“Come here,” he said, his voice a ribbon of sound across the elegant room, seductive and stirring. Tristanne felt it against her skin like a caress. Like another one of his promises, the ones her body ached for—the ones she knew she had to fight off at all costs.
“I don’t think so,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it—had she? She only knew that she could not let this happen. She could not surrender to this man. She could not. And not only because of her ulterior motives. She coughed slightly. “I think, in fact, that I will stay over here instead.”
His smile deepened, turned dangerous in ways that made her nipples peak and her belly tauten, further signs that she was in so far over her head, she might as well consider herself half-drowned.
“Of course not.” But he did not seem angry, or even particularly tense. Instead his gaze moved over her, sending heat flashing across every place on her overtly displayed body that his eyes touched. When his eyes met hers again, he seemed almost relaxed. Almost. “Why am I not surprised?”
“You promised…” she began, but she lost track of the sentence because he moved, that long, rangy body eating up the distance between them with sure strides. He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it aside, in the general direction of the grand sofa that commanded one wall. Never taking his eyes from hers, he removed his cuff links in a few quick jerks and dropped them on the wide, wooden coffee table.
He stalked toward her, and she knew he was doing it deliberately. Openly. She could not seem to summon breath to fill her lungs, much less the will to step back, to avoid him.
“No,” he said, as he came to a stop a scant few inches in front of her. His voice was soft, his gaze so hot, so terribly, impossibly hot, and she felt an echo of that dangerous fire flash through her. “No, I did not promise you a thing, Tristanne.”
“Of course you did,” she contradicted him desperately, that thrumming, tightening panic making her scowl at him. “And even if you did not, what does it matter? Surely the great Nikos Katrakis does not have to take unwilling women to his bed!”
“Do you see such a creature in this flat?” he asked, his eyes molten gold and impossible to look away from. “Perhaps you see unicorns, too?”
“You cannot imagine that anyone could turn you down, can you?” she threw at him, her head spinning, her chest tight, as if she had in fact been running all this time, putting all of Florence between her and this man.
Instead of what she was actually doing, which was simply standing there, hoping her legs would hold her up, hoping the bravado that had gotten her through every other complicated interaction with this man would keep her going just a little bit longer. Just this one night more.
He smiled then, a real smile, for all that it was stamped with a deeply male satisfaction that seared through her, making her eyes heat and her sex pulse in want, in need. In that instinctive, insane response to him that she could not seem to control, nor reason away.
“I cannot imagine that you can turn me down, Tristanne,” he said quietly, that undercurrent of certainty, of command, somehow more shattering than anything he might have said. “But by all means, prove me wrong.”
He began to unbutton his shirt as he stood there, looking down at her like some kind of ancient god, all arrogant male confidence and power. Tristanne swallowed convulsively as her eyes, of their own accord, dropped to follow the widening swathe of smooth, olive-toned skin, brushed with a dusting of jet-black hair.
She could not remember her arguments, her strategies. It was as if the entire world had disappeared—all she was, all she had been, all she had planned to do—and all she wanted was to touch the hard male flesh he was unveiling so close in front of her. Taunting her, she was sure. Torturing her.
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” she managed to say, somehow. “This display is highly unlikely to make me change my mind. I told you on the boat—”
“We are not on the boat,” he said, amusement and fierce, unmistakable intent in his gaze, in his voice.
He peeled his shirt back from the hard planes of his chest and let it drop from his arms, and then there was no more hiding from his stark male beauty, rough and compelling, hard-worn steel covered in satin. He was the most glorious man she had ever seen, and she was trembling with the effort it took to keep her hands away from the expanse of smooth, muscled male that stood so tantalizingly close. So close. She curled her hands into tight balls, her fingernails digging into the soft flesh of her palms.
“Nikos…” she whispered, and she knew then that she was lost. All she had was her bravado, her reckless, hopeless willingness to fight the inevitable against all odds. To throw words at him in desperation, because she had nothing else. And if she could not deflect him, if she could not keep him at arm’s length…