She wondered whether she could kick him, but he’d already warned her that it tended to piss him off. Besides, she couldn’t seem to summon up the energy past her initial outrage.
“You drugged me,” she accused him as he kissed the side of her neck, and she could feel his teeth against her jugular. And beneath her palm, the beat of his heart was smooth and steady.
“I’m drugging you right now,” he whispered. “There’s more than one way to wipe out a woman’s defenses.” He pushed the thin ribbon strap of her bra aside to kiss her shoulder, and her own heart lurched.
“Enough,” she said, stumbling back, away from him. “I believe you. You can turn me on against my better judgment without getting excited yourself. I’m impressed. Maybe you could even give me a thousand orgasms, though I sincerely doubt it, but I’m not interested in trying. Now let me go.”
But he caught her wrist, pulling her back toward him, and before she knew what he’d intended he slid her hand down the front of his linen trousers, to the shockingly hard evidence that he was far from unmoved. “Who says I’m not aroused?” he murmured. “I just know how to control my body. My cock may want you but the rest of me isn’t quite as desperate.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but he was too strong, his long fingers like a manacle on her wrist, holding her there, even as he pushed against her, slowly, rocking.
“Stop it,” she said. “You’re a sick bastard.”
“I can be,” he agreed. “Why don’t you try to find my weak points?”
“You don’t have any,” she said in a strangled voice.
“You never know,” he said, and kissed her, with her hand trapped between their bodies, and he grew harder still.
It wasn’t the kind of kiss she’d expected—something masterful and overpowering. Instead, it was a slow, almost curious kind of kiss, hypnotic, as he tasted her lips, her tongue, her skin. He put his other arm around her and drew her up against him, her almost nude body against the loose white linen, the caftan puddled at her feet between them. She could feel his heart against hers, the steady beat an ironic counterpoint to her own racing pulse, as he kissed her, a slow, deep, intoxicating kiss that proved what he said—he was drugging her right now, and he didn’t need to use chemicals.
But she’d never been one to seek forgetfulness or release in sex. It always brought a brand-new set of problems, sometimes worse than the first, and he was right, for the last three years she’d been better off without.
Not that things could get much worse at this point. He was going to kill her—he’d made that more than clear, and there was no way out of it that she could see.
And the shameful, inescapable truth was that she was going to have sex with him. She might try to talk him out of it, talk herself out of it, but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion. She was going to make love with the man who was going to kill her. How sick was that?
But it wouldn’t be making love. He would fuck her, and she would let him, just to prove a point. Not that he could make love to her and remain unmoved and uninvolved. Any man could do that.
But it would prove he wasn’t as all-powerful as he thought. He used sex as a weapon, he’d said, but she was impervious. Even with a gentle, tender man who loved her, she seldom reached anything beyond a mild stirring of pleasure. She certainly wasn’t about to start with her murderer, no matter how good he thought he was.
He pulled back, and she realized he was still rocking against her trapped hand, so slightly that she hadn’t noticed, an imperceptible rhythm that thrummed through his body. And hers.
“You think I c
an’t do it?” he whispered with the ghost of a laugh.
She’d forgotten he could read her so well, and her anger only fueled the cold fire in her belly.
“Can’t do what? Seduce me? I don’t think I have much say in the matter. You’ll do what you want, with or without my cooperation. You just can’t make me enjoy it.”
“Yes,” he said, “I can. Anyplace, anytime. We’ll use your room.”
She was too startled to react. The calm decision in his voice as he took her hand, the one that he’d held pressed against him, was unnerving as he drew her through the shadowy villa. She didn’t resist, stepping out of the discarded caftan and following him. In the end, what would it matter? Things had been spiraling out of control for days now, and she kept fighting back. At least this was one battle she was sure to win.
He released her when they reached her darkened room. He turned on the bathroom light, closing the door most of the way so that only a sliver illuminated the room. He stripped off his shirt and threw it over the small statue of the ballet dancer.
“I don’t like cameras,” he said, turning to her.
Somewhere she found her voice. “There’s a camera in that thing? I guess it’s not Degas after all.”
“It probably is. Harry had no qualms about destroying irreplaceable works of art for his own use. There are cameras everywhere. Harry liked to know what was going on around him, and he never minded an audience himself.”
“Why are you using the past tense? He’s not already dead, is he?”
“Not as far as I know. I doubt Renaud would disobey my orders when it comes to something like that. Get on the bed.”
He was as beautiful as she’d been afraid he was. Most Englishmen tended to be pale and skinny. Peter had tanned, golden skin and subtly defined muscles, and she already knew the feel of his warm, strong flesh.