Page 14 of Captured
Excellent. He needed the time alone.
As usual, he avoided Ari’s portrait, preferring instead to focus on the much older generations of the royal family. The quiet, staid paintings had the desired effect. His temper cooled, his body unknotted. He could manage the American, if he kept his distance from her. He could manage her even better if she never spoke. His lips twisted. Like that would ever happen.
He’d made it halfway down the long, narrow room when a flurry of movement at the doorway had him turning around.
“Ungh!” Lauren’s momentum took her halfway into the room before she stopped, her graceful arms flexing as she lifted her fists to her eyes. She hissed out a long breath, clearly trying to get control of herself. “This is impossible!”
Dimitri shifted toward her almost unconsciously, picking up every detail, cataloging it, assessing. The blonde thought she was alone, safe. Unwatched. She pressed her hands to her temples, then turned toward the picture at the head of the room and exhaled a long, tortured breath. The image she was looking at was a large portrait of the royal family made after Ari’s death. Without Ari in the frame, the royal family seemed impossibly wrong, but Dimitri could tell Lauren wasn’t actually seeing the painting. She wasn’t seeing anything except the images shuddering through her mind.
He moved closer to her on soft feet, unreasonably pleased that she didn’t notice him. The room was mostly dark, the only light where she was, highlighting the royal family. No windows lined the walls either. Ideal for a portrait gallery, and for hide-and-seek as well. But he was close enough now to see Lauren’s distress, and his words were harsher than he intended. “You lost?”
“Oh!” Lauren whirled, taking a defensive step back, and the play of emotions across her face would have been comical in any other situation. Shock, fear, panic, anger, all in succession, but the only one he wanted there was the anger. It was clean and fierce and didn’t twist up his guts, didn’t make him want to punch through walls he couldn’t see.
“No, I’m not lost,” she snapped. “The queen and Kristos left, and Emmaline was practically bursting with the desire to talk to us, but then an entirehostof staff members descended for fittings, she got called away to deal with some need with her family, and I—I just couldn’t deal with it. I split.”
“Uh-huh. Or maybe you just decided to follow me?” He grinned at her, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his trousers. As he planned, her gaze dropped to track the movement, then shot back up to meet his, her outrage ratcheting up.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped, her chin firming. “You’re the last person in the world I’d want to follow.” The fire he wanted to see—needed to see—was back in her eyes, and he couldn’t deny the relief that spread through him.
He also couldn’t deny the way his body reacted, being this close to her.Dammit. She might be a stuck-up, spoiled pain in the ass, but she had his number. She radiated with energy no matter where she was in a room, or who she talked with. This close, that energy reached out toward him like a hungry sun, and it was all he could do to stand his ground and not grab it up, gathering in its warmth.
Instead, he went on the offensive, leaning toward her close enough that she stiffened, on guard. She wouldn’t back down, of course. That wasn’t her way.
He liked that about her.
About as much as he liked the soft curve of her lips, parted slightly below his mouth. As he’d thought before, she was a drug. And he was well on his way to getting addicted.
“And yet you’re still standing here,” he murmured. “Something you still want from me, princess?”
Nine
Lauren’s focus had narrowed to a pinprick, emphasis onprick. What was it about Dimitri Korba that so completely turned her brain to mush?
Even now, he stood there, oozing sex appeal like it was his job, and she knew he was screwing with her, knew he could see how much he affected her. Saw it and liked it, which was galling on an entirely different level.
She found the trailing edge of her mad and grabbed for it, wrenching her gaze away from his lips to focus again on his maddeningly dark eyes. “Why are you really on security at this stupid party tomorrow? What else happened with that box that you’re not telling me?”
If he was surprised about her change in direction, he didn’t betray it. “Nothing.” He shrugged. “There’s still a lot of chatter about the Americans in our midst, and Emmaline remains news fodder. Additional security is standard procedure.”
“Oh, bullshit. You’re lying.”
Irritation flickered in his gaze, and she poked him in the chest with her index finger. She might as well have been poking a brick wall. “What happened? Did you get another package? You have to tell me.”
“I don’thaveto do anything. You’re not my assignment, beyond keeping your pretty ass safe at a fancy party.” He gave her another half-smile. “Now, you want to talk about the things Iwantto do, with and to you, that’s different.”
Once again, she found herself staring at his mouth. How long had it been since she’d been kissed by someone as vital and alive as Dimitri Korba? She couldn’t remember. Not that she lacked for suitors. But none of them, by careful design, were anything special.
And none of them were anything like Dimitri.
Then she recovered herself. This man was playing her, and here she was, begging to be played. She drew herself up haughtily. Even on her worst days, haughty was always a reaction she could depend on. Good thing, because this was quickly becoming one of her worst days. “I thought you didn’t like me,” she said, arching one eyebrow. “You’ve made that clear enough.”
“Idon’tlike you. I don’t like anything about you.” Before she could let those words register, before the hurt shot fully through her, stinging her to the quick, Dimitri closed the final gap between them and leaned down to brush her lips with his. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to bury myself inside you. Princess.”
The raw intensity of his words stung her, and Dimitri’s wolfish smile as he pulled back only made it worse. “And you know what? I think you want that too,” he said. Somehow, he remained far too close, so when he spoke, his breath fanned against her mouth, causing a response deep in her core that teetered dangerously close to complete meltdown. “You gonna tell me I’m wrong?”
“No.” She breathed out the word before she could stop herself, before she could fully think.
“Good.” And he reached for her.