at the thought of what might happen. What he might do if he ever suspected what was happening to her. What she felt—careening around inside of her, bright and impossible—
“You are no longer twelve,” he bit out, and his voice in person was...better. Richer. Darker. Delicious, somehow.
God help her. She was definitely no longer twelve.
And she refused to act as if she still was, no matter that the fairy-tale shadows in her head had come to life before her eyes...and in a way that was far more raw and real than she ever could have imagined.
“My friends said my birthday present was waiting for me in here,” Liliana said, with an ease that had to be all about the wine she’d been drinking, because it certainly wasn’t her usual way of speaking. To anyone, and especially not to him—not that she’d had much practice with the latter. “If they meant you, it’s official. This is the worst birthday of my life.”
Izar took a step toward her, then stopped abruptly. As if he didn’t quite trust himself to come closer—but that was ridiculous. Still, the odd little notion made her throat go dry and her heart beat at her all the harder.
His black eyes glittered in the buttery light from her desk lamp and the chaotic gleam of the city outside her windows. He held himself still, so still she was entirely too aware of his solid shoulders, which took up the whole of her bedroom, and how he seemed to vibrate with a certain rich, masculine darkness that kicked its way along her limbs and pooled deep in her belly. Then pulsed.
But this wasn’t a letter. This wasn’t one of the few, brief telephone calls they’d had over the years in which he spoke and she was expected to listen gratefully and then quietly obey. This was her bedroom and her birthday party.
This was her life.
And she didn’t have to be cowed by this man, no matter the effect he had on her and no matter what parts of her fortune and future he still controlled.
“Did you by any chance happen upon a better-looking man and heave him out the windows? Into the closet?” She smiled at Izar. Coolly. Which was not the snide note of her dreams but felt good all the same. “Because I left my own birthday party for the promise of a hot guy, not you.” She let her smile deepen, trying to look as unimpressed with him as possible. “Sir.”
A muscle in Izar’s lean jaw clenched. And she was not at all prepared for his thunderous scowl. It all seemed directly wired to that pulsing, humming, molten place between her legs.
“Tell me something, Liliana,” her guardian said very distinctly. Fury and something far darker and more dangerous threaded through that quiet voice of his she’d only heard directed at her once or twice in all these years. And never like this, as if he had feelings about her one way or the other. She could hardly breathe through it. “What game do you imagine you are playing?”
THE LAST TIME Izar Agustin had seen Liliana Girard Brooks in the flesh, she’d been young and flushed and sobbing her eyes out. Not unreasonable for a girl who had lost her parents, but entirely outside his various areas of expertise. Then, as now, he’d acted entirely in her best interests—none of which could possibly have included welcoming her into his high-profile, business-focused, notably tearless life.
Liliana was the heiress to an unimaginable fortune and half of his company. She was his ward and his responsibility. In his head she had remained that chubby, awkward and sodden-faced child he’d met all those years ago, no matter that he’d been well aware she’d grown older in the interim. And tonight she was standing there before him entirely grown-up and dressed like a common whore.
And, moreover, had just talked back to him in a manner reminiscent of the streetwalking variety of the same, if his ears had not deceived him and his memories of the unsavory neighborhoods of his youth did not fail him.
Izar couldn’t quite take it all in. He couldn’t quite fathom it, because this level of crude defiance spoke to a failure on his part so deep it should have leveled him. And it was a simple fact that Izar was too unaccustomed to the experience of failure to tell one way or the other.
Her attire was not the worst part. Nor was the fact that she was here at all, apparently living in this ramshackle, flea-bitten flat four rickety flights up in a building she could have purchased outright with the change in her pocket—though that factored. It was that she’d deliberately lied to him about where she was living in this sinful city, making Izar’s trek into the hinterland of questionable neighborhoods in the Bronx, of all places, unavoidable on a night he’d intended to spend in more civilized pursuits, such as the theater with one of his current mistresses.
Izar Agustin—who prided himself on his iron control and ruthless focus in all things, from the fútbol pitch of his youth to his current domination of any boardroom he entered—had allowed this situation to get out of control. Clearly. Yes, Liliana had lied to him. Yes, she had gone to some lengths to deliberately mislead him, allowing him to believe that she’d spent these months since her college graduation living in her late parents’ brownstone in the deeply moneyed and far less dangerous West Village in Manhattan rather than here in this grotty hinterland. Still, he could blame no one but himself.
Not even the woman who stood before him, sulky-mouthed and flushed from what appeared to be equal parts defiance and drink, glaring at him as if he was the devil incarnate.
Izar supposed he was. As far as Liliana was concerned, he was far worse. And he was about to rain down a little brimstone all over her to cement that impression.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” He kept his voice soft. Low. He did nothing to conceal the harsh lash of it that regularly made his underlings and associates cower, stammer and fall all over themselves to apologize no matter if they were guilty of anything or not.
His ward only tipped up her chin as if he’d landed a glancing blow at best. And as if she expected—even welcomed—more. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen anything like it. This was not how people treated a man of his stature. Ever.
“Nothing polite,” she retorted.
It took Izar one beat, then another, to understand that it was temper that wound through him, red and wild, at her bored and disinterested tone. Temper, when he hadn’t permitted himself anything close to such a display of emotion since he’d left fútbol behind him.
It was there in his tone when he spoke. “You cannot possibly imagine that adding insults, however vague, to your deceit and your dishonesty—to say nothing of your appalling disregard for your own safety—is the correct way to handle this situation, can you?”
He could hear the fury in his voice slice through the room, but Liliana didn’t flinch. She didn’t crumble or break. Izar had taken down whole companies with a far gentler tone than the one he’d used on her, but Liliana didn’t appear to notice it.
Izar couldn’t decide if he admired her or wanted to throttle her for that. He only knew that neither feeling was the least bit appropriate.
“The only situation I’m aware of is that there’s an uninvited guest lurking in my bedroom,” she replied, with a level of icy hauteur that would have done a queen proud.
It almost diverted his attention from the fact she’d accused him of lurking. He was Izar Agustin. He did not lurk.
