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She stood there a few feet away from him, stricken, too aware of the way that laughter licked its way through her. And equally aware that despite her best attempts here—despite actually removing her clothing and standing there naked before this man—she had failed.
He was laughing at her. He had already rejected her.
What else did she have to offer him?
“You must go back to your father and your brother and tell them about these offers you have made me,” Balthazar said, when his laughter finally stopped. He straightened from the wall, and she was struck anew by thephysicalityof this man. Unlike the rest of her father’s associates that she’d met over the years, there wasn’t the faintest hint of dissipation stamped on his skin. No paunch, no alcoholic redness about his cheeks. Just that glare of his, like smoke and condemnation—and all else a pageant of lean muscle and tightly leashed power. “How proud the two of them will be, I am certain, that you are prepared to go to these lengths for them. The obvious next question is, how often have you done exactly this on their command?”
“That’s more of a philosophical question, really,” she made herself say, trying to sound witty and urbane. Or something other than shattered. “Are fallen women born or made, do you think?”
It was only as his expression changed, shifting to something far more heated and intent, that she realized that she’d been backing up. That he was advancing on her. And she really ought to have stood there, stood her ground—
But she didn’t have it in her. She was still trembling, from the inside out, and he was bearing down on her.
She could either kneel or back away, and she didn’t dare kneel.
Kendra was terrified that she might not want to do anything else once she did.
“The philosophy of fallen women,” Balthazar said in a musing sort of voice, though there was nothingmusingin the way he looked at her, then. “I confess I have never given it any thought.”
“Of course not. Why think of such things when all that is necessary is using and discarding them on a whim?”
She threw the words at him as if she thought they might hurt him. As if she thought anything might hurt him.
His mouth moved into something even more cruel. Her breath caught. Then Kendra had the confusing sensation of moving through something—only belatedly realizing that he’d backed her straight through the door of his office again.
“Shall we test your theory?” he asked, his voice a growl.
She was something like bewitched. She could only watch as he reached out a hand again, sliding it along her jaw, his fingers over her lips, then hooking the nape of her neck as he had long ago.
Her breath was a wild, flickering flame between them—
Then Balthazar’s mouth was on hers, obliterating everything else but need.
CHAPTER FOUR
HESHOULDHAVElet her go.
That had been Balthazar’s plan. Humiliate her, then dismiss her.
A neat revenge for how she’d left him in that gazebo three years ago. Also a slap at her father and brother, who kept aiming their tawdry secret weapon at him. He’d been looking forward to aiming it right back in their direction, without giving them even a shred of what they’d wanted from him in return.
Only a small taste of what he had in store for Thomas Connolly and his spawn.
He had been congratulating himself on a job well done while he waited for her to slink out, her proverbial tail between her legs.
But she’d come out of his office tucked neatly back into the sleek skirt and blouse she’d worn. There hadn’t been the faintest hint of any slinking. It was as if nothing happened in there. There was only some turbulence in her gaze.
And that husky note in her voice.
Balthazar honestly didn’t know what had come over him. Maybe it was when she hadn’t wilted away into nothing when he’d used the wordwhore.
When she’d debated the point instead.
He had been unable to control himself. Or more precisely, perfectly able to control himself, a skill that had been beaten into him by his merciless father—but wholly uninterested in doing so.
And now his mouth was on hers, at last.
At last.
