couldn’t lie to herself—hadn’t she made herself that vow?—and pretend that letting this happen would do anything but destroy her.
For good this time. She could feel the truth of that deep inside of her, like some kind of primal feminine knowledge she’d never accessed before.
She tore her mouth from his and backed up then, as she should have done from the start. Better late than never, she told herself. Another mantra that could apply to her whole life these days. It was cold comfort.
“Well,” she said lightly, easily, pretending she couldn’t feel him still, that her whole body did not ache, yearn, need. That her heart was not still thudding, hard and insistent, her blood racing wild and excited through her veins. “Apparently you handle things quite well. But I think I’ll have to decline.”
“Why?” The single word was almost a laugh, arrogant and sure, his gaze frankly incredulous as it seared into hers, invitation and temptation. And that impossible fire that always burned between them, that seductive blaze.
Why, indeed?
But she was not the old Larissa, the heedless Larissa who thought only of a moment’s pleasure—the better to avoid thinking about anything else. She could not play games with this man and skip away unscathed. And she was very much afraid that she had already damaged herself beyond repair.
So she shrugged, pulling the familiar mantle of Larissa Whitney, heartless, careless flirt around her like the armor it was. Her favorite disguise. Because she did not dare let this man see anything more, anything deeper. She did not dare show him anything he could destroy.
“Because you want it too much,” she said airily, turning away from him and drifting toward the fireplace as if she could dismiss him that easily. She closed her eyes for a tight, brief moment—for strength—and then glanced over her shoulder at him, and smiled. Saucily. As if she wanted nothing more than to tease him. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have touched her, much less kissed her. Jack could see the passion in her green eyes, making them luminous. He wanted to make them glaze over with heat. Her mouth was still swollen slightly from his, and he wanted to taste her again. She was narcotic. And still she played her damned games. Lies within lies, like the Russian dolls his mother had collected.
Why was he surprised? That was the real question, and one Jack knew he should investigate. But instead, he watched her.
“I didn’t realize I scared you so much,” he drawled, injecting a note of mockery into his tone, knowing it would get her back up, refusing to question why he wanted that reaction. Any reaction. “I thought nothing could.”
“Bats,” she said immediately, that charming lilt to her voice, the one that made her so impossible to dismiss. The one that made her seem like some latter-day Holly Golightly. “And scorpions.” She gave a mock shudder. “But you? I’m afraid not, Jack. I know that must come as a grave disappointment.”
“I know why you’re here.” It grated out of him, more angrily than it should have. “You can stop all your playacting and simply admit it.”
She glanced back at him again, still standing before the fire, damp and delectable from a bath he could imagine in all-too-graphic detail, her short dark hair slightly mussed and entirely too alluring. He could not seem to reconcile himself to the dissonance—to the fragility of her delicate bones, her waiflike figure, juxtaposed with that cold, heartless core of emptiness he knew was the hidden truth of her, holding her up like a spine. She was indestructible, for all she looked like the next gust of bitter wind against the rattling windows might blow her over.
And those eyes of hers should have been hard as stones, but reminded him instead of the sea. His beloved, unknowable Atlantic, forever complicated by the storms, the island’s rocky shoreline, the towering wall of pines. Shadows chased through her mysterious gaze, then disappeared, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined them.
“Why don’t you tell me why I’m here?” she suggested, her voice low. She turned back to the fire, dismissal and disinterest stamped along every inch of her aristocratic back, the incline of her elegant neck. “Or we can just pretend that you already did. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to add in the necessary insults in my memory of the conversation that never was. It will be just like the real thing.”
There was a certain dryness to her tone, a certain dark humor, that he couldn’t quite take in. It spoke to a kind of self-awareness he’d never believed she could be capable of achieving. He wished he could see her expression. If she had been another woman, he might even have entertained the possibility that he’d hurt her feelings. But this was Larissa. She didn’t have any. Not the way other people did. Not unless she could use them as leverage.
He let his gaze travel over her celebrated body, admiring her despite himself. How could he not? She was one of the great beauties of the age, or so the media claimed with predictable regularity. And he had tested the theory with his own hands. He knew all of those fine, patrician lines. The curve of her spine, the swell of her hips, the delectable round thrust of her bottom. He knew that soft place just below her hairline at the nape of her neck. He knew what would happen if he pressed his mouth to it, the little gasp she would make, the way her whole body would arch and then shudder.
He found the simple black pants she wore, the small, snug T-shirt, her feet bare against the floorboards, far more erotic and captivating than any of the many elaborate costumes he’d seen her in before. Almost as if she was not as out of place here as he believed her to be. But he was not likely to share that kind of thought, not with a woman like Larissa, and not when it was no doubt proof of his own abiding insanity. She would only use it against him somehow. Everything was a weapon. Everything and everyone had a use. He knew that better than anyone.
She was some kind of witch, though he knew others preferred a different word to describe her, and he had spent years trying to figure out why he’d fallen so hard beneath her spell. Why she had haunted him when so many other women had failed to make any impression at all. He had a thousand different theories, but he still didn’t have an answer. And it hardly mattered any longer.
“I feel suitably chastised,” she said, making him aware of his own brooding silence. She turned around then, her skin flushed from the fire, her eyes darker than they should have been. But her smile was the same as it ever was. That impertinent curve of her lips—as alluring as it was concealing. He should not have this insane urge to try to figure her out. He should not find her so damned fascinating, despite his best intentions.
“See?” Again, that saucy little quirk of her lips. “No need to have the conversation at all. Feel free to let yourself out.”
“The Whitney Media Board of Directors meets next month,” Jack said before he knew he meant to speak. He watched her wince slightly, then check it, and thought he’d landed a blow. He had the impression that she forced herself to resume her usual air of disinterested bonelessness—and felt something move in him in response. He called it cynicism. Weariness. After all, he’d just exposed her little game, hadn’t he?
“You really have become the most tedious man,” she said softly, a light in those captivating eyes he couldn’t read. “I can’t think of anything I would rather discuss less while in the middle of a storm on a lonely little island than Whitney Media.”
“I’ve heard rumors,” he said. He tracked her, his eyes narrowing, as she drifted over to the armchair near the fire and folded herself into it, drawing her knees up beneath her. “Everyone has.”
“Manhattan
