CAITLIN CREWS - The Billionaire's Innocent

“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.

“I am not a good man. This is not safe place.” But he reached over and pulled a long blond wave between his fingers, and it made her heart stutter. And for absolutely no reason at all, she felt far safer in that moment than she had all night. Protected, somehow. “There is nothing I won’t do to get what I want, Nora. No one I won’t hurt. Even you.”

She ached in a different way then. The air around them seemed heavy, spiked. It was too hard to breathe. And every instinct she had called her to step forward, to take him in her arms, to soothe him. To tell him everything he wanted to know, because maybe he could help her. And because maybe she could help him, too.

But she couldn’t risk it.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she whispered, and the lie seemed to light up the room, casting them both in its harsh, unforgiving glare. “I came to France to—”

“To fuck,” he finished for her. He let her hair drop from between his fingers and there was no reason on earth that the grave look on his face should make her breath catch in her throat. “Yes, I know.”

“Zair—” She didn’t know what she meant to say, though she was horrified it might be too much. Too many things she couldn’t take back if she was wrong about him.

And of course she was wrong about him. He hadn’t been on that yacht by accident, and he hadn’t been there for her. And the yacht that Harlow had last been seen on had been registered to the Port of Ruyi.

“One last chance,” he whispered.

She didn’t hesitate again. “Is this your normal routine? All this talking? Because I feel pretty confident you wouldn’t have to pay a girl for that. You could just go out and talk to one.” She let her smile sharpen. “Or maybe not. Is that your problem, Zair? Are you incapable of closing the deal with a girl who might refuse?”

Zair altered somehow, standing right there before her. He shifted. His face became stern, dark, even more forbidding than usual. His green eyes glittered, and his mouth was so hard she thought it might bruise her if it touched her.

And she was obviously sick unto her soul, because she wanted him anyway. Maybe even a little bit more than before.

“Go on, then,” he said, in the coldest voice she’d ever heard him use. “Strip. And Nora? I wouldn’t disobey me again, if I were you.”

* * *

He didn’t think she’d do it. He expected her to balk—

But Nora Grant was proving to be far more of a puzzle than Zair had anticipated. She swayed slightly on her feet. She blinked, as if trying to clear her head. And then she looked him right in the eye as she reached down and took hold of the hem of the peach-colored dress she wore, pulling it up over her head and off of her in a single smooth motion.

It went straight to his head.

She was perfect. Her curves were lush for her slender form and the smooth expanse of her belly beneath the small pout of her navel made his mouth water. And all those sun-kissed limbs of hers that he wanted to explore until he knew every inch of her secrets seemed to go straight to his head. Because he knew, now, how her pleasure felt in his hand. How she fell apart so quickly. Gave herself so completely.

She was so gorgeous it made him ache.

“Do you need me to explain the mechanics of stripping to you?” he asked, and he didn’t do a single thing to modify his harsh tone. His reward was the widening of her summer-blue eyes, the erratic beat of that pulse in her neck.

God help him, the ways he wanted her.

She reached behind her and unclipped her bra. Then slowly peeled it down her arms, and it didn’t take a particularly keen observer to recognize that she wasn’t trying to be alluring. She was stalling.

He waited for her to call it off.

Instead, Nora took a breath so hard he heard it, then let the bra drop to the floor. She stepped out of her shoes, and then her hands moved to the top of those hot pink panties he imagined would linger in his mind for years to come.

Her gaze flickered to his. He stared back, implacable. He saw her jaw move and realized she’d clenched her teeth.

Good, he thought.

Then she reached down and whisked the panties from her body as if she was afraid that if she thought about it any further she wouldn’t do it. Leaving her naked, at last.

“Turn around,” he said with a relentless calm he wished he felt. “In a circle.”

She flushed with what he assumed was temper, though it could have been shame. He’d take either one, if it worked. He thought she’d break then, but she glared daggers at him instead. She also turned. Slowly. In a circle. And he prayed to the God he was certain had abandoned him a long time ago for his usual control. For the strength to resist.