Until You

"Baby?" The door knob rattled. "Are you all right?"

Easy, Miranda. Take a deep breath. Good. That's the ticket.

She stole another glance at the mirror. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it back from her face; she licked her lips, sent her thoughts into the same cool, blank place that was always her refuge just before she went on the catwalk, and opened the door.

"Sorry," she said pleasantly. "Did you want the bathroom?"

Conor smiled at her. He hadn't bothered to hide his nudity. God, he was so—so disgustingly male, so patently sure she'd give him what he wanted.

She could. Oh, she could. She could go to him, clasp his face between her hands, press her mouth to his...

And then he smiled, a sexy little lift of the mouth that told her exactly what he was thinking.

"I don't want the bathroom," he said. He held out his hand. "I want you."

Miranda smiled, too, the way she'd learned to do years before she'd needed that mysterious curve of the lips for the crowds or the photographers.

"I'm going to take a shower."

His smile grew even sexier. "Later, baby. We'll shower together."

"Conor, I've asked you before, don't call me baby. I don't like it."

She could see that it was an effort for him to hold his smile but she had to give him credit; he was managing.

"Okay, if it really bothers you. Now, come back to bed."

"I told you, I'm going to take a shower." She reached into the tub and turned on the spray. "That was fun, I have to admit, and probably just what I needed."

"Just w

hat you needed?" he said, and there was a dangerous undercurrent in his tone.

"Well, you know, to get a good night's sleep." She flashed the smile again. "But I never vary the ground rules."

He was looking at her as if she were something nasty that had just crept in out of the night. A sharp pain lanced through her-—but then she thought of Eva, and Hoyt, and Edouard, and the pain faded to a dull ache.

"What ground rules?" he said, through his teeth.

"Well, there's only one, really." Another deep breath, Miranda, and then spit it out. "No matter how terrific the fuck, I never let a man spend the night in my bed."

His face paled; every bone seemed to stand out so that his blue eyes burned like fire. She thought of the time Jean-Phillipe had convinced her to fly to Vegas with him to see a much-lauded championship boxing match. She'd hated it, the blood and the sweat and the knowledge that a human being should want to pound at another like the most primitive of animals, and Jean-Phillipe had laughed at her.

"Ah, cherie," he'd said, "you do not comprehend the needs of the male animal."

Well, she comprehended those needs now. Conor's eyes glittered with the hunger to beat her senseless.

"Is that what I was?" he said in an ominously soft voice, "A good fuck?"

"You do understand that I meant it as a compliment," she said in her kindest tone.

"Oh, yeah." He smiled tightly. "Yeah, I understand. And I guess it really is a compliment, coming from a connoisseur like you."

The words were blows that hammered at her soul, but she knew better than to let the pain show.

"There's no need to get nasty, Conor. I'm sorry if you've got some kind of old-fashioned sentimentality about sex, but—"

"Hey," he said, and now his smile was swift and very wolflike, "trust me, lady. I've got no sentimentality about anything. I just figured, what the hell, this was fun for the both of us, so—"