‘You could, yes.’ He smiled confidently.
‘Or not,’ Thia muttered as she saw the inflexibility in his challenging gaze.
Sighing, she finally climbed awkwardly into the back of the limousine. She barely had enough time to slide across the other side of the seat before Lucien Steele got in beside her. Dex closed the door behind them before getting into the front of the car beside the driver and the car moved off smoothly into the steady flow of evening traffic.
‘I don’t like being ordered about,’ Thia informed Lucien tightly.
‘No?’
‘No!’ She glared her irritation across the dim interior of the car. The windows were of smoked glass, as was the partition between the front and back of the car. ‘Any more than I suspect you do.’ Once again he was intimidating in the close confines of the car, so big and dark, and she could smell his lemon scent again, the insidious musk of the man himself, all mixed together with the expensive smell of the leather interior of the car.
‘That would depend on the circumstances and on what I was being ordered to do,’ he drawled.
Her irritation deepened along with the blush in her cheeks. ‘Do you think you could get your mind out of the bedroom for two minutes?’
He turned, his thigh pressing against hers as he draped his arm along the back of the seat behind her. ‘There’s no need for a bedroom when this part of the car is completely private and soundproofed.’
‘How convenient for you.’
‘For us,’ he corrected huskily.
Thia’s throat moved as she swallowed nervously. ‘Unless it’s escaped your notice, I’m really not in the mood to play sexual cat-and-mouse games.’ She moved her thigh from the warmth of his and edged further along the seat towards the door. ‘You offered to drive me home—not seduce me in the back of your car.’
‘I believe my original offer was to take you for a quiet drink somewhere,’ he reminded her softly.
She gave a shake of her head. ‘I’m not in the mood for a drink, either,’ she added determinedly.
He smiled slightly in the darkness. ‘Then what are you in the mood for?’
Thia ignored the innuendo in his voice and instead thought of Jonathan’s brutish and insulting behaviour this evening—that reckless glitter in his eyes—all of which told her that it wouldn’t be a good idea for her to go back to his apartment tonight. In fact after tonight she believed it would better for both of them if she moved out of Jonathan’s apartment altogether and into a hotel, until she flew back to London in a couple of days’ time.
Not that she could really afford to do that, but the thought of being any more beholden to Jonathan was no longer an option after the way he had spoken to her earlier. She was also going to repay the cost of the airfare to him as soon as she was able. She was definitely going to have bruises on the top of her arm from where he had gripped her so tightly. It was—
‘Cyn?’
She turned sharply to look at Lucien Steele, flicking her tongue out to moisten the dryness of her lips—only to freeze in the action as that glittering silver gaze followed the movement, reminding her all too forcefully of his earlier threat. ‘I—could you drop me off at a hotel? An inexpensive one,’ she added, very aware of the small amount of money left in her bank account.
This situation would have been funny if Thia hadn’t felt quite so much like crying. Here she was, seated in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine, with reputedly the richest and most powerful man in New York, and she barely had enough money in her bank account to cover next month’s rent on her bedsit, let alone an ‘inexpensive’ hotel!
Lucien Steele pressed the intercom button on the door beside him. ‘Steele Heights, please, Paul,’ he instructed the driver.
‘Will do, Mr Steele,’ the disembodied voice came back immediately.
‘I totally forgot about the worldwide Steele Hotels earlier in my list of Steele Something-or-Others...’ Thia frowned. ‘But I’m guessing that none of your hotels are inexpensive...?’
The man beside her gave a tight smile. ‘You’ll be staying as my guest, obviously.’
‘No! No...’ she repeated, more calmly. ‘Thank you. I always make a point of paying my own way.’
Her cheeks paled as she recalled that the one time she hadn’t it had been thrown back in her face. She certainly had no intention of being beholden to a man as dangerous as Lucien Steele.
Unfortunately she was barely keeping her head above water now on the money she earned working evening shifts at the restaurant. That would change, she hoped, once she had finished her dissertation in a few months’ time and hopefully acquired her Masters degree a couple of months after that. She could then at last go out and get a full-time job relevant to her qualifications. But for the moment she had to watch every penny in order to be able to pay her tuition fees and bills, let alone eat.
A concept she realised the man at her side, with all his millions, couldn’t even begin to comprehend...
‘Why the smile...?’ Lucien prompted curiously.
Cyn gave a shake of her head, that silky dark hair cascading over her shoulders. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me,’ he invited harshly, having guessed from her request to go to a hotel that she had indeed been staying at Miller’s apartment with him. Lucien had meant it when he’d said he didn’t poach another man’s woman. Ever.
His own parents’ marriage had been ripped apart under just those circumstances, with his mother having been seduced away from her husband and son by a much older and even wealthier man than his father. They were divorced now, and had been for almost twenty years, but the acrimony of their separation had taken its toll on Lucien. To a degree that he had complete contempt for any man or woman who intruded on an existing relationship.
The fact that Cyn Hammond claimed she and Jonathan Miller were only friends didn’t change the fact that she was obviously staying at the other man’s apartment with him. Or at least had been until his aggression this evening...
She gave a grimace as she answered his question. ‘I’m a student working as a waitress to support myself through uni. Now do you believe you inhabit a different world from me? One where you would think nothing of staying at a prestigious hotel like Steele Heights. I’ve seen the Steele Hotel in London, and I don’t think I could afford to pay the rent on a broom cupboard!’
‘I’ve already stated you will be staying as my guest.’
‘And I’ve refused the offer! Sorry.’ She grimaced at her sharpness. ‘It’s very kind of you, Lucien, but no. Thank you,’ she added less caustically. ‘As I said, I pay my own way.’
He looked at her through narrowed lids. ‘How old are you?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ She looked puzzled by the question.
‘Humour me.’
She shrugged. ‘I’m twenty-three—nearly twenty-four.’
‘And your parents aren’t helping you through university?’
‘I’m sure they would have if they were still alive.’ She smiled sadly. ‘They were both killed in a car crash when I was seventeen, almost eighteen,’ she explained at his questioning look. ‘I’ve been on my own ever since,’ she dismissed lightly.
The lightness didn’t fool Lucien for a single moment; his own parents had divorced when he was sixteen, so he knew exactly how it felt, how gut-wrenching it was to have the foundations of your life ripped apart at such a sensitive age. And Cyn’s loss had been so much more severe than his own. At least his parents were both still alive, even if they