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He held it out, yet didn’t hand it to her.
“You can have it,” he told her. “But it’s not a donation. You’ll have to work for it.”
Zair watched her pale. And he was a lost cause, a twisted creature all the way through, because he liked it, for all kinds of reasons. Chief among them, the fact that she didn’t back down, pale as she’d become. How far would she take this?
“Is there a problem?” he asked, calm again. Cool, while she stared back at him with wide, worried eyes, and he liked that, too. “Because surely you must know this, Nora. This is what hookers do.”
* * *
Nora opened her mouth to automatically object to him calling her a hooker—but caught herself in the nick of time.
Tonight, she was a hooker. It was easier to keep that in mind when she was the one saying the kinds of crass, come-hither-with-cash things she imagined hookers might say. It was a lot harder when Zair did it. It veered a little bit too close to a host of shameful, hurtful feelings she’d assured herself she was immune from because she had reasons for doing this. Because it wasn’t a choice she was making, it was a mission.
This isn’t about you, she reminded herself then. Fiercely. Or him. Or whatever happens here.
“Of course,” she said, forcing that calm note into her voice. She held out her hand and his mouth twitched slightly as he slapped the envelope into her palm. “We can do whatever you want, Zair. Just tell me what that is and we’ll get going.”
There was something different about the way he was looking at her, something she might have called indulgent in a more optimistic frame of mind, but she told herself she was imagining it.
That kiss had rocked her. She could still feel it, everywhere, as if he’d changed the chemistry of her body and she was something different now, something new. She’d thought kissing him on that yacht was hard enough, mind-blowing and insane. Here, all alone, with the sparkling lights of the beautiful French Riviera gleaming down below and a mess of stars above, it had been like throwing herself off the side of the nearest cliff.
She wasn’t certain she’d landed yet.
But she couldn’t let herself think too much. She’d decided in the car ride on the winding roads that led up into these hills that she had to concentrate on getting through this night with him, and that was all. She couldn’t let her age-old fantasies about this man confuse the issue.
And if she had to have sex with him to prove she was the whore she was pretending to be, well, she could do that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him for years. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could convince herself that this was all romantic, somehow. That it was something more than a cold, hard transaction and that Zair, too, was something more than a rich, dissolute john.
And meanwhile, Zair was studying her in that disconcerting way of his, as though he was taking her apart and analyzing every piece of her, and she needed to focus. This wasn’t some random guy with a yen for deviant sexual behavior; this was Zair. She had no doubt that he feasted on political intrigue for breakfast, thanks to his job, and she already knew he was lethal. He was formidable and dangerous on every possible level. If she wanted to keep her secrets from him, it was going to take every last bit of her concentration.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he asked, proving himself something like psychic, his cool green eyes seeing far too deep inside her head.
“You mean other than fucking?”
“No matter how many times you throw that word at me,” he said with a certain quiet menace she felt spear through her, making her feel breathless and needy and deeply anxious at once, “it won’t make this charade of yours any more convincing.”
Nora realized, in that searing moment, that she’d anticipated having to do this—if she’d truly had to do it at all, as she’d indulged in a rather sepia-toned fantasy sequence of spotting Harlow the moment she set foot on the yacht and the two of them breaking for land before any transactions took place—with a stranger. She hadn’t imagined she’d have to put on this act for someone who knew her.
She’d certainly never imagined doing this with him.
Nora tucked the fat envelope into her clutch, buying herself a little bit of breathing room, and then she eyed him again, wishing she’d thought to wear some kind of body armor tonight. Alas.
“You don’t actually know me very well, Zair,” she said, and she stopped trying to pretend she was the Happy Hooker. She just said it, flat and matter-of-fact. “I’m sorry if you can’t handle this. But it’s not up to you to decide what I get to do for fun.”
“Fun?” He looked so relaxed, suddenly. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his trousers and shifted back on his heels, and Nora knew, somehow, that he was the most furious she’d ever seen him. It should have terrified her. Instead, it made her…tingle. Everywhere. “This is what you find fun? Sucking the cocks of strange men in foreign countries? For cash you don’t need?”
“If I needed the cash, it wouldn’t be fun, would it?”
“And what pleasure do you get from this, exactly?” He shook his head, his gaze darker and more tormented than she’d ever seen it before—but surely that was a trick of the light. It was gone in an instant. “If this is an adrenaline thing, you should consider more extreme sports. Flinging yourself from planes and down the backs of unmapped mountains would be far safer, don’t you think?”
She smiled. “I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Do you extend the same consideration to all the women you buy?”
That fascinating mouth of his moved into something too dark to be a smile in return. “How often do you do this?”
“As often as I feel like it.” Nora tilted her chin up when he looked dubious. “I don’t need your approval, Zair. It’s none of your business.”
“That is where you are wrong.”
“I think you should spend some time thinking about how you only seem to find my participation problematic,” she told him, ignoring the simmering way he was looking at her. “If women selling their own bodies is a bad thing, then it must be equally bad for everyone on that boat. Yet you went there to buy someone. And you only left with me.”
“You were the only woman in the room related to my best friend,” he gritted at her. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You’re wasting my time.” She squared her shoulders when he glared at her, and she wished that she felt as tough as she was acting. Or that he didn’t still appeal to her, despite all of this. “You dragged me away from a boat full of prospects. I didn’t come to France to sit through a lecture. I’m calling a cab.”
She started for the door with her head high, though she was prudent enough to give him a wide berth as she went. Her heart was clattering against her ribs and her knees felt weak, but she thought she could hold herself together long enough to make it into a taxi.
Then she could spend the rest of this terrible night in the fetal position, crying for the death of the Zair al Ruyi who had clearly never existed outside her childish fantasies.
And then start this whole thing over again tomorrow.
She had her hand on the front door and she didn’t hear a thing—Zair simply came up behind her and slapped his own hands against the tall, smooth wood on either side of her, caging her there. He didn’t touch her. But she could feel the heat of his hard body like a furnace, roaring just there at her back, easing into her bones and making her feel weak and greedy.
She was suddenly, powerfully glad that the huge, heavy door was right there in front of her, propping her up. It kept her from sliding into a heap on the ground when he leaned in close, swept her hair to one side, and pressed his mouth to the nape of her neck.
Nora went white hot. Her eyes slid shut while that same wildfire scoured her, hotter than before, burning her alive and making her want more. More.
She felt that bold, sensual kiss everywhere. His mouth was so hot, so clever. He was so big and so powerful, and he touched her so gently, it made her mind blank out while her body shivered into total, needy awareness.
And he knew it.
He laughed, low and dark, and Nora knew that he was as aware of that tightness in her breasts, that flush that lit her up from her cheeks to her navel, even that molten heat between her legs, as she was. He knew everything, as if she were nothing but a wide-open book to a man like him. She suspected she really was.
Even that notion failed to do anything but make her want him all the more.
“I won’t lecture you,” he told her, his voice like a hundred dark dreams, winding through her, pulling those gleaming threads of need inside her so tight they took her breath. “But you took my money, Nora. Surely you must realize that I must take my pound of flesh in return. This is how it works.”
“I’m your best friend’s sister,” she reminded him, her voice ragged. “Weren’t you clutching your pearls about that not five minutes ago?”
“I can think of a number of uses for pearls, none of which involve clutching them,” he said, and the obviously sexual insinuation should have left her cold.
But it didn’t. Which meant she was as twisted as he was.
Nora couldn’t bring herself to care about that. In that moment, with him right there, his mouth on her skin and his body braced behind her like a promise she wanted desperately for him to keep, she didn’t care about a single thing except having him.
She’d wanted him for years. Even while she’d claimed to hate him, she’d wanted him. Surely the circumstances didn’t matter. Surely she could have him just this once.
She turned around. His green eyes blazed with something harshly male and triumphant. His mouth was a hard, determined line, and Nora thought that she really might die if she didn’t taste him again.
Nora leaned forward, thought about extreme sports, and then she threw herself off that cliff, pressing her mouth to his.
This time, the kiss skyrocketed into madness the moment their mouths touched, and she had the wild notion that he’d been holding back before. Sensation pounded through her, so intense she was afraid, on some level, that she might not survive it. His hands moved to cradle her face and he crowded into her, pressing her back against the door, leaning into her with that athletic body of his, and she loved it. She wanted more.
She only realized when she heard a sound she dimly recognized as her voice that she’d said that out loud. “More.”
He angled his head for a better fit, and Nora rejoiced in it. In him. She kissed him with all her fear, her panic, and the driving passion inside her that made her feel like a stranger to herself.
Zair muttered something and then he pulled back. He shrugged his way out of his jacket and let it drop to the hard stones beneath them, then he moved in close again and this time, he simply picked her up. He propped them both against the door and he brought her legs up, helping her wind them around his narrow waist.
And all the while he kissed her, feasting on her mouth, tasting her over and over as if he was as starved for this as she was. As if he felt the same need.
As if they were both equally doomed.
His mouth moved from hers then, and he tasted his way across her jaw, then down her neck to the place where it met her shoulder. He pressed her harder into the door and smoothed one of his big, tough hands down her side, then over the outside of one leg. Then he reversed directions and traced that same lazy pattern beneath the rucked-up hem of her dress, up along the smooth skin of her inner thigh.
Nora trembled, but it didn’t occur to her to protest. Or to do anything at all but open herself to him and then welcome him in. He made a sound that was something like a growl, and she felt it inside her like an echo. Zair reached the core of her, hot and aching, and she jolted against him as he caressed the wet, swollen heat there through the lace panties she wore.
Zair lifted his head to meet her gaze. His green eyes were so bright they almost hurt her, his mouth was that solemn, distracting line that Nora could feel like music inside her, and then he slipped his fingers beneath the lace and satin she wore and he stroked his way deep into her.
He muttered something—a curse, a prayer. Nora arched against him, tossed and torn by the crash of so much sensation, so much searing, electric need. Zair thrust his fingers deep inside her, setting a hot, dark rhythm while he held her there, pinned between the door and the immovable wall of his chest.
She was open and immobile. She was outside herself. She was so lost in his spell she didn’t care about anything but what he was doing to her. She tossed her head back and she matched her hips to his movements, and she was scalding, hot, wild, and his. Undeniably his.
The way she always had been, something intoned, deep inside her, like a bell.
“Come,” he ordered her in a harsh whisper, and it sent a thrill through her, making her hurt—and then he pressed down hard against the aching center of her and she burst into desperate, gorgeous pieces all around him, sobbing out his name, tipping over the side of the world and falling straight off into the stars.
And when she came back to herself he was setting her down carefully on her wobbly feet, putting the skirt of her dress to rights and watching her in that hooded, lethal way of his that made her tremble all over again.
“What about now?” he asked silkily, appearing to be in complete and utter control of himself. “Are you ready to tell me the truth yet?”
And she was terrified that he’d see too much on her face now. Or worse, that she’d blurt it all out, because she felt rubbed raw. Outside her own skin. Completely incapable of protecting herself.
The way he wanted her to be, she understood, and she couldn’t let it happen.
She did the next best thing.
Holding his gaze, Nora sank down onto her knees before him.
Chapter Three
NORA BRACED HER hands on Zair’s rock-hard thighs and then pressed her mouth to the hard, hot length of him through the fine material of his trousers.
She felt him thicken even further and told herself it didn’t make her tremble, that she didn’t feel a bolt of new heat pierce through the core of her like a brilliant ache. That this was simply playing offense instead of defense.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zair demanded, and she liked that he sounded as rough as she felt. His strong hands came down and blocked her, taking her face between his palms and gently, if inexorably, tilting it up so he could scowl at her.
“I’m sucking the cock of a strange man in a foreign country,” she said in a voice she hardly recognized as her own. “The way I like to do. I told you.”
It could have been a few moments there on her knees, or several years. Nora felt caught. Suspended somewhere in his dark green gaze, outside herself. She found she’d caught her breath—
And then he moved, scooping her up from the floor in another offhanded display of his superior strength and it thrilled her in a way that had nothing to do with what she thought she ought to feel and everything to do with something primitive and deeply feminine inside her that she was afraid to examine too closely. He swept her up and onto her feet and then he used her shoulders to turn her toward one of the long corridors that ran off from the great room.
“Walk.” It was a low, gruff command.
Nora simply obeyed him.
It made her calm. It made it easy to walk straight ahead until he told her to turn and then follow the spiral stairs down and around into the vast, two-story master suite that plunged down the side of the hill, a cunning merging of old French country accents like the exposed wood beams and the Provençal color scheme with a certain modern sleekness, making the room feel old and new and somehow perfectly Zair. The grand windows offered views of all the sparkling lights that would, come daylight, transform from all its current glittering dark beauty into the serene, sun-drunk stretch of the Côte d’Azure and the gleaming Mediterranean Sea beyond.
Zair followed her down the stairs. When she turned to face him on the dark wood floor between the sitting area arranged around a great stone fireplace and the stout, pillared bed that dominated the far wall, he smiled.
A small, infinitely predatory quirk of his wondrous mouth. Nora let out her breath in a rush.
“Strip,” he said gently. Almost tenderly.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
She stared at him. Paralyzed, somehow.
Zair’s smile deepened, grew more lethal. “Are we about to have another conversation about the role of the common prostitute, Nora? For someone who finds this line of work so delightful she travels the world to indulge herself in the joy of it, you certainly seem untutored in how to proceed. Curious, wouldn’t you say?”
“I wouldn’t say anything of the kind.”
He moved to the back of the nearby sofa and leaned against it. He crossed his arms over his muscular chest and his long legs at the ankle, and he fixed that dark green gaze of his on hers.
“Let me tell you what I think,” he said.
“I can’t imagine why you think I’m interested.” But all she could think about was his taste. His kiss. How terribly she wanted him, even now. His gaze was a smoldering thing, and it took everything she had to stand there so insouciantly, as if it hardly signified.
“I don’t buy it,” he said, with a small shrug.
Nora sniffed. “In fact, you did. Literally.”
Zair laughed, low and dark. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you’re here for fun.”
“It’s cute that you think you know me,” she replied, though her heart was beating too hard then. Much too hard. “But you don’t.”
“If you say so.” His voice was steel now. Demanding in a different way, as if he was fighting his own temper. “But you should certainly know better than to lie to me.”
She swallowed, hard. “I’m not lying.”
He pushed himself off the back of the couch, and she had the hysterical notion that he was taller, somehow. Darker. Certainly more grim as he came toward her, towering above her, making her chest feel too tight.
“Do you want me to push you, Nora? Because I can. I will.” He laughed again, and it was a stark sound. A scrape against her skin. “I’ll enjoy it.”
“Go ahead,” she said, though it came out much thicker than it should have. “If that’s what turns you on. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?”
He frowned, and there was a bleak thing alive in his gaze then, making his green eyes seem haunted.
