“I’m not.” He dipped his head briefly, eyes locked on hers. “You have my word.”
Christ, she must be insane, because she was buying this, totally. She had the distinct impression he rarely gave his word and when he did, he kept it. Whoa, maybe she was concussed. She searched his eyes for a moment longer and found nothing but directness, some sadness and some pain.
Against all the odds, she believed him.
“Okay. I’m sorry I asked, but I had to.” A huge weight had been lifted from her chest.
He dipped his head again. “I understand completely.”
Slowly and carefully, he lifted her hand from his chest and brought it to his mouth, placing a gentle kiss on the back. Even his mouth was hot, the soft brush of his lips painting a small circle of flames on the back of her hand.
Her body blossomed.
She drew in a deep breath and he released her hand.
She felt behind her blindly and grasped the shiny brass handle. “So I’ll, um, take a bath. And I think you should sit down, right now. Are you in pain?”
He looked surprised at the question, eyes flaring briefly. “Nothing I can’t handle. Don’t worry about me, you go take your bath and soak your muscles. You were tossed around pretty brutally. I’m going to take a bath of my own in another room. And here—” He dug into his pants pocket and held some kind of electronic device in the huge, callused palm of his hand. She looked it over carefully. It was sleek and essentially featureless save for a big button on one side. “Take this with you. Put it on the side of the tub within easy reach. If the hot water makes you feel faint in any way, just press it and I’ll come. Don’t lock the door. I’ll come as fast as I can.”
Well, she was going to be naked in that tub, so there wasn’t much of a chance of her pressing that button. She was a big girl. If she felt faint, she’d just get out. Still, to make him happy, she grasped one end. He held on to the other. They were linked by five inches of plastic.
“Call me if you need me.” His voice was insistent. A muscle rippled in his jaw, as if he were clenching his teeth against saying something more.
She looked at the lines of his face—harsh, strong, totally unlike any male she’d ever met—and realized something terrible. Something that shook the foundations of her world.
Oh God.
She was attracted to this man. Massively. Wildly.
This was clearly insane. Being shot at had made her crazy. That was the only explanation possible. This had never happened to her before, ever. She had to be in bed with a man for her body to bloom as it had just done, by the simple touch of his lips to her hand.
A hot flush had shot through her, head to toe, and it wasn’t menopause. It was the real deal. As if by merely kissing her hand, he’d speeded up the rate at which the blood circulated in her body. Actually, that sounded about right because her heart had speeded up as well and was now pounding so hard it was a miracle he didn’t hear it.
Pools of that heat centered in intense flashes in her breasts and between her legs. When his lips touched the skin of her hand, she’d clenched tightly between her legs, the first time that had ever happened to her, so startling it took her a second to even recognize it as desire.
Desire for a man who was scary. She knew nothing about him except that he appeared to be rich and powerful. Powerful enough to have men gunning for him. Powerful enough to have men with guns protecting him.
In her experience, rich and powerful men were obnoxious creatures, completely concentrated on themselves, oblivious to others. This man, Drake, had proved himself to be the exact opposite. He’d disarmed himself for her, shielded her with his body, insisted that she be treated for scrapes and bumps before Ben dealt with his bullet wound.
Rich, powerful men had obnoxious vibes coming off them in almost palpable waves. She wasn’t getting this from Drake at all.
What she was getting from him was desire. Rich, powerful sexual vibes, like some intense spice, centered on her.
And—whoa—she felt them right back.
This was absolutely nuts. What did she know about him except that he was lethally dangerous? He’d fought like a trained soldier, yet he didn’t act like one. Soldiers were trained to obey and this man looked like he would obey no one. An army of one.
Whatever he was, whoever he was, he was way too rich for her blood. She was going to get mangled. She had no defenses whatsoever against the solid male power she could feel streaming from him.
Desiring him was suicide.
She stepped back from him, as if backing off from a force field, clutching the electronic device in her hand.
He stepped back, too. Maybe he sensed how rattled she was and knew he had to back off. He nodded at the device.
“Keep that close to you at all times and don’t hesitate to use it if you feel faint. Don’t lock the door,” he repeated, as she started closing the door in his face.
No, she wouldn’t lock the door. It was his home and anyway, he looked like the kind of man who could pick any lock in a heartbeat.
She wanted him.
Drake eased himself into the steaming hot water in the bathroom off the living room, careful not to wet his bandages, sighing at the hot jets massaging his sore muscles.
Grace definitely wanted him, which was good, because they had to start their affair soon. Fucking her was a strategic necessity, something he knew he had to do, but it wasn’t a sacrifice. It was his deepest desire. Only now that he’d been close to her, touched her, could he admit openly to himself how much he wanted her. Like he wanted his next breath, that’s how much he wanted her.
And now she was here, in his home, naked, right this minute.
His jaw clenched, imagination running riot at the thought of Grace naked in his tub.
That long, white neck tilted back over the lip of the tub, all the jets firing, clouding the water, revealing then hiding that lovely pale body. He could almost see her beautiful face relaxing, the lines of pain and stress slowly disappearing.
It wasn’t like him to have to imagine a naked woman. Most women he’d wanted naked were only too willing to comply.
He’d noticed a change in naked women over the years he’d lived here. There was no softness anymore. Most beautiful women took pains to become buff, tightly muscled. Hard-bodies, the Americans called them. It puzzled him so. Who wanted a hard woman in this hard world? The whole point of having a woman of your own—not that he’d ever wanted one—was to have some softness in your life.
But the women he’d been with over the past few years had been hard, inside and out. Totally invulnerable. The complete opposite of Grace Larsen, with her smooth, soft skin and even softer heart. She was right to keep away from the world, because the world was one giant hammer, just waiting to come smashing down on someone like her.
It had almost smashed her today.
He clutched the rim of the tub tightly, feeling a little flare of pain in his shoulder. Not much. Ben had given him something that dulled it, while letting him have as much use of his hand and arm as possible. And anyway, pain was nothing. Learning how to disregard pain had been his first lesson learned.
The biggest pain in his body right now was his straining erection at the thought of a naked Grace in his home. More nights than he cared to think about, he’d jacked off to thoughts of her. All he had to do was conjure up the fleeting glimpses of her from the alleyway and instant boner, as the Americans would say. And that was when what he knew of her was those brief flashes in the gallery, separated by heavy plate glass, as she talked to Harold Feinstein. There had been no way for him to know how amazingly soft her skin was, how the touch of her hand could send his pulse racing, how every cell in his body came to a point in her presence, like iron filings to a magnet.
God, she was beautiful. She was smart and brave and kind, but fuck, she was so beautiful, too, with the kind of beauty that didn’t dissipate with wear and tear. Muddy, bloodied, wet and bedraggled, she’d simply taken his breath away.
Everything about her seemed designed specifically for him, starting from her eyes, the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Large, slightly tilted, not blue, not green—the exact color of the Mediterranean at noon.
Or her breasts, clearly visible underneath the wet sweater she’d been wearing. It had also been clear that she wasn’t wearing a bra, because she didn’t need it. Her breasts were perfect as they were.
Grace Larsen was so fucking dangerous. Just wanting to see her had placed him in mortal jeopardy and now a big part of him understood how much she was going to cost him.
Everything. Everything he’d built and worked for, gone. She was going to cost him everything he had, including life as he knew it. Thirty-four years of existence, gone.
He couldn’t mourn his life, though, because there wasn’t enough room in his head for that. Right now the most intense sensation in his body was the tightness between his thighs. He looked down at himself and sure enough, he was as hard as stone.
He held himself with his uninjured hand and gave an experimental tug, running his hand from the base to the tip, imagining that Grace held him, and he nearly came out of the tub from the intensity. God!
His jaw clenched. He sometimes jerked off when it was too much trouble to find a woman. He found it a pleasant stress reliever. But touching himself now, with the recent, up-close images of her right there in his head—it felt like he’d lost a layer of skin.
Another pull and he clenched his jaws at the intense sensation. He’d seen her, touched her, breathed her air. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine that they were in bed together. She’d look at him out of liquid eyes, naked on his bed, and open her legs for him. He could see it behind his closed lids, he could feel it.
Feel her arms coming around him, the soft huff of breath as he mounted her. She’d be soft and slick for him, because in this half-dream state she wanted him just as intensely as he wanted her, which meant that she was weeping in her cunt for him, just as he was weeping for her.
He’d push into her, fast, because though he was known to be a controlled lover, he wasn’t feeling in control at all. Just mount her, pull her legs apart and shove in fast, feeling every delicious inch…
Whoa. Rewind.
That wouldn’t work. He knew it wouldn’t work from fucking hundreds of women. He was big and he had to take care. In his world, he’d seen way too much brutality to women. Even the thought of hurting a woman made him nauseous. And this was Grace. So no, he wasn’t going to open her legs and thrust as hard as he could.
First he’d touch her, softly, gently. Carefully feel her cunt in all its soft folds, while kissing her breasts. Feel her open up, soften for him. Hear her sigh with longing—
No, that wasn’t working, either. Because he couldn’t get the image of fucking her out of his head. He was in her, fucking her hard, hands clasped to her hips, watching her head move up and down on the pillow with his thrusts.
His hand was moving faster now as he saw the two of them on his bed, her pale slender legs curled around his as he pumped in and out of her. His fist worked hard and fast as the images of them intertwined on his big bed burned in his head.
He closed his eyes, hand working faster and faster in the water, as he imagined moving in a hot and slick Grace, listening to the puffs of her breath in his ear, her low moans, her arms tightening as she screamed and her cunt started clenching around him—
It was too much. Overload. Hot prickles raced down his spine, his toes curled and his jaw clenched as his cock swelled in his hand. It was impossible to resist the heat, like trying to stop a freight train. The climax just barreled right through him. He started spurting hot jets into the water as he arched his back with a pleasure so intense it was almost pain, one of the most explosive orgasms he’d ever had.
It took long, long moments for him to settle down, for his breathing to go back to normal, for him to be able to open his eyes and see his bathroom and not the naked pair of them on his bed.
He lingered in the water for far too long, contemplating the ceiling, feeling his new reality shift around him. His life was changing more quickly than even he could keep up with.
Christ, he was in a shitload of trouble if jacking off to the thought of Grace was much more exciting than any of the sex he’d recently had. He was so used to having his life tightly under his control, master of his surroundings and himself. This scared him a little. There was no place in his head for these new sensations, for the feel of another life joining his. Grace was now in his life, not by choice but by violence, thrust there by circumstances beyond his control and hers. He could deal with the responsibility—he bore the responsibility of a goddamned empire on his shoulders. What he couldn’t deal with were the emotions attached to her. Brand-new emotions. Uncontrollable ones. Not much frightened him, but this did.
He sat in the tub while the water cooled and his cock relaxed to a semi-erect state, contemplating the massive changes in his life.
Finally, he shook himself back into action, standing up in the tub, letting the silvery water wash off him. His life was now not completely his own, he thought as he toweled himself dry. There were steps to be taken, and step number one was to take care of Grace.
He’d brought in clean clothes, a sweater and jeans, and dressed. Back in the bedroom, he pressed a button on a small console.
“Sir?” a disembodied voice answered immediately.
Drake smiled. He’d found Shota on the streets of Tbilisi, an underage conscript who’d been wounded and abandoned by his teammates. He’d taken Shota back to his hotel, patched him up, and when he would have sent him on his way, discovered that Shota didn’t want to leave. Shota was hopeless as a soldier, but he turned out to be a superb butler.
Drake had had households in Odessa; in Ostende, Belgium; in Johannesberg and now in Manhattan, and Shota made sure everything ran smoothly. He had six maids, four chefs and an underbutler working for him, making sure that Drake lived in clean and comfortable circumstances and that his needs were met instantly.
For an instant, Drake ran through his mind the possibility that Shota had betrayed him. He let the idea lie there, turning it over gently, looking at it from all angles, then dismissed it. Not only was Shota fanatically loyal, he wasn’t greedy at all. Shota lived in the building, two stories down, like all his employees. He paid no rent, no utilities, ate on the premises and seemed very content. Drake had had to force him to accept a raise last time.
Drake knew that he treated Shota well and he felt that Shota’s loyalty was real.
Humans are capable of many things—no one knew that better than Drake—but by the same token, they were always true to themselves. Shota was loyal to the bone. So he wasn’t the one.
Drake was going to go over every single employee he had. Only someone working here could possibly know his movements. All in all, Drake had a permanent staff of forty-five men and six women, amongst them a traitor. He had finely tuned instincts and he kept his surveillance camera recordings forever, so if necessary, he could go over every single employee’s movements over the past year.
He’d find the man and make him sorry, but right now there were other, more important, things to see to.
“Sir?” Shota’s voice held some puzzlement. “Did you need something?”
Christ. He was so wiped out by the orgasm he’d forgotten he’d buzzed downstairs.
“Yes, Shota. I’d like dinner brought up to the dining room, set on the table in front of the fire. Something warm and nutritious, with a sweet dessert”—Grace was going to need warmth and sugar to overcome her shock—“and a good bottle of red. One of those Argentinian merlots you bought would be nice.”
“Yessir,” Shota’s voice came back. Drake could imagine him already bustling about, beginning the preparations.
“For two,” Drake said, a slight smile lifting one side of his mouth.
“Sir?” Shota sounded shocked and well he should be. He’d been with Drake for years and Drake had never, e
ver had anyone over for a meal. Any meals with women were consumed in private clubs with adequate security measures or catered in his flat on Fifth. He never ate over business deals, one of his many hard and fast rules. Food and alcohol were distractions he couldn’t afford during negotiations, and the possibility of poisoning always had to be factored in.
“Dinner for two, Shota. And tomorrow morning I need for you to go to…” Drake tried to think of the clothes he’d seen Grace in. She had classic tastes, nothing overly trendy, and she liked clean, bright colors. “Valentino,” he decided. “And Ralph Lauren.”
How much of what? Well, it was going to take at least a week to do what he had to do, not to mention seducing her into what had to be done. “Five sweaters in blues and greens and reds, cashmere, five pairs of pants, cashmere and wool, five simple wool dresses, cashmere, ten silk shirts. Colors for a woman with auburn hair and blue-green eyes. Then go to La Perla and buy underwear. Silk, of course. No thongs.” Some instinct told him she wouldn’t wear thongs. She didn’t dress to seduce.
“But—but…” Shota sputtered.
“I don’t know what size, but specify it’s for a woman who is five five and weighs one hundred twenty pounds. Oh, and shoes. Fur-lined boots, flat-heeled shoes. Lots of them. Try Ferragamo. Size seven.” Drake was entirely used to sizing up competitors. He’d be surprised if he were one inch or five pounds off the mark.
God, what else would a woman need?
“Go to somewhere like Bergdorf or Saks and buy creams.”
“Creams, sir?” Shota sounded resigned.
“Yes.” What kinds of creams? Fuck if he knew. “Day creams, night creams, body creams…” And shit, didn’t that create images in his head? “And, and intimate products.”
Shota coughed. Drake smiled. “You know—things women need at times.”
A choked sound came over the intercom.
Drake suspected Shota was gay. Personally, he didn’t give a shit about anyone’s sexual orientation. Whatever Shota’s was, he kept his private life discreet. But Drake knew he’d have an excellent eye for the clothes and underwear, which is why he’d chosen him. Female hygiene products might stretch his expertise some, but he’d manage. Shota prided himself on providing excellent service to him.
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