‘Are you all right?’
He leaned over and placed his hand o
n hers. Thea’s slender fingers were cool and tempting under his. He drifted his thumb over the back of her hand. She turned to him, eyelids heavy and slumberous, her raspberry lips parted as if it were hard to breathe.
He looked back to where he touched her. Glorying at her silky skin, paler than his. Light to his dark. So tempting to slide higher. To stroke his errant fingers along the flesh of her inner thigh and watch those golden eyes glaze with need. See if she’d gasp and yield, relax her legs and allow him to explore all her honeyed dark places till she sighed his name and clenched around his fingers as she came.
He could do that in the back of this quiet car, with no sound bar her shallow breaths and the low thrum of the engine. Trapped in this tiny world of their own.
Time slowed, the moment pregnant with anticipation as his pulse pounded with desire. Did she feel it too?
As he looked up at her Thea’s eyes widened, her gaze flicked away and she jerked her hand from under his as if burned.
No, clearly not.
Christo sat back in his seat once more, ignoring the roar of blood coursing in his ears.
‘Something bit me.’ Thea smoothed the hem of her dress over the red mark on her thigh and clasped her hands in her lap, fingers twisting. ‘Anna says when we get to New York we’re staying in your apartment near Central Park. She seems excited.’
Christo accepted the brisk change of subject. It was safer this way, when all he craved was to touch. To push. His body didn’t listen to sense when he was around her. It wanted—like a fractious child grasping for a jar of sweets placed out of reach. And Thea was the last woman he should desire. He’d discovered things about her. Secrets and lies.
The time would soon be arriving to show her he was no fool. He’d never be fooled again.
‘I’ve a gift to keep you company whilst we’re away,’ he said.
Now to see how well she’d handle what he’d found out, and how fine an actress she was.
‘Ooh, goody.’ She rubbed her hands together with mock glee. ‘What is it? A puppy?’
Christo stilled. Ignored the pang in his chest. No. Assuming his specifications had been met, his gift wasn’t something she’d be able to tame and train.
‘I’m not sure you’re mature enough for that responsibility,’ he said as the car slid through his home’s open gates and pulled into the garage.
He led her to his study. A quiet, book-lined room where fortunes had been made and lost. Nothing had been lost since he’d acquired the house. Thea was to thank for that, but she’d never know it.
He sank into the chair behind his huge desk.
‘I can hardly bear the thrill of it all,’ she said.
Yet she hovered in the corner of the room. Tense, as if she was a woman who hated surprises.
There was a rap at the door.
‘Come.’
In walked a hulk of a man. Christo recognised him. He was one of Raul’s operatives, who’d been assigned for a month to go over the house’s security before he and Thea married. He was perfect. Taciturn. Incorruptible. Raul had chosen well. Thea wouldn’t wrap this man around her little finger, as she’d obviously done to so many others.
‘Thea, meet Sergei Ivanov.’
A deep frown marred her forehead as she looked Sergei up and down. ‘Who the hell is he?’
Christo leaned back in the leather of his chair and smiled. ‘Your new bodyguard.’
She stiffened. ‘I don’t want him. I want Alexis.’
Now the game began.
Christo moved from behind his desk to lean against its front corner. He’d investigated her former bodyguard out of curiosity, though he’d never have employed a man who’d missed so much. It meant Alexis was either careless or complicit. From what he’d learned, complicit seemed more likely. Although there was more to it than that...