What did it mean that I didn’t call for help.
I could scream.
I should scream, but that undeterminable look in his eyes stopped me. An unfathomable moment that stole my breath away and weaved doubt in my mind, spun what was happening between us into a complex web.
Cassius had shared that story of his mother like it was nothing—yet it was clearly everything, a clue to why he’d stolen me away.
He pinched my jaw and brought his lips toward mine, and I could have sworn he was going to kiss me. His mouth was so close that the scent of the champagne on his breath was on my lips. My body came alive again as sparks of white-hot heat made me weaken, causing me to shudder with want.
“Obey me,” he said, his tone gruff.
His dominance snapped through this thread of desire like a sharp object.
I clutched his forearm. “That’s why you kept your eyes on your watch.”
His smirk was as cruel as it was inviting. “Let’s go home.”
He peeked out and checked that the way was clear. As we scurried along toward the rear of the hotel, it crossed my mind that no one else was searching for us. There weren’t swarms of people who should have been alerted to the fact I’d been observed literally having dinner with my captor.
As we rushed out into the heated night air and moved quickly toward his SUV, those words exchanged with the valet at the beginning of the evening made sense. He’d planned all of this, including escaping out the back. The valet had parked his car a few feet from the rear door.
Back in Cassius’s SUV, I brought up my legs and hugged them, angry with myself for not trying harder to escape.
Though as the car pulled away from the hotel, I had to question if I really wanted to be found.
It was impossible to pretend what had just threaded itself between us in the closet hadn’t happened. A vivid connection. The intensity of two people needing the other to survive while hidden away together for those strained seconds.
Me protecting him from my father, because that’s what it had felt like—because surely Dad would have killed him on sight. And perhaps Cassius was guarding me against something unknown, something sinister. Our dinner conversation revolved in my mind with all its perilous undertones.
As he navigated his SUV out of the city, we left behind the bright lights of the business district until all that was left was moonlight guiding us and the fluorescent glow of headlights ahead.
I couldn’t look Cassius in the eye. Couldn’t have him see this doubt and confusion. Regret crashed against what I should have done. I should have tried to get away from him. But that delay, that split-second decision having entrapped me all over again because I’d not called out for my father. In that moment, I’d chosen to stay with him, with Cassius, the man who drove us back toward his home in silence.
The man who’d revealed the darkest part of himself tonight. Delving deeper would be just as treacherous.
It was better we never talked of it ever again.
Cassius
With each passing second, my impatience grew.
By the time I had finished looking over the information tracking a tanker that was scheduled to leave the port of New York, I was itching to leave. Despite my best intentions, I needed to know what she was doing.
My thoughts were annoying, dragging me back to the Hotel Monteleone, and our dinner there last night.
The thrill of the chase.
Baiting the enemy.
That jolt of excitement blasted through my veins as my well-thought-out plan played out.
I’d held Anya in my arms in that small closet, so tight it had to have hurt with my hand cupping her mouth.
There was an unfamiliar expression on her face that I still couldn’t define because after what I’d done to her, I didn’t deserve her compassion.
Didn’t fucking want it, either.
I had the desire to say fuck-it and cross the divide between us in that suffocating space and kiss her, and it appeared she wanted the same thing.
Call it by any other name but it was manipulation on her part—a guile of biblical proportions because it made no sense with her father outside that door looking for her. She could have screamed—and she hadn’t.
It didn’t matter how much I threw myself into my work, her name bounced around my brain like a pinball in a machine. I’d chosen to work in the city today. Here in the Orleans Tower, with its gym and the other amenities I took advantage of, making sure I could focus away from home. Usually, the view of the city brought me back to more important issues, but not today. Even as I glanced out at the horizon, all thoughts led me back to Anya.
I couldn’t go to her yet. No, I had to bide my time.
Dangle her from the hook a little longer.
“What do you think?” Ridley asked, and I swiveled my seat toward the direction in which his voice came from. He had been working at the other table in my office and had shaken me from my musing.
With her in my life now, it was easy to get lost in thought.
I tried to scour my brain and remember what Ridley had asked me, but nothing came to mind. How could it? I hadn’t heard a word he’d said because I was too busy wondering what a certain captive was doing.
Without answering, I stood, pushing up from my chair. The wood scratched against the floor as I shoved it back with force and urgency. The sound bounced off the walls, echoing through the room like a freight train.
The moment I heard it, I knew I had made a mistake. Ridley would pry, and then as if on cue, he did.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
My steps halted, but I didn’t turn to look at him. There was no need to answer him, but I did anyway.
“I have a pressing matter I need to attend to,” I responded vaguely.
“Is the pressing matter a certain woman . . . ?” He trailed off for emphasis.
I wouldn’t dignify that with a response. That wasn’t something I was ready to admit, so instead, I kept walking, and as I made my way through the door, I thought I heard him chuckle behind me.
Asshole.
It didn’t take me long to arrive home. I was eager to see Anya and the speed with which my car took each twist and turn reflected that. The longer she was here, the harder it was to remember why I took her.
But just as the whys escaped me, it would all come rushing back. I could smell the blood in my nostrils all over again, the coppery tang of death, and it hit me in the heart why she was here and what I hoped to accomplish.
As much as she affected me, I needed to stay the course. All that being said, I could still play with my prey.
It would be fun to torment her, but even more fun to torment him. To have Stephen Glassman know I had her in my possession was a heady aphrodisiac.
When I arrived back at my estate, I didn’t bother pulling my car around back. I stopped in the front circular drive and stepped out of my car. I headed straight for the front door, placed my finger on the keypad, and stepped inside when it clicked open.
Ever since my parents had died, I’d had the entire estate locked down. It was more secure than Fort Knox. Biometric entries, infrared scanning. If I didn’t want anyone in, they couldn’t gain entry, and if I didn’t want anyone to leave . . .
Well, Anya knew the answer to that question.
My need to search her out had me taking the stairs two at a time, and when I swung open the door, I was met with a well-made bed and silence.