“Never.”
I resumed drying his hair, but this time I edged a little nearer. I pressed my breasts against his chest and slowly kissed up his throat, noticing immediately the way his body stilled. I felt the pulse in his neck quicken, and it alarmed me how affected this man was by me.
I thought of the way he looked when he let me walk down the sidewalk, away from him. How hard it was for him to hold himself back.
He didn’t view me as a toy, I knew.
I’d known it all along, I supposed.
But confronting that truth had repercussions. It made things complicated. It made him less evil than he really was.
I pulled back to look at him again, and this time his expression seared me. He looked…anguished and needy. It wasn’t just lust, there was a desperate sort of longing for my touch.
I saw it, clear as day, and…I thought I’d seen it before between us, and I’d buried that memory away to protect myself.
“The cabin,” I whispered, quietly, almost afraid to hear my words, “it was real, wasn’t it?”
He nodded once, eyeing me carefully. “Time to look back on it, don’t you think?”
“I’m scared.”
He shook his head slowly. “Don’t be. I’m your villain, isn’t that right? Yet I have a feeling, if you stopped and remembered, you might be surprised what you’d find.”
Before I could respond, he took the towel from my hand and stepped out of the shower stall, drying himself off before leaving the bathroom. I stood in the stall for a few minutes, rubbing my hand against my chest.
Images flickered before my eyes.
Blood and snow.
Trepidation and tears.
Warmth and fire.
His silhouette in the doorway.
The body beneath him, gurgling.
Shaking, I shook my head, trembling. I couldn’t go back there. I buried it away, determined not to waver. I grabbed another towel off the hook behind the door and wrapped it around myself.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, I paused mid-step, my gaze snapping to the latest maid in the room. She was on her hands and knees before the window, cleaning up the lamp shards. I winced, feeling guilty. “I can do that.”
She paused and swung her sight to me. I repeated myself, “I can do that.”
Her face morphed to confusion and she let out a series of words I didn’t understand. I was about to repeat myself again just as Nixon emerged from the closet in nothing but his jeans on.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I tried to tell her to stop cleaning up the lamp,” I explained, watching as she resumed. “But I don’t think she understands me.”
“Leave her alone. She’s doing her job.”
I glowered at him. “Nixon, no one should have to clean up after my lamp fits.”
He grinned. “You wouldn’t feel so guilty if you knew how much I’m paying these ladies.”
I continued watching her fill up a tiny trash bin with all the big bits. “You keep recycling through maids, Nixon. Do you even know anything about them?”
“This is Maria,” he said simply. “She fled Venezuela after the country went tits up. She’s got two kids she didn’t want to watch starve to death. She isn’t totally legal…yet.”
My mouth hung open in shock. “Did you make that up?”
He smiled so wide, his whole face lit up. It made me lose my balance just a little. “No, baby, I didn’t. Get ready.”
“Can I at least help her?” I asked as he disappeared back into the closet.
“You can,” he answered.
“Can we also stop buying lamps for the room?” I added.
“And put that lamp company out of business?” he responded in mock dismay. “You’re keeping that cheap ass store from going under.”
I suppressed a smile as I called out, “Is that store located on the island?”
“Yeah, family owned business, baby. He needs your lamp purchases.”
I laughed, surprised by Nixon’s knowledge and how excited he sounded. I joined him in the closet and began leafing through my side of it, sneaking glimpses his way.
“Do you know every store here?” I wondered.
He slid a sweater on, hiding that sinful as fuck body. “Every single one.”
“Because you bought them out.”
He turned to me, his hair still in disarray. “I saved them from going under.”
“I was under the impression you wanted to own them all.”
“The ones that were swimming in debt, yeah. The owners weren’t keen on keeping their place when I gave them the option of either buying them out or loaning them enough to save them from going under. The latter didn’t appeal because they didn’t want to pay me off.”
“Has anyone refused both?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“And what did you do to them?”
He gave me a strange look. “Nothing, Vixen. It’s just business. Sometimes you win big, other times you don’t.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Nixon had never struck me as the kind of guy that would take no for an answer. Then again, business wasn’t personal.
“What made you want the hotel?”
He paused to look at me, and God, I wanted to run my hand through his wet hair and tug it down to me. He was hot when he was wet. Who was I kidding, he was hot at everything he did.
“I thought the hotel was right for us,” he said, watching my expression carefully, like he was wary how I’d react. “I thought it was the perfect way to keep you.”
“You didn’t own it already when we met?” I asked, shocked because that wasn’t how he had presented it to me back then.
“No,” he said in a low tone. “I came here to escape, and then after the job I returned so you would escape the world with me.”
I watched him for a few minutes, understanding him a little more. It should have made me feel glum, or even outraged. I should have been defiant, like usual. I could have said a million snarky things, but it seemed pointless now.
He loved this island. Had put all his money into it, from what I could tell. He was making it his home.
Our home, he’d said.
He’d come here to keep me. To escape from mainland life. Probably to hide me from the media.
Guilt swamped me as I thought of last night. Of my conversation with Flynn. He said he could take me away from here, and I believed he could. He was too confident to bullshit it. It didn’t seem part of his nature to spew promises he couldn’t keep.
But such a thing was dangerous, and…irreversible.
I dreaded having to see him in the conference room.
As I stood for minutes on end, trying to figure out what I wanted to wear, Nixon let out a sigh and pulled out a random blue dress from in front of me. “There, done,” he said. “You can’t dress yourself, you know that?”
I frowned at him, dismissing my thoughts of Flynn. “When have I had the opportunity? You always put aside what I’m going to wear for the day.”
He pulled out his socks from his stack from the top shelf and shot me a look of disbelief. “Kitten, you are the most indecisive woman I have ever met. You can’t dress yourself for shit.”
I pursed my lips. “That’s not true.”