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length and strength of his lean, hard body mere
inches away from hers. Only inches. A breath. “I’m happy to call you anything
you like.”
                 “Thank
you, Mr. Wolfe,” she said in that brisk, insultingly matter-of-fact voice that
had gotten her out of sticky situations in the past. She pretended not to
notice how hard it was to dredge up this time, how hard it was to employ. “But
I doubt very much I’m the target demographic for your particular brand of
charm.”
                 “You
are a woman, are you not?” he asked mildly.
                 “Yes.”
She smiled, bright and false. “But a discerning woman, I’m afraid.”
                 His
gaze moved to her mouth, and she felt it like a touch. Hot and demanding. Sure.
                 “Excellent,”
he said softly. “Can you discern my thoughts?”
                 She
felt herself flush in helpless reaction, and could only hope that her legendary
cool kept her skin from actually turning red and broadcasting her response to
him. How could this be happening? She had never had trouble in the past, keeping
her feelings and any unwanted attractions safely hidden away in the parts of
herself she kept locked up tight. Soon enough, they’d disappeared, subsumed
into the work she’d always known would save her. Anything to pretend her past
belonged to someone else.
                 “I’m
afraid not,” she managed to say, forcing herself to sit there calmly, as if she
was relaxed. “My psychic abilities only work on more … intellectual subjects.”
                 “That
is a great pity, indeed,” Lucas said, not at all discomfited. “My own abilities
are far more universal. Shall I tell you what you’re thinking?”
                 She
wanted to know what she was missing, she knew suddenly—with a deep, new need
that frightened her with its intensity. She wanted him to touch her, to taste
her. To mark her. Brand her. Take her. She wanted to taste that wicked mouth
with her own. She wanted him in ways she’d never wanted another man—even though
it made no sense. Even though it made her everything her mother had ever called
her. But none of that seemed to matter. She
wanted .
                 But
that didn’t mean she planned to act on it.
                 “I
doubt that would be wise,” she said, and mustered up an approximation of her
professional smile. “Mr. Winthrop wanted me to usher you through your first
project, not mortally insult you.”
                 His
gaze moved up to meet hers once more, and his smile was far too satisfied, far
too aware. As if he knew that all he needed do was touch her and she would
collapse at his feet, as much his to toy with as any of the hundreds of women
who had undoubtedly landed face-first at his trouser cuff before. He was the
ultimate predator, and that should have repulsed her utterly—but it did not,
and she could not account for it. Anger and fear and something else, something
too much like yearning, collided inside of her, making Grace feel jangly and
breathless, unnerved.
                 “It
seems your luck has held, Ms . Carter,”
he said at last, laughter lurking somewhere in his voice, and that dark,
sensual promise in his eyes. That was when she noticed that the car had slowed
considerably. He inclined his head toward the window. “We’re here.”
                 Lucas
did not mind when Grace all but leaped from the car the moment it rolled to a
stop at the top of the winding drive, in the looming shadow of the great house
he so hated. Let her run. He had always enjoyed the chase—not that, in truth,
he had ever had to do much more in the way of chasing than indicate his
interest. But he’d always liked a new challenge to keep life interesting, and
there were only so many times one could leap from a plane or climb a mountain
when one did not, in fact,