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I’ll have to distract him.
I blanch as I slip off my dress, leaving on my panties and heels. Ihatethat he’ll see me like this. But fuck it.
It’ll be the last thing he ever sees.
I reach for the doorknob. My chest rises and falls as I set my jaw and my resolve.
Do it for Nina.
I open the door and step out.
…And then stutter to a stop. The room is empty.
He’s gone.
“Slight change in plans.”
I scream, whirling at the sound of the deep baritone, at the clean scent of linen and spice.
Dante emerges from the shadows by the bathroom door, dressed in a dark suit, a white shirt open at the collar. No mask.
The light from the fireplace flickers in his eyes as they burn right into mine, drinking in my nakedness and my fear. His face is half furious, and half smiling, like he’s savoring my panic.
He moves toward me, his lips curling as I scramble back until my ass hits the back of one of the sofas.
“Now, little hurricane,” he murmurs. “You’re going to tell meexactlywhat the fuck you’re doing here, andexactlyhow you got in.”
21
DANTE
Rage.Jealousy. A primal pull to assert dominance over what ismine.
The rational part of me, or at least what’s left of it, isn’t really functioning at the moment. All I can focus on, all I canseeis Tempest, sauntering basically naked out of the bathroomlooking for another man.
Not just any man.
I’ve been tracking Robert Mouret for a year. Usually, he rarely leaves his estate in the English countryside, and he’s got a twenty-four-hour personal security detail that watches his every step.
When he popped up on my radar as shopping for penthouses in New York, and then applied for a membership at Venom a few months ago, I started to pay attention.
He only knows me as the charming proprietor of the club. I know him as apredator.
Tonight started off badly, when Mr. Mouret cancelled on my dinner invitation, leaving me to entertain the three other couples Tempest and I went out with, none of whom I have any interest in.
However, despite a rocky start, tonight has turned out splendidly. Because while Robert might not have been hungry for cigars and a Michelin starred dinner, hedoesseem to have an appetite for pussy tonight.
Rich and powerful as Mr. Mouret is, being the son of an actual duke and worth north of two billion from his family’s mineral mines in South Africa, he’s embarrassed about his sexual needs, and to be here at Venom. So tonight, he threw off his own security, giving them the slip and letting them follow a town car he wasn’t in all over Manhattan. Meanwhile, he hired asecondcar to bring him here for an evening of acting on his carnal urges.
That was his first mistake.
The bigger one, though, was laying hands on Tempest.
It’s a jealousy I wasn’t aware I was capable of feeling.
Venom has about eight-hundred current members, and a third of those are here maybe twice a year at most. So it’s not as if I recognizeeveryone, but something about the particularly thin, waifish redhead that Robert was talking to tickled my brain.
So I had one of my people walk past them and discreetly scan her wristband to find out who it was. Imagine my surprise when the system told meTaylor Crownwas having a conversation with Mr. Mouret.
