by Dani Collins
He finished another oyster, but she had his full attention. She could feel it. When his tongue cleaned his lips, she imagined he was licking her all over.
Ignore it, she chided herself.
“Why?” he asked.
Why what? Her brain had lost the plot, but she quickly picked it up, reminding herself of his flaws.
“Because I don’t like your methods. You’re no better than the criminal you replaced.”
“I’m a lot better than the criminal I replaced. Check my human-rights record,” he growled while a flush of insult rose to his cheeks.
It was enough antagonism to give her pause and make her reconsider deliberately riling him, but despite how much she hated herself for having sex with him, she was still aware of a pull. She desperately needed to cut him down and out.
“You’re living pretty large while your countrymen starve. How many people died so you could eat raw oysters and watch the sun set?”
“You know nothing about what I’ve lost so my people can eat,” he said in a lethal tone.
As he spoke, he turned aside to toss his empty shell on the cart, but she glimpsed such incredible pain she caught her breath against an answering stab of anguish. She quickly muffled it, but something in her wavered. Was she misjudging him?
She shook off the thought, scoffing, “Did I strike a nerve? Do you not like having your repulsive side exposed?”
He shot her a fierce look and she thought, Shut up, Tiffany.
“You’re acting out of bitterness, and it’s not with me. We promised not to be cruel.”
That gave her a niggle of guilt, which she didn’t like at all. She looked at her perfectly manicured nails.
“You might have promised,” she said haughtily. “I didn’t.”
“You like to deliberately hurt people? You do have an ugly side.”
That lifted her gaze, and his expression made her heart tremor where it clogged the base of her throat. He had very patrician features. Very proud and strong. Right now they were filled with contempt.
Shame lunged in her. She might have been spoiled and self-involved, but she never used to be mean. But she was angry. So angry. And there was no one to take it out on. She had to look away from the expression that demanded she apologize.
She wavered, uncertain of her footing, but she had enough unscrambled brain cells to remember he was a dictator, not some do-good pastor.
“What do you expect, a welcome mat?” she hazarded, tucking her fists behind her upper arms, affecting a bravado she didn’t feel. “You’ve invaded my territory—”
“You’re not angry I’m here. You’re angry you had to face the man you made love to last night. That I saw your secret. You’re not repulsive, Tiffany.”
“As I said, you’re stepping into places you haven’t been invited.”
“I was invited.” He picked up an oyster, and his tongue curled to chase and catch the slippery flesh before he pulled the morsel into his mouth.
Inner muscles that were still vaguely tender from their lovemaking clenched involuntarily, sending a shimmer of pleasure upward to her navel and down the insides of her thighs.
When he took a step toward her, she took a hasty one back, bumping into the rail of the balcony.
He raised his brows as he pulled out her chair another inch, reading way too clearly what kind of nervousness she’d just revealed.
“I want you to leave,” she insisted.
“We’ll clear the air first.”
She almost mumbled an adolescent, I don’t want to clear the air. Because she didn’t. She wanted to hit and bite and push away.
She wanted to be left alone to die of loneliness.
Oh, don’t be such a baby, Tiffany.
It was true, though. She was like a wounded animal that snarled at anyone who tried to help it. It was the source of the horrible tension with her family. They didn’t know what to do with this new Tiffany who hated her life and everything in it.
She glared at Ryzard, loathing him for being the man to show her how twisted she’d become. He’d caught her in a moment of terrible weakness last night, playing pretend that she was normal. He’d sliced past the emotional scar tissue she’d grown, and he seemed to still be doing it. That made him dangerous.
“The sun is about to set. It won’t hurt you to be out here,” he said.
She whipped around to see how close it was to the horizon. She hadn’t been in the sun for more than a handful of steps between a house and car in two years. As she stepped into its rays, the heat on her face felt good. The fading red ball filled her with rapture as it lowered toward the sea.
Holding her breath, she strained her ears.
The band started below, making her slap a hand on the rail in disappointment. “I wanted to hear it!”
“Hear what?” he asked, standing next to her.
“When the sun touches the water.”
He gave her a skeptical look that said, Aren’t you a bit old for that?
She turned away, hiding that yes, she clung to certain childish fantasies that reminded her of easier, simpler times. Being lighthearted and silly didn’t come naturally to her anymore, and she desperately longed to find that part of herself again. Tiny moments of happiness were like bread crumbs, hopefully leading her back to a place of acceptance. Maybe even contentment.
“You’re really quite sensitive, aren’t you?” he mused.
“No.”
“And contrary.” He waved at the chair he’d pulled out for her. “I have some questions for you. They’re important. Sit.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“No, you’re as aloof and touchy as a wet cat. The purring version is worth all the scratching and hissing, though.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she rushed to state, unnerved by the suggestiveness in his remark.
“We won’t. Not yet,” he agreed, and his touch on her shoulder nudged her to sit.
She did, mainly to avoid the way the light contact of his hand made her stomach dip in excitement, and partly because her mother was lecturing her in her head. The members of their family, in all their greatness, were ambassadors, obligated to set an example of good manners and rising above the unpleasant. Such an annoying legacy.
She was also starving. Taking care of herself had become a habit through her recovery. Good food was one of her few real pleasures these days, and this stuff looked awesome.
He watched her build a flatbread into a soft taco, not being shy with the high-calorie avocado paste, either.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“I’m not used to seeing a woman eat like that.”
She bit back a spiteful, Too busy watching them starve? She really didn’t want to be that person, but she didn’t know how else to handle him.
“Why are you here?” she asked instead.
He paused in preparing his own flatbread. “Why are you here, Tiffany? Why did your family send you to meet me?”
The weight of his gaze turned her shrug into a shiver. “Apparently I’m the only one who is a member.”
His brows went up in surprise.
“I inherited my husband’s fortune. My father isn’t exactly struggling, but he doesn’t qualify.”
“I read about your accident. I’m sorry for your loss.”
She prickled, waiting to see if he would make more of it, dig deeper, question how a married woman could have been a virgin.
“I’m also a member and was one long before our civil war. The money you accuse me of stealing is Bregnovia’s. It’s earmarked to fund our recovery.”
She eyed him, seeing a contrary mix of Euro-sophistication and obdurate leader. When he caught her looking at him, her heart skipped. She looked away.
“
I’ll have to request a report on you from the powers that be. Find out how you made your fortune,” she said.
“I’ll tell you. It’s a spigot system I developed for the oil industry, inspired by what I learned working in vineyards after finishing my engineering degree.”
Despite her inner warnings to hold him off, she was intrigued. “That seems an odd choice. What was an engineer doing in a winery?”
“Rebelling,” he said flatly, not inviting more questions as he reached to the wine bucket and drew out a dripping green bottle. “This is from my country. You’ll enjoy it.”
Of course she would. Who would dare not?
His arrogance was growing on her if she was finding it more amusing than annoying.
“What do you mean, you were rebelling?”
He drew a subtle breath, as though gathering himself for something difficult. “If you were to order a report on me, you would learn my parents sent me to live in Germany when I was six. For my safety and to give me a better life. Our country has been annexed by one neighbor or another since before the First World War. There were constant outbreaks of independence-seeking followed by terrible repression. My parents couldn’t leave, but they smuggled me out to friends. I can’t complain. My foster parents were good people. The husband was an automotive engineer who pressed me to follow in his footsteps. As a vocation I didn’t mind it, but when I graduated I felt as most young people do. That this was my life and I could do as I liked.” He shrugged, mouth twisting in self-deprecation. “I’m not proud of abandoning my potential to pick grapes, but it allowed me to bring a fresh perspective when I went to Russia, planning to make my fortune drilling for oil.”
“Where you fashioned this doodad that is so popular it made you into a bazillionaire?”
“Da,” he confirmed with a nod.
“Humph.” She reached for her wine. “Does the rest of the world know this?”
He lifted a shoulder dismissively. “The press prefers to sensationalize what I did with my money.”
“Which was to fund a war.”
“I freed my country.”
“And now you own it.”
“I lead it. What do you think of the wine?”
She was no sommelier and didn’t bother with sniffing and swirling, but she thought the light color was appealing and she enjoyed the way the initial tang, almost fruity, eased into something more earthy. Not oaky. Vanilla?
She tried again, wanting to determine what it was. But as much as she loved wine, alcohol had been off-limits as her body had needed every advantage to recover. That made her a lightweight. She had to be careful about losing her head around him.
As the memory of their dirty dancing and everything that followed bathed her in heat, the proximity of a bedroom and sitting here in her robe suddenly seemed incredibly dangerous and intimate.
* * *
Ryzard watched a glow of awareness brighten Tiffany’s skin, filling her compelling blue eyes even as she looked into the crisp white wine she set aside. Her reaction might be in response to the alcohol, but his male instincts read her differently.
He shifted in his chair, widening his knees to make room for the growing reaction tugging insistently between his legs.
Tricking the waitstaff into granting him entry to her room had been the oldest one in the book, but as he’d suspected, she wouldn’t have seen him otherwise and he wanted answers. At this precise second, however, he found himself with only one thing on his mind: her. She was more complex than he’d given her credit for, both when he’d lost himself in the mecca of her flesh and when he’d assumed she was attempting to manipulate him.
She was far more beautiful than he’d taken the time to notice this morning, too. Then his attention had been drawn to the scarring, his focus on the pain it indicated. Now he could see what had existed before discoloration and a raised jagged line had bisected her cheek. Blonde, blue eyed, with skin like a baby and the bone structure of an aristocrat, she was Helen of Troy.
Not that he was prepared to go to war ever again, but he could imagine men who would. Her young husband must have been intimidated, knowing how coveted she was.
“It’s rude to stare,” she said, growing redder in one cheek.
“I’m not staring. I’m admiring.”
Her mouth shrank in rejection, and so did his brain. He forced himself to look away from thick lashes that swept down to hide her eyes. This meeting wasn’t about kindling an affair that had barely started, no matter how much the thought appealed.
It appealed far too much. He could barely concentrate as memories of her pushing her ass into his groin as she writhed with pleasure under his slippery touch filled his head. The heady power of fondling her to orgasm had made him drunk and was overshadowed only by how good she had felt squeezing him in her hot, perfect depths.
But his country came first. He couldn’t forget that. Couldn’t forget anything.
He shook himself out of his fascination and spoke briskly.
“Your father seems exceptionally well connected in Washington. By sending you to speak to me, he is signaling that your country is likely to support my petition for recognition at the UN, is he not? Has he told you this is forthcoming?”
“He’s under that impression, but who knows what the attitude will be tomorrow? Welcome to politics. You know how these things work.”
He did, and the hardest lesson he had learned after being in a war was when to back off and use diplomacy instead of force to get what he wanted. It was also standard practice to weigh a person’s impact on an agenda before developing a relationship.
Maybe he hadn’t properly examined how their affair could affect his goal before he made love to her, but Tiffany’s knowledge and connections suggested she could have a very positive influence.
A wild rush of excitement flew through him as he found a rationale to continue their affair, but he forced himself to hold on to a cool head and gather information first. “Does your father have any sway over your country’s decision makers?”
“He has followers. Believers in his vision. Isn’t that how you got elected, by cultivating the same?” The remark was somewhere between haughty and ironic.
“You don’t seem to be one of them. His followers, I mean. It’s quite obvious you’re not one of mine. Yet.”
“Ha,” she choked, but she lowered her lashes as if to prevent him reading something different in her eyes. “Never yours and while I’ll always cheer for Dad, I’m tired of living my life by his career,” she said with dour humor and popped a cherry tomato into her mouth, pursing her lips in a pout as she chewed.
“When is the election?” he asked, trying not to watch her plump lips too closely.
“Not for a year, but the campaigning is well under way. He was leaving for Washington as we were coming here.”
“We?” he asked sharply, territorial instincts riled.
“My brother and I.”
“Ah. That’s fine then.” He frowned. Whatever relief he felt in knowing there wasn’t another man in her life was buried under the discomfort of revealing he saw himself in the role. What was it about her that not only affected him but also lowered his ability to hide how much?
She lifted her brows. “Jealous?” Her smile was taunting, but her voice thinned across the word, suggesting a vulnerability that further undermined his resistance to her.
He shouldn’t want her this badly, but he did. Last night had been exceptional, and she was a practical connection to cultivate. Where was the sense in fighting it?
“Possessive,” he corrected. “You have a lover, draga.”
Her shocked expression masked into something complex. Her lips tightened in dismay while her brow flinched in pain. A stark yearning drew her features taut while her swallow indicated a type of fear. Then it all smoothed away, lea
ving him unsettled, wondering if an affair with her could become more complicated than it needed to be.
“Had,” she said in a husky voice. “Past tense.”
“I’m not talking about your husband,” he growled, stirred to jealousy after all.
The blank look she sent him disappeared in a raspy laugh. “Neither am I.”
His sharp brain caught a hidden meaning, but she kept talking, distracting him.
“Last night was a departure from my real life, not something I’ll ever do again. Why would you even want to—” Dawning comprehension waxed her features before her face gradually tightened in rejection and something more disturbing. Anguish. “Wow. Nice to know some things haven’t changed,” she said bitterly.
“What do you mean?” Clammy palms seemed an overreaction to being rejected as a one-nighter. He’d done it himself in the past, but he didn’t like it. Not from her.
“I’m still capable of being used,” she answered. “You think that if you keep me close, you’ll keep my father’s cronies closer.”
A pinch of compunction gave him pause, but that’s not all that was going on here. And now she’d piqued his curiosity.
“Who used you in the past? How?” It was a tender point for him. Only a blind fool would fail to see the advantage to him in associating with her, but there were lines, especially with women. When Luiza was taken, it was to use her as leverage against him. She’d ended her life to prevent it. He never took manipulation of the unwilling lightly.
“Who hasn’t used me?” she demanded. “I thought if there was one silver lining to this—” she drew a circle around her face “—it was that I was no longer a pawn. Thanks for dinner.” She stood up, tossing him a pithy look. “A girl in my position is lucky when a man shows her a bit of attention. You’re a helluva guy, Ryzard.”
Her contempt burned like acid as it dripped over him. It might not have seared so deeply if he hadn’t grasped at the advantages of an affair to justify exactly how badly he wanted to continue theirs.
He didn’t want to admit how fierce his hunger for her was, but the hurt beneath her words told him she didn’t see any at all. Wounding her, especially when she was so sensitive about her desirability, had a disturbing effect on him. Guilt assailed him and provoked something deeper. A compulsion to draw her close and make up with her.