She had the urge to play dumb, to ask him what he meant, but the glittering light in his gaze stopped her. She was afraid he would demonstrate what he meant, and how could she possibly survive that? He thought she was the same person she’d been eight months ago, the same person she’d been five years ago. Brittle, hard. Empty. Capable of withstanding anything without truly letting it touch her. Numb. He would treat her like the girl he’d known then, that ghost of herself, that walking shadow. And in so doing, he would ruin whoever she was now, softer and quieter and certainly no match for the likes of him.
She couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t.
But she also couldn’t let him see that she’d changed. It would end the same way, and she would lose so much more. He would assume it was a trick, a game. He would accuse her of ulterior motives. And Larissa couldn’t defend herself, could she? She couldn’t explain what had happened to her, much less who she’d become—she was still in the process of figuring that out.
And she was so deathly afraid of the answer.
“I thought you said one taste was more than enough,” she tossed back at him lightly, surprised to find that the words still stung. She knew they shouldn’t. What was one more low opinion? She smiled up at him, mysterious, unknowable. The Larissa Whitney promise. Her impenetrable armor. “But no need to worry. Most men, like you, can’t even begin to handle me.”
His smile bordered on feral. She felt it hard in her belly, like a kick, and then his eyes went dark.
She stopped breathing.
“Watch me,” he said hoarsely.
And then his hands were on her shoulders, warm and sure. And she was lost.
He pulled her close, his lips twisting slightly into something too hard to be a smile, and then he took her mouth in a searing, impossible kiss.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS worse than she’d remembered, when she’d allowed herself to remember him at all. It was better.
So much better.
Hotter, sleeker, rolling through her like a tornado, tearing her apart, making her shake as the wild passion claimed her. Her hands found his narrow hips, the taut, smooth muscles of his back, and despite herself, she clung. His skin was so warm, so firm, blazing through the tight shirt he wore, making her long to reach beneath it.
She felt him everywhere.
He kissed her again and again, as if he was as swept away in this fire, this madness, as she was. As if he never meant to stop. Her toes curled against the floorboards. Her eyes fell shut, her back arched, bringing her closer to his drugging heat. She ached everywhere he touched her, and ached even more where he did not. She melted. She burned.
She was in so much trouble.
She was not drunk this time, feeling daring and careless and out of control after a long night at a chaotic party. She was not numbed and halfway to dead inside. There was nothing to dull the exquisite force of him or her own helpless, needy reaction, and however dangerous she had believed him to be before, she knew now she had greatly underestimated his power over her.
She was such a fool.
And still she kissed him back, angling her mouth for a better fit, moving closer in his arms, pressing up against the hard wall of his chest. She couldn’t seem to help herself. It was as if he’d been created just for her, carefully constructed to make her lose her mind.
But she was not the same girl he’d once known, however peripherally—not the same person at all any longer, and it was that thought that finally penetrated the delirious fog in her brain. She knew what she was doing here, with him—what she was risking. But he was still playing old games, settling old scores. She knew it, no matter how good he tasted, how perfectly they fitted. She couldn’t let that matter.
She couldn’t lie to herself—hadn’t she made herself that vow?—and pretend that letting this happen would do anything but destroy her.
For good this time. She could feel the truth of that deep inside of her, like some kind of primal feminine knowledge she’d never accessed before.
She tore her mouth from his and backed up then, as she should have done from the start. Better late than never, she told herself. Another mantra that could apply to her whole life these days. It was cold comfort.
“Well,” she said lightly, easily, pretending she couldn’t feel him still, that her whole body did not ache, yearn, need. That her heart was not still thudding, hard and insistent, her blood racing wild and excited through her veins. “Apparently you handle things quite well. But I think I’ll have to decline.”
“Why?” The single word was almost a laugh, arrogant and sure, his gaze frankly incredulous as it seared into hers, invitation and temptation. And that impossible fire that always burned between them, that seductive blaze.
Why, indeed?
But she was not the old Larissa, the heedless Larissa who thought only of a moment’s pleasure—the better to avoid thinking about anything else. She could not play games with this man and skip away unscathed. And she was very much afraid that she had already damaged herself beyond repair.
So she shrugged, pulling the familiar mantle of Larissa Whitney, heartless, careless flirt around her like the armor it was. Her favorite disguise. Because she did not dare let this man see anything more, anything deeper. She did not dare show him anything he could destroy.
“Because you want it too much,” she said airily, turning away from him and drifting toward the fireplace as if she could dismiss him that easily. She closed her eyes for a tight, brief moment—for strength—and then glanced over her shoulder at him, and smiled. Saucily. As if she wanted nothing more than to tease him. “Where’s the fun in that?”
He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have touched her, much less kissed her. Jack could see the passion in her green eyes, making them luminous. He wanted to make them glaze over with heat. Her mouth was still swollen slightly from his, and he wanted to taste her again. She was narcotic. And still she played her damned games. Lies within lies, like the Russian dolls his mother had collected.
Why was he surprised? That was the real question, and one Jack knew he should investigate. But instead, he watched her.
“I didn’t realize I scared you so much,” he drawled, injecting a note of mockery into his tone, knowing it would get her back up, refusing to question why he wanted that reaction. Any reaction. “I thought nothing could.”
“Bats,” she said immediately, that charming lilt to her voice, the one that made her so impossible to dismiss. The one that made her seem like some latter-day Holly Golightly. “And scorpions.” She gave a mock shudder. “But you? I’m afraid not, Jack. I know that must come as a grave disappointment.”
“I know why you’re here.” It grated out of him, more angrily than it should have. “You can stop all your playacting and simply admit it.”
She glanced back at him again, still standing before the fire, damp and delectable from a bath he could imagine in all-too-graphic detail, her short dark hair slightly mussed and entirely too alluring. He could not seem to reconcile himself to the dissonance—to the fragility of her delicate bones, her waiflike figure, juxtaposed with that cold, heartless core of emptiness he knew was the hidden truth of her, holding her up like a spine. She was indestructible, for all she looked like the next gust of bitter wind against the rattling windows might blow her over.
And those eyes of hers should have been hard as stones, but reminded him instead of the sea. His beloved, unknowable Atlantic, forever complicated by the storms, the island’s rocky shoreline, the towering wall of pines. Shadows chased through her mysterious gaze, then disappeared, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined them.
“Why don’t you tell me why I’m here?”