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‘Liar.’
He laughed. ‘Your assessment of me is wholly and completely wrong, Sienna—my honesty has at times been described as almost brutal.’
Brutal. Yes. There was a brutal side to his nature. And yet it contrasted with the extraordinary gentleness he had displayed when she had lain so helplessly in his arms. She felt the drying of her lips, and as if he had read her thoughts he leaned forward and touched his mouth to hers in a barely-there kiss which started her senses sizzling.
‘Don’t,’ she said weakly.
The same cold skill and calculation which made him a world-class poker player made him kiss her for long enough to hear her sigh, and then he stopped and leaned back against the seat to study her. He pressed a button by his side and said something she did not understand. The car began its powerful acceleration.
‘Where are we going?’ she questioned, in alarm.
‘Just driving around—we will draw less attention to ourselves that way—this car tends to attract sightseers.’
‘Why don’t you travel in something less ostentatious, then?’ she questioned acidly.
‘Because I cannot,’ he said simply. ‘It needs to be bullet-proof.’
And—perhaps for the very first time—Sienna allowed herself to see the downside of his life. Hadn’t there been part of her which had somehow thought that the bodyguards which accompanied him were simply for show? As some kind of indicator of his power and lofty position? She had never actually stopped to think that someone might want to shoot him, and now that she had she found her stomach twisting over in anxiety.
‘Now, let us both be honest,’ he said quietly. ‘Can you do that?’
‘You don’t take any notice of me when I am.’
But he shook his head. ‘No, Sienna—I am talking about real honesty. I do not mean that you should say what you feel you ought to say, but what is truly in your heart.’
‘Then I’m at a disadvantage—for you don’t have a heart!’
He paused, for it was not the first time this accusation had been flung at him. ‘Have you thought of me?’
She opened her mouth to say no—but something in his eyes stopped her. ‘Yes.’
He nodded his head. ‘And for me it is the same. I have thought of little else. The way you felt in my arms. You haunt me, Sienna—for I cannot forget the great gift which you gave to me.’
‘Which you took, you mean,’ she corrected him quietly. ‘You set me up and seduced me—as you had intended to do right from the start.’
‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘Of that I am guilty—I robbed you of your greatest virtue. But I would not have done it had I known that you were innocent, and that innocence has changed everything.’ He paused, studying the lush fullness of her mouth, and when he spoke his voice was almost reflective. ‘What passed between us was not enough—not for me, nor for you. You were beautiful and responsive, but your initiation into the pleasures of the body should not be limited to a single session on a cold floor, our bodies not even naked.’
She was glad then for the dim light, for she began to blush and he saw. His eyes narrowed and she wondered if he was remembering—as she was—that very first blush such a long time ago. ‘It’s over,’ she said, aware of how lacking in conviction her words sounded. Was that because she didn’t want it to be over?
He thought how strange it was that a woman could still blush with innocence, even when that innocence was gone. ‘Ah, but that is where you are wrong,’ he whispered. ‘It is not over. Indeed, that was only the beginning.’
Sienna blinked, because suddenly the picture had shifted, changed focus. Was he asking her to be his girlfriend? ‘What are you saying?’ she whispered.
‘You came to me untutored—a beautiful novice,’ he said huskily. ‘And yet, in a way, it was as new for me as it was for you.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘You see, I had never had a virgin before.’
He made himself sound like a jockey who had attempted a higher than usual jump, and his matter-of-fact words fractured the tiny flicker of hope which had begun to spark into life. But maybe that was a blessing, because the very word ‘virgin’ was charged with emotion—and emotion could, she realized, be character-changing in every sense of the word. It could make you weak when you most needed to be strong. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered by this remarkable statement?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘For I am admitting to you that I found the experience profoundly moving.’
As an admission it bordered on the arrogant, and if it had been anyone else then Sienna might have said so. But something stopped her. Maybe it was the look in his eyes. As if he had lifted away a veil and allowed her to see a whisper of contrition. And the unexpected glimpse of this gave him the fleeting shimmer of vulnerability, reminding her that deep down he was just a man—that all the rest was just packaging.
‘Go on,’ she said steadily. ‘I’m intrigued.’
‘I want to teach you everything there is to know about the art of love.’ His smile was edged with hunger. There was the briefest of pau
ses before he spoke again. ‘I want you to become my mistress,’ he said softly.
Sienna stilled. ‘What?’
