Cold as Ice (Ice 2)

“Sometimes,” he said again. “If I have to.”

She was good at hiding her reaction—he had to grant her that. She’d wanted to know.

“Did you sleep with Harry Van Dorn?”

“Not his type, fortunately.”

She was silent for a moment, and he had no earthly idea what she was thinking.

“I don’t understand you,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know why I’m trying. Bisexual assassins aren’t my usual acquaintances.”

“I’m not bisexual. I just do what needs to be done.”

“Do you come? When you’re fucking on the job?”

He almost smiled. She couldn’t say the word fuck quite as casually as she wanted to. Or maybe he just upset her with his frank answers.

“Of course,” he said. “Sex is simply a programmed physical response. I can make my body do anything I want without it interfering with my emotions.”

“You said you had no emotions.”

“Did I? Well, that’s true enough. Let’s just say that using sex as a tool is no more intimate than using a fake name and learning to respond to it. It’s a skill, a weapon. Something I use when the occasion calls for it.”

“I don’t believe it’s possible,” she said. Foolish girl. Didn’t she know he was looking for an excuse, any excuse to put his hands on her?

“It’s possible. Shall I demonstrate?” He almost wanted to laugh at her expression. Almost.

She bolted out of her chair. “I’m going to bed.”

Let her go, he told himself. Keep your bloody mouth shut and let her go.

“Aren’t you curious?” he found himself saying. “I thought you weren’t going to give up without a fight. Prove me wrong. Melt my icy heart with the warmth of your tender love.”

“Fuck you,” she said, furious.

“That was what I was suggesting.”

She should’ve run while she still had the chance. For a smart woman she was being astonishingly stupid. Either that, or she liked playing with fire. “You’re joking,” she said in a flat voice.

But they both knew he wasn’t joking. He didn’t know why he was doing it. He wanted her, that was a given, but he’d wanted other women and having a hard dick didn’t mean he had to do anything about it.

Maybe he wanted to play with fire as well. Maybe he thought it would make things easier if he just fucked her and got it over with. Or maybe he was looking for a reason to save her.

But even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. Run away, he thought.

“Come here,” he said.

10

Genevieve stood frozen in the middle of the room, her bare feet planted on the cool tile. The night was still and quiet around them, and somewhere out there a helpless man was bound and drugged and awaiting certain death at the hands of the man sitting so casually in the leather chair. Peter Jensen’s face was all planes and angles, eerily beautiful in the twilit room, and she couldn’t forget what that full, mobile mouth tasted like. Even his cold blue eyes seemed warmer, more like a still lake than an Arctic sea.

Oh, yes, he was beautiful—there was no denying that. And she’d never realized how sick she could be, to want him, to want an excuse to let him put his hands on her.

“How stupid do you think I am?” she said, barely keeping the fury from her voice.

He leaned back in the chair, his long, linen-clad legs stretched out in front of him. He was barefoot as well, and she couldn’t help but notice he had long, beautiful feet. What else was beautiful?

“We both know you’re a very smart woman,” he said. He began unbuttoning his loose white linen shirt, his hands tanned and graceful and deadly. “You won’t miss an opportunity to gain some sort of advantage over me, either emotionally or physically, and you’d never accept the fact that it was hopeless. Since I have no emotions, that leaves the physical.”