Ouch. He tried to ignore the blow to his masculine pride. “You’ve never wanted to go to Paris?” he said lightly. “To stay at the finest hotels, to have a magnificent view of the Eiffel Tower, to shop in designer boutiques, to…”
His voice trailed off when he saw Josie shaking her head fiercely. “I just want my sister—home safe. As you promised!”
Kasimir sighed, telling himself they’d have been tracked to Paris, anyway, when he was surrounded by the inevitable paparazzi. He flashed her a careless smile. “Fine. No honeymoon.”
“But do you know where Bree is?” she persisted.
“I might have a slight suspicion.” It wasn’t a lie. He knew exactly where Bree was, and he’d known since yesterday. She was at Vladimir’s beachfront villa on the other side of Oahu. Too damned close for comfort. It was a miracle that for almost a week now, Kasimir had managed to keep it quiet that he was in Honolulu.
“Is she safe?” Josie grabbed his hand anxiously. “He hasn’t—hurt her—in any way?”
Hurt her? Kasimir snorted. His investigator had seen Vladimir kissing her on a moonswept beach last night, while Bree, wearing a bikini, had been enthusiastically kissing him back. But at Josie’s pained expression, he coughed. “She’s fine.”
“How can you know?”
“Because I know.” Rubbing his throbbing temples, Kasimir leaned forward to tell his chauffeur, “The airport.”
They’d already turned down the street of his penthouse as the driver nodded.
“Airport?” Josie breathed. “Where are we going?”
Kasimir smiled. “Let’s just say I’m glad you have your passport…”
His voice trailed off as he saw Greg Hudson pacing on the sidewalk outside his building. He’d come to demand payment in person. A snarl rose to Kasimir’s lips. Damn his greedy hide. If Josie saw her ex-boss, it would ruin everything. Intuitive as she was, she’d quickly figure out who’d bribed him to hire the two Dalton girls. And why. Then, married or not, she’d likely jump straight out of Kasimir’s car, and that would be the end of his revenge.
Josie blinked. “Wait, are we back on your street?” She turned towards the chauffeur. “Could we please just stop for a moment at the penthouse, so I can pick up my bag before we go?” She glanced at Kasimir with a dimpled smile. “And I’ll grab the cake.”
The chauffeur looked at Kasimir in his rearview mirror, then said gravely, “Sorry, Princess.”
“Tell him to stop,” Josie said imploringly to Kasimir. She started to turn towards the window, her hand reaching instinctively for her door. In another two seconds, she’d see her ex-boss waiting outside the building, and Kasimir’s plans would be destroyed.
He didn’t think. He just acted. That was the reason, he told himself later, the only possible reason, for what he did next.
Throwing himself across the leather seat of the Rolls-Royce, he pulled her roughly into his arms. He heard her gasp, saw her eyes grow wide. He saw panic mingle with tremulous, innocent desire in her beautiful face. He saw the blush of roses in her pale cheeks, breathed in the sweet peaches of her hair. His hands cupped her face as he felt the softness of her skin.
And then, with a low growl from the back of his throat, Kasimir did what he’d ached to do for hours.
He kissed his wife.
CHAPTER THREE
JOSIE TRULY DIDN’T believe he was going to kiss her. Not until she felt his mouth against her own. As he lowered his head to hers, she just stared up at him in shock.
Then she felt his lips against hers, rough and hot, hard and sensual as silk. She gasped, closing her eyes as she felt the caress of his embrace like a thousand shards of light.
In the backseat of the Rolls-Royce, Kasimir pulled her more tightly against him, and she felt his power, his strength. He tilted her head back, deepening the kiss as his hands twined in her hair. Her eyes squeezed shut as she felt the hot, plundering sweep of his tongue, felt the velocity of the world spinning around her, as if they were at the center of a sandstorm. She was lost, completely lost, in sensations she’d never felt before, in his lips and tongue and body and hands. When he finally pulled away, she sagged against him, dazed beneath the force of her own surrender.
But Kasimir just sat back against the seat, glancing out the car window calmly. As if he hadn’t just changed her whole world—forever.
“Why…” she whispered, touching her tingling, bruised lips. “Why did you kiss me?”
Kasimir glanced back at her. “Oh, that?” He shrugged, then drawled, “The justice of the peace did tell me I was allowed to kiss you now.”
Her heart was pounding. She tried to understand. “You did it to celebrate our wedding?” she said faintly. “Because you were overcome… by the moment?”
He gave a hard laugh. As the chauffeur drove the Rolls-Royce onto the highway, Kasimir looked away from her, as if he were far more interested in the shining glass buildings and palm trees and blue sky. “Exactly.” His tone was sardonic. “I was overcome.”
And she imagined she saw smug masculine satisfaction in his heavy-lidded expression.