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“Good luck with the investor’s meeting on Tuesday, Caldwell,” I tell him.
His mouth clamps slowly shut. He nods and leaves without protest. Caldwell doesn’t know the amount of information I have on him, but he knows I have enough.
Enough to not want to get on my bad side right before his important investor’s meeting. Enough to let me have the woman he intended to take tonight.
“Where are you headed?” I ask against Sasha’s ear, my body pressed into the back of hers.
“My hotel,” she says with a moue of dissatisfaction. “I was hoping I wouldn’t be going back alone.”
“You won’t.”
The second the limousinedoor closes, I turn to take Sasha by the neck and kiss the red of her mouth, pushed more by a rush of possessiveness than desire.
She lets me pin her back against her seat. There’s a reluctance in the way she answers my kiss, and yet she obediently parts her lips for my tongue. The kiss is strange and stilted, marked by the contradiction of palpable reluctance and sweet submission, like she’s willing to put up with whatever I throw at her even if she doesn’t like it.
I tighten my hand around her neck, pressing in, constricting her breath. Her back arches, the column of her neck shudders underneath my fingers, but her hands stay at her sides. She makes no attempt to push me away.
Sucking her bottom lip into my mouth, I bite down, hard and abruptly. She lets out a tiny moan. I pull away. Her eyes, in the darkness of the car, are darker still. Her lips are parted and bloodied. I loosen my grip on her neck.
“I like how—” Her voice comes out rough and breaks. I feel her swallow under my hand. “I like how you’re putting on a good show for your driver.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
She lets out a rasping laugh and stays where I’ve left her, pinned back against the car seat, back arched, hands at her side. Her hair is in disarray, and a thick smear of blood blossoms over her bruised lips. There’s a pink ring around her neck where I gripped it. Her eyes, that poisonous green, glimmer in the darkness of the car, entirely devoid of fear.
“You don’t have a clue who I am, do you?” I say, more to myself than to her.
She pouts the red heart of her mouth, making it gleam. “Everybody knows who you are.”
“Do they?”
“Of course. Luca Fletcher-Lowe. Spearcrest alum. Novus heir. Fencing champion. Archer.” She glides her tongue gingerly over her bitten lip. “Sadist, apparently.”
She might as well have said that everything she knows about me is lifted straight out of the tabloids. When I don’t respond, she lifts an eyebrow.
“Well? Do I have your measure?”
“You’ve barely even scratched the surface.”
She lets out a little laugh. “I’m sure that’s true. I’m sure you’re a verycomplexman—just like all the other men at your club.”
The knife’s edge in her words is half-disguised beneath those big innocent eyes and that carnal mouth that seems to be begging for a cock to silence it. Her inflection and words mock me, but her body language oozes shameless lust. I’m certain that if I were to slip my hands underneath her dress and push aside her panties, I would find her dripping wet.
But doing so would be a mistake, the kind of mistake I ought to be too wise to make.
Sasha’s presence fills theconfined space with the heat of her body, the fragrance of her perfume. Like her, her scent is full of contradictions: floral but dark, exotic but understated. Black orchids or jasmines, and something woody and rich, like vetiver or oakmoss.
Going back to her hotel was supposed to be a simple matter of analysing a specimen. Like pinning a butterfly to an entomological spreading board before carefully labelling it.
But now, I have half a mind to amuse myself with the pretty creature before I—figuratively—needle the delicate thorax.
“You don’t even know what you’re signing yourself up for,” I tell her.
This time, my voice is low and soft. Not because I don’t want the driver to hear but because I want Sasha to know my words are for her benefit and hers alone.
My fingers, skilled from years of fencing, trace a slow path up her bare leg beneath the glossy fabric of her skirt. Her bruised lips part ever so slightly as she catches her breath. I’m still wearing my gloves, but warmth radiates from her skin even through the leather. I pause when I reach her thighs, digging my fingers into her flesh.
She blinks slowly and commands, “Show me, then.”
