“It is not like a dance at all,” Nikos replied, his eyes glittering. “Not if you are doing it correctly. Euphemism cannot change the facts, only the way they are relayed, Tristanne.”
“The man is not supposed to see the steps of this dance, of course,” Tristanne continued airily, as if she had such conversations regularly and they affected her not at all. “That is my job. And I do not wish to be protected from anything, I assure you. Least of all you.” She lied easily, because she had no choice, and then met his gaze, hoping her own was clear, guileless. Unclouded by her own fears and indecision. “But I will confess that I am something of a perfectionist.”
She shifted her weight then, leaning back so that he would have to choose between letting her stand up or grabbing her close to his chest and making a deliberate show of his superior strength. He chose the former—though not without the faintest hint of a smirk. But Tristanne would take whatever small victories she could with this man. She knew without having to be told directly that they would be far and few between.
“By all means,” he murmured, lounging back against his seat, his eyes trained on her, burning into her, “tell me more about this job you plan to perform with your perfectionist tendencies.”
“Sex is so reductive,” Tristanne said briskly. Rather than take her seat, she moved over to the nearby rail and gazed out at the sea, the passing red and gold French countryside. Her palms were damp. She could still feel the heat of him, stamped into her skin. She turned to face him, hoping she looked nonchalant.
His brows arched as he regarded her, his gaze steady. “I would imagine that depends entirely on the quality of the sex,” he replied. “And with whom you are having it, yes?”
Tristanne waved a hand in the air, with a breeziness she did not feel, as if discussing sex with him was nothing to her. As if her heart did not pound heavily in her ears, her neck, her softening core. As if she could not feel a faint sheen of heat along her skin, making her too hot, too aware. Think of your purpose here! she ordered herself.
“There is so much more to an artful, sustained seduction,” Tristanne continued, as if she had spent a significant amount of time puzzling over the issue, instead of merely last night, while she stared desperately at the ceiling in lieu of sleep and tried to come up with a plan to handle this man. She leaned back against the rail. “And that is what a mistress must do, is it not? Produce the fantasy on command. Seduce on call.”
“I am glad we agree on the command and the call,” Nikos said, rubbing a finger over his chin. “It is the most important part of the equation.”
“Is it?” Tristanne let out a trill of laughter, and immediately regretted it. The laughter was too much—too absurdly blasé. It gave her away, surely. But he only watched her, much the way large and deadly predators watched their prey before making a quick meal of them. He is a dragon, she reminded herself, and she already felt as if she had the burn marks to prove it. Blisters everywhere he’d touched her. She could almost feel them on her skin.
“It is to me,” Nikos said after a moment. “This conversation is missing the crucial point, I think. I am delighted that you wish to perform well as my mistress. But if you think that there is some debate, some contention, over who is in charge of the relationship, I must disabuse you of the notion at once.”
He did not need to deepen his tone, or strengthen the force of his dark gaze when he said such things and, indeed, he did not. He actually relaxed. He lounged in his chair, and stretched out his long legs. He spoke casually, almost as if what he said was an afterthought.
But his undisputable power hummed in the air between them, making the fine hairs on the back of Tristanne’s neck stand at attention.
“You are misunderstanding me,” Tristanne said in the soothing, conciliatory tone she used primarily with her mother when Vivienne was inconsolable, from her ailments or her grief. When that maddening half smile of his deepened, she knew he recognized exactly what sort of tone it was. That it was meant to handle him, appease him.
“I doubt that very much,” he said. “But, of course, I did not have the benefit of your expensive education. Perhaps you must explain things to me in very small and simple words, so that I will understand you.”
Tristanne did not address the idiocy of that remark, though the hard gleam of something like bitterness in his eyes was momentarily disconcerting. She shook it away. In a week’s time, she would be on her way back to Vancouver with her trust fund and her mother, and whatever bitterness he carried within him would remain his and his alone. It was no concern of hers.