“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 wild fire.
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.”
He went terrifyingly still, his eyes turning to poured gold.
“And you like to collect things,” she continued, not caring about how scratchy her voice sounded, or how many unshed tears pressed against her throat. “You’re good at it. You obsess for a time and then you forget all about it while you chase your next obsession.” She shook her head, and stepped back from him. “I can’t even blame you for that. I saw what your grandfather was like. But how can I marry you when you don’t love me back? When you can’t?”
“Dru—” he started, but it was a stranger’s voice, and he was looking at her as if she’d become a ghost again, right there in front of him, and she knew that it was time to leave. That she should never have come. That she had betrayed herself once again.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said softly, and she meant it. She did. “I should have stayed aw
ay. I’m sorry.”
And then she turned back around and walked away from him. For the last time.
He tracked her back to a converted townhouse in a part of Clapham that was a world away from his three-story penthouse at the top of an old Victorian warehouse perched at the edge of the Thames. This was what she preferred to him, he told himself as he caught the door from one of her neighbors and climbed the narrow, grimy stairs to her second-floor flat—this dingy little place and the dim little life that went with it.
He was so angry with her, Cayo thought it might actually burn off the top of his head.
He pounded on her door, not even pretending to be polite.
“I know you’re in there,” he growled through the door. “I saw you enter the building not five minutes ago.”
He heard the rattle of her locks and then she swung the door open and stood there, scowling up at him, and his curse was that he felt her prettiness like a punch to his gut. Her cheeks were flushed with emotion, making her gray eyes gleam, and he was tired of playing nice. Or trying to. He’d let her go, hadn’t he? What else was he meant to do? And she’d been the one to come back and make it perfectly clear that he’d been a fool to do so. That he should have ignored what she’d told him. That he shouldn’t have let her go in the first place.
“You are not welcome here,” she told him in that cold voice that only made him want her more. It made him think about what best melted all of that ice, and he was certain she could see it on his face when he saw her eyes widen. “Go away.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. He stepped toward her and she leapt back, terrified, he suspected, that he might touch her and prove what a liar she was. He simply shouldered his way inside the flat and kicked the door shut behind him.
And then they were all alone. No brand-new personal assistant in the outer office. And he was blocking the only exit. Cayo could see precisely when that occurred to her, and he smiled.
It was a laughably tiny little place, a bedsit indeed, all in white with a few accent colors—a wooden headboard, the pop of scarlet pillows on her bed—to suggest the idea of space without actually having any. She kept it scrupulously neat, and that was why it seemed slightly bigger than it was—but only slightly.
To his right, a wardrobe and a double bed jutted out into the small, fitted kitchen. Her laptop lay there, on a café table next to what looked like an abandoned cup of tea, and something about the sight made his chest feel tight. He could imagine her there, dressed in whatever she slept in, her glorious hair knotted on the back of her head as she scrolled through the internet with her morning tea. To his left, when he wrenched his gaze away from her laptop and his imagination, was the smallest version of a living room he’d ever seen, featuring only a plush white armchair, a small trunk and a little shelf with a television sat on it.
This was where she slept. Dreamed. Imagined her life without him. Lived it. Even while claiming she was in love with him.
She would pay for that, too, he promised himself. And dearly.
“This is my space,” she fumed at him. “It’s not one of the many things that belong to you, that you can storm in and out of as you please. I get to decide what happens here, and I want you to leave.”
“I’m not leaving.” He leveled a dark look at her. “Nor am I planning to run away if things become intense, unlike some.”
He moved farther into the room, grimly amused at the way she skittered away from him, or tried to, as there was nowhere left to go. He picked up one of the handful of framed photographs that sat on the narrow bookshelf at the top of her headboard. A younger Dru and a pale, skinny boy who looked just like her, the same dark hair, those same unfathomable gray eyes. Dru was staring into the camera, mischief in her eyes and a slight smile on her lips, while her brother slung an arm around her neck and laughed. They looked happy, he thought. Truly happy. The constriction in his chest pulled taut.
“I did not run away,” she was protesting. She reached over and snatched the picture from his hand, holding it against her chest for a moment before replacing it. “There was no point continuing that conversation. There still isn’t. It hurts too much.”
“All you do is run away,” he contradicted her, not even attempting to temper the harshness in his voice. “You jumped off the damned yacht. You demanded I let you go. You walked out of my office. And that’s not counting the numerous ways you run away without ever leaving the room.”
“That’s not running away,” she hissed at him. “That’s called the survival instinct. I’ll do whatever I have to do to survive, Cayo, including climb out this window and down the side of this—”
“I promise you that if you attempt to run away from me again,” he cut her off, his gaze hard on hers, his voice brooking no argument, “I will lock you up in the nearest tower and throw away the key.”
“Another excellent threat,” she retorted, unfazed, if that glint in her eyes was any indication. “With shades of Rapunzel, no less. Sadly, not a single one of your sixteen properties features a tower.”
“Then I’ll buy one that does.”
They glared at each other for a long moment, while everything inside him rioted. What was it about this woman? How did she do this to him? Even now, all he wanted was to sling her over his shoulder and then onto the bed, and who cared what she thought about that? He knew how she’d feel, and it was rapidly becoming the only thing that mattered to him. She stood in her small living area, her arms crossed over her chest, her sleek boots kicked off next to the armchair so it was only Dru in her stocking feet with too much color in her cheeks.
And he wanted her so badly it was painful.
“What do you want, Cayo?” she asked then, her voice soft, as if it really did hurt her. And he hated that, but there was no other way.
“I want you,” he said, gravely. Deliberately holding her gaze. “That hasn’t changed, Dru. I don’t believe it will.”
She held herself even tighter, while her cheeks paled and she bit down on her lower lip. And he wanted his hands on her. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and inhale the sweet fragrance of it. He wanted to hold her slender shoulders in his hands. He wanted to be what chased her pain away, not what caused it. But he had never known how to do such things. He’d never tried. He didn’t know how to start, and all she ever did was leave.
But she loved him. And that was like a bright light where there had never been anything but dark. It was everything.
“I meant what I said in your office,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have come back. I should have stayed gone. If you leave now, you’ll never see me again.”
“I believe you.” He kept himself from touching her, but barely. “But I’m not prepared to watch you martyr yourself. Not for me.”
Dru felt as if he’d kicked her.
“I’m no martyr,” she said in a low voice, her mind reeling.
“Are you certain?” His voice was like silk, danger and demand. And he didn’t back down so much as an inch. “I can almost see the flames dance around you as you burn yourself at the stake of your choosing.”
She couldn’t handle this. He was so much larger than life and standing in the middle of her tiny flat, taking it over, as if the space could not contain him. As if it groaned around him, near enough to bursting at the seams with the effort of holding the force of him within these walls. She couldn’t seem to make sense of it. Or breathe past the knot in her stomach.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, but she hardly sounded like herself.
He started toward her, backing her up against the cold windows on the far side of the room. It took all of three steps, and then the cold glass was at her back and Cayo was a wall in front of her, big and tempting and more dangerous to her than anything else in the world.
“What have you told yourself?” he asked in that smooth way that made her look around wildly for some escape route. “Have you cried over me, Dru? The man who cannot love you back? Have you forg
otten I know you, too?”
“Are you mocking me?” She was incredulous. Not sure if that was anger or agony that surged inside of her, she focused on that fiercely cruel face of his and asked herself why she’d expected anything else. “Are you really that much of a monster, after all?”
His dark amber eyes glowed with something that was not quite malice—something that shivered through her and made her catch her breath. Temper. Fury. And that simmering, unquenchable desire that had ensnared them in this in the first place.
“How convenient for you,” he said, his voice no less deadly for all it was so soft, like a lover’s. “To find yourself someone else you can love so bravely, and from afar.”
His words slammed into her like blows. Dru heard herself make some kind of horrible squeaking sound, and thought her legs would give out. She staggered back against the windowsill, while Cayo only stood there, pitiless, and watched.
“You only love what can never love you back,” he told her in that same way, so calmly, as if he didn’t know how devastating it was. As if he couldn’t see what it was doing to her—or more likely, didn’t care. “You arrange your life around distant objects that you can circle but never approach. You thrive on it.”
“You …” She could hardly speak. She felt winded. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” She saw the shadows in his eyes, the darkness that lurked there. “Do you love me, Dru? Or do you only think you do because you imagine there’s no danger I could ever return it? No chance you might risk yourself, not really. You get to pretend to suffer for your great love while remaining, as ever, completely and utterly alone. Hermetically sealed away. The perfect bloody martyr.” He paused, his eyes flashed, and his voice dropped. “Just as you did with your brother.”
She lifted a hand as if to stave him off, unable to keep herself from trembling, and sank down against the wall, her legs no longer capable of holding her upright. But he was relentless—he was ruthless down into his bones, and he squatted down before her, his coat flaring around him like a cape, his suit clinging to the hard muscles of his thighs. A perfect and pitiless god, rendering his terrible judgment.
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