The Ultimate Seduction (10 page)

“Was your husband planning to go into politics?”

“If our parents had anything to do with it, yes.” She curled her mouth in mild distaste.

“You didn’t want him to.”

Once again she was able to speak a truth to him that she couldn’t say aloud to anyone else.

“I honestly didn’t think I had a choice. But I’ve seen how that life has affected my mother over the years. Every word she says is guarded. Half the time she’s Dad’s mistress. His work is his wife. Our family day at the fair was always a photo op with Dad glad-handing everyone except us. He couldn’t buy me the candy floss I wanted. A taffy apple was a better message.” She sighed, still more bewildered than bitter. “My life was staged to look like the life I wanted, but we weren’t allowed to actually live it that way.”

“Another reason why I will never marry. Too much sacrifice on a family’s part.”

“Another’ reason? You don’t intend to marry? Don’t you want children? That’s the one thing I looked forward to when I agreed to marry. I wanted to give my kids the childhood I hadn’t had.”

As the words left her mouth, she realized how leading they sounded. As if this was a conflict they’d have to resolve before proceeding with their relationship. She never talked this openly, except maybe to her therapist, but who else did she talk to these days? She was out of practice with hiding her real thoughts and feelings.

“You can still have a family,” he said with a calm blink of his eyes within the holes of his mask. “Why couldn’t you?”

Behind her own mask, she burned with self-consciousness, her gaze fixed to his. Her finding that kind of happiness wasn’t as easy as he made it sound, and he knew it. With her teeth bared in a nonsmile, she said, “Why don’t you want to marry?”

“I’m married to my country,” he stated. “As you said, my work is my wife. Everything I do, I do for my people.”

She tried to ignore the dull pain that lodged in her chest. That was good, wasn’t it? She admired patriotism, and that certainly kept things simple between them. No false expectations.

“How did you become, um, president?” she asked, faltering because it was an impulsive question that sounded a lot more loaded than she’d meant it to.

“I was elected,” he said coolly.

She waited while their meals were delivered, then said, “I meant, how did people come to know who you are and want to vote for you? I’m sure it was covered in the news, but as you’ve said, that’s usually slanted, and quite frankly I’ve had other things on my mind for the last few years. I missed how it all happened. I’m really asking what drew you back to your country and into representing it.”

“My mother was killed in a random attack. I went back for the funeral and my father was determined to fight. I couldn’t leave him to it. I was angry with myself for not returning sooner, for thinking someone else would sort out the trouble and I could return when there was peace.”

“You’re either part of the solution, or part of the problem,” Tiffany murmured. “I’m sorry about your mom.” Was that whom he’d been talking about yesterday, she wondered, when he’d held her in shared grief? “At least your father is safe.”

“He died, as well. Fighting.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

He waved that away with a lift of two fingers. “I believe he wanted it that way. To be with my mother.”

“Still...” She swallowed, ready to cry for him because he seemed so withdrawn and contained. Tears would never dare to seep from his bleak eyes. “I’m sure he would be very proud of you for what you’ve achieved.”

“Once you’ve paid the price of a loved one, you don’t stop until the job is done. I managed to bring enough of our various factions together to throw over our corrupt government and campaigned on a promise of peace. There is still a very long road. The biggest challenge is keeping the country from falling back into fighting, but we had some corruption charges work through the courts recently that gave people confidence. Small things like that matter.”

She nodded, tipping a little further into the primordial world of deeper feelings for him. Genuine admiration. Awe. Empathy.

Careful, Tiffany.

“Shall we take the art walk?” he asked when they finished eating.

“I didn’t know they had one.” She looked around, expecting artists with pads and a jumble of still lifes and caricatures had arrived to line the stones near the pool.

“They set it up inside to avoid sun and humidity damage.”

“Really? What are we talking about? Priceless artifacts? Da Vinci?”

“If something like that is on the market, absolutely. Most of it is contemporary, but they’re all good investments.”

Moments later, they entered a gallery of comic book art competing with old-world landscapes and elegantly carved wooden giraffes. She fell in love with a stained glass umbrella, mostly because it was so ridiculously useless.

“How much is it?” she demanded, searching for a tag.

“The auction is in a few hours.”

“We’ll come back?”

“If you like.”

“I want to use it as a parasol against the sun.” It had to weigh fifty pounds. It was the most impractical object ever created and she
had
to own it.

“You have a beautiful laugh,” he remarked, tugging her into a space behind a giant sculpture of ladies’ shoes. “I’d like to see you smiling under this umbrella of yours, your face painted by the colored glass. I’d like to see you sunbathe naked under it,” he added in a deeper tone that seemed to stroke beneath her skin and leave a tingle.

At the same time his words put a pang in her heart. She wished...

He bent to kiss her, pulling her into his aroused body as if they were the only two people in the room. A second later, as his tongue invaded her mouth, she forgot everything except the feel of him, shoulders to thighs, branding her.

“I want you in my bed,” he told her huskily, as he found her bare earlobe and drew it between his lips.

Her body felt as if it swelled to fill his arms, breasts aching, all her skin thin and sensitized. Willpower and self-protection fell away as she confided in a whisper, “I want that, too.”

He lifted his head. His possessive hands stilled and firmed on her. “Yes?”

Her heart stalled. He wouldn’t accept any more waffling. She swallowed, still terrified by the idea of being naked in front of him, but she would hate herself forever if she refused him out of sheer cowardice. With breath held, she gave an abbreviated nod.

His smile should have alarmed her. It bordered on grim, but a light of excitement behind his eyes made her tremble with anticipation. He really did want her.

Blood rushed in her ears so she barely heard him speak to a
petite q
as they made their way back to the main floor.

“Early checkout?” she repeated as he led her through the door the
petite q
released with a thumbprint and security override card.

“Gold membership has its privileges,” he said drily. “But they’ll only let me leave early. They won’t allow us back in.”

“Oh, but what about my things—?” She paused on the ramp down to the marina, where several eye-popping luxury yachts bobbed like toys in a bathtub.

“Our luggage would be packed for us regardless. That’s the level of service we pay for, Tiffany.” He waved and called something in Bregnovian to a young man as they approached a catamaran. It was called the
Luiza
and had an orange sail wrapped around its single mast. The body was such a brilliant white she had to squint.

“We’ll remain docked a few hours yet,” Ryzard said in answer to a question from his crewman. “Unless we have to move to let someone out.” He nodded at the boat they’d traversed to reach this one. “Tell the captain we’re aboard and will order lunch when we’re ready, but we don’t wish to be disturbed.”

Tiffany blushed behind her mask, thinking Ryzard was making it incredibly obvious what they were about to do. He didn’t seem concerned, however, as he led her through the interior salon of sleek curved lines, the colors a soothing mix of bone and earth tones. Panoramic windows slanted over the lounge and bar, bringing splashes of turquoise water and cerulean sky into the room. Bypassing a short staircase that led to an elevated pilothouse of some kind, he brought her down a half flight of steps into the master stateroom.

“This is amazing,” she couldn’t help blurt. No stranger to the finer things in life, she was awestruck by the simple elegance and understated masculinity in the surprisingly spacious room. Drawers and cupboards in blond teak lined the space below the windows that provided a one-eighty view. A door led to an exterior deck on this side and into a well-organized head on the other. One curved radius corner of the room was a scrupulously efficient work space, the other a rounded sofa that looked to a flat-screen television set into the wall offset from the bed.

The bed itself was a king-size statement of power, tall and stalwart, its linens almond colored with a bold chocolate stripe across the foot. She dragged her eyes away from it as she heard a whispery sound and the light changed.

Ryzard moved with deliberation to draw woven shades down into a clip, allowing filtered sunlight to penetrate, but giving them privacy.

Her stomach swooped and she put out her hand, not sure where to find purchase when the floor was dipping at the same time.

“I thought we’d go to a room in the club,” she said, linking her hands before her to hide that she was trembling with nerves. And excitement.

He turned from the last window and brushed away his mask, tossing it aside. “As I said, I don’t want to be interrupted.”

By staff wanting to pack their belongings, she imagined he meant, but couldn’t speak because he came close enough to remove her mask.

She stopped him.

“I’ve seen your face, Tiffany.”

“I don’t want you to see how scared I am.”

He frowned. “Of me?”

“Your reaction.”

He shook his head, dismissing her fear as he trailed light fingertips over her clothing, grazing the sides of her breasts and settling warm hands on her waist. “I’m afraid I’ll hurt you again. I wish you’d warned me the other night. I wasn’t nearly as gentle as I could have been.”

“I know pain, Ryzard. That was nothing.”

“It was something,” he told her, pulling her close enough to brush his mouth against hers, not properly kissing her. Teasing. “I’ll never forget it.”

An odd expression spasmed across his face before he controlled it, as if he hadn’t meant to admit that to her, but she drew in his confession like air, deeply affected, wanting to hold on to this special feeling he provoked in her. Everything in her yearned so badly to please him, and she was so sure she wouldn’t.

Get it over with,
she told herself. She had to let him see and judge and reject before she climbed too high in optimism and desire. A long fall from excitement to disgust would be more than she could bear. If she did it now, before they’d gone too far, she’d still be able to dress and trudge into the nearest town to phone her brother—the one she kept forgetting about.

For now, she had to gather her courage.

Gently removing Ryzard’s hands from her waist, she took a step back. The mask seemed like a tiny bit of necessary protection so she kept it, reaching first for the single button that held her linen jacket closed.

Removing it exposed her arm, marbled in streaks of red and pink, some parts geometric patterns from the grafts, other edges random and white. Not looking at him, she opened her pants and stepped out of them. Her left leg was as bad as her arm, and the top of her good right thigh was peppered with rectangles where they’d taken skin to patch the bad. Her stomach had the same types of scars. She threw off her sleeveless silk top and stood there in her cherry red bra and underpants and gold gladiator sandals.

For the life of her, she couldn’t lift her chin. Her eyes were glued to the floor, her mind full of the rugged road map her body had become. No ivory virgin here.

“You do know pain, Tiffany,” he said quietly.

That brought her eyes up. He studied her gravely, all the way to her toes, and gradually climbed his gaze back to her face. Stepping closer, he touched her chin to bring her face up and looked into her eyes. His were somber, but glowing with something fierce.

“You humble me. I don’t know if I could have fought through such a thing.”

She had to bite her lips to keep them from trembling.

Gently he removed her mask and let it fall. She felt incredibly vulnerable, standing before him nearly naked when he was clothed.

“Do not be ashamed of your courage to survive.”

She had wanted to be told she was pretty despite her scars, but what he said was better, filling her with an emotion she couldn’t describe. Tipping into him, she hugged him tight.

And realized he was aroused. His hand swept her bare back down to where her thong exposed her naked cheek. With a purposeful clench of his fingers into the firm flesh, he tilted her hips into pressing where he grew harder by the second.

“You’re turned on,” she breathed in wonder.

“I’ve got you naked next to a bed. How the hell else would I react?”

That made her laugh, then she squealed as he picked her up and lightly tossed her onto the mattress. Coming up on her elbows, she accused, “Caveman.”

“Believe it,” he confirmed, yanking off his shirt and dropping it away. His pants came off with similar haste. “Off with the rest,” he ordered, jerking his chin at her lingerie. “This time we’re both naked.”

He was, in record time, and pulled off her shoes without ceremony.

“Don’t wreck them. I like those,” she protested, pausing in finding the clip between her breasts to reach for the strap of her shoe.

“What about these?” he asked, hooking two fingers in her panties at her hip. “Special favorite? Because I’m out of patience.” He snapped them.

“Oh!” Why his primitive act turned her on, she couldn’t imagine, but the way he loomed over her, practically overwhelming her with his strength, gave her a thrill. Probably because she felt totally safe despite his resolute expression and proprietary touch. He was impatient, but not without discipline. He threw away her bra, but then he simply held her, his weight on one elbow as he studied her breasts.