to play, but he wasn’t just anyone else and she wasn’t just any woman.
The question was—who exactly was she?
It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter, he thought fiercely. He had to have her and he would do everything to see that he made her his.
“My place or yours?” he asked roughly as her touch powered through him in racing spears of energy. It could all sound almost normal. Almost real. Julian craved what she offered so artfully, his heart racing to know her and how she would feel in the throes of lusty, energetic screams. “Never mind. You’ll come with me,” he told her in the very next breath.
She gave him another of those enigmatically simple, shallow smiles that never quite thawed the icy calculation in her eyes. Julian did not pay that any mind. She was voluntarily allowing him to take her somewhere private, and that was all that mattered.
He swept her outside of the club, keeping her tight and close to his body. He ignored Vincent’s leer and thumbs-up and hastened his prize to the rental car he had chosen a month earlier. He knew the racy design earned him status in the eyes of some women, and he also knew it would make no impression on this woman in particular. He rather enjoyed that idea. It was indicative of a woman who, for all her fine embellishments, was not dependent on material things. He thought of how useful that would be as he ushered her into the vehicle and hurried to get behind the wheel.
“I need to stop at my car for my purse,” she informed him quickly, leaning her warmth against the length of his arm and trailing fingertips against his chest. He nodded curtly and threw the metallic beast into gear.
Asia snagged her bag from her car, not bothering to check what she already knew was ready and waiting for her within it. Even if he hadn’t stopped as she had requested, she was prepared for that, too. This was just added insurance.
Julian Sawyer was going to regret the day he’d ever laid a hand on her sister.
Chapter 2
Asia was quite familiar with where Sawyer lived and lurked. She knew the entire layout of his rather classy apartment, from the broad living room to the wood-paneled kitchen, and especially the roomy back bedroom where he had taken so many of his nightly conquests. Of course, they hadn’t always made it that far into the apartment. Julian did have the annoying habit of keeping all his shades tightly drawn, so it was only with parabolic microphones that she had learned as little as she had. Tonight that privacy was a deeply felt blessing. If there were newly aware Feds out there watching, she was going to keep them forever guessing over what was really going to happen. She might have preferred the anonymity of her own hotel room, but any agents worth their salt would have followed them there just as easily. At least she knew exactly how well versed he was in sealing his privacy.
The door closed and she tossed her purse down on a nearby chair as she turned and fully confronted the enemy. She wriggled a little slink into her carriage, reminding herself that she was supposed to be there for a good fuck and she needed to keep up that image until she was able to finally make her move. If that meant getting down and dirty, then so be it. Asia would do anything if it gave her even the smallest chance of restoring her sister to her.
Anything. Even if it meant completely seducing the repulsive beauty of this sociopathic Casanova.
Julian shut the door and dropped his keys on a side table, his eyes riveting onto her as she stood in a pose of proud display for him. Her Amazon’s body tantalized and teased, she knew, the provocative cling of her clothing an amazing lure to his innately male sexual need for visual stimuli. She had watched him and knew his every last preference. He didn’t care for any particular hair color, it seemed, but he tended toward women with long hair. He loved the long-legged ones most of all. He seemed to react very strongly to willfulness, enjoying fire and a bit of fight. Above all, he liked aggressive women. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Julian Sawyer was looking for either a rough ride or a good fight to get himself off.
Asia tipped one spaghetti strap to the very edge of her shoulder, silver sliding low against her breast and threatening to run free from the nipple it clung to.
Julian’s eyes ran dark, like evergreen as they fell to the tempting, teasing display, and she could swear he made a deep, dangerous sound of need and blatant desire. She recalled that she had noted him to be an eerily silent and methodical lover. She had heard woman after woman cry out in satisfaction, attesting that he actually knew what he was doing, but outside of his breathing she’d never heard so much as a groan from him. In fact, he’d been unnaturally quiet and still. She wondered if she should be flattered or afraid of anything different from the norm. Perhaps the more he was provoked, the more likely he was to lose control. Perhaps it was his sexual response getting out of his control that set off his psychosis. The thought only encouraged her to goad him. She wanted him to snap. She wanted him to give her a reason to open up hell on him.
She reached to push aside the opposite strap, but in a quick flash of movement she barely saw, he crossed to her and caught the thin strips of silver fabric, closing his large hands around her arms and shoulders as he kept her dress from sliding free of her body.
“No,” he said deeply at her surprised and questioning look. “When I see you naked for the first time, it will be as a lover, not as a stranger. You will tell me your name first.”
She hesitated at the dictate, knowing it was a very visible pause by the way he frowned so seriously. If he had been anyone else, she would have thought she’d hurt his feelings. But in all the time she had been stalking him, the one thing she had noted above all else was that Julian Sawyer was a man of very few emotions. He was always calm and always steady. Perfectly controlled at all times. Except for tonight. Tonight he was different. Different for her.
“Asia,” she offered at last, the firmness of her tone warning him that was as far as she was willing to go. “My name is Asia.”
He digested that for a moment, and she wondered how long it would take before he considered his condition satisfied and subjected her to the slightly chilly air-conditioned atmosphere of the apartment.
“Asia,” he echoed, his large hands sliding smooth and warm up over her shoulders until, she realized, he had resettled the straps of her dress into a less precarious position. The unpredictability of his actions disturbed her a little. This wasn’t how he had been with the others before her; he had shown no interest in speaking to them. Asia tried to remind herself yet again that a difference was a good thing. Something had set each pair of women of the past seven months apart from all the others. She needed to be set apart if she was going to be among that select class of victims.
In keeping with her character of the night, however, she dropped her hands onto her hips and cocked her head as she bent a knee forward enough to rub her leg between his thighs where it settled against them.
“I thought you were out for a fuck,” she noted bluntly. “You can skip the Mr. Romance routine. I don’t need it.”
He studied her carefully a moment, reaching to trail his fingertips up along her throat. “I think you do need it,” he observed. “I think you have a great many needs you’d rather not share with me. You want this to be uncomplicated and straightforward, where it cannot be.”
“Sure it can,” she forced herself to say even as his uncanny words made her heart race beneath her breast. “You are a man. I am a woman. As long as we have all the interlocking parts required—and I admit, a fair amount of skill would be nice as well—we can get straight to where we both want to be. You haven’t had a hard-on for me for this long because you want to talk to me,” she pointed
