quiver of awareness at having this man look at her so intently, realising that she was completely alone out here with a man she didn’t know from—well, from Adam.
‘Have they all stopped licking Lucien Steele’s highly polished handmade Italian leather shoes yet, do you think?’ she prompted in her nervousness, only to give a pained grimace at her uncharacteristic sharpness. ‘I’m sorry—that was incredibly rude of me.’ She winced, knowing how important Lucien Steele’s goodwill was to Jonathan’s success in the US. He had certainly emphasised it often enough on the drive over here!
‘But true?’ the man drawled dryly.
‘Perhaps.’ She nodded. ‘But I’m sure that Mr Steele has more than earned the adoration being showered upon him so effusively.’
Teeth gleamed whitely in the darkness as the man gave a hard and humourless smile. ‘Or maybe he’s just so rich and powerful no one has ever dared to tell him otherwise?’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded ruefully. ‘Cynthia Hammond.’ She thrust out her hand in an effort to bring some normality to this conversation. ‘But everyone calls me Thia.’
He took possession of her hand—there was no other way to describe the way the paleness of her hand just disappeared inside the long bronzed strength of his. And Thia could not ignore the jolt of electricity zinging along her fingers and arm at contact with the warmth of his skin...
‘I’ve never been particularly fond of being a part of what everyone else does,’ he murmured throatily. ‘So I think I’ll call you Cyn...’
Just the way he said that word, in that deliciously deep and sexy voice, was enough to send yet more shivers of awareness down Thia’s spine. Her breasts tingled with that awareness, the nipples puckering to tight and sensitive berries as they pressed against the sheer material of the clinging blue ankle-length gown she wore.
And it was a totally inappropriate reaction to a complete stranger!
Jonathan might have done yet another disappearing act with Simone forty minutes ago, but that certainly didn’t mean Thia was going to stand here and allow herself to be seduced by some dark-haired hunk, who looked sinfully delicious in his obviously expensive evening suit but so far hadn’t even been polite enough to introduce himself!
‘And you are...?’
Those teeth gleamed even whiter in the darkness as he gave a wolfish smile. ‘Lucien Steele.’
Thia gave a snort. ‘I don’t think so!’ she scoffed.
‘No?’ He sounded amused by her scepticism.
‘No,’ she repeated decisively.
He raised one dark brow. ‘Why not?’
She breathed her impatience. ‘Well, for one thing you aren’t nearly old enough to be the self-made zillionaire Lucien Steele.’ She estimated this man was aged somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, ten or twelve years older than her own twenty-three, and she knew from the things Jonathan had told her about this evening’s guest of honour that Lucien Steele had not only been the richest man in New York for the last ten years, but was also the most powerful.
He gave an unconcerned shrug of those impossibly wide shoulders. ‘What can I say? My parents were wealthy to begin with, and I’d made my own first million by the time I was twenty-one.’
‘Also,’ Thia continued, determined, ‘I saw Mr Steele when he arrived.’
It had been impossible to miss the awed reaction of the other guests. Those incredibly rich and beautiful people had all, without exception, fallen absolutely silent the moment Lucien Steele had appeared in the doorway. And Felix Carew, a powerful man in his own right, had become almost unctuous as he moved swiftly across the room to greet his guest.
Thia gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘Lucien Steele is in his early forties, several inches shorter than you are, and stocky, with a shaved head.’ In fact on first glance she had thought the man more resembled a thug rather than the richest and most powerful man in New York!
‘That would be Dex.’
‘Dex...?’ she echoed doubtfully.
‘Mmm.’ The man beside her nodded unconcernedly. ‘He takes his duties as my bodyguard very seriously—to the point that he always insists upon entering a room before I do. I’m not sure why,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps he expects there to be an assassin on the other side of every door...’
Thia felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach as she heard the amused dismissal in this man’s—in Lucien Steele’s?—voice. Moistening her lips with the tip of tongue before speaking, she said, ‘And where is Dex now...?’
‘Probably standing guard on the other side of those French doors.’ He nodded down the balcony to the same doorway Thia had escaped through minutes ago.
And was Dex making sure that no one came outside, or was he ensuring that Thia couldn’t return inside until this man wished her to...?
She gave another frown as she looked up searchingly at the man now standing so near to her she could feel the heat emanating from his body on the bareness of her shoulders and arms. Once again she took note of that inborn air of power, arrogance, she had sensed in him from the first.
For all the world as if he was used to people licking his highly polished handmade Italian leather shoes...
* * *
Lucien continued to hold Cyn’s now trembling hand and waited in silence for her to gather her breath as she looked up at him between long and silky lashes with eyes a dark and mysterious cobalt blue.
Those eyes became shadowed with apprehension as she gave another nervous flick of her little pink tongue over the moist fullness of her perfectly shaped lips. ‘The same Lucien Steele who owns Steele Technology, Steele Media, Steele Atlantic Airline and Steele Industries, as well as all those other Steele Something-or-Others?’ she murmured faintly.
He shrugged. ‘It seemed like a good idea to diversify.’
She determinedly pulled her hand from his grasp before tightly gripping the top of the balustrade. ‘The same Lucien Steele who’s a zillionaire?’
‘I believe you said that already...’ Lucien nodded.
She drew in a deep breath, obviously completely unaware of how it tightened the material of her dress across her breasts and succeeded in outlining the fullness of those—aroused?—nipples. Nipples that were a delicate pink or a succulent rose? Whatever their colour, he was sure they would taste delicious. Sweet and juicy, and oh so ripe and responsive as he licked and suckled them.
He had noticed the woman he now knew to be Cynthia Hammond the moment he’d entered Felix and Simone Carew’s penthouse apartment a short time ago. It had been impossible not to as she’d stood alone at the back of the opulent room, her hair a sleek and glossy unadorned black as it fell silkily to just below her shoulders, her eyes that deep cobalt blue in the beautiful pale delicacy of her face.
She wore a strapless ankle-length gown of that same deep blue, leaving the tops of her breasts, shoulders and arms completely bare. The smoothness of her skin was a beautiful pearly white unlike any other Lucien had ever seen:
