* * *
Thia wrenched her mouth from Lucien’s and pulled out of his arms before taking a stumbling step backwards—as if those few inches in any way nullified Lucien’s sexual potency, or the devastation wrought upon her senses by that hungry kiss and those caressing hands!
‘No...’ she breathed shakily, her cheeks ablaze with embarrassed colour as she attempted to straighten her top over breasts that pulsed and ached for the pleasure she had just denied them.
Lucien’s gaze was hooded. There was a flush across those high cheekbones, a nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘No?’
‘No,’ Thia repeated more firmly. ‘This is—I don’t do this.’
‘“This” being...?’
‘Seduction in a zillionaire’s office!’
He arched one dark brow. ‘How many zillionaires do you know?’
Her cheeks warmed. ‘Just the one.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’ He crossed his arms in front of his chest and he looked at her from between narrowed lids. ‘Just what did you think was going to happen, Cyn, when you came to my office dressed—or rather undressed—like that?’ That glittering silver gaze swept appreciatively over her breasts, naked beneath the crop top, her bare midriff and hip-hugging denims.
She hadn’t allowed herself to think before coming here—had just acted on impulse, knowing she had to thank Lucien Steele for his help some time today and just wanting to get it over with. But, yes, now that he mentioned it she wasn’t exactly dressed for repelling advances. Deliberately if subconsciously so? Lord, she hoped not!
‘Stop calling me Cyn,’ she snapped defensively.
‘But that’s what you are to me... Sin and all that word implies.’ He all but purred. ‘You have all the temptation of a candy bar in that shocking pink top. One that I want to lick all over.’
Thia felt heat in her already blushing cheeks at the provocative imagines that statement conjured in her mind. ‘You—I don’t—didn’t—’ She gave a shake of her head. ‘Could we get back to our earlier conversation?’ Please, she added silently, knowing she would have plenty of time later today to think about and to remember with embarrassment the touch of Lucien’s lips and hands on her body. ‘For one thing, Jonathan was only ever my friend,’ she continued determinedly.
‘Not any more he isn’t.’ Lucien nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘He made it clear before I left his apartment earlier this morning that he was feeling decidedly less than charitable towards you,’ he explained dryly.
Thia’s eyes widened. ‘What did you say to him?’
‘About you?’ He shrugged. ‘As you have neither a father nor brother to protect you, I thought it necessary that someone should warn Miller against laying so much as a finger on you with the intention of hurting you ever again.’
She gasped. ‘I can look after myself!’
‘Is that why you spent the night at a less-than-reputable hotel? Why you have bruises on your arm?’ Lucien’s expression darkened with displeasure as his glittering silver gaze moved to the purple-black smudges at the top of her left arm. ‘If I had known the extent of your bruising I would have inflicted a few of my own on him this morning, rather than just firing his ass!’
Thia gasped even as she looked up searchingly into that ruthlessly handsome face, totally unnerved by the dangerous glitter in Lucien’s eyes as he continued to glower at the bruises on her arms. ‘You fired Jonathan from Network?’
He looked up into her face as he gave a humourless smile of satisfaction. ‘Oh, yes.’
Oh, good grief...
LUCIEN’S HUMOURLESS SMILE became a grimace as he saw the expression of horror on Cyn’s face. ‘Don’t worry. My decision to fire Miller wasn’t because of anything he did or said to you. Although that was certainly a side issue in the amount of satisfaction I felt doing it.’
‘Then why did you fire him?’ She looked totally bewildered.
Lucien gave another impatient glance at his wristwatch. ‘Look, can we continue this conversation later? Possibly over dinner? I really do have to leave for my appointment now.’ He moved around his desk to pick up the file he needed for his meeting before putting it inside his black leather briefcase and snapping it shut. ‘Cyn?’ he prompted irritably as she stood as still as an Easter Island statue.
He was more than a little irritated with himself for having suggested the two of them have dinner together when he knew that the best thing for both of them was not be alone together again. His response to Cyn—as he had proved a short time ago!—was so different than to any other woman he had ever met. She was so different from those preening, self-centred, high-maintenance women he usually dated...
‘Hmm?’ She looked across at him blankly.
‘Dinner? Tonight?’ he repeated shortly.
‘I—no.’ She shook her head from side to side. ‘You’ve been very kind to me, but—’
‘You consider my almost making love to you just now as being kind to you...?’ Lucien bit out derisively.
Her cheeks flushed a fiery red. ‘No, of course not—’
‘Dinner. Tonight,’ he said impatiently. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been late for a business appointment. Business always came first with him, pleasure second. And making love to Cyn just now had been pure pleasure. ‘We can eat at the hotel if that would make you feel...safer?’ he taunted.
* * *
Thia easily heard the mockery in Lucien’s voice. A mockery she knew she deserved.
So Lucien had kissed her. More than kissed her. She wasn’t a child, for goodness’ sake, but a twenty-three-year-old woman, and just because this was the first time that anything like this had happened to her it was no reason for her to go off at the deep end as if she were some scandalised Victorian heroine!
Besides which, it was obvious Lucien wasn’t going to tell her any more now about why he had fired Jonathan, and she desperately wanted to know.
Was it even possible for him to dismiss Jonathan so arbitrarily? Admittedly this was Lucien Steele she was talking about—a man who had already proved how much he liked having his own way—but surely Jonathan had a contract that would safeguard him from something like this happening. Besides which, Network was the most popular series being shown on US television at the moment; sacking its English star would be nothing short of suicide for both the series and Steele Media. And Lucien was Steele Media.
‘Fine, we’ll eat at Steele Heights,’ she bit out abruptly. ‘What time and which restaurant?’ There were three of them, but obviously Cyn hadn’t eaten at any.
Lucien moved briskly from behind his desk, briefcase in hand, and took hold of her elbow with the other hand. ‘We can talk about that in the car before I drop you off at the hotel.’
‘I’m not going back to the hotel just yet.’ Thia dug her heels in at being managed again, even as she recognised that familiar tingling warmth where Lucien’s fingers now lightly touched her arm. ‘I’m going to the Empire State Building this afternoon.’
He raised dark brows. ‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why?’ She looked up at him irritably. ‘It’s a famous New York landmark, and I’ve been here five days already and not managed to go to the top of it yet.’
Lucien’s mouth twisted derisively. ‘I was born