Not Just the Boss's Plaything

by Caitlin Crews

  She ignored the way his voice lowered so suggestively, the images that it conjured before her and the wildfires it sent spinning over her skin. She dropped her hand to her side and nodded at the view behind him. An infinity pool lay on the far side of the patio, the water as smooth as glass, surrounded by more of the smooth dark wood, and beyond it, the endless sea. Yet Cayo sat with his back to it, more interested in his laptop computer, the documents spread out before him on the desk, the television on the wall tuned, as ever, to the financial news.

  “You haven’t been here in years.” She knew she should walk to the desk, sit down, act appropriately and do her job, but she couldn’t bring herself to move that close to him. Not so soon after the last two nights of all that savage intensity. Not yet. “Not in as long as I’ve worked for you.”

  “It was eight years ago, I believe,” he agreed, that lean body much too still, as if he was deliberately leashing all of his power as he sat and watched her. As he waited. “When I bought the place from some Saudi prince or another.”

  Dru bit at her lip, that fluttery feeling twisting and suddenly too close to another surge of what felt like tears. As if it was impossible to be around him without all of this emotion welling up in her. She was afraid she might simply burst.

  “I don’t understand the point of owning beautiful things you never see.” Her voice should have sounded casual. Easy. Not...raw. Wounded. She was supposed to be so good at this kind of thing! “And now that you’re here for the first time in almost a decade, you’re sitting inside in an office, working. Moving all your money and power about like an endless game of chess. Why bother collecting all these little pieces of paradise if you never plan to let yourself enjoy them?”

  He looked at her for a beat, then another. And then that same look she’d seen the night before, as if he’d come to some kind of decision, gleamed in his eyes. A little chill snaked down Dru’s back. Cayo moved from his chair, rising to his feet and prowling toward her.

  Dru had to fight to stand still—not to break and run. He stopped when he was a foot or so away, and that cruel mouth of his, brutally sensual and entirely too dangerous, quirked slightly in the corner. Dru felt it like another touch, like the hand he’d pressed against her cheek in Milan, like his thumb across her mouth last night. Her blood seemed too hot in her veins, her skin felt too tight across her body, and when she reached over to grab the doorjamb again, it was because her legs were too weak to hold her upright.

  And still, he only looked at her. Through her. Making the fire inside her leap high, burn white.

  “I appreciate your concern,” he said in that silky voice that teased along her oversensitive skin, moved like a shiver down her spine, and then made even her bones ache. “It’s too bad you insist upon leaving me. We could play chess with my properties together.”

  “What a lovely idea,” she said with a great insincerity she took no pains to conceal, and which made him look something close enough to amused. “But I am terrible at chess.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She thought he nearly smiled then, gazing down at her. “You are always at least six moves ahead. You’d excel at it.”

  She had the oddest sense of déjà vu for a moment and then it came to her—he was talking to her like a person. Not as his employee, but as another human being. Someone he actually knew. The last time he’d done this, he’d teased her in just this way. They’d smiled. They’d told stories, shared parts of themselves over small dishes of food and large glasses of wine. Or she’d thought they had. That had been that long dinner in Cadiz, before their fateful walk home, and Dru couldn’t stand her own treacherous heart, the way it softened for him anew, as if she didn’t know exactly where moments like this led. Precisely nowhere, with a three-year detour through infatuated subservience.

  She could not let him reel her in. Not again.

  “I’m not here to play games,” she said quietly, hoping he couldn’t hear the unevenness in her voice, that clash between what was good for her and what she wanted. “I’m here to be your personal assistant. The only other offer on the table was to be your dog. On a leash. Isn’t that what you said? Is that what you’d prefer?”

  His gaze heated, becoming so molten she could hardly bear it, though she didn’t look away. His mouth twisted. She remembered belatedly that he was much too close, his potent masculinity and all of that restless, brilliant power of his bright and brilliant between them, making her swallow hard. Making her feel too hot, too weak, all at once.

  “If you want to be my pet you must sit,” he growled at her. Daring her. Commanding her. “Stay. Surrender.”

  And the worst part was, she very nearly obeyed.

  “I do appreciate the offer,” Dru whispered when she could speak, but she hardly heard her own voice, lost as it was in the thunder of her heartbeat, the shriek and clamor of the storm only gaining strength inside her. “But I think I’ll pass.”

  She should have moved—but she didn’t. She only stood there, paralyzed, as Cayo closed the distance between them and stretched an arm up, over his head, to brace himself against the doorjamb and look down directly into her face.

  She thought of old gods again, stunning and unpredictable, implacable and fierce. Something deep inside her seemed to go very, very still. He leaned there, propped up in the doorway, dark eyes and that sinful body, exuding the ruthlessness and command that made him who he was.

  Worse than that, he looked at her as if he knew her at least as well as she knew him. As if he could read her as easily as she’d learned to read him. And the very notion was as terrifying—as impossible—as it had been before.

  “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 hone
st 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.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHE 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 wan
ted, 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.