by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
But she couldn’t seem to look away. She remembered that moment in his penthouse a little too clearly, the first night they’d been in New York. She remembered how close they’d stood in that window, and the things he’d told her, that dark gold gaze of his boring into her. As if he had every intention of looking directly to her soul. More than that, she remembered him reaching out and taking hold of the end of the ponytail she’d worn, that he’d looked at as if he had no idea how it had come to be attached to her.
But she’d dreamed about it almost every time she’d slept, either way.
Tonight Achilles was lounging in a pushed-back chair, his hands on top of his head as if, had he had longer hair, he’d be raking his hands through it. His jaw was dotted with stubble after a long day in the office, and it lent him the look of some kind of pirate.
Valentina told herself—sternly—that there was no need for such fanciful language when he already made her pulse heat inside her simply by being in the same room. She tried to sink down a bit farther behind the piles and piles of documents surrounding her, which she was viewing as the armor she wished she was wearing. The remains of the dinner she’d ordered them many hours before were scattered across the center of the table, and she took perhaps too much pride in the fact she’d completed so simple a task. Normal people, she was certain, ordered from take-out menus all the time, but Valentina never had before she’d taken over Natalie’s life. Valentina was a princess. She’d discussed many a menu and sent requests to any number of kitchens, but she’d never ordered her own meal in her life, much less from stereotypical New Yorkers with accents and attitudes.
She felt as if she was in a movie.
Valentina decided she would take her victories where she found them. Even if they were as small and ultimately pointless as sending out for a takeaway meal.
“It’s late,” Achilles said, reminding her that they were all alone here. And there was something in his voice then. Or the way his gaze slammed into hers when she looked up again.
Or maybe it was in her—that catch. That little kick of something a little too much like excitement that wound around and around inside her. Making her feel…restless. Undone. Desperate for something she couldn’t even name.
“And here I thought you planned to carry straight through until dawn,” she said, as brightly as possible, hoping against hope he couldn’t see anything on her face. Or hear it in her voice.
Achilles lowered his hand to the arms of his chair. But he didn’t shift that gaze of his from hers. And she kept catching him looking at her like this. Exactly like this. Simmering. Dark and dangerous, and spun through with gold. In the cars they took together. Every morning when he walked out of his bedchamber and found her sitting in the office suite, already starting on the day’s work as best she could. Across boardroom tables just like this one, no matter if they were filled with other people.
It was worse now. Here in the quiet of his empty office. So late at night it felt to Valentina as if the darkness was a part of her.
And Valentina didn’t have any experience with men, but oh, the books she’d read. Love stories and romances and happy-ever-afters, and almost all of them started just like this. With a taut feeling in the belly and fire everywhere else.
Do not be absurd, she snapped at herself.
Because she was Princess Valentina of Murin. She was promised to another and had been since her birth. There wasn’t space in her life for anything but that. Not even here, in this faraway place that had nothing at all to do with her real life. Not even with this man, whom she never should have met, and never would have had she not seized that moment in the London bathroom.
You can take a holiday from your life, apparently, she reminded herself. But you still take you along with you wherever you go.
She might have been playing Natalie Monette, but she was still herself. She was still the same person she’d always been. Dutiful. Mindful of what her seemingly inconsequential behavior might mean to her father, to the kingdom, to her future husband’s kingdom, too. Whatever else she was—and she wasn’t sure she knew anymore, not here in the presence of a man who made her head spin without seeming to try very hard—Valentina was a person who had always, always kept her vows.
Even when it was her father who had made them, not her.
“If you keep staring at me like that,” Achilles said softly, a kind of ferociousness beneath his rough words that made her stomach knot, then seemed to kindle a different, deeper fire lower down, “I am not certain I’ll be able to contain myself.”
Valentina’s mouth was dry. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
Achilles didn’t move, she could see that he wasn’t moving, and yet everything changed at that. He filled every room he entered—she was used to that by now—but this was something different. It was as if lightning flashed. It was if he was some kind of rolling thunder all his own. It was as if he’d called in a storm, then let it loose to fill all of the room. The office.
And Valentina, too.
“No,” she whispered, her voice scratchy against all that light and rumble.
But she could feel the tumult inside her. It was fire and it was light and it threatened to burst free of the paltry cage of her skin. Surely she would burst. Surely no person could survive this. She felt it shake all through her, as if underlining her fear.
“I don’t know what you mean, and I don’t like what you’re implying. I think perhaps we’ve been in this office too long. You seem to have mistaken me for one of your mistresses. Or worse, one of those desperate women who call in, hoping to convince you they ought to be one of them.”
“On the contrary, Miss Monette.”
And there was a starkness to Achilles’s expression then. No curve on his stern mouth. No gleaming thing in the seductive gold of his dark eyes. But somehow, that only made it worse.
“You’re the one who manages my mistresses. And those who pretend to that title. How could I possibly confuse you for them?” He cocked his head slightly to one side, and something yawned open inside her, as if in response. “Or perhaps you’re auditioning for the role?”
“No.” Her voice was no less scratchy this time, but there was more power in it. Or more fear, something inside her whispered. “I am most certainly not auditioning for anything like that. Or anything at all. I already have a job.”
“But you told me you meant to quit.” She had the strangest notion then that he was enjoying himself. “Perhaps you meant you were looking to make a lateral move. From my boardroom to my bed?”
Valentina tried to summon her outrage. She tried to tell herself that she was deeply offended on Natalie’s behalf, because of course this was about her, not Valentina herself… She tried to tell herself a whole lot of things.
But she couldn’t quite get there. Instead, she was awash with unhelpful little visions, red hot and wild. Images of what a “lateral move” might look like. Of what his bed might feel like. Of him.
She imagined that lean, solidly muscled form stretched over hers, the way she’d read in so many books so many times. Something almost too hot to bear melted through her then, pulling deep in her belly, and making her breath go shallow before it shivered everywhere else.
As if it was already happening.
“I know that this might come as a tremendous shock,” Valentina said, trying to make herself sound something like fierce—or unmoved, anyway. Anything other than thrown and yearning. “But I have no interest in your bed. Less than no interest.”
“You are correct.” And something gleamed bright and hot and unholy gold in that dark gaze of his. “I am in shock.”
“The next time an aspiring mistress calls the office,” Valentina continued coolly, and no matter that it cost her, “I’ll be certain to put her through to you for a change. You can discuss la
teral moves all day long.”
“What if a random caller does not appeal to me?” he asked lazily, as if this was all a game to him. She told herself it was. She told herself the fact that it was a game made it safe, but she didn’t believe it. Not when all the things that moved around inside her made it hard to breathe, and made her feel anything at all but safe. “What if it is I who wish to alter our working relationship after all these years?”
Valentina told herself that this was clearly a test. If, as this conversation seemed to suggest, Natalie’s relationship with her boss had always been strictly professional, why would he want to change that now? She’d seen how distant he kept his romantic entanglements from his work. His work was his life. His women were afterthoughts. There was no way the driven, focused man she’d come to know a bit after the close proximity of these last days would want to muddy the water in his office, with the assistant who not only knew where all the bodies were buried, but oversaw the funeral rites herself.
This had to be a test.
“I don’t wish to alter a thing,” she told him, very distinctly, as if there was nothing in her head but thorny contract language. And certainly nothing involving that remarkably ridged torso of his. “If you do, I think we should revisit the compensation package on offer for my resignation.”
Achilles smiled as if she delighted him. But in an entirely too wicked and too hot sort of way.
“There is no package, Miss Monette,” he murmured. “And there will be no resignation. When will you understand? You are here to do as I wish. Nothing more and nothing less than that. And perhaps my wishes concerning your role here have changed.”
He wants you to fall apart, Valentina snapped at herself. He wants to see if this will break you. He’s poking at Natalie about her change in performance, not at you. He doesn’t know you exist.
Because there could be no other explanation. And it didn’t matter that the look in his eyes made her shudder, down deep inside.
“Your wishes concerning my role now involve me on my back?” It cost her to keep her voice that flat. She could feel it.
“You say that as if the very idea disgusts you.” And that crook in the corner of his lethal mouth deepened, even as that look in his eyes went lethal. “Surely not.”
Valentina forced herself to smile. Blandly. As if her heart wasn’t trying to claw its way out of her chest.
“I’m very flattered by your offer, of course,” she said.
A little too sweetly to be mistaken for sincerity.
Achilles laughed then. It was an unsettling sound, too rough and too bold. It told her too much. That he knew—everything. That he knew all the things that were moving inside her, white hot and molten and too much for her to handle or tamp down or control. There was a growing, impossible fire raging in places she hardly understood, rendering her a stranger to herself.
As if he was the one in control of her body, even sitting across the table, lounging in his seat as if none of this was a matter of any concern at all.
While she felt as if she was both losing pieces of herself—and seeing her true colors for the very first time.
“Are you letting me down easy?” Achilles asked.
There was still laughter in his voice, his gaze and, somehow, dancing in the air between them despite all that fire still licking at her. She felt it roll through her, as if those big hands of his were on her skin.
And then she was suddenly incapable of thinking about anything at all but that. His hands all over her body. Touching places only she had ever seen. She had to swallow hard. Then again. And still there was that ringing in her ears.
“Do think it will work?” he asked, laughter still making his words sound a little too much like the rough, male version of honey.
“I imagine it will work beautifully, yes.” She held on to that smile of hers as if her life depended on it. She rather thought it did. It was that or tip over into all that fire, and she had no idea what would become of her if she let that happen. She had no idea what would be left. “Or, of course, I could involve Human Resources in this discussion.”
Achilles laughed again, and this time it was rougher. Darker and somehow hotter at the same time. Valentina felt it slide all over her, making her breasts feel heavy and her hips restless. While deep between her legs, a slick ache bloomed.
“I admire the feigned naïveté,” Achilles said, and he looked like a pirate again, all dark jaw and that gleam in his gaze. It lit her up. Everywhere. “I have obviously failed to appreciate your acting talent sufficiently. I think we both know what Human Resources will tell you. To suck it up or find another position.”
“That does not sound at all like something Human Resources would say,” Valentina replied crisply, rather than spending even a split second thinking about sucking. “It sounds as if you’re laboring under the delusion that this is a cult of personality, not a business.”
If she expected him to look at all abashed, his grin disabused her of it. “Do you doubt it?”
“I’m not sure that is something I would brag about, Mr. Casilieris.”
His gaze was hot, and she didn’t think he was talking about her job or his company any longer. Had he ever been?
“Is it bragging if it’s true?” he asked.
Valentina stood then, because it was the last thing she wanted to do. She could have sat there all night. She could have rung in a new dawn, fencing words with this man and dancing closer and closer to that precipice she could feel looming between them, even if she couldn’t quite see it.
She could have pretended she didn’t feel every moment of this deep inside her, in places she shouldn’t. And then pretend further she didn’t know what it meant just because she’d never experienced any of it before outside the pages of a book.
But she did know. And this wasn’t her life to ruin. And so she stood, smoothing her hands down her skirt and wishing she hadn’t been quite so impetuous in that London bathroom.
If you hadn’t been, you wouldn’t be here, something in her replied. Is that what you want?
And she knew that she didn’t. Valentina had a whole life left to live with a man she would call husband who would never know her, not really. She had duty to look forward to, and a lifetime of charity and good works, all of which would be vetted by committees and commented on by the press. She had public adulation and a marriage that would involve the mechanical creation of babies before petering off into a nice friendship, if she was lucky.
Maybe the making of the babies would be fun with her prince. What did she know? All she knew so far was that he didn’t do…this. He didn’t affect her the way Achilles did, lounging there like hard-packed danger across a conference table, his gaze too dark and the gold in it making her pulse kick at her.
She’d never felt anything like this before. She doubted she’d ever feel it again.
Valentina couldn’t quite bring herself to regret it.
But she couldn’t stay here tonight and blow up the rest of Natalie’s life, either. That would be treating this little gift that she’d been given with nothing but contempt.
“Have I given you leave to go?” Achilles asked, with what she knew was entirely feigned astonishment. “I am clearly confused in some way. I keep thinking you work for me.”
She didn’t know how he could do that. How he could seem to loom over her when she was the one standing up and looking down at him.
“And because I’d like to continue working for you,” Valentina forced herself to say in as measured a tone as she could manage, “I’m going to leave now. We can pick this up in the morning.” She tapped the table with one finger. “Pick this up, I mean. These contracts and the deal. Not this descent into madness, which I think we can chalk up to exhaustion.”
Achilles only watched her for a moment. Those hands that she could picture to
o easily against her own flesh curled over the armrests of his chair, and her curse was that she imagined she was that chair. His legs were thrust out before him, long and lean. His usual suit was slightly rumpled, his tie having been tugged off and tossed aside hours earlier, so she could see the olive skin at his neck and a hint of crisp, black hair. He looked simultaneously sleepy and breathlessly, impossibly lethal—with an intensity that made that hot ache between her legs seem to swallow her whole.
And the look in his eyes made everything inside her draw tight, then pulse harder.
“Do you have a problem with that?” she asked, and she meant to sound impatient. Challenging. But she thought both of them were entirely too aware that what came out instead was rather more plaintive than planned.
As if she was really asking him if he was okay with everything that had happened here tonight. She was clearly too dazed to function.
She needed to get away from him while she still had access to what little of her brain remained in all this smoke and flame.
“Do you require my permission?” Achilles lifted his chin, and his dark eyes glittered. Valentina held her breath. “So far tonight it seems you are laboring under the impression that you give the permission, not me. You make the rules, not me. It is as if I am here for no other purpose than to serve you.”
And there was no reason at all that his words, spoken in that soft, if dangerous way, should make her skin prickle. But they did. As if a man like Achilles did not have to issue threats, he was the threat. Why pile a threat on top of the threat? When the look on his face would do.