“What are you wearing?” he growled.
Hell, he hadn’t intended to vocalize that question. And with his bourbon-weakened control, no way in hell could he prevent the lust careering through him.
She peeked down at herself, then returned her fairy eyes to him. “What?” she asked. “This is what I sleep in. Excuse me if it’s not La Perla enough for you, but I didn’t exactly expect to bump into anyone.”
La Perla. Fox and Rose. Agent Provocateur.
His ex-wife had insisted on only purchasing the expensive, luxury lingerie for herself, and they’d shown up regularly on his credit card statements, which was the only reason he recognized the brands.
But damn. Now, staring at her body with those lethal curves, he would love to put that useless-until-now information to work. To drape her in the softest silk and the most delicate lace. To personally choose corsets, bras and panties to adorn a woman who didn’t need anything to enhance her ethereal beauty and earthy sensuality. And still he wanted to give them to her. To see her in them.
To peel them from her.
Taking another sip, he wrenched his gaze from the temptation in cotton.
“What do you want, Isobel?” he rasped.
She stepped into the room, the movement hesitant. It should be. If she had any idea of the need grinding inside him like a relentlessly turning screw, she’d leave.
“I was headed toward the kitchen and saw the light on in here. I thought you’d gone to bed.” A pause. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said automatically.Lie.
“I’m sorry for you,” she said, gliding farther into the room and halting a small distance from him. As if unsure whether or not she should chance come any closer.
Smart woman.
The way the alcohol and lust coursed through him like rain-swollen rapids, he should warn her away, bark an order to get out of the study. Instead he watched her, a predator silently waiting for his prey to approach just near enough for him to pounce.
“Sorry for me,” he repeated on a serrated huff of laughter. “Why?”
“Because I went there tonight knowing I wouldn’t be welcome. I wasn’t surprised by anything that happened. But you were shocked...and hurt. And for that, I’m sorry.”
He lifted his head, stared at her, astonishment momentarily robbing him of speech.
Discomfort flickered across her features, and she shrugged a shoulder. “Anyway... Your relationship with them isn’t my business...”
“You weren’t hurt?” He ground his teeth around a curse. He hadn’t intended to snap at her. Dragging in a deep breath, he held it, then exhaled. “You weren’t hurt by what they said, how they acted?”
She studied him for a long second, then slowly shook her head. “No, Darius. For me, it was business as usual. For the two years I was married, I was never good enough. Smart enough. Sophisticated enough. Just never...enough.”
“I can’t believe that,” he snapped, banging his glass on the table and surging to his feet. Tunneling his fingers through his hair, he paced away from her. Hecouldn’t. Because then what did that say about the past, about what he’d believed?
What would it say about the family he idolized?
“It’s not that you can’t believe it. You won’t,” she contradicted, her voice low, laced with an unmistakable thread of resignation. As if she hadn’t expected much from him. Certainly not for him to accept her truth. “And you never will. You won’t allow yourself to even consider that the brave man who saved you from a burning building, the honorable man who became your brother when you lost your parents could’ve changed. Or at the very least, had one side with you and another with his wife, who he grew to resent almost from the moment he said ‘I do.’”
“No,” Darius rasped, stalking closer and eliminating the small space between them. “He went against his family’s wishes to have you, risking everything for you...”
“And he came to hate me for it,” she whispered, tilting her head back to meet his gaze. “Just like you eventually will. You said you’re going through with this engagement and marriage for Baron, Helena and Gabriella. What happens when they force you to choose between your pretend wife and them? Because it’ll happen. They’ve earned your love, your loyalty, but you’ve given your word to me. Oh, yes.” She nodded, shadows swirling in her lovely, haunted eyes. “In the end, you’ll resent me, too.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, his jaw so hardened, so tense, the muscles along it twinged. Emotion. So much emotion howled and whistled inside him, he feared one misstep, one wrong-placed touch, and he would shred under the power of it.
“I already resent you, Isobel,” he ground out, forcing himself to meet her gaze. Her scent—delicate like newly opened rose petals and intoxicating like the bourbon he’d been drinking—wrapped around him with phantom arms. Heat emanated from her petite body, and he wanted to curl against it. “And it has nothing to do with tonight or a future emotional tug-of-war. I hate that I can’t get you out of my head. Can’t stop replaying a night that should’ve never happened. I can stillfeelyou. Your lips parting for mine. Your skin under my hands. Your tight, soaking-wet flesh gripping my fingers so hard, it almost bruised me. You just won’t get out of my goddamn head.”
Lust churned his voice to the consistency of gravel. “I hate that I know who you are, and I still want to fuck you. I hate that I can’t tell if you’re the sweet, giving woman from that dark hallway or the conniving one who was married to my best friend.” He shifted that scant inch forward and brought his chest to hers, his thighs to hers. His breath to hers. “I hate that I want to find out.”
Her labored pants broke across his mouth, and he slicked his tongue across his lips, seeking to taste that hard puff of breath. Her scrutiny followed the movement, and like clouds moving in over a blue sky, lust darkened her gaze. God, why didn’t she close those beautiful eyes? Shield both of them from the knowledge that she craved him as he did her? He placed the responsibility on her, because he was the weaker one. She had to be the strong one and save them both.
