A Devil in Disguise (11 page)

“Tell me,” he said, his voice even lower, his golden amber eyes so hot she worried they might blister her skin or consume her whole. “What are
you
hiding from?”

For a moment, she looked almost as if he’d punched her in the stomach. But then she blinked, the mask Cayo had come to hate descended, and she even produced a strained sort of smile.

That might have irritated him, but he was done with
this. He’d decided he would have her no matter what games she played, and he would lick that wall away if he had to. He looked forward to it.

“The only thing I’ve been hiding from today is our workload,” she said brightly. Hiding, he knew. Right there in front of him. “Perhaps we should get to it.”

“Forget about work,” he growled, a sentence that had never crossed his lips before, perhaps not ever. And he didn’t allow himself to consider the ramifications of that—all he could seem to concentrate on was the confusing woman in front of him. And how very much he wanted her, despite all the reasons he knew that was a bad idea. “We’re in Bora Bora. Work can wait.”

“I beg your pardon?” She looked unduly horrified.

“What’s the point of being the boss if I can’t decree a holiday on a whim?” he asked, striving for a lighter tone and, if that look on her face was any indication, failing. “Didn’t you suggest I enjoy myself in paradise not five minutes ago?”

“To hell with the consequences, is that it?” she asked, throwing that back at him, and her eyes flashed as if she was angry with him. Which grated.

He didn’t understand any of this. He didn’t understand what was happening to him, and he certainly didn’t understand why everything he said made her so unhappy, or so furious. Or both at once. Why she leaped from boats to escape him, then looked at him on a dark Italian terrace with all the world in her eyes and spoke of
punishment,
making him feel small three years later.

He was not a man who dealt well in uncertainties.

But what he did know was passion. Sex and desire. He had built his life around what he wanted. He knew
want.
And much as she claimed to hate him, much
as she threw words or shoes at his head, he knew she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could see it. He’d always seen it, if he was honest with himself. And he was tired of fighting off the only thing that made sense in all of this.

“Consequences are for lesser men,” he said.

He’d already decided. When he’d walked away from her last night despite the way he burned to take her, when he’d found himself handling his own brutal need alone in his shower, he’d known he was done with this. She was leaving him anyway. There was only so much complication that could occur in the time she had left. Why was he denying himself? He was not the kind of man who did without the things he wanted.

She blinked at his arrogance, but that was better. He didn’t want the threat of tears, the sting of her temper. And he certainly didn’t want that neutral wall of hers, designed to keep the world at an icy remove. He wanted heat. He wanted that fire again, and who cared anymore what burned?

“Come,” he said. It was an order. He didn’t pretend otherwise. “Kiss me.”

Drusilla’s eyes flew wide. One hand went to her throat. He imagined he could feel her pulse there, imagined it kicking against his own hand instead of hers. He wanted to press his mouth to her skin and taste her excitement for himself.

“What did you say?” Her voice was no more than a whisper.

“You heard me.”

“I am not going to kiss you,” she said, coming over all flustered and something like prim then, her gray eyes brimming with outrage.

Yet behind it, mixed in with it, that consuming, distracting
heat that matched his. That called to him. That meant, he knew, that he already had her. It was only a matter of time.

“But you will, Drusilla,” he promised her. “Trust me.”

Dru didn’t know why she wasn’t running away from him.

Her heart pounded so hard it made her feel faint, everything inside her seemed to be in revolt, and yet she only stood there. Gazing back at him, while uncertainty and longing howled and fought and pooled between her legs in a hot pulse of desire.

“Don’t call me that,” she said instead of all the other things she could have said—
should
have said. What was the matter with her? Why couldn’t she seem to summon the will to protect herself the way she should?

“Your name?” His eyes gleamed like gold. He was so close, so arrogant and sure, and it was harder and harder to remember all the reasons she shouldn’t let herself fall over this particular cliff. All the reasons she shouldn’t jump headfirst, for that matter.

“My mother is the only person who ever called me Drusilla,” she found herself telling him as if she were not standing in this doorway torn apart by tension, while her body clamored for things she was afraid to look at too closely. And far more afraid to do. Or not do. She wasn’t sure which scared her more. “And I have not laid eyes on that woman in at least ten years.”

“Dru, then,” he said, and it moved through her like honey, her name in his mouth. It set fires in her in places she hardly knew existed. It felt like a lock falling open, but she knew better than to give in to that. She knew better than to trust herself around this man.
Look at what a kiss had wrought! “And I think you want to be on my leash, after all. Don’t you?”

There was no denying the sensual intent behind that question. Or the frank appraisal in his eyes.

Or what it did to her.

The hall fell away. The world with it. There was only him. Only Cayo. Nothing but the exquisite tautness that wound around them, stealing her breath, making his eyes seem to glow. There were scarcely two feet between them and yet all she could focus on was his mouth and that carnal knowledge, that masculine certainty, in the way he looked at her.

She should have said something. Anything.

When she only gazed at him, fighting for breath, unable to speak, his eyes went dark with a need she was afraid she recognized all too well.

“Then come.” Another order, which should have enraged her. His mouth curved into something sardonic—and impossibly sexy. Those wicked brows rose in challenge. “Heel.”

She felt the words sizzle through her, white-hot and life-altering, and that was when she knew with a sharp burst of clarity that there was only one way this would end. She knew him, didn’t she? Cayo’s attention span when it came to the women who shared his bed was famously short. If she really wanted to leave him, if she really wanted to be free of this hold he seemed to have on her, then this was the way to do it. This was a one-way street. No turning back.

No matter what it cost her.

“Well?” he asked softly, taunting her.

Dru swallowed, hard. She held his gaze for a long moment, understanding that this was a line she could never uncross. That she had no idea, really, what giving
in to this kind of inferno might do to her—the damage it might cause. She’d spent three years recovering from a kiss, after all. She couldn’t imagine what this would do.

But it didn’t matter now. He looked at her with that certainty in his eyes, that sheer male confidence and stark carnal promise, and she knew that she didn’t have it in her to walk away from this. Not when she’d spent so long imagining it, fantasizing about it. Yearning for it with everything she had.

Who cares how you have him, so long as you do?
a greedy voice inside her asked, and she didn’t have it in her to disagree. She’d lost her will to fight somewhere high above the Pacific Ocean. She didn’t have to lose herself, too. She wouldn’t, she promised herself. This was a strategy, not a surrender.

She closed the distance between them, watching the light in his fascinating eyes burn ever brighter the closer she came. She slid her hands over the taut planes of his chest, reveling in his heat, his bold strength. There was no going back—but there was no way forward, either, without this. And the truth was that she wanted him. She always had. This way she could have everything—she could have Cayo in the way she’d dreamed of since Cadiz, and then her freedom in a little over a week. In every way that mattered, this was a victory.

It was, she assured herself, her gaze searching his.
It was
. But what she felt was that wild flame searing into her, burning through her, making all these things she clung to, all these things she told herself, so much ash.

“Please do not tell me that you intend to do all of this in tedious slow motion,” Cayo said, that curve in his mouth telling her he was teasing her again and
connecting hard to all the places that longed for him like this, for his touch, turning her fever for him ever higher. “I believe that is far more entertaining in films than in real life.”

“For God’s sake,” she said, no longer his assistant, not in a moment like this. Not when they were changing everything, no doubt for the worse, and she couldn’t even pretend to care about that as she should. “Shut up.”

And then Dru stretched up onto her toes, plastered herself against the length of him, and doomed herself forever by pressing her mouth to his.

S
HE
tasted the way he remembered. Better. So hot and good and
his.

Cayo’s arms came around her, pulling her against him, into him, needing to feel the weight of her breasts against his chest, the softness of her belly against the thrust of his hardness, the gentle swell of her hips against his. He kissed her again and again, reveling in the punch of it. The kick.

And she met him. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her mouth moved against his with the same urgency, the same demand. He thought she said his name. He wasn’t sure he could speak or if he did, what language he might use, or if it would all come out as nonsense. He didn’t care.

She was intoxicating, and he could finally let himself indulge in her as he wished.

At last, he sank his hands into her dark hair, exulting in the feel of it, the scent. Warm silk and the faint hint of vanilla. He pulled out the band that held her hair and let the mass of waves fall around her shoulders. He angled his mouth for a better fit, gathering her closer, taking what he wanted, at last.

He smoothed his hands down the sensual curve of her back, then tested her pert bottom, making them
both groan when he moved her against the thrust of his arousal. It wasn’t enough. It was barely a start. He took and he took until she was gasping his name, breathing hard, and he had to rein himself in. Or have her right there in the hallway—and he had no intention of going too quickly.

Not with this woman. Not with Dru. Not when it felt as if he’d waited lifetimes for this. For her.

He moved to taste, briefly, the freckles the sun had already raised across the bridge of her nose, then traced the line of her cheekbone, her satiny cheek, her stubborn jaw. She smelled of coconut and flowers, and tasted like magic, and he could not seem to get close enough.

She made a small noise in the back of her throat, like a purr, and it nearly undid him.
Mine,
he thought, with a surge of possessive triumph.
All mine.

He took her hand in his, marveling at how delicate she was, how perfectly formed. He led her down the hall, the afternoon sun still golden and shining through the windows of the rooms they passed, and he couldn’t pretend he didn’t feel victory thump through him like a drumbeat when she simply followed him like this, those gray eyes dizzy with want—very much like the docile, biddable female she had pretended to be for so many years, but wasn’t. The surrender of a strong woman, he thought with pure male satisfaction, was so much more exciting than that of a weak one. He intended to revel in hers.

Once in his bedroom, he pulled her to him again, luxuriating in the feel of her in his arms.
Finally.

He took her mouth again, kissing her anew as he maneuvered her toward the bed. When the back of her knees hit the mattress she pulled away and looked up
at him, her breath coming too fast, her fathomless gray eyes dark now and dazed with need, her pretty face soft and flushed and
his.

She was his
.

Cayo didn’t speak. He didn’t counter his own uncharacteristic possessiveness, or even try. Nothing about Dru had made sense so far, not since that rainy morning in London when she’d changed everything he took for granted. Why should this? He tugged the vest up over her head, sliding it over all of that long, dark hair, and smiled when he saw her royal blue bra and the round breasts he’d only glimpsed through her wet blouse before now.

“Perfecto,”
he murmured, and leaned down to press his mouth against the crest of one breast, sucking on it through the thin, glossy material. Dru gasped, and so he did the same with the other, waiting until her head was thrown back and her eyes closed before he reached around and unhooked the bra. She reached to pull it from her arms and he bent and licked the closest nipple, pulling it into his mouth.

And Dru went wild.

Cayo got lost in it then, in her. In her heat, her softness, her beautiful cries. He stripped her trousers from her long, sleek legs, then that other scrap of satin and lace. He hardly noticed as he shrugged out of his own clothes, because it wasn’t fast enough, it meant he wasn’t touching her, and it took entirely too long before he was naked and she was sprawled across his bed the way he wanted her, the way he’d wanted her for longer than he’d been aware of it. This was no new need that roared in him, demanding he take her again and again until they were both sated. What moved in him felt old and complicated, as if he’d hidden it from himself.

But he wasn’t hiding any longer. He stretched out beside her, propping himself up on one arm, fiercely satisfied to see her nipples were hard and her tattletale English skin was pink and rosy.

His.

She rolled as if she meant to begin exploring him herself, but he pressed her back down.

“But I want—”

“Sit,” he murmured, tracing a finger down to her breast and toying with its peak, making Dru arch from the bed with a moan.

He bent to replace his fingers with his lips, and she cried out again, writhing beneath him as he tugged her nipple into the heat of his mouth even as he cupped her other breast in his hand. Then he kissed his way down the gentle swell of her abdomen, licking over her navel and the gentle curve of her hips. He learned she had a trio of small birthmarks near her left hip bone, and that she couldn’t keep her hips still, especially when he held them between his hands and then curved his fingers around to test the shape and sweet, silken perfection of her bottom.

And then he parted her thighs and kissed his way even lower.

“Cayo—” she started again, naked passion in that voice, so full of
want
it made his hardness ache in response.

“Stay,” he ordered her, and licked his way into her molten core, exulting in the fresh, hot taste of her desire.

She arched from the bed again, her hips rising to meet his mouth as he took her, tasted her, made her his. Unequivocally. And then she exploded all around
him, sobbing out his name as she fell off the side of the world.

And it was not nearly enough.

He moved back up the bed, and pulled her to him, then rolled them both, sitting up and lifting her so she sat astride him. He wanted to see her. He wanted to see everything.

“Cayo …” She whispered his name, her eyes fluttering open, to gaze at him as he pressed against the core of her.

She was wet and hot and soft, and he wanted her so badly he nearly shook with it. He held her bottom in his hands, lifted her, and watched as she shivered in turn when he slid himself along the entrance to her core, teasing her. Her gray eyes darkened again. She pulled her perfect lower lip between her teeth. She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his shoulders, bringing her breasts flush against his chest.

“Surrender,” he whispered, and then he drove into her, and there was nothing at all but fire.

That perfect, encompassing fire. It roared through him, into him. It incinerated everything he thought, everything he knew, until there was nothing at all but Dru. And she was supple and curvy and draped all around him. She began to move her hips and he groaned, too close to the edge.

He wrapped his hands around her hips to slow her down, then set his own pace. Slow. Deliberate. Torturing them both. Hot and endless strokes that made him grit his teeth and made her drop her head to his neck and sob out her pleasure. He moved her up and down as he thrust into her, again and again, wanting it never to end. Wanting to stay balanced in all this lush perfection forever. Wanting to breathe her in like
this, so deep inside her he hardly knew which one of them was which.

She lifted her head then and her gaze locked with his. Held. He felt her breath on his face, her legs tight around him, and still he moved, building that fire into a raging blaze, making her moan even louder, watching those gray eyes of hers glaze over with the same incomparable passion that stormed through him. Taking him over. Making him want nothing more than to burn in it, over and over, too hot to bear, until there was nothing left of him.

This is Dru,
he thought, unable to stop looking at her, touching her, feeling her in every part of him.
And this is mine.

And he understood then that he had no intention of ever letting her go. Whatever that might mean.

She closed her eyes and threw back her head, her lovely back arching toward the setting sun through the windows behind her, the fading light casting her lush body in oranges and golds.

Like some kind of pagan goddess, and all of her his.

She started to shudder again, wild and untamed in his arms, and when she called out his name this time, he followed her over the edge. At last.

Dru lay tangled with him in the wide bed and watched the sun drip down toward the sea, then melt away.

She could not seem to form coherent thoughts. There was only the buzzing in her limbs and under her skin, like some kind of high-voltage live wire, still sending out sparks. She felt Cayo’s hard shoulder beneath her cheek. She felt the heat of his skin and the way his chest rose and fell. She did not think. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think. She watched the sky instead.

Cayo stirred beside her when the sun dropped below the horizon, as if roused by the twilight. He turned to face her, his eyes dark and once again unreadable in the deep shadows of his chamber.

He slid his hand up to hold her cheek and then brought her face to his. For a moment he only gazed at her, and she felt a great stillness inside her, a kind of hush. As if she was waiting for something, poised on the edge of another high cliff while all the rest of her seemed to shiver.

The clock is already ticking,
a voice whispered inside her head, ruthlessly practical when Dru felt anything but.
He’s already gone.

But as if he could hear her, he kissed her. Deep and slow. Sweet. Addicting. And then the fire kicked in. As if it could never be quenched. As if none of this would ever be enough. She had been a terrible fool, she acknowledged as his hand moved over her face, angling her mouth closer to his for a better fit, a deeper kick. She should have known better than to think she could handle this. She would leave him as planned, she understood then in some deep, primitive way, but then she would mourn him, and she might never stop. She had walked right into this, and there was nothing for her but Miss Havisham and regret on the other side of it. And still she kissed him, unable to help herself. Unable to stop what she’d already started, what she’d already done.

No sense borrowing trouble
, she thought then, in some desperation. It would come no matter what she did. It would hurt. Maybe she’d always known that.

He rose over her in the bed and settled himself between her legs, and Dru let go of a future that seemed far away from this moment, too far away to matter. He
settled his weight on his hands and looked down at her, still watching her with those too-shrewd eyes of his.

“Dru,” he said. Just her name. As if he was tasting it.

“Cayo,” she replied in kind, feeling far too vulnerable. She didn’t know what he saw when he looked down at her like that. She didn’t know how to prevent him from seeing everything, all of her hopes and fears and terrors, not when she had abandoned herself so completely to be with him like this.

But he simply twisted his hips and thrust into her. Slick. Hot.

And she stopped caring what he saw. What he knew. She concentrated instead on the sleek perfection of this age old dance between them. As if she’d been made to fit him, just like this.

He moved slowly, hypnotically. As if he did not wish to build that fire between them this time so much as encourage it to burn high on its own. She matched his lazy rhythm, her hips rising to meet his, every part of her exulting in the way they fit together. In the way they moved together. Slow and easy and devastating.

She told herself it was the only thing that mattered.

This time, she could reach up and explore the sheer beauty of his lean, smooth torso. She ran her hands over his hard pectorals, then trailed her way down that mouthwatering abdomen. Smooth skin stretched across steel. Hard male beauty unlike any other. Ferocious and proud. Fierce and demanding. She pulled herself up from the bed to kiss his chest, to taste the bold heat of him, the incomparable strength. The delectable power.

The pace began to change, then, the fire burning ever hotter. Cayo’s shoulders blocked out the world, and she forgot everything but this. Everything but him. Everything but the wildness they made here, and the
way it stormed through her, tearing her apart from within.

He slid down to pull her close and she loved it. The full, hard weight of him against her, pressing her into the bed, making her feel somehow small and yet cherished, all at once. She could feel his breath in her ear, and then he began to murmur words she didn’t know in Spanish, crooning against the length of her neck while still he thrust into her, over and over and over again. She wrapped her legs around his hips and clung to him, mindless and wanton, entirely at his command. And when he reached between them and pressed his fingers against the heart of her need, she burst into a million pieces. Again.

He kept on as she shattered around him, until he shouted out her name and shuddered against her, burying his face into the crook between her neck and her shoulder. And even broken into too many pieces to count, even thrown as she was off the side of a very high cliff and still floating her way down to earth, Dru understood that nothing was ever going to be the same again. Especially not her.

Cayo’s version of enjoying himself in paradise, Dru was not greatly surprised to learn, involved cutting down his business hours to something like six or eight hours per day instead of more than twice that.

“What a great sacrifice this must be,” she murmured toward the end of one such “holiday” afternoon as she took more dictation, her fingers flying across the keyboard when she would have preferred to explore him instead, not that he had asked. “To abandon yourself so hedonistically into a normal person’s version of a workday.”