He rolls his eyes, and then turns his back. “I’ll talk, you get dressed.”
A part of me wants to insist he wait outside: I might be rocking this sapphire number tonight—his words, not mine—but I’ve always been self-conscious about my figure, never having had, until recently, one I was even remotely happy to flaunt in public. As far as clothes go, baggy and casual is my thing. On the other hand, nothing about this night smacks of the Athena Katsaros I’ve known all these years; these are uncharted waters for me, too, and there’s something exciting—no, deep-down thrilling—about the fact that I don’t shrink from danger. Real danger... But more than that, I’ve never felt as alive as I am right now. Those oil fires I saw burning in the eyes of Valdez and his henchman earlier: I’m not so sure they weren’t my eyes I was seeing—in reflection because right here, right now, something’s igniting me again.
This time it isn’t hate. It’s more subtle, flavorsome, a slow-burning fuse to a secret cache of erotic fireworks I didn’t even know I possessed. It’s something to do with the danger, the disrobing, and him—a killer, protector, and a billionaire Brit. All it would take would be a little turn of his head and I‘d have no defense against the piercing eyes of my dark defender. He’d see right through me, and I’m shivering with fear and anticipation just imagining it.
It makes no sense. But here’s the thing: I’m so going to do it.
“Okay, who the hell is she?” I ask, dropping the towel.
“Buggered if I know...”
“So why did you call me Evelyn at the party?”
“It was either that or Tallulah.”
It's cute. I can’t help but twitch a smile. “Why not just use my real name? You knew who I was.” It suddenly hits me how significant that fact is, because I never attend those kinds of parties, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember if Carlisle and I had met before.
“I was trying to embarrass you. I needed you to leave,” he says.
“Why?”
He sighs. “Because the reason I was there, what I came here to do, I did it for you.”
“It was for me?” I slowly unzip my dress at the side; let the cool air feel its way in. It gooses my bare back, and my nipples begin to harden against the damp fabric hanging loosely out front. The thin shoulder straps need only gentle sideways tugs in order to slip...
“I’ve studied you, Athena. I know all about you. And I’m always very thorough.”
Oh my God... The dress falls, catches on my wide hips, exposing breasts that have never seemed so perfectly shaped, and nipples that have never felt so erect. I’m suddenly dying for him to see me and terrified at the same time. It’s an intoxicating spiral of desires that leaves me breathless. I shove the dress down past my hips, feel it pool about my ankles. Close my eyes to let my imagination take over...try to see myself through his eyes.
“How do you know me?” I ask.
“At first, she was just an orphaned girl who needed my help. Now, she's a woman to me. A rare, brave, completely pain-in-the-arse woman, who happens to be a hundred times more beautiful than she ever thought she could be. She has these exotic, painted eyes that are pure Scheherazade, and a body a man could die for.”
I gasp, open my eyes, and meet his gaze less than halfway. The urge to hide screams inside, but fades behind a shivery desire to know more. About what he sees, what he likes, what I can do for him if he comes closer.
He says nothing, just walks up to me, and his hungry blue-gray eyes exploring every inch of me on the way. My breath hitches. I start to tremble. An aftershave the flavor of a mountain lake in summer fills my part of the boathouse. But it isn’t my part, never was; this is all his. My assignment never reached past the balcony. I’ve been under his protection since then, and this is my final—and willing—surrenders to my dark defender.
If you want me, you can take me.
“I came here to help you get even,” he says, draping the beach towel over my shoulders. “To right a wrong someone has done to you. And this...this wouldn’t be right.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Shhh... It’s all right. You’ve been through a lot; not just tonight, but for months now. I know how it is, what you’ve been through. And you’re not thinking straight.” He holds me to him, gentle but firm, the way Papa used to hold me when I’d done something bad that had left me upset.
That memory, and everything that has happened since—my wayward years apart from him, our tentative reunion, his sudden violent death at Valdez’s bidding, the packed but lonely funeral, Roger Stimson’s kind words after, and this whole crazy quest for vengeance—it all spills out in bitter sobs in the arms of my dark defender.
We lie there for hours, Carlisle and me, together on the sun lounger. He says we can’t make a move till tomorrow anyway. His rendezvous is in the early afternoon, and until then we’re safest here, out of sight, incommunicado.
So who is he really? What’s his part in all this?
“I was hired to kill Valdez.”
“Yeah, I kind of get that part,” I reply, “but who hired you?”
“It was someone who wanted him dead.”
Oh-kay...Interrogating Barrett Carlisle is like picking the world’s most stubborn lock—you really need the right tools for the job. I haven’t a clue what those might be, but I persevere anyway. If I’ve gotten this close to him, he can’t be immune to me.