The fact she had any vulnerability to show in the first place was an outrage.
“Not everyone can live by their wits in a forest hut,” she said. Perhaps a bit acerbically.
But if she expected him to glower at that, she was disappointed. Because all he did was stare back at her, that curve in the corner of his mouth, and his eyes gleaming a shade of silver that she felt in all those melting places inside her.
“Your innkeeper told me you were coming.” He shifted back only slightly, and she was hyperaware of him in ways that humiliated her further. There was something about the way his body moved. There was something about him. He made her want to lean in closer. He made her want to reach out her hands and—
But of course she didn’t do that. She folded her arms across her chest, to hold him off and hold herself together at the same time, and trained her fiercest glare upon him as if that could make all the uncomfortable feelings go away.
“You could have saved yourself the trouble and the walk,” he was saying. “I don’t want your rich boss and yes, I know who he is. You can rest easy. I’m not interested in him. Or his mother. Or whatever ‘provisions’ appeared in the wills of overly wealthy people I would likely hate if I’d known them personally.”
That felt like a betrayal when it shouldn’t have felt like anything. It wasn’t personal. She had nothing to do with the Combe and San Giacomo families. She had never been anything but staff, for which she often felt grateful, as there was nothing like exposure to the very wealthy and known to make a person grateful for the things she had—all of which came without the scrutiny and weight of all those legacies.
But the fact this man didn’t want his own birthright...rankled. Lauren’s lips tingled. They felt burned, almost, and she could remember the way his mouth had moved on hers so vividly that she could taste him all over again. Bold and unapologetic. Ruthlessly male.
And somehow that all wrapped around itself, became a knot and pulled tight inside her.
“My rich boss is your brother,” she pointed out, her voice sharper than it should have been. “This isn’t about money. It’s about family.”
“A very rich family,” Dominik agreed. And his gaze was more steel than silver then. “Who didn’t want me in the first place. I will pass, I think, on a tender reunion brought about by the caprice of a dead woman.”
Her heart lurched when he reached out and took her chin in his hand. She should have slapped him away. She meant to, surely.
But everything was syrupy, thick and slow. And all she could feel was the way he gripped her. The way he held her chin with a kind of certainty that made everything inside her quiver in direct contrast to that firm hold. She’d gone soft straight through. Melting hot. Impossibly...changed.
“I appreciate the taste,” he rumbled at her, sardonic and lethal and more than she could bear—but she still didn’t pull away from him. “I had no idea such a sharp blonde could taste so sweet.”
And he had already turned and started back toward his cabin by the time those words fully penetrated all that odd, internal shaking.
Lauren thought she would hate herself forever for the moisture she could feel in her own eyes, when she hadn’t permitted herself furious tears in as long as she could remember.
“Let me make certain I’m getting this straight,” she threw at his back, and she certainly did not notice how muscled he was, everywhere, or how easy it was to imagine her own hands running down the length of his spine, purely to marvel in the way he was put together. Certainly not. “The innkeeper called ahead, which means you knew I was coming. Did he tell you what I was wearing, too? So you could prepare this Red Riding Hood story to tell yourself?”
“If the cloak fits,” he said over his shoulder.
“That would make you the Big Bad Wolf, would it not?”
She found herself following him, which couldn’t possibly be wise. Marching across that clearing as if he hadn’t made her feel so adrift. So shaky.
As if he hadn’t kissed her within an inch of her life, but she wasn’t thinking about that.
Because she couldn’t think about that, or she would think of nothing else.
“There are all kinds of wolves in the forests of Europe.” And his voice seemed darker then. Especially when he turned, training that gray gaze of his on her all over again. It had the same effect as before. Looking at him was like staring into a storm. “Big and bad is as good a description as any.”
She noticed he didn’t answer the question.
“Why?”
Lauren stopped a foot or so in front of him. She found her hands on her hips, the wrap falling open. And she hated the part of her that thrilled at the way his gaze tracked over the delicate gold chain at her throat. The silk blouse beneath.
Her breasts that felt heavy and achy, and the nipples that were surely responding to the sudden exposure to colder air. Not him.
She had spent years wearing gloriously girly shoes to remind herself she was a woman, desperately hoping that each day was the day that Matteo would see her as one for a change. He never had. He never would.
And this man made her feel outrageously feminine without even trying.
She told herself what she felt about that was sheer, undiluted outrage, but it was a little too giddy, skidding around and around inside her, for her to believe it.
“Why did I kiss you?” She saw the flash of his teeth, like a smile he thought better of at the last moment, and that didn’t make anything happening inside her better. “Because I wanted to, little red. What other reason could there be?”
“Perhaps you kissed me because you’re a pig,” she replied coolly. “A common affliction in men who feel out of control, I think you’ll find.”
A kind of dark delight moved over his face.
“I believe you have your fairy tales confused. And in any case, where there are pigs, there is usually also huffing and puffing and, if I am not mistaken, blowing.” He tilted that head of his to one side, reminding her in an instant how untamed he was. How outside her experience. “Are you propositioning me?”
She felt a kind of red bonfire ignite inside her, all over her, but she didn’t give in to it. She didn’t distract herself with images of exactly what he might mean by blowing. And how best she could accommodate him like the fairy tale of his choice, right here in this clearing, sinking down on her knees and—
“Very droll,” she said instead, before she shamed herself even further. “I’m not at all surprised that a man who lives in a shack in the woods has ample time to sit around, perverting fairy tales to his own ends. But I’m not here for you, Mr. James.”
“Call me Dominik.” He smiled at her then, but she didn’t make the mistake of believing him the least bit affable. Not when that smile made her think of a knife, sharp and deadly. “I would say that Mr. James was my father, but I’ve never met the man.”
“I appreciate this power play of yours,” Lauren said, trying a new tactic before she could get off track again, thinking of knives and blowing and that kiss. “I feel very much put in my place, thank you. I would love nothing more than to turn tail and run back to my employer, with tales of the uncivilized hermit in the woods that he’d be better off never recognizing as his long-lost brother. But I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter why you’re here in the woods. Whether you’re a hermit, a barbarian, an uncivilized lout unfit for human company.” She waved one hand, airily, as if she couldn’t