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‘Ashamed to be seen with me?’ he asked.
But even though his lips had curved into that confident sensual smile she adored, his eyes had suddenly lost their twinkle of amusement.
‘Of course not,’ she said instantly, and her heart squeezed at the thought she might have insulted him.
However much being Luke’s date might compromise her business reputation—especially when she was forced to explain the situation to Temple—that wasn’t the real reason she was struggling.
‘I just... I didn’t expect for us to be so...’ Right. She swallowed the word down, tried to unthink it. ‘So much like a couple,’ she managed.
This relationship wasn’t right—it wasn’t even real. Not for much longer anyway.
He stared back at her. ‘You’ve got to come. You don’t want to waste this dress.’
He pressed his palms into the fabric, letting the shimmering material rasp over her already over-sensitised skin.
‘Even if it’s gonna be torturing me all night, knowing how much I want to get you out of it,’ he added provocatively, skimming a finger over her breast.
Her nipple squeezed into a tight peak from the tantalising caress. She shuddered, enthralled all over again—the way she had been for nearly two weeks now. Every time he touched her, every time he looked at her with that searing approval in his eyes, every time he made her feel more than she’d ever felt before...
He dropped his hand back to her waist and tugged her close to press a kiss to her temple. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We won’t be staying long.’
He clasped her hand and led her out of the penthouse apartment.
‘Which is why we need to get there before midnight,’ he added as he stabbed the private elevator button. ‘So we can leave early.’
She let the familiar hunger surge. His urgency was as intoxicating as the devilish gleam that had returned to his eyes. But it did nothing to cover the frantic beat of her heart, which was still rammed in her throat.
It wasn’t until Luke stepped out of the limo at the venue, with her hand still clasped firmly in his, and headed through the barrage of paparazzi to the legendary nightclub hired for the event—three floors of the world’s hottest DJs, housed in an iconic nineteen-hundreds redbrick canning factory in Fisherman’s Wharf—that she realised her professional reputation was the least of the things she had already lost to Luke Broussard.
And the only person to blame for that was herself.
* * *
‘Damn, I thought we’d never get out of there.’
Luke spun Cassandra around as they walked back into his apartment. Finally. The sun was coming up over the bay through the penthouse’s windows as he pressed her lithe body to the glass and placed his mou
th on the hammering pulse in her neck.
He wanted her. Now. Had been frantic to have her all evening. Dancing with her had been tortuous...feeling her body move in time with his and knowing he couldn’t claim her the way he wanted to claim her without getting arrested.
But he’d branded her as his for all the world to see tonight in every other way that counted.
‘I haven’t told anyone except Ash about us...’
The quiet words she’d spoken earlier ricocheted through his head again, taunting him the way they’d been doing all evening, tying his gut into tight, greasy knots and making his insides hurt.
To hell with that.
She was his. And he’d be damned if he’d let her hide that from anyone.
The echo of her words had faded when he’d paraded her in front of the photographers outside the club, when he’d kept her anchored to his side while everyone came up to congratulate him on the launch, when he’d lost himself in the throbbing bass beat of a retro rap anthem and celebrated his success with her in his arms.
But now what she’d said shouted across his consciousness again, as he grasped the dress that had been keeping her from him and yanked it down.
The sound of rending fabric tore through the quiet apartment and she bucked against his hold.
‘Luke...’ she said, her voice trembling with arousal, and shock. ‘Is something wrong?’
