He said something into her ear, but she must have heard him wrong. She looked to the stage, but that DJ couldn’t be the pop star he’d just mentioned.
Maybe it was, though. A chart-topping band occupied the VIP section and rose to greet Demitri with exuberance when he arrived, insisting they join their entourage, which included a dozen people, three of whom she recognized, two from television and one from a blockbuster movie. More champagne was ordered and she was pressed into a chair next to a movie star.
Oh, sweet Lord. What kind of life had she stepped into that she was partying in Paris with celebrities? No wonder women dropped like flies for Demitri. He plucked them out of their boring little lives and set them into fantasy worlds where money wasn’t mentioned and rich, gorgeous men flattered you shamelessly.
Not that she felt the same frisson of awareness and excitement when this very handsome actor leaned in to fawn over her, but the way he kept asking her about herself, as though he was genuinely interested, was enormously gratifying to her small-time ego. When he asked her to dance, of course she said yes. What a story to tell her grandchildren! I once danced in Paris with a movie star.
He was a bit handsy in real life. Drunk, she assumed. Not outright offensive but awfully familiar awfully fast. He wanted to dance right up against her and she told herself to go with it. This was how the high rollers lived, right on the edge, she supposed. And honestly, if she wanted to flirt with a wealthy stranger, this guy was probably a far simpler entanglement than Demitri.
He roamed his hands over her hips, skewing her dress up her thighs and she let him, hoping for a flicker of the physical spark she felt with Demitri.
An arm shot between them, separating her from the actor and none too gently forcing the man back.
Demitri stepped into the space he’d created, his posture one of startling aggression even though he said nothing, only stood there like a wall between her and the movie star.
“I thought you were done with her,” the actor excused, holding up his hands.
Oh, yuck. Instantly feeling worthless and dirty, Natalie turned away.
Her arm was caught in a hard grip and Demitri said next to her ear, “We’re leaving.”
You think? she wanted to snap, but didn’t bother. She was so offended and disgusted she wanted to evaporate. Maybe she owned some responsibility for that ugly remark since she hadn’t exactly been discouraging the actor. Even so, it didn’t excuse his talking about her as though she was something to be picked up and passed around. She wasn’t an object.
And what did that say about Demitri that his women moved through the ranks?
And, if that was normal behavior for him, why was he acting all possessive? Because he hadn’t actually had her yet? What if she’d been into that other guy? He didn’t have to come on like he owned her, escorting her to the car as though he’d just bailed her out of jail. Giving her a shoulder of glacial ice because she’d danced with his friend.
“You know...” she began over the sound of the tires hissing through the wet streets.
“Not right now,” he said in a deadly tone.
Seriously? She glared at his incredibly still posture, eyes facing front, jaw set, hands in loose fists on his thighs. As the silence thickened, she realized that hissing sound was his breath moving in measured soughs through his flared nostrils.
That signal of barely controlled fury gave her pause when she really wanted to rail at him. He’d set her up to be hit on and now he was mad it had happened, as though it was her fault. They drove in silence until they reached the hotel. As they entered the lobby, she said frostily, “Don’t bother walking me to my room. Thanks for dinner.”
“Suit yourself,” he said through his teeth, and walked toward the elevators.
She stared at his back, brain throbbing with the knowledge it was better to leave it like this, him going to his room where everyone could see she was not following.
But she still needed to take the elevator to her own room.
Her feet carried her in swift clips of her heels across the marble until she was right beside him.
“I’m a free agent,” she whispered. “In case you missed the part about this evening not coming with any guarantees. So how about you knock off acting as if I’m a tease who bruised your ego by dancing with your best friend.”
* * *
Demitri slowly turned his head and watched her eyes widen like a gopher realizing she’d called down a raptor and was being swallowed by its shadow. Her throat worked and she pulled her elbows in against her body, telling him exactly how menacing he must look. But even though he was holding himself firmly in check, he couldn’t shake the fury that had lit in him with a gasoline-fueled whoosh when he’d glanced over and seen that Natalie was gone.
Finding her on the dance floor being pawed by that overpaid puppet had further infuriated him, making an unfamiliar phrase explode in his head: She’s mine.
He’d watched himself from a distance behaving like a jealous lover, unable to countenance where this streak of possessiveness had come from, but his desire to do violence had been disturbingly strong.
Especially when he’d heard the actor’s tasteless comment.
Natalie’s recoil had been a visceral stab to his gut, making him see how he was tarnishing someone nowhere near as cynical and jaded as he was. He’d been instantly disgusted with himself.
“Is that what you think? That I’m angry with you?” The skin across his cheekbones felt tight and he heard how low and chilling his voice was, coming from a churning, ugly place deep in his chest. “We had to leave, Natalie, because I was going to kill him.”
The elevator doors opened, but neither of them moved. She stared into his eyes and he let her see the banked rage burning in his.
The doors started to close, and he shot out a hand to catch them back. Waving her into the car, he leaned in and pressed the button. “Good night.”
“Wait,” she insisted, holding the doors herself from the inside. “I probably kind of let him think—”
“No, you didn’t,” he said flatly. “I did.” And he was so filled with self-contempt, with shame, he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“What?”
He looked away, regretting he’d said anything. But he couldn’t let her think he was calling her out for drawing that man’s attention when he was the one who’d put her in the actor’s line of sight in the first place.
Inhaling to gather his composure, he stepped into the elevator and punched the button for the penthouse, folding his arms and bracing his feet as he faced her. The elevator began to climb.
“I don’t typically care if the women I take to these things choose to leave with someone else. That guy knows it. Hell, most of the women I date come on to me for an introduction to a crowd like that. I don’t care,” he insisted, because until this evening, he genuinely hadn’t.
“But tonight you did?” She was very somber, looking up at him with something that approached concern. As though she sensed he was facing a demon, which was as painful as actually looking into the hard light of self-reflection.
“Tonight I saw how tawdry it is,” he acknowledged.
The elevator stopped at her floor, making her take a half step for balance. The doors opened, but they stayed in the suspended elevator, the air so thick with tension it held no oxygen.
“He embarrassed me,” Demitri admitted, teeth locked and trying to hold in the uncomfortable revelation. “He made me embarrassed of myself. You said you weren’t in the same league as the women I usually date, and that’s true.”
She flinched, taken aback.
“You’re well beyond anything they could aspire to,” he expounded. “Not as worldly, I’ll give you that, but you have the kind of standards the people I call friends wouldn’t even begin to understand.”
“That’s not true,” she argued. Glancing out to the hall, she motioned that he should release the door. She seemed embarrassed, as though she wanted privacy.
As he allowed the doors to close again, she clasped her hands before her, shoulders hunched and defensive, brow crinkled and looking mortified.
The elevator began the rest of its climb.
“I’m not worldly, that’s dead-on. But I don’t have any kind of great standards. I came to France kind of fantasizing about having an affair, just like you accused me this afternoon. I mean, obviously not really expecting anything to happen,” she stammered, wringing her hands. “But as I was dancing, I was letting myself think it could. I’m sure I gave him the wrong impression.”
His brain went supernova, exploding in his head, sweeping out any other thought but that he could have her.
“If you want an affair, Natalie, I’m your man.” His voice plummeted into throaty depravity, the want in him so quick and intense it tightened his airway.
Her lashes quivered and her pupils expanded. “I... It was just a fantasy,” she insisted—voice, tone, protest thin and insubstantial.