Caitlin Crews - In Defiance of Duty

She could see the group of older women at the next table—the way they turned to look at him, then widened their eyes at each other before dissolving into besotted giggles better suited to the girls Kiara imagined they’d been some thirty years before.

“Tell me how to play this game,” he said after a moment that seemed overripe with the gold sinking against the water, the murmur of the crowd of tourists all around them, his own dark magnetism spread over them like an umbrella. “Will I woo you with my wit? My appreciation of the local beauty? Perhaps I will tell you a series of pretty lies and convince you to come back to my hotel with me. Just for the night. Anonymous and furtive. Do you think that would work?”

“You won’t know until you try,” she said, biting back a grin, even as carnal images chased through her head—none of them either anonymous or furtive. All of them spellbinding. Wild with passion. “Though I hardly think laying out your options like that, so coldblooded and matter-of-fact, will do you any favors. You should think in terms of seduction, not spreadsheets.” She found she was grinning despite herself then, but still kept from looking at him, staring resolutely ahead at the delicate arch of the bridge as if unable to tear herself away. “If you don’t mind a word of advice.”

“I relish it, of course.” His low voice was cool, ironic, and still managed to kick up fires all along her skin. And deeper. She shifted in her seat, crossing and then recrossing her legs, wishing he did not take up quite so much space. He did not seem to move at all, and yet, somehow, she was even more aware of him.

“So far,” she continued, her own voice confiding, pitched for his ears alone, “I must tell you that I’m completely unimpressed.”

“With the view?” Now his amusement wasn’t hidden at all. It moved through his voice even as it moved through her, teasing her with hints of something else beneath his crisp British public school vowels, something that indicated English was only one of his languages. The faintest suggestion that he was nothing simple or easily categorized. “I hope you’re not one of those terminally bored socialite types, so shallow and endlessly fatigued by everything the world has to offer.”

“And if I am?”

“That would be a great disappointment.”

“Luckily,” she said drily, “you can hardly have been too invested in something that could only have ended in lies and a furtive hotel visit, could you? I imagine the disappointment will be minor.”

“But I am captivated,” he protested in an insultingly mild way that made her laugh despite herself.

“By my profile?” She smiled at the bridge, imagined the man, and shook her head. “It’s all you’ve seen of me.”

“Perhaps it is your profile superimposed on such a famous view,” he suggested. “I’m as awestruck as any run-of-the-mill tourist. If only I’d remembered my camera.”

She forgot she didn’t mean to look at him and turned her head.

It was looking into the sun. Searing. Dizzying.

He was beautiful—there was no other word for it—but there was nothing in the least bit pretty about him. He was a study in controlled ferocity. He was all sleek muscle and hard, strong lines. His rich black hair, his dark skin, the gleam in his unusual, near-blue eyes. The merciless thrust of his cheekbones, his belligerent jaw. He lounged beside her with seeming nonchalance, but she wasn’t fooled.

He was all focus and menace, his rangy, athletic body showcased to perfection in a dark suit and a snow-white shirt that he wore open against his neck, as if he was attempting a casual gesture when everything else about him shouted out the formidable force he wore the way another man might wear a jacket. He looked as if there was nothing at all he couldn’t do with his disconcertingly elegant hands—and nothing he hadn’t already done with them. She could think of several possibilities, and had to swallow against the shocking surge of heat that swept through her then, wild and out of control.

She was sure he could feel the very same flames.

“Hello,” he said quietly as their eyes met. Held. His sensual mouth curved into a knowing smile. “I like this view, too.”

Kiara forced a jaded sigh. “You really aren’t very good at this, are you?”

“Apparently not.” His impossible eyes, somewhere between blue and green, or possibly gray, gleamed. “By all means, teach me. I live to serve.”

She didn’t laugh at that. She didn’t need to. His own mouth quirked up in the corner, supremely arrogant and male, as if he was as unable to imagine himself serving anyone or anything as she was.

“For all you know, I could be meeting someone.” She forgot about the view; he was far more mesmerizing, especially when his gaze turned darker and something like stormy. She smiled then. “My very jealous lover, for example, who might find you here and take out his aggression all over you. With his fists.”

“A risk I feel prepared to take, somehow.”

There was no denying the edge of confident menace in his smile then, and she wondered what sort of woman she was to find that as appealing as she did. Surely she ought to be ashamed. She wasn’t.

“Is that a threat of violence?” she asked tartly. And then lied. “That’s incredibly unattractive.”

“That is exactly how you look,” he said, the knowing quirk of his hard mouth deepening, his storm-tossed eyes too hot, too sure. “Unattracted.”

“Or perhaps I’m simply a single woman out on the town, looking for a date,” she continued in the same nonchalant, careless tone. “You seem to want to talk only about the view. Or make depressing remarks about the furtiveness of a night of wild, uncontrollable passion. Neither is likely to make me want to date you, is it?”

“Are we talking about a date?” His mouth curved again, as if he was trying not to laugh, and very nearly failing. His almost-blue eyes reminded her of the winter sea, and were as compelling. “I thought this was a negotiation about sex. Endlessly inventive sex, I believe. Or hope, in any case. Not a tedious date , all manners and flowers and gentlemanlike behavior.”

It took her a moment to breathe through the way he said sex , like some kind of incantation. Much less the images he conjured up, and their immediate effect on her body. How could one man be this dangerous? And why was she wholly unable to offer up any kind of defense against him?

“The way this works is that you pretend to be interested only in a date,” she told him as if she was this close to exasperation but only the kindness of her heart kept her from it. “You pretend that you want to get to know me as a person. The more you do that, the more romantic it will all feel. To me, I mean. And that, of course, is the quickest route toward rampant sex in a hotel room.” She shrugged her shoulders as if she felt she shouldn’t have to be the one to share this with him. As if every other person in Sydney was well aware of this, and she wondered why he wasn’t.

“I can’t simply ask for rampant sex?” he asked, as if baffled. Possibly even shocked. Though that lazy, indulgent gleam in his eyes said otherwise. “Are you sure?”

“Only if you are planning to purchase it.” She eyed him, and the hint of a smile that toyed with that mouth of his, and made her wish all sorts of undignified things. “Which is, of course, perfectly legal here. And no, buying me a drink is not the same thing.”

“Your country has so many rules,” he said softly, the amusement leaving his gaze as something far hotter took its place. “Mine is far more…direct.”

She felt the way he looked at her, the fire in it moving over her like a caress, making her wish that she was dressed far more provocatively. Making her wish she could bare her skin to his gaze, to the night falling all around them. The black blazer she wore over a decadently soft black jumper and the dark blue jeans she’d tucked into her favorite black suede books felt confining, suddenly, instead of the casually chic look she’d been going for. She wished she could peel it all off and throw it all in the harbor. She wondered what it was about this man that made such an uncharacteristic urge seem so appealing in the first place.