But something hungry and jazzed inside her wanted to just grab him. Shove him around. Provoke him, fight with him, kick him, hit him. Engage with him in a very specific, heated way.
The sex in the air between them had gotten so heavy and hot, she could feel it pressing against her skin, like a palpable force. She felt breathless, panicky at its inexorable rise.
“Don’t get any ideas,” she flung at him. “The drug’s worn off.”
“Of course,” he said. “I am glad.”
“Are you? But I imagine you had the duration of its effects calculated down to a fraction of a second,” she said.
“No, not that precisely,” he admitted. “There were too many variables. I had more like a fifteen-minute window. But you ate more food than I expected. That flattened out the effect.”
“That’s probably why it took me so long to figure it out,” she said.
“Probably.”
His easy agreement pissed her off. Was he trying to make her feel better about having been so easily managed? Condescending bastard.
She looked down at her fisted hands. “You’re here because you want some more, right? You think you’ve won? You’ve found my weak point, and that entitles you to fuck me into submission?”
His expression did not change. “I’m here because you want me here,” he said. “Even though you hate yourself for it. Otherwise you would never let me near you.”
That blunt, uninflected statement said both too much and too little. Her face heated with humiliation. “You flatter yourself.”
“No,” he said. “I do not need to.”
“You think you can make my fantasies come true even without the benefit of drugs? Good luck, buddy boy. I’m on to your dirty tricks.”
“I did it at the club,” he reminded her. “The circumstances were difficult. You were flat on the ground, you had just held a poisoned knife to my throat. You had bodyguards outside the door poised to kill for you. And I never even got your clothes off.”
She sniffed. “Listen to you congratulating yourself. Bastard.”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
His laconic refusal to be baited was driving her mad. She had to shut up. Pride dictated that she not drop her gaze, and maintaining that much contact was challenge enough.
His dark eyes saw so much. She felt transparent.
“You cannot bear the way you feel right now,” he said very softly. “I could make you forget. For a little while, at least.”
“With what?” she demanded. “Do you have some other pharmaceutical nightstick in your pocket?”
“You know with what.”
Her jaw dropped, at the hugeness of his vanity. “Oh! Here comes Janos, and his wonder dick! You mean to grant me a moment of blessed oblivion as a reward for helping with your crazy plan? How generous of you. A mercy fuck. Wow, what a prince. I am overwhelmed.”
He was shaking his head before she finished. “You know how much I want you,” he reproved her. “I couldn’t hide it if I wanted to.”
“Bullshit. You can hide and show anything you choose to,” she said. “Don’t try to persuade me otherwise. I can, too. I’ve had the same training you have.”
“I won’t try to persuade you,” he said. “The truth is the truth.”
“Don’t talk about truth,” she snapped. “It’s a big turnoff coming from a professional liar.”
He inclined his head. “Fair enough. If you do not want to hear it.”
She wrenched her gaze away from his, feeling fluttery and stupid, and felt them dragged back to his by force. Damn him. That had never happened to her before.
“I want you,” he said quietly. “You want me. Why is it so shameful to you to acknowledge this? Why must you always fight it so hard?”
Her hands flew up to cover her hot cheeks, a hatefully femmy gesture that she regretted instantly. “Because you’re using me,” she said, her voice raw. “It’s shameful to let myself be used.”
He did not deny it. He was silent for a very long moment. “I am sorry,” he said finally. His voice was muted. “I wish that I was not.”
Well. Miracle of miracles. At least he was honest about that.
She couldn’t say anything snide about it, though. Her voice was stuck behind a stone wall in her throat. Her lips shook. Heat rose in her face. He moved closer, so slowly it was almost imperceptible, but all at once he was right behind her. She craved the heat his body generated.
Needed it, to warm the bone-deep cold inside her. Against the icy room, the red chemise. The snowflakes fluttering down onto the carpet.
She choreographed the words carefully. “Do not…wake up…Rachel. Understand?”
A brief smile touched his lips. “Try not to make so much noise this time, then.”
He shrugged off his jacket, hung it on the door behind him. Stripped off the tight black T-shirt underneath.
She would not let herself gasp or ogle. He thought well enough of himself as it was. But oh, God, it was difficult not to. Wow.
His body was startling. Big, broad, but every muscle sinewy and cut. From hard practical use, not from pumping iron. She’d felt coiled power vibrating when she touched him, she’d experienced the incredible reflexes when he wrestled her in Shibumi. Intelligent muscles, flexible and ready. They knew what to do without being asked twice.
She liked muscles like that. She liked power like that.
A triangle of dark hair on his chest arrowed toward his groin, lost in the low waistband of his jeans. He stood patiently, giving her time to check him out at her leisure. The thick, uptilted slash of his eyebrows, the sharp hollow of his cheekbones. The olive tinge of his skin, the thick bulge of his shoulders. Tendons snaked over his sinewy forearms. Blue veins formed subtle, pleasing patterns beneath his golden skin. She wanted to trace them with her fingertips. Memorize them.
And scars, more than she had imagined. He’d seen some rough use, and recently, too. He had scabs, scrapes. Green and yellow bruises. The bloodstained bandage on his upper arm. A reminder of the injury he’d sustained that morning, fighting to save them. His face was stark in the harsh glare from the lamp embedded in the bathroom mirror. It showed every mark. In this profound silence, the masks had fallen: the smooth businessman, the slick gigolo. He was all warrior now, hard and battered and deadly dangerous.
His eyes were black, his mouth a flat line. No dimples, no grin. He appeared to be taking this seriously. As well he should, considering what he risked, being intimate with someone like her.
He gathered her hair into a thick bunch, lifting it up to bury his nose in it. He kissed the back of her neck. His lips were so hot. So soft.
The contact made her flinch and shudder. Too much.
He hesitated and pressed his scorching heat against her to melt the ice. She had to squeeze her eyes shut, breathe slowly. Deliberately relaxing, accepting his energy into herself.
He did not move, his breath hot against her shoulder, his hands clasped around her upper arms. Minutes crawled by. Time was measured by her frantic heartbeats.
Then he hooked the shoulders of her dress and tugged the stretchy fabric downward, until the edge snagged against the jut of her nipples. He stared at that intently for a long moment, and wrenched the thing down. It dropped around her ankles.
She was naked