She flashed him an admonishing look. “Don’t you dare say that if I don’t have affairs, it should be a treat to spend a night with you.”
“Oh, I’m starting to see the honor will be all mine.” He meant it. Everything she had shared pointed to a woman who lived within her own restrictions. No wonder she had exploded in his arms. She was a powder keg of suppressed passion.
She sputtered with laughter, shaking her head. “You are an incredibly arrogant man.”
“There is an expression, isn’t there? About a kettle and a pot?”
“I’m not arrogant.” She dismissed that with a shake of her loose hair and a haughty elevation of her chin.
“You are,” he assured her. It was as captivating as the rest of her.
“No.” She looked him right in the eye. “My sister is the brash one. Deep down.” Her irises reflected the candlelight between them, mesmerizing as the glow of a fire in the blackest night in the desert. Tears gathered to brim her lashes. “I pretend to be.”
She blinked to clear the wetness and her eyes widened with forced lightness.
“I am her and she is me. At least, that’s how it feels sometimes. Can we talk about something else?”
“I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking you into my bed,” he pointed out, made cautious by that moment of acute vulnerability. Was it concern for her sister? Or an indication of a deeper sensitivity in her personality?
He recoiled inwardly from that. He had enough emotional drama in his life. He needed her to come to this with as light a heart as he had.
“I want you,” he stressed. “What will that take, Angelique? Reassurances about your security? I see you’ve changed your necklace. Is that one rigged?” He winced as he recalled her talk of suitors having to tolerate being constantly under observation. “We’re not being recorded, are we?”
“No. This one requires two hands to twist and set it off.” She ran the teardrop pearl back and forth on its chain. “So I rarely wear it. In terms of physical safety, I have no concerns about being alone with you. I’m not even worried you would write a tell-all afterward.”
“The sting you mentioned? A man did that to you?”
“One did. You can find him living under a false name in whichever Eastern European slum men use to hide when they’ve been financially ruined by defamation litigation and threatened with castration.”
“Your brothers went after him?”
“I went after him,” she said crossly. “Give me credit.”
“Is that a warning? I would never do such a thing,” he promised her. “I may be nonchalant about spending the night with a woman, but I don’t degrade myself or my partner. You can be assured of my discretion.”
Her shoulder hitched in acceptance, but she wore her Mona Lisa expression.
“You’re resisting temptation. Why?”
He reached across to take her hand in his, cradling her knuckles in his palm. He used his thumb to catch at hers, pressing her hand open so he held the heel of her palm gently arched open to his touch. He smoothed his thumb to the inside of her wrist, pleased to find her pulse unsteady and fast.
“Is it because it’s only one night?”
“No,” she said softly. “That’s actually a plus. Like I said, I don’t fit others into my life very well.”
“If you weren’t reacting to me, I would finish our meal and send you home, but I can see your struggle against your own feelings. What’s holding you back then? You clearly want to.”
He caressed that sensitive area at the base of her hand, where a former lover had once told him life and fate lines had their root. That’s why it’s such a sensitive place on a woman’s body, she’d said.
Angelique caught her breath.
He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he did believe in nature’s ability to create sexual compatibility. That sort of gift should be relished when it was offered.
“My room is just down the hall. Anyone who sees us leave the restaurant will think we’re going to the elevators.”
He lifted her hand and pressed his lips into her life, into her fate, as he tasted and grew drunk with anticipation.
* * *
Oh, he was good.
Her pulse went mad under the brush of his lips and she had to concentrate to draw a breath.
“I told myself I was only coming out to prove to you I wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“To scare me off? I don’t scare.”
I do, she wanted to say. She wanted to go to his room so badly it terrified her. And she didn’t understand why this want sat like a hook in the middle of her chest, pulling her toward him with a painful sting behind her breastbone. She didn’t know how to handle any of this because she wasn’t the bold, confident one.
What would Trella do?
It was a habitual thought, one that harked way back to her earliest years when her sister had been the one to stride eagerly forward while Angelique hung back.
She brushed aside thoughts of Trella. She shared almost everything with her twin, but not this. Not him.
That was what scared her. Who was she if not Trella’s other half?
An internal tearing sensation made her touch her chest. She immediately felt the beading on her dress and wondered why she had worn Trella’s creation. Armor, she supposed, but this wasn’t about Trella. That was what made this situation so starkly unique and put her at such a loss.
In this moment she was only Angelique. Except she didn’t know what Angelique would do in a situation like this. Her other lovers had wanted one of The Sauveterre Twins and the fame or influence or bragging rights that came with it. She had gone with them hoping for a feeling of fulfillment, but had never found it.
Kasim wanted her. That’s what made him so irresistible.
And she had a feeling this would be more than fulfilling. Profound. Maybe life-altering.
Which was terrifying in its own way, seeing as it was only for one night, but if she refused him out of fear, she knew she would regret it for the rest of her life.
* * *
The lights were set low in the opulent suite. Champagne chilled in a bucket next to an intimately set table overlooking the Eiffel Tower. The muted notes of a French jazz trio coated the air with a sexy moan of a saxophone, subtle bass strings and a brush on a drum.
Angelique was walking into a setup and wasn’t even sure how she had arrived here. It felt like she had floated. There had been a conversation with Maurice, who had escorted them down the hall. She had instructed him to go back and finish his own meal and put theirs on hold. Charles, her
