Nauti Temptress (Nauti 8)

Lifting a glass to her lips, she sipped at the white wine she’d obviously found in the large walk-in refrigerator. The house had an actual walk-in refrigerator, which had amazed Brogan the first time he had been there.

Propping one arm on the bar, he just watched her, biding his time. She was sitting over there trying to convince herself she could control what was going to happen this weekend and how it was going to happen. And he would give anything to allow her the opportunity to see whether she could use all those very perceptive instincts and feminine wiles to control him. Unfortunately, in the middle of an operation with the potential to turn nasty fast was no place to allow himself to be that distracted.

“Are you ready to tell me who owns this place yet?” she asked when he said nothing more.

“I’ll tell you everything before we leave Sunday,” he promised her. “Hold your questions until then. ”

“How very ominous,” she murmured as she brought the wineglass to her lips once again. “Let me guess: You’re waiting until Sunday because you know once you explain everything, I’m going to be either so pissed, so brokenhearted, or both that you won’t have a chance in hell of getting me into your bed. ”

She was good; he had to give her that.

He merely grinned back at her, and kept his opinion to himself. His opinion and his confessions. It was the confessions that were going to get him in trouble. Or might piss her off for a while.

Of course, sometimes she was so much like her brother she might actually shoot him.

“I’m going to bed; I’m tired. ” Sliding from the chair, still wearing those strappy four-inch peep-toe heels and carrying her glass of wine, she strolled toward him with such sensual grace and sleepy-eyed arousal, he had to clench his teeth, grinding off yet more enamel, to keep from throwing her to the couch and taking her with all the finesse of a callow, inexperienced teen.

He waited until she was ready to pass him. Until he was confident she actually thought she was going to get past him.

Then he stepped in front of her.

“You haven’t seen all the rooms yet,” he told her softly. “How can you be certain you’ve chosen the right one if you’ve missed any?”

Her heart was pounding. He could see the proof of it at her throat, where her vein pulsed at a rapid pace beneath her flesh. It was there in the hard, quick rise and fall of her breasts and the fine trembling of her body.

“The room I chose is fine, I’m sure. ”

God help him, her nipples were as tight and hard beneath the material of her dress as little pebbles.

He lifted his hand and stroked the backs of his fingers down her cheek as her breath caught before she exhaled with a rough little sigh.

“You know what’s going to happen,” he told her as her lips parted to facilitate her breathing.

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen right now,” she informed him. He let her lift the wineglass and take a healthy sip before he spoke.

“I don’t heel worth shit,” he told her then. “You won’t control me, Eve, you won’t tame me, and you won’t dominate me. Now, that’s a warning I’ve never given another woman, and I won’t waste my time telling you again. So if that’s what you think you’re going to do, then I highly suggest you reconsider your options. ”

Eve stared back at him silently, careful to keep her mouth firmly shut until she was certain she had a handle on the anger ready to burst past her lips.

When she felt she could speak civilly she smiled back at him with cool disdain.

“Brogan. Number one. ” She held her forefinger up to him imperiously. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, some bitch who needs to be warned how arrogant, controlling, dominant, and manipulative men such as you can be until you realize just how it can potentially damage a relationship you decide you don’t want to lose. ”

“Eve—”

“I listened to the bullshit spilling from your lips, Brogan; you can take a few precious minutes of your time to listen to common sense now. ”

That finger pointed up toward his face imperiously.

“Number two,” she continued. “Not only am I not a bitch to jump at your command, neither am I some whore you bought for fifty bucks, or the mistress you support. Just because you all but kidnapped me does not mean I owe you so much as my company, let alone my virginity. ”

She watched as his eyes narrowed on her, the blue-gray definitely turning steel gray at the mention of her virginity.

“And number three,” she snapped, unable to hold back the anger caused by so much adrenaline with no place to go. “If you can’t respect me, Brogan, and see me as your equal, then I’ll be damned if you’re even in the running for my virginity. ”

She was finished now.

Stepping back, she propped her hands on her hips and glared at him. He smiled. And that smile sent trepidation surging through her.