Kate Hewitt - Bad Blood

Or maybe that was her fear about what might happen next.

“Invite me in.” The crack of command in his voice dragged her attention to his eyes, which were far darker and ripe with the tension between them than the rest of him let on.

She was doomed.

“Why would I do that?” she managed to ask crisply, as if she was affected neither by his stark male beauty nor the darker truths she could see move through his gaze. “Do you plan to suck my blood?”

“Is that a request?” he replied, but his customary easy charm was gone. She sensed it before she under stood it—a whisper of trepidation that danced across her skin, snuck down her spine. Something is different , a small voice whispered in alarm. He seemed edgier. More dangerous. Less controlled. She remembered that dark fury she’d sensed in him the first morning he’d walked into her office. Everything has changed , she thought. But she cast it aside.

If she pretended she didn’t notice that the balance had shifted between them, that every breath and every moment seemed taut and terrifying and much too unwieldy to be borne, would that make it so?

“I had to see it for myself,” he drawled, his eyes like green fire as they traveled over her, making her feel scorched. Making her want . Making the air seem to hum with everything that had changed, everything that was new and dangerous. “Up close.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Grace managed to say over the catch in her throat. She left him standing in the doorway, because it was that or risk much more than she dared, and moved back over to the bed as if she meant to finish unpacking. But she was aware only of Lucas.

“You do.” He stepped inside the room and let the door swing shut behind him, which was not at all what she had planned. She jumped slightly and then turned to face him, her stomach dropping. The room seemed much smaller, suddenly, constricting around her. Trapping her—and yet she couldn’t bring herself to run.

Worse, she did not want to run.

She meant to speak, to deny him again, to keep up the civil, professional pretense—but she couldn’t seem to do it. It was the hungry look in his eyes as he moved closer, lean and big and more commanding than he should have been. More intense. More compelling. She could not tear her gaze away from him. It was as if, having seen a glimpse of what was behind the mask he wore, she could not see that mask any longer. She saw the man. Electric and consuming, and so much more real than he had seemed before—more real than was at all healthy for Grace. Her heart began to beat low and deep, the pace quickening—becoming ever wilder, more frenetic—the closer he came.

“I had no idea you even owned a piece of clothing that was not strictly stodgy and office appropriate,” Lucas continued, that mocking note in his voice, the one that suggested he was being playful when she could all but see the tension shimmer through every tendon, every bone of his lean body. “Other than that one red dress.”

“There is nothing in the least bit outrageous, or even interesting, in anything I’m wearing,” she said, trying to sound authoritative. In control. She had chosen the crisp denim jeans and smart black cashmere sweater deliberately, knowing that while her team might choose to dress more casually while away from the conservative head office, she could only allow herself to unwind so far. Her version of casual involved dry cleaning and clothes she would be comfortable wearing to business meetings with her superiors.

Was she really thinking about her clothes? With this man so near? So unpredictable? Did she think that would work?

He ignored her, and prowled closer, peering at the clothes stacked in her open suitcase and beside it on the thick white duvet. Grace felt frozen in place. She did not dare to move. He was much too close, so close she could smell him, heat and man and something expensively spicy. So close she could seem to do nothing at all but think of how his mouth had fit against hers—how demanding, how sure. Or recall how warm his skin was to the touch, or think about how she felt so shivery now, so hot and cold.

And he knew everything. There were no secrets.

Why should that make her feel even weaker? Even more aroused?

He leaned back against the bed, far too close to where she stood, crossing his long legs at the ankle and tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His green eyes were hooded as he gazed at her for a long, hot moment while Grace could do nothing but panic. Her heart sped up and her pulse pounded. Her eyes seemed to glaze over with heat, while her mouth stayed far too dry. The very air in the room seemed to crackle.

“Will we talk about it?” he asked, that dark edge to his voice, as if he fought the same demons that Grace did. “Or will we continue this game of cat and mouse until we end up in bed? I love to verbally spar with you, Grace, do not doubt it. And I intend to take you to my bed. But I rather think there is more to this than that.”

“More?” She did not quite stammer. Not quite, though her voice went up an octave or two, and she flushed.

“I am afraid you’ve seen behind the curtain,” he said in a low voice, with that odd, stirring current beneath. The corner of his mouth flirted with a smile, though his gaze was far too direct, too disconcerting. Too dark. Was this the real Lucas? The man behind the mask? Because Grace knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was not joking. Not this time. “There are penalties for that. Taxes that must be levied. Those are the rules.”

She could not breathe. She moistened her lips and then clenched against a shocking flood of heat when his gaze dropped to her mouth and a stark, purely sexual hunger cast his face into wickedness. The kind of wickedness she wanted to taste, despite everything.

“I came to find you yesterday, after meeting with Charlie Winthrop,” he said, coiled there, just out of reach, about to pounce. And still, Grace could not bring herself to move away as she knew she should. His head tilted slightly to the side, his gaze measuring her. “But you’d gone.”

“I had a meeting,” she said faintly. An electric current was buzzing through her, skimming along her skin, burning through her veins. She felt almost light-headed. Almost dizzy.

“I do not understand this,” he said in the same quiet, serious tone he’d used yesterday. The same stark, brutal honesty. The same directness, with the same undercurrent of something like despair. The room seemed to contract, trapping them both in the same tight, bright grip. “I do not understand why I feel compelled to tell you things I normally do not speak of to anyone. I do not understand why I cannot stop thinking about you. I can’t seem to stay away from you.” His smile turned wry. “And the truth is, I do not want to.”

“You must,” she said, but her voice was insubstantial, the barest breath, and he ignored it, anyway.

“I have never been very good at doing what I must,” he said, a hard amusement flashing through those smoky green eyes. “It is among my many and varied character flaws.”

Grace did not want this. She could not want this—it was too much. He was too much. She felt as if the world shook, as if she shook with it, though nothing moved.

“I am not interested in your flaws, many though they may be,” she said, fighting desperately to return to familiar ground. She could not do this . “We have a job to do. Nothing more.”

“Yes,” he said. “Our job. That has brought us here, to this village of the damned I vowed I would burn to the ground before I’d return to it, and all I can seem to do is wonder.”

His voice was deceptively light, completely at odds with the intensity and fire in his gaze.