his head-and had hit her target this time. "There's no point   marrying  without love."

"Of course," he breathed, and she had never seen that look on his face.    Remote and terrible, and if he'd been someone else she'd think she'd    ripped his heart from his chest. But this was Cayo. His mouth twisted.    "You have already made clear your opinion on my character. Who indeed    could marry a monster such as me?"

But though his words were the bitterest she'd ever heard, so much so    they made her flinch in reaction, he still moved closer. He reached over    and ran his hand down the sleek end of her ponytail, drawing it   forward  to drape over one shoulder, the gentle touch at odds with the   way his  gaze burned into hers, fierce and uncompromising. And she   remembered,  then, that night on the chilly terrace in Milan, when he'd   done the same  thing. When he'd made her heart ache. When he'd made her   believe there  was more to this than simply that wildfire.

She remembered treading water in the sea, how she'd ducked under the    waves and felt, for a moment, that she might simply let herself sink.    How that had seemed better than facing this man who cast such a shadow    over her whole life. Who she could not seem to do without, however much    she thought she should.

Who had accused her of hiding from him, time and again, and here she    was, hiding the most important truth of all from him. When really, what    was she protecting? She had nothing and no one. She was wholly alone.    She had nothing to lose.

But it was still so hard, so overwhelming, that spots danced before her eyes.

"I don't think you're a monster, Cayo," she whispered. And maybe she had    nothing to lose, but it still felt like leaping from a very high  cliff   into nothingness. "I love you."