Shameless Playboy (13 page)

 
          
She
had never felt this fine desperation, this coiling, insistent need. This fire.
She was lost in him. Undone by him.

 
          
And
still he made love to her mouth as if he could do so forever, as if he had all
the time in the world, as if nothing existed but the two of them.

 
          
At
first, the flash of light made no sense to her, though she pulled back and
blinked, dazed, her breath coming in pants and her eyes too glazed to see. But
then it came again, and again, and she realized with dawning alarm that it was
not lightning. It was no storm. It was a camera. A flashbulb.

 
          
“Ignore
them,” Lucas muttered, his hands still urgent on her.

 
          
Reality
came crashing back, slamming into Grace with the force of a punch to her gut.
Ice and horror washed through her, and for a long moment she was frozen,
incapable of movement, like a stone as she stared down at Lucas.

 
          
At
that wicked mouth of his, that some treacherous part of her still longed for.
At his beautiful, fallen-angel face, that she now knew the feel of beneath her
hands. At his bold, unapologetic green gaze, that tore into her like knives, leaving
her jagged and despairing.

 
          
She
could not speak. Words flashed across her mind, harsh and accusing, desperate
and pleading, and none of them came close to addressing how she felt. What it
meant to be the latest in his endless parade of interchangeable females. Who
she had just discovered she was, despite everything, despite all her years of
sacrifice and hard work, ambition and denial.

 
          
All
it took, apparently, was a red dress and the world’s most shameless playboy,
and she transformed into her own worst nightmare.

 
          
She
lurched to her feet, putting air and space between their too-heated bodies,
letting her hair swirl around her—hoping it covered her face and concealed her
identity from the cameras. She wished desperately she did not have to live through
the next awkward, terrible moments, that instead she could simply disappear in
a puff of smoke and avoid the consequences of her thoughtless actions
altogether. But when had she ever gotten what she’d wished for?

 
          
Lucas
reached out and snagged her small wrist in his big, elegant hand before she
could turn away, forcing her to look down at him, sprawled there on the brushed
suede settee like some kind of dissolute god. She wanted to scream, to curse.
To throw things at him. To ruin that handsome face, as if that could change how
easily she’d fallen for him, how quickly she’d melted all over him.

 
          
She
bit back what felt like a sob—but could not be. She would not allow it. Not
here. Not now. Not where too many people, too many cameras—and Lucas—could see.

 
          
“Don’t
touch me,” she managed to grit out, past the lump in her throat and the tears
that threatened to further disarm and expose her. “Haven’t you done enough for
one night?”

 
          
“Grace,”
he began, his voice low, but she could not listen to him. He was all lies and
seduction, and she had to go before she lost herself completely. She had to
think. How could she repair the damage? It was as if a bomb really had gone
off, and she was the wreckage, all splintered and shredded and strewn
haphazardly about. There was nothing left of the Grace she had been before he’d
kissed her like that.

 
          
And
she would die before she let him see it.

 
          
She
jerked her wrist from his grasp, all too aware, from the measuring gleam in his
green eyes, that he allowed it. And then she spun around on her heel, ignoring
his muttered curse, and threw herself into the crowd. She shoved her way past
the avid gazes of the looming cameramen and bolted for the elevator that would
whisk her away from this mess.

 
          
If
only she could run from herself as easily.

 
          
She
heard her mother’s voice echo in her head, weathered from too many cigarettes
and too many bad choices. “Someday you’ll ruin yourself on some no-account man
just like the rest of us. You’ll see. Then maybe you won’t be so high and mighty.”

 
          
Grace
felt a rolling swell of a multitude of things—none of them
high and mighty
. Maybe no one could escape her destiny. Maybe she’d
been a fool to try so hard, for so long.

 
          
It
was not until she’d made it down into the lobby of the exclusive luxury hotel
that she realized she’d left her bag behind on the top level—behind the tight
wall of high-level security that only Lucas’s famous face had managed to
breach. She sighed, a noise that was dangerously close to a sob.

 
          
Her
keys. Her wallet. Her PDA. How could she leave without them? Where could she
go?

 
          
She
came to a stop in the middle of the marble floor, her legs feeling unsteady
beneath her, her breath still too quick and her heart still so loud she was
afraid it echoed in the hushed space.

 
          
“Grace.”

 
          
Of
course he had followed her. He was the reigning champion of this particular
game, and she had just forfeited. All over him and on film.

 
          
It
was not possible to hate herself more than she did at that moment, but Grace
tried. Oh, how she tried.

 
          
She
did not turn around, but still, she knew when he drew close. Her body reacted
as if his proximity was a caress. She felt an inevitable, breathless kind of
heat slide from the nape of her neck to her breasts, then down between her legs
where it coiled tight and bloomed into a fire. She found she was biting her
lower lip and forced herself to stop. Just as she forced herself to raise her
head and meet his penetrating yet oddly shuttered gaze when he stepped around
to her front to face her.

 
          
For
a moment, the world fell away. The glittering, ornate lobby, with its hint of
tasteful music from above and the acrobatic flower displays in large ceramic
vases, faded into a gray nothingness, and there was only Lucas. Only the things
she told herself she did not, could not, see in him, because he was only
surface no matter how he made her ache. Only the deep, abiding desire for him
that rolled inside of her, the fire banked and smoldering, but too-easily
kindled by the way he tilted his head to one side as he considered her, his
mouth crooking slightly in one corner.

 
          
“I
would almost say that you were running away from me,” he said quietly, his gaze
too perceptive for such a supposedly shallow man, “if I did not know that such
a thing were impossible. Women run
to
me, not
away
from me.”

 
          
“I
must not have received that memo,” she said, attempting to match the lightness
in his tone, if not his eyes—but her voice betrayed her. It was too rough, too
emotional. Too fragile.

 
          
Wordlessly,
he held out his hand, and that was when she noticed that he held her small,
glittering clutch. She swallowed and reached for it, taking care not to touch
him in any way. She knew, somehow, that it would ignite that fire all over
again, and she was not so foolish as to think she could walk away from this man
twice. She was not even sure she could do it now.

 
          
“I
never took you for the Cinderella type,” Lucas said. Still that light, easy
tone, but she could see something much darker, much more intense in his face,
his gaze. As if he knew, too, that they danced around the same land mines, the
same quicksand. That one false step would incinerate them both.

 
          
“I
loathe Cinderella,” Grace said, trying to firm her spine, to breathe. To retain
control. “There is never any need to wear shoes so precarious that you might
lose one should you need to run. And why was a ball so important to her, of all
things? She’d have been much better off looking for a job instead of a prince.”

 
          
“I
suspect you are missing the point of the fairy tale,” Lucas said in that same
quiet voice. His dark brows rose. “Deliberately.”

 
          
She
did not know why she stood there, simply looking at him. She did not know why
the moment felt so heavy, yet so breakable, and why she could not seem to make
her escape as she knew she should. As she knew she must.

 
          
“Come
home with me,” he said, and it was a command, not a request. It licked through
her, into her. She could not seem to breathe through the heat suffusing her,
the tight, hot desire that coiled in her and pulled taut.

 
          
What
terrified her was how tempted she was to simply do it. To give in to the
demands of her body. To surrender to him and the pleasure she knew he could
deliver. Had already delivered, little as she wanted to admit it.

 
          
But
it was that terror that spurred her into action. She heard herself sigh, or
perhaps she’d tried to speak, but then she stepped around him and headed for
the grand entrance across the lobby. There was nothing to be gained by a
discussion, because she could not be trusted around him. It was as simple as
that. She had to get away from him—from this
spell
he’d cast that seemed to compel her to do the very thing she’d
vowed she would never do.

 
          
The
night outside was frigid and wet, but Grace welcomed both, gasping slightly as
the cold slapped into her.

 
          
“This
is absurd,” Lucas said from behind her, his voice clipped with impatience. “The
weather is vile. You’ll contract pneumonia.”

 
          
“That
would be preferable, at this point,” she said without thinking and heard his
short laugh.

 
          
And
then she was spinning around, because his hands were hot and firm on her bare
shoulders, and then the world tilted again and there was nothing but the smoky
green of his impossibly beautiful eyes. The ones that saw too much, however
unlikely that should have been.

 
          
“You
would prefer the fate of an opera heroine to one moment more in my company, is
that it?” he asked with a certain grim amusement, and were he any other man,
Grace might have thought she’d hurt his feelings.

 
          
But
this was Lucas Wolfe. He had none, as he would be the first to announce.

 
          
“Yes,”
she said, lifting her chin and wishing that alone could clear her head. “Consumption.
Tuberculosis. Either is far better than being photographed as yet one more
hapless female connected at the mouth to the infamous Lucas Wolfe.”

 
          
The
night was dark and the rain seemed to blur the edges of things, but, even so,
Grace could have sworn that she’d wounded him somehow. Far more confusing than
that possibility was her reaction. She wanted to apologize, to comfort him. To
make that hint of vulnerability disappear.

 
          
She
had no idea what was happening to her.

 
          
“Don’t
worry,” he drawled, his eyes flashing as his fingers flexed slightly against
the flesh of her shoulders before letting go. “I cannot imagine anyone will recognize
you as my ‘unnamed companion du jour,’ or care. I doubt that it will even make
the papers.”

 
          
“I’m
so glad,” she bit out, unable to process why she was suddenly so angry with him—and
not wanting to examine it, just as she did not want to examine why she felt so
jagged, so messy, so ruined—as her mother had spitefully predicted all those
years ago. She wrapped her arms around herself, her hands moving to absently
cup the places he’d just vacated.

 
          
“Grace,”
he said, and her name was something between a sigh and a curse. “Come home with
me,” he said again. He shook his head slightly, as if he was as unnerved by his
own tone of voice as she was. “Please.”

 
          
“I
…” But she could not seem to finish the sentence. She could not bring herself
to break the odd spell between them, the enchantment—as if doing so would cause
him pain. And, she acknowledged with great reluctance, her, too.