“If I am suddenly your husband,” Theo said, that dark fury making his eyes gleam and his mouth a hard and beautiful line she longed to taste even now, God help her, “am I to assume that this wild-child outfit of yours is for my benefit? I am filled with nostalgia.” He reached over and took a thick wave of her hair between two fingers and tugged on it gently, so gently. It echoed in her, hard, as if it was a touch against her skin. Or the thrust of his entry. “But, of course, your ability to dress in character rather proves my point, does it not?”
“I’m sorry,” she said when he dropped the thick strands of her hair as if he’d only then realized he was touching her, and she didn’t try very hard to inject anything actually apologetic into her voice. “Did I ruin your big night out with my inconvenient appearance?”
“My night? No.” His voice was dark and it moved over her like the air around them, like the music. An insistent seduction that called to things in her she’d long since forgotten were there. “My life, on the other hand? Very likely.”
“Everyone needs a talent,” she replied, as if they were flirting with each other. As if there really was nothing in the world but the sneaky tilt and roll of the beat and that look on his face, so narrow and intent. “What’s yours, Theo? Aside from talking every single woman in Europe into your bed, that is—which I thought you’d claimed you’d outgrown?”
“You must be kidding. Or you really are insane. Is that it?”
“It’s okay.” She tilted her chin up and only then realized she was too close to him and that the things that swirled inside of her weren’t the music or the crowd or even adrenaline. It was all their history. It was the same old, incapacitating need, and tonight it made her as furious as he looked to be at the moment. She felt blind with it, ripe and near to bursting. “I’m sure that was one of the lies you told, that you’ve quite naturally overlooked in all your deep and abiding nasty judgments of me.”
He let out a sound that was far too harsh to be a laugh, and then his hand was on her arm, and something in her thrilled to that no matter how dangerous it was. How out of control all of this was.
She didn’t care that it wasn’t a particularly kind touch, that he took her and then propelled her across the crowded space as if he might very well throw her out the door—and she let him because she couldn’t seem to do anything but acquiesce when he touched her, as always. She didn’t care that nothing good could come of this and that she really, truly, should have stayed locked away in her room at The Harrington, catching up on her sleep, the better to deal with him again come morning. Theo steered her into an alcove she wouldn’t have known was there and didn’t want to question why or how he did, pushing her inside and kicking the door shut behind him with a loud thunk.
They were up in a small glassed-in booth above the main dance floor, and it was heaving down there. Crowded and wild and somehow glorious in all its hedonistic excess. Holly could feel the bass thumping against the glass in front of her, taking over the kick of her heart and that pulsing thing between her legs, and then Theo was there, right there behind her, pressing against her back in a silent threat.
Or maybe this was merely a dark and heady sort of promise, not a threat at all. Either way, she found she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe.
“Is that why you came here?” he growled at her, into her, so it shook her the same way the deep roll of the bass moved the glass. Or maybe that was the hard expanse of his chest, his abdomen, pressed against the flimsy barrier of her light shirt, making her skin feel pink and hot beneath it. “Jealousy after all these years? Or did you want to take her place, perhaps?”
“I doubt you know her name.”
“I knew yours. I gave you mine.”
Another growl, and he was nothing but heat and strength, plastered hot against the length of her spine. His hands were at her sides, tracing her shape as if he still had that right, and Holly found her palms flat against the glass before her, as if she could hold on to that wild, seductive beat. Or to him. It all felt inevitable and reckless at once, and she couldn’t seem to do what she knew she should, what self-preservation demanded she should.
The truth was, she didn’t want to stop him.
“What good did that ever do?” Theo muttered.
And then his hot mouth was against the side of her neck, as insistent as the music, as delirious and as seductive, and Holly simply catapulted off the side of the earth the way she always had, every single time he’d touched her. Her body was still his, always and only his. It fell apart for him. She did, as easily as if it had been moments since he’d last had his talented, inventive hands on her instead of long, lonely years. Her breasts swelled and ached as his hands moved unerringly beneath her airy shirt, sleek against the skin of her belly, then moving up to hold them, her nipples hard points against his palms.
He left one hand there, teasing that jutting peak with casual mastery, torturing her sweetly, while his other hand traveled south. And all the while he tasted her, from that treacherous sweet spot behind her ear to her shoulder and back, and she did nothing but let him.
And exult in him. Long for him, as if there had never been anything between them but this. Simple and undeniable. Overwhelming and perfect.
The truth of them in that wild, impossible fire, scalding her, making her burn bright and hot and long.
“You are still so hot for me,” he said at her ear as his hand slipped beneath her skirt and then held her heat in his hand, just held her there, completely his. Her back arched of its own accord, pressing her breast above and her core below deeper into his clever hands, her head falling back against his hard shoulder. “Will you be as wet as I remember, Holly? All these years later? As wild and ready for me no matter where or when or how?”
He didn’t wait for her to answer. Did he know she couldn’t speak? That her voice was lost somewhere in the music, the dark, the fiery spell he’d suspended them in? That all she could do was shake as he held her on that delicious edge?
She imagined he did. Of course he did.
Theo merely shifted and let his fingers stroke up under the edge of her panties, a teasing hint of wildfire, and then he thrust them deep—so deep, so perfectly deep—into her molten heat.
It was like bursting into flame. Like combusting. And he thrust again with his two fingers deep into her, that other hand hard against her nipple and his hot mouth on her neck, and it was as if that same comet she remembered so well streaked from the heavens straight into her.
And she came apart.
That easily and that disastrously, the way she always had. She bucked against him. She called out his name. She forgot herself completely. And when she went limp in his arms, he held her there, his big hand still cupping her heat and his fingers still deep within her, and waited for her to breathe again.
“You certainly seemed to enjoy that, Holly,” he said, cool and harsh and directly into her ear so there could be no mistaking his bitter tone, the hard slice of it deep into her. “Is it the same for all your marks? Is it a game you play or are you truly that easy?”
She felt cold then, instantly, as she imagined was his intention. She shoved against him to get away, the shocking intensity of her climax shifting into a kind of suffocating horror that beat at her. And it was aimed mostly at herself, she knew. Holly felt herself tip over toward tears as she pulled her clothing back into place and turned to face him, that throbbing glass at her back. Theo dark and vengeful before her. Somehow, she blinked the tears away.
But she couldn’t make Theo disappear that easily. Much less their past.
It was a very small alcove and he didn’t move. He was too big and devastatingly lethal besides, and he merely watched her for a thundering sort of moment, then another, nothing the least bit soft or apologetic on his beautiful, stern face. Instead, he held her gaze as he raised his hand and licked her from
his own fingers.
She shouldn’t feel that like a shuddering heat. She should be appalled. She told herself she was, but nothing with Theo was that easy. Nothing ever had been, especially not her reaction to him. Her body didn’t care what he said. It simply hungered for him the way it always had. Even more now.
“Stop it.”
He ignored her.
“You still don’t taste like the liar we both know you are,” he told her, deliberate and even, his dark gaze never wavering and that gleaming, furious thing keeping her frozen where she stood, as if he’d nailed her feet to the floor. “It’s like magic.”
“I told you,” she managed to say, over that pounding, jolting thing inside her chest she understood was her heart, “I never cheated on you. Never. I lied about taking a lover. What will it take to prove that to you?”
He rolled his eyes and that was too much. That and the fire she could still feel inside of her, charring her, changing her. She felt the tears spill over and hated herself for that. She felt raw and broken, and the worst part was, she could still feel his touch, could still feel the leftover sensation as if he’d branded her somehow with his hands and his mouth. As if a single climax could never be enough to soothe this hunger for him.
Nothing had ever been enough. That had been the problem.
“I’m telling you the truth!” she hurled at him.
She could feel the blast of his temper, a thick, black thing, though he didn’t move a muscle. Then he did, and she heard herself make a small little noise of panic or longing or both when he moved toward her, taking her chin in his hand and pulling her face toward his, close enough to kiss.
Though she knew, somehow, that kissing her was the last thing he was about to do.
“I believed you, Holly,” he grated at her, and his fury was different, suddenly. It looked a little too much like grief. It scared her. “Back then. And why, I asked myself, should I hold my wedding vows sacred when you had profaned them as many times as you could? No doubt far more than you’d dared admit?”
“I’m trying to tell you, I didn’t...”
“I hope this is nothing more than another one of those sick games of yours that no one ever wins.” His voice was a thing of stone, a monolith, and it crushed her. “Because know this. Once you revealed yourself to be faithless, I saw no reason to adhere to the very vows you’d thrown in my face.”
She didn’t want to understand him. She refused to let herself, no matter that harsh cast to his mouth, the too-still way he stood. She told herself he was the one who wasn’t comprehending her, even as something devastatingly icy began to emanate from inside of her. From every place he’d touched her.
From that suddenly hollow place inside her chest.
“Theo.” She was whispering. “I never broke our vows. Not like that.”
His dark gaze went bleak, then uncompromising. It was so black it hurt.
But he didn’t look away. If anything, he stood taller. “But unfortunately, Holly, I didn’t know that. So I did.”
* * *
When she shoved past him, hurtling herself back through the door and out into the crowd again, Theo let her go.
He told himself he wanted her to go, and he did. Of course he did. He hadn’t wanted to see her again in the first place—this had all been her idea, her threat, her execution. Let her run away. Let her do whatever the hell she wanted. Let her disappear back into the club, back into her new, separate life that he refused to believe had really been some exercise in born-again chastity the same way he would not accept that she’d lied back on the island four years ago. Let her go right back wherever the hell she’d come from this time with her new set of painful, damaging falsehoods and her big, soft, hurt eyes he couldn’t seem to get out of his head.
Those eyes. Like broken blue. And this time, he’d done the breaking.
There was no earthly reason he should believe her, he reminded himself as he scowled down at the main dance floor but saw only Holly’s twisted face and her tears making tracks down her cheeks. This entire night was a show she’d decided to stage for her own reasons, nothing more, complete with the flower petals on the floor of his suite and that ridiculous see-through thing she’d worn here tonight that had made him nothing short of murderous the moment he’d seen it. It was another taste of her brand of marital theater and he didn’t believe a word of it, anyway. Not one damned word that passed those deceitful lips of hers.
But her taste was in his mouth, sweet and as intoxicating as ever. It felt as if there was some kind of great stone pressing down into him where he stood, and he told himself he didn’t want to know what it was or why.
Theo understood that he’d miscalculated. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. He should never have touched her. He should never have allowed himself to relearn the fact that the memory of her was but a pale and boring substitute for the real thing. Her sweet, hot, yielding flesh. The scent of her, soft and female, spice and sweet at once. The cries she made as she came apart in his hand.
Theo muttered something vicious and crude in Greek, then he slammed his fist against the wall of the alcove. Once.
He thought of her bright eyes, flooded with those tears that had to be fake but certainly hadn’t looked it. That stricken, horrified look on her face he’d have thought couldn’t be feigned, not even by an actress as accomplished as she was. Twice.
“Vlakas,” he growled at himself because he was a stupid bastard, always and ever where this woman was concerned, and then he went after her.
He told himself it was self-preservation, nothing else. He convinced himself of that as he pushed his way through the oblivious crowd and out into the street, the soft Spanish air feeling thick around him, an unwelcome echo of her body slumped against his. It wouldn’t do to let his errant wife careen off into danger after an emotional scene with him—how would that look in the tabloids? As long as she bore his name, he lectured himself, she remained his responsibility.
He’d practically gone over all pious—not the best fit for a man of his nature, he could admit—when he caught a movement down the street out of the corner of his eye. A suggestion of the curve of her hip, a mere hint of her usual sweet gait that he would know anywhere, moving from beneath the street lamps into the beckoning shadows.
Theo caught up to her as she started toward the sand, as if headed for the dark waters of the bay beyond.
“Holly, stop,” he ordered her as he came up behind her, and something seemed to ripple over her at the sound of his voice. In him, too, but he ignored that part.
He had no choice but to ignore it. It was that or go mad.
Holly’s head was bent, her hair a wild mess around her shoulders in a way he hadn’t seen in years, and Theo was so caught by the thick fall of it that he almost missed the way her hands were clenched into tight balls at her sides. But she stopped walking and then stood there swaying slightly, almost as if she really was that obedient, and Theo couldn’t tell which one of them he hated more in that instant. Holly for causing this mess in the first place. Or himself, as ever, for remaining so damned susceptible to her. Even now. Even on a dark street in Barcelona, where he still didn’t know what to believe.
Much less how to feel. He thrust that aside—because he was very much afraid he knew how he felt and he refused, he damn well refused, to indulge it.
“Are you planning to fling yourself into the sea?” He sounded flippant and aggressive at once, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. His hand ached faintly from its hard contact with the wall in the club and he refused to look too closely at the things ricocheting through him, at the things it might mean if she’d actually told him the truth, for a change. If she really, truly, hadn’t betrayed him four years ago—at least, not with her body. “That seems unduly histrionic. The papers would have a field day.”
“What do you care?” she a
sked, her voice thick, as if she’d been screaming into the night before he’d found her, and he filled up with a dangerous kind of rage at the idea that he’d somehow caused her pain.
As if she had any right to feel anything here.
He wanted to poke at her until she made sense to him again, until she dropped this latest act and returned to form. He wanted to reveal her, somehow, on this dark side street mere steps from all of Barcelona’s late-night club magic. Yet all he could seem to summon was a casual cruelty that did nothing to take the taste of her away and even less to move that great, hulking stone of a thing he could still feel pressing down on him, crushing him.
God, he hated this. He’d felt indifferent for a few moments back in The Chatsfield’s lobby, and that had felt like a relief. Like freedom. Like some kind of resurrection, but it hadn’t lasted. He’d already been bored and furious again when he’d looked up and seen Holly standing there in that VIP room. This was nothing new, this cut-to-shreds, dark and tormented thing in him. But he hated it all the same.
And then she turned around to face him, and the world seemed to slip a bit beneath his feet, rocking him. She looked wrecked. Utterly destroyed. And Theo felt perilously uneven, suddenly, scraped raw and hollow, because he knew exactly what she was feeling. He’d felt exactly what she was feeling.
He could see it right there on her face and she, by God, didn’t deserve to feel that way.
“Don’t you dare look at me like that.” There was nothing flippant about him then. It was all aggression, all fury, and he made no attempt to soften it. He could feel it surging in him, making him feel something a good deal like drunk. “You did this, Holly. Not me.”
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