Indy plowed on because she’d never skidded over this particular cliff before and she didn’t have the slightest clue how to stop herself. “There has been no communication in all of that time, yet here we are. Surely that means, at the very least, we owe each other a little bit of honesty. Don’t you think?”
“I live for honesty.” And it occurred to her that that little undercurrent in his voice, the one that matched the gleam in his eyes, was amusement. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re so nervous?”
Nervous. Indy wasn’t nervous. She was never nervous.
And yet, as wrong words went, that one seemed to hit her in all the places she felt raw.
“I’m just wondering if I’ve flown across an ocean to shack up with the Big Bad Wolf,” she said tartly. “Maybe this wasn’t my smartest move.”
“I thought we were being honest.” Stefan shook his head, though his hard blue gaze never left hers. “We met in a dark alley with my gun in your face. That didn’t stop you from fucking me blind not ten minutes later. And it didn’t stop you coming here for more, years afterward, knowing nothing about me except that alley. Are you afraid of me, Indiana? Or are you afraid of yourself—and the fact that you don’t care what I am?”
She felt caught by that, in a hard, tight grip. As if the honesty she’d demanded was choking her—but Indy forced out a laugh anyway. And maybe she gripped her coffee cup tighter as she settled back in her chair, wishing she’d come down naked.
Because that would have been a distraction. And a distraction was obviously better than...whatever this was.
Indy opted not to acknowledge the uneasy sort of knots that drew tight inside her at this unwelcome awareness of how she operated. Almost as if she wasn’t the carefree, fun-loving creature she’d always been so sure she was.
“This is getting pretty heavy for a morning after,” she said as her laughter faded. “And besides, aren’t conversations like this better during sex? To spice it all up a little.”
She expected the usual reaction when she said even the most nonsuggestive things, as long as sex was implied. Explicitly stated, she expected his eyes to drop where his T-shirt rode up on her thighs. She expected his hands on her, touching her like he couldn’t bear not to for a single moment more...
But Stefan remained as he had been all along, lounging in his chair and regarding her far more closely than was comfortable. Not as if he wanted to jump her bones. More like he wanted to forensically examine them, then jump them.
Indy didn’t like it.
“Do you have discussions when you’re not having sex?” he asked, with entirely too much mild amusement for her taste.
“I’m having one right now.”
“Are you?” There was a hint of a smile on his hard, sensual mouth, but only a hint. “Because it seems to me that discussions are not something you wish to do. Most people reveal themselves in sex, Indiana. But you? You hide.”
That felt a lot like a terrifying mirror shoved straight in her face. And after she’d gone to the trouble of avoiding that actual, nonmetaphoric mirror upstairs.
She made herself laugh again, though she didn’t love the sound of it in the summer air. Had she always felt so forced? “I have sex when I’m having sex. I don’t put any extra, weird weight on it. I don’t understand why people do.”
“Do you not?”
The way he said that felt a lot like an accusation. Or maybe a dare.
Worse, it butted up hard against all those raw and hollow places inside her.
“I keep forgetting we’re strangers,” Indy said, and laughed again. Longer this time, because the summer air could bite her. She drew her legs up onto the chair, pulling the T-shirt down over her knees, then resting her chin on the little shelf she’d made. “Let me give you the story of Indy March. First and foremost, I’m not like other girls.”
Stefan considered her. “I have lived in many places, you understand. Not only different countries with different languages, but in many conditions. Rich, poor, and many shades between. And I have never met a person who introduced themselves to me by telling me how special they were who was, in any way, special.”
But this was where Indy sparkled. She didn’t take offense. She didn’t glare at him. She only laughed. Because where everyone else went intense about their identities, she went effortless.
It felt as if she’d been treading water since she woke up this morning, and suddenly she’d found the bottom. And could finally stand.
“I don’t attach to things the way most people do,” she told him with a shrug. A smile. “That isn’t to say that I don’t have feelings, because of course I do. But some people make feelings their whole life. To me, feelings are just experiences. I have them, I put them aside, and then I move on. Sex is supposed to be fun. Not an opportunity to dredge up the dark and let it take you over. Because where’s the fun in that?”
“You’re talking about run-of-the-mill, boring sex,” Stefan said dismissively. “Anyone can have this kind of sex. With any person they happen to meet. With their own hands, even. It is not so thrilling, this kind of sex, but it gets the job done.”
“I wouldn’t call the sex we’ve had boring or ordinary.” She wrinkled up her nose at him. “But it’s been fun.”
“Fun.” It was his turn to laugh, and Indy found she really didn’t love it when he did it. Not like that. Not at her. “Is this what you tell yourself?”
“Fun is what matters to me,” she told him. “Or I wouldn’t have come here, would I?”
“Indiana.”
He still didn’t lean forward. She didn’t understand it. This was a perfect opportunity for him to reach out and put his hands on her, so they could both feel the kick of that wildfire connection and get lost in that for a while. But he didn’t do it.
And yet, somehow, she still felt caught tight in that gaze of his. It was too blue and far too knowing. She had the shocking notion that he could see straight through her.
For once in her life, a man’s dick wasn’t getting in the way of his gaze. Indy would have sworn that wasn’t possible.
Her heart began to gallop. And his gaze only seemed to pin her to her chair.
“The first time we’ve fucked you had just had a near-death experience. The sex was many things that night, but not fun.” Stefan’s mouth did something, some near-curve, that made her feel light-headed again. “It changed you. I know, because it changed me. And now here we are, two years later, and nothing that happened last night was fun. It was intense. Provoking. It also only scratched the surface. Because this thing between you and me?” He did that thing with his chin, indicating the two of them. “This is not fun. It’s too big. Too dark. And you are terrified of it.”
She tried to make herself laugh, because she always made herself laugh, but she couldn’t quite get there. “You have me confused with someone else. I don’t get terrified.”
“You like to fuck your way across this planet,” he continued, in that same too quiet, too confronting way. “You like your little candy-coated orgasms, like sugar. But you and me? It’s blood and fire, my foolish girl. This is life or death. Do you think I didn’t notice that the more intense it got, the less experienced you seemed?”
“That’s me.” Indy’s voice was rough. She told herself it was Czech allergies, nothing more. “A born-again virgin, just for you.”
He was really smiling now, no question, and it burned through her. “What are you afraid of? Don’t you ever ask yourself what the point of it all is if you’re always too scared to truly strip naked?”
Indy’s heart was pounding at an alarming rate inside her chest and all the rest of her was in a knot. She wanted too many things, most of them at odds with each other. What if you picked one? something in her asked, but she ignored it. And switched tactics.
Anything to disrupt the steady way he looked at her.
&
nbsp; “I know I can’t be understanding you correctly,” she said, and the light tone she used was a struggle. But she did it. “Do you really mean to tell me that this is how a man like you rolls around? Ranting about intensity to every girl he touches?”
“Not every girl I touch.” His smile made his lean, almost-cruel face a kind of portrait, painted in the light all around and her own rapid pulse. It made her think of poetry again. “This is how I know the difference. If I wanted a quick fuck, Indy, I could get that anywhere.”
She was pretty sure it was the first time he’d called her by her nickname, and there was no reason she should dislike it. But she did.
And she hated that she’d even noticed. “Wait, wait. Are you telling me that despite your snide commentary on the number of countries you’ve lived in and the number of times people have claimed to be special only to prove that they were not... I am, in fact, not like the other girls?”
He leaned forward then, but for emphasis. Or so she assumed, because he didn’t reach across the table to her.
“This is what fascinates me,” he said in that same mild tone that was completely belied by the fire in his eyes. The fire that matched hers, and that was what was going to kill her. She knew it was. “Why would you fly all this way, two years later when anything could have happened in the meantime, only to pretend you did such a thing for fun?”
There was the knotting inside and the way each little snarl pulled painfully tight. There was the clatter of her heartbeat, the din of her pulse. And now Indy found her throat was dry, which would tell him all the rest if he heard it, wouldn’t it?
“What else would it be?” she asked, in a vain attempt to sound lazy and unbothered.
But Stefan only smiled.
That damned smile of his that made her melt where she sat.
“You had better eat before you go,” he told her, sitting back again and resuming that lounge of his, as if a man as lethally built could ever look truly languid. “Regardless of whether or not you hate the meal that had you scowling so ferociously, you expended a lot of energy last night. For all that fun we had.”
She stared at the meal in question as if she’d never seen it before. Then lifted her gaze to his again. “Where am I going?”
“We agreed on one more night.” He shrugged, looking entirely unbothered. “The night is over. I assumed you would be in a hurry to get away. After all, Indiana, the world is stocked full of the kind of fun you claim to love so much, is it not? Why would you waste your time here?”
Indy knew that this was a part of the game he was playing and clearly, she’d walked right into his hands. Because even though she’d been planning to leave when she woke up earlier, had been very nearly eager to get away and settle herself down, she’d gotten sidetracked in all this...light and heat.
It felt like a gut punch.
She wanted, more than anything, to pull out a measure of that effortlessness that usually came so easily to her. An airy laugh. A languid hand. She could stand up, stretch, and grin mysteriously down at him as if she already had six more lovers lined up for the next twenty-four hours. Because both of them knew she could make that happen. She could pile her hair on top of her head, because it was rare that she did that in front of a man without him itching to get his fingers in it.
Indy had never considered these things games of her own, but she could see now—with uncomfortable clarity—that they were. That she’d been playing all kinds of games for a long time. The difference today was not only that Stefan could see through her.
The difference was that she could, too.
And it didn’t matter anyway, because she couldn’t seem to move.
“One night,” she managed to say, fighting to sound anything but thrown. “Yes. That’s what we agreed.”
“Are you not satisfied?”
That darkly mocking note in his voice should have been all she needed to hear. It should have sent her running for the door—or in her case, sauntering with purpose while doing her best to look as unbothered by this as possible.
But sure, a voice inside chimed in, as mocking as Stefan. You’re not a game-player at all.
“It’s not a question of satisfaction,” she replied. And even managed a smile. “This is what I’m trying to tell you. I’m always satisfied.”
He didn’t actually call her a liar then. He didn’t have to.
“Terrified,” he said softly, instead.
“Maybe,” she heard herself say, filled with a wild, dizzy sensation that was certainly not terror, “I’d like to renegotiate the one night we agreed on.”
“Because you want to see?” His voice was so rich. A dark ember, already lodged deep inside her, yearning to catch fire. “What can be?”
“Not at all.” Because she didn’t. Did she? She couldn’t. “To prove to you what it is.”
He took a long time to smile at her then, though his poet’s gaze gleamed bright. Like everything else where he was concerned, it pierced her. She was sure he could see straight through her as if she were glass.
Indy had never thought that she was trying to fool anyone, but she knew without question that she wasn’t fooling him.
“Very well,” Stefan said. He inclined his head slightly. “Convince me then. Show me how much fun you’re having, Indiana. You have one night.”
CHAPTER FIVE
STEFAN EXPECTED HER to crawl directly onto his lap to work her magic the way she knew best, but she didn’t.
Instead, Indy seemed to relax, though he didn’t believe it for second. Still, she sat differently, still curled up in the chair opposite him. His T-shirt seemed to grab at her, or almost let go to show more skin... And he suspected there wasn’t a lot his Indy didn’t know about the way her body moved, how it looked from all angles, and what those things meant.
She shook her hair out of its braid so that it fell all around her in a silken, heavy mass of dark waves. The smile she aimed at him rivaled the summer sun above them. And then she dug into her breakfast at last, looking for all the world as if she was totally unaware of the pretty, sexy picture she made.
Stefan knew better.
He would wager that Indy March knew exactly the effect she had on him. On anyone and everyone, but right now, just him. She sat there naked with only his T-shirt on, her hair wild from the last time he’d had his hands in it, eating with such relish it became a sensual act when she licked her fingers. Looking totally unselfconscious, though he knew better.
It wasn’t that she was calculated. He wouldn’t accuse her of that. She was far too generous with her body, her responses, her need. It was more that she was aware.
The thing was, he liked it. His cock liked it more.
She had slept in late, which wasn’t surprising after her travel the day before—not to mention the night they’d had. He had gotten up with the sun, as was his custom no matter what kind of night had gone before. It had long been a way he had exercised control over a life that had sometimes seemed to be forever careening where it wished.
One of the only things life with his father had taught him.
He had gone for a long, looping run through this quiet neighborhood, the kind of place he couldn’t have imagined well enough to dream about back when he thought his father was the whole of the dark, unkind world. Stefan had pushed himself, trying to clear his head of all that need and passion...if only to prove he could.
As always, he had failed.
Indy had still been asleep when he’d returned, curled up in a soft ball in the center of the bed he’d put to use in a hundred different creative ways, all night long. Her face had been hidden by a thick curtain of her hair, so he had brushed it back, sighing a little at the curve of her cheek. The way she looked so serious as she slept, a far cry from the laughing, flickering creature she was by day.
Mi-ai intrat în suflet, he’d said, because h
e knew she couldn’t hear him. And even if she could, he would not translate the Romanian phrase for her.
Because she did not need to know that she had entered his soul. Become a part of him.
No matter what happened.
His chest had ached enough that he’d found himself tensing, and he’d left her there as he’d showered and dressed, then had gone about his day as if it were any other. As if he hadn’t been aware that she was finally here, in this house, where he’d pictured her a thousand times.
Stefan had never trafficked much in imagination. His father’s backhand had taught him the folly of expectation early, a lesson he had taken to heart. But when it came to Indy, he found himself indulging in the kind of what-ifs that he knew better than to entertain.
The man he’d been two years and one day ago would not have recognized him now.
He chose to take that as a good thing.
A very good thing, as men who lived as he had often found themselves dead.
Whatever else happened, he told himself now, he would always be grateful that an unexpected vision in the form of this foolish, beautiful girl had appeared before him in that alley. Then led him out.
Because it had been in the dismantling of his various operations that he’d truly seen how much the cancer of it all had spread. It was possible that had he not pulled out when he had, he would have found himself incapable of it later.
That would mean, among other things, that this house would have stood empty. That he would never have discovered what it was like to wake up in a place he loved, a place where no one would show up at his door uninvited, bringing their ugliness and violence with them. That he would never have known what it was to sit high above Prague on a summer afternoon, across from a beautiful woman with the wind in her hair.
That he would never have known this.
It would have been a loss worth grieving, though he never would have known what he’d missed. Somehow, that made it worse.
He sat back in his chair. He enjoyed the sun on his face. He waited to see what his Indy would do next.
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