caught her again with the full force of his focus a moment later. “This place is incompatible with human sanity.” His eyes forged another path of fire down her body to where her purse was hanging limply from her hand. “I see you’ve got your bag with you. Shall we go?”
She gasped as currents forked through her from where his hand curved around her upper arm in courteous yet compelling invitation. “B-but it’s your party.”
His eyes crinkled at her as his lips spread, revealing the even power of his teeth. “Aih, and I’ll leave if I want to.” His thumb swept the naked flesh of her arm, causing a firestorm to ripple through her as though through a wheat field in a storm. “And how I want to.”
Her free fist came up, pressing against a heart that seemed to be trying to ram out of her chest cavity.
The world had always transformed into a wonderland when he smiled. But this was … ridiculous. There should be a law against his indulging in the practice in inhabited areas!
She blinked, her sluggish gaze drifting from his at the pull of something vague. And she blinked again. In disbelief.
She was no longer in the middle of the party. She was in a spacious marble hall, walking on jellified legs toward what she judged to be McCormick’s private elevator.
Had she really walked here? Or had he teleported them?
Suddenly it was all too much. His every move and glance stripping her of basic coherence, his very nearness inching her to the verge of collapse as she and the situation spiraled out of control. He didn’t have the slightest memory of her, was enacting this aggressive seduction based on her anonymity, confident of her availability.
Still, only when they stopped in front of the elevator did she manage to attempt to extract herself smoothly from his loose yet incapacitating grip. Her spinning senses made her stumble back instead, wrenching her arm away.
She could see astonishment reverberate through him as the spectacular wings of his eyebrows snapped together and his lips lost the fullness of intimacy, chiseling into harsher lines that accentuated their perfection. And showed her yet another side of him that she’d never been exposed to—the ruthless royal he could become when provoked or displeased.
So he couldn’t comprehend that a female would have the temerity to not fall all over herself to obey his decrees? Maybe this encounter would end in closure, after all. Just in a different way than she’d imagined.
She glared her disillusion up into his eyes. “You’re so certain I want to leave with you, aren’t you?”
Bitterness hardened her voice. She knew he heard it loud and clear, too.
The last of the heat in his gaze drained as stillness descended. “Yes, I am. As certain of my desire to leave with you.”
She huffed her fury. “You’re right. You are spouting the oldest lines in the book.”
His pupils expanded, almost engulfed his vivid irises. “I realize they sound like that, but they happen to be true.”
Her lips twisted, mimicking a fiercer contortion of her heart. “Sure they are.”
“You think I’m so lacking in imagination or finesse that I’d use something so hackneyed to express myself if it wasn’t the simple truth, and no other words would do?”
“Maybe you’re just too lazy, too jaded to think of something new. Or you can’t even fathom the possibility that you might need a new line. Or maybe you didn’t think I warranted the effort of coming up with something a tad more original, since you thought I’d fall flat on my back at the idea of your interest.”
He seemed more taken aback at every word firing from her lips, his scowl dissolving into a flabbergasted look.
She was as shocked as he was. Where had all that come from? It was as if pressure had been building up inside her, and disappointment was a blade that had slashed across the thin membrane holding it in, her feelings bursting out of containment.
She’d just loved him for so long!
She’d fantasized about how it would be if they met again, and reality had demolished every comforting scenario. His indiscriminating carnal purpose made a mockery of the soul-deep connection she’d been convinced they’d resurrect on sight. A connection, it seemed, that existed only inside her lovesick mind.
The insupportable deduction squeezed more resentment from her depths. “And didn’t it occur to you that the person you felt you owed unending thanks to for bringing me here might be my boyfriend, or even my fiancé or husband?”
All expression evaporated, leaving his face a hard mask. “No. It didn’t.”
“It didn’t, or the possibility of my being committed to another man didn’t seem relevant to you?”
“You can’t be. I would have felt something, from you, a connection with someone else, a disconnection from me. But—”
He stopped abruptly. That limitless energy that had radiated from him from the moment he’d caught her eye flickered, wavered. Then it blinked out. The gloom she’d thought she’d seen tainting his aura before he’d noticed her descended on him again like a roiling thundercloud, seeming to slump his formidable shoulders under its weight.
He closed his eyes, swept a palm over his eyes and forehead. His other hand joined in, raking up through his hair before rubbing down his face.
Then he let his hands drop to his sides, leveled his eyes at hers. The bleakness there shriveled her insides.
“I don’t know what came over me. I saw you across the room and I thought … No, I didn’t think. I knew. I was certain you looked at me with the same … recognition. That sense I’ve heard people experience when they meet someone who’s … right. It must have been a trick of the lights. Your recognition was of the literal variety, and I saw what I subconsciously wanted to see. I must be in worse shape than even I thought, imagining I’d found an undeniable connection at such a party. Or at all. I apologize. To you, and to your man. I should have known you’d be taken.”
His fists clenched and unclenched as he spoke, as if they itched with the same sick electricity discharging inside her limbs. Then with a shake of his head and an indecipherable imprecation, he turned away.
She stood feeling as if she’d been struck by lightning, watching his long strides take him away from her. All she could think was that he didn’t seem callous or indiscriminating, only hurt, and that the last thing she’d ever see of him was that look of despondency on his face.
“It was a hypothetical question.”
At her squeaking statement, he stopped. But didn’t turn. He only inclined his face so that she saw his profile, eyes cast downward, tension emanating from him in shockwaves.
She forced the explanation he was waiting for between barely working lips. “When I mentioned a boyfriend or fiancé or husband, it was only in a ‘what if’ scenario. I don’t have anyone.”
“You’re not taken.” His hoarse whisper shuddered through her as he turned toward her, animation creeping back into his face. She shook her head, had locks snaring in her trembling mouth. “You objected to me sweeping you away because—”
