Victoria Parker – The Ultimate Revenge (страница 8)
Because her evasion would never, ever happen.
Those big violet eyes narrowed on his. ‘Together with a full explanation? Because I know there’s more to you than meets the eye and far more to this meeting you desire with Zeus. I want to know why.’
It occurred to him then that she must work for her father in some way. Must have come in his place this weekend. She might have already put two and two together and suspect he was at the root of the dissent at the club. Not that she could prove it.
‘Of course I’ll tell you everything you want to know. However, if you lose, and I take your body as mine, have you at my mercy, you’ll arrange a meeting with Zeus and take me to him.’
Two days and she’d succumb. Three at the most.
For long moments she simply stared at him, and it was shocking to admit but he’d have given half of Manhattan to know what she was thinking. He’d never given much credence to the term ‘closed book’, but this intriguing package was still wrapped in Cellophane.
Finally she gave a heavy sigh, as if she really didn’t have much of an alternative. As if he’d pushed her into a corner with his refusal to tell her anything and she had nowhere else to go but to follow him.
What had he said? Child’s play.
‘All right. Here’s the deal. Zeus will be in Paris in eight days. If you win, I guarantee you’ll meet at a specified time and place. You have my word.’
A smile—so small yet inordinately confident—curved her luscious lips. He wished she’d do it more often—it made his heart trampoline into his throat.
So bold she was, so sanguine, so sure he would fail and she would be the victor. He almost felt sorry for her.
‘But when you lose I will have you on your knees, Nicandro.’
‘If I lose I’ll go down with pleasure, Olympia.’
Eyes locked, they stared at one another. Neither giving an inch. And he’d swear the air sparked with electricity, tiny arrows of fire that bounced from one point of contact to another. One strike of a match and they’d blow sky-high.
‘Then you have a deal...Nic...’
Welcome to three days of torture.
Even the way she purred his name like that, drawing out the N, made him hard.
‘Splendid. And every deal should be sealed, don’t you agree?’
Without giving her time to bat an eyelash he slowly lowered his mouth to hers. There was no better place to start the war, and his body begged for just one kiss, one taste.
Gossamer-light, Nic brushed his lips across hers and lavished the corner of her mouth with a lush velvet kiss. Electricity hissed over his skin, his blood seared through his veins on a scream of satisfaction, and before he knew it he stepped closer. Her breasts crushed against his chest and he fingered her sweet waist while he swept his tongue across the seam of her lips, demanding entry, commanding more.
Dizzy, as if she’d put him under some kind of spell, his mind stripped itself clean and he nipped at the plump flesh and sucked gently, desperate to be inside her warm heaven. She tasted of sweet, hot coffee liqueur, and if she’d just let him in...
After a few more seconds he drew back. Frowned.
Passive, emotionless—she hadn’t moved one muscle and her skin was like ice, her blood-red lips equally devoid of warmth. Even her violet-blue stare was cold and vacant.
The shock of it made his tone incongruous. ‘Olympia, you are frozen, querida.’ A coil of serpents in the pit of his stomach couldn’t have unsettled him more.
Lifting her chin she gifted him a small smile. Except it wasn’t cold—it was sad.
‘I am frozen...querido. Inside and out. Ah, Nicandro, you really have no idea who you are playing with, do you?’
Her hand to the handle now, she hauled the door wide and he floundered for a beat, stepping backwards, his foot crushing the small black sensor pad she’d tossed at him earlier.
The inevitable crack snapped him back to his wits. ‘Hold up there, ice queen. The petite q. She was innocent in all this. Promise me the girl will—’
‘Be removed from the premises. Good evening, Nicandro.’
Next thing he knew she was gone—the razor-sharp tap-tap of her towering heels vibrating in the void around him.
‘You really have no idea who you are playing with, do you?’
Wasn’t that the truth?
PIA PULLED THE double doors to her suite closed behind her and fought the urge to slump against the carved wood. Bad enough that she raised her fingertips to the corner of her mouth to chase the faint echoes of his kiss, shimmering over her lips like an iridescent butterfly.
Old habits truly did die hard, because for the first time in years she was second-guessing herself—and that really didn’t bode well. Suddenly spending time with Nicandro Carvalho seemed like a bad, bad idea. But what alternative did she have? Wait it out until he struck again? God only knew what havoc he’d wreak next, and she could not let that happen. Not in her world.
‘Pia?’
She jumped clean off the floor, then flushed guiltily like an idiotic schoolgirl who’d just had her first kiss from a long-time crush and her big brother had been spying on her. She didn’t want to think how close to the truth that was.
‘Where did you come from? I thought you were escorting our nefarious burglar to his suite?’
Jovan watched her warily from where he sat looking incongruous—his large frame stiff and upright—perched on the edge of her delicate gold silk daybed.
‘Mission accomplished.’
Oh.
Pia’s eyes shuttered at the concern marring his face. He wanted to ask if she was okay but he wouldn’t. He didn’t like making her feel weak. Emotional. Not when she was supposed to be a machine. But therein lay the problem. Machines didn’t tremble with the touch of man’s hand, at his finger breezing down her arm. Machines didn’t suffer a glitch after a soft evocative kiss from his warm lips. And machines certainly didn’t stare into his eyes and feel something close to longing, wishing for the impossible.
For one heart-stopping moment she would have done anything to kiss him back. Anything to feel his scorching heat melt some of the ice inside of her—ice that was so terribly, terribly cold. But Pia knew that surrendering to meaningless brief moments could shower you in a lifetime of regret, and he’d chosen the one route to her bed with a guaranteed outcome of failure and causing her maximum levels of pain.
He was using her. To get to Zeus. To Q Virtus. Ignorant of the fact he’d already been in Zeus’s company for most of the evening. If it wasn’t so humiliating and didn’t exhume such loathsome feelings of worthlessness she would laugh. Sorry, Nic, I’ve already learned my lessons in love. Pia could spot a seduction routine a mile off and erect her barricades with ease.
Being used for the Merisi fame and fortune years ago had thrown her hard-earned self-respect to the wolves—with a little help from her father’s constant stream of berating anger during the miserable aftershocks of her affair.
‘Women are weak fools with vulnerable hearts, Olympia. You think he wanted your body? Your mind?’ he’d hollered, as if the idea that any man could desire her for simply being Pia was unfathomable. ‘True lust is greed for money and power. Surrender to a man and he will strip you of your fortune and glory and leave you as nothing more than a whore in his bed. Trust no man. Not even me.’
That her hollow, cold flesh should now answer to the practised tongue of a Don Juan with criminal tendencies who was quite possibly trying to take her down could only be the cruel joke of a universe that despised her.
Now she had to drag him across Europe for the next few days, on a schedule that was impossible to change, trying to delve into the intricacies of his mind while he tried to delve into her knickers.
Not in a million years.
She’d just have to keep her head on straight and her eyes on him. The man could hardly kick up a storm if she was watching over his shoulder, and it would give her plenty of time to unearth what game he was playing and why.
The anxiety of it all—the possibility that she was in danger of having everything she’d worked so hard for taken away—made her feel sick to the stomach. And that’s not the only thing that has you rattled, a little voice said. She told that voice to hush up.
‘You look tired, Pia,’ Jovan said.
She was. Bone-deep tired. But machines weren’t supposed to get tired. So instead of crawling into bed she tried to pretend that she didn’t ache all over, lifted her chin, strode towards her office and got back to business.
‘I’m fine. You worry too much.’
That wasn’t fair. He cared about her and she would be for ever grateful for that small mercy in her life. It would have all been so easy if there’d been flames of attraction between them, but there wasn’t so much as a flicker—never mind the high-voltage current that was still racing through her body from—
No, no, no. She was not going there.
‘Get Laurent from Paris on the phone and tell him I’ve found him a new concierge. Then ask Clarissa Knight to pack her bags and come to my office. She’s wanted to be based near her mother for months and this is the perfect opportunity. With a bit of luck she’ll find some fresh eye-candy in days, and Mr Carvalho will be reduced to a distant memory. Just make sure Mr I’m-Sex-Incarnate-and-I-Know-It doesn’t see her leave.’