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The etched silver hoops in her ears. The way the crimson dress dipped low over her breasts to show soft, bitable curves. The strong, intriguing muscles of her legs. Her tangy, very feminine fragrance.
Her gaze jumped from the dark street outside the window to the men in the front seat and finally to me. Her fingers knitted together on her lap, but she maintained that serene mask.
In that moment, I’d have given half my fortune to sense her emotions. I wanted—no,needed—to know what she was feeling. But she was as unreadable as a field of new snow.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was huskier than I recalled, another reminder that she’d changed in the years we’d been apart. Back then, she’d always seemed so young to me, so fresh-faced—hell, the day we’d met, she’d just turned twenty-one. I was only four years older, but it had seemed more like ten.
Now she was a woman—a woman who’d turned up at a damn convenient time.
Because if my father’s enemies had searched the world for the one woman guaranteed to slip under my guard, her name would be Camila Vittore.
You won’t be sorry you left me in charge.
My jaw hardened. “Somewhere we can be alone,” I replied.
“Oh.” Sooty black lashes swept down, concealing her eyes. “Good.”
I eyed her. “Are you afraid of me?”
I already knew the answer. I might not be able to sense her emotions, but I knew Mila, and that tense body and too-serene expression said she was anxious, uncertain. The gods help me, but I took a dark satisfaction in it. Let her suffer. She deserved it for running like that.
Her chin lifted. “Should I be?”
“You tell me.”
She shrugged and looked out the window.
Several beats passed in which she sat stiff and composed as a queen going to her execution before I relented. The vampire part of me took a dark enjoyment in her fear, but another, better part—Father would sneer that it was the human in me—felt a curl of shame. Once, this woman had been my whole world.
I pressed a button and soft music filled the interior. Another button, and a minibar slid out from the console in front of us. I gestured at the bottles. “Would you like a drink?”
She licked her full red lips, and my cock went from half-mast to a full salute. ”Yes, please.”
I swallowed against a vivid, very erotic image of her naked and on her knees, sayingyes, pleasein those same husky tones.Later, I told myself.
“Beer?” I asked. “Or a glass of wine?”
“D’you have anything stronger?”
I raised a brow. The Mila I’d known had stuck to beer, wine, and the occasional sweet, slushy drink.
“Whiskey?” I showed her a bottle of single-malt scotch, and at her nod, poured two fingers worth into a Glencairn whiskey glass.
Our fingers brushed as she accepted the glass. Her breath sucked in.
So she wasn’t as unmoved as she appeared.
She tossed down a hundred dollars’ worth of scotch in a single gulp, and then wheezed. Her face flushed.
I stifled a smile even as pain twisted through me, sharp and sudden.
There you are.
That was my Mila. Half-tamed, impetuous. A wild child running free in fields and forests. The woman whose tastes ran to cut-offs and bare feet and crooked daisy-crowns, not chic little dresses and elegant hairdos.
She shoved the glass at me with a scowl. “What is that stuff—gasoline?”
I eyed the pretty heat in her cheeks. Beneath the smooth skin of her throat, a vein throbbed.
