A Devil in Disguise Read Free

trumpets, at the very least. And certainly no trace of that hard sort of anguish that swam in her and made this much, much more difficult than it should have been.
    She was almost to the far door of the outer office, where her desk sat as guardian of this most inner sanctum, when he snapped out her name. It was a stark command, and she had been too well trained to ignore it. She stopped, hating herself for obeying him, but it was only this last time, she told herself. What could it hurt?
    When she looked over her shoulder, she felt a chill of surprise that he was so close behind her without her having heard him move, but she couldn’t think about that—it was that look on his face that struck her, all thunder and warning, and her heart began to pound, hard.
    “If memory serves,” he said in a cool tone that was at complete odds with that dark savagery in his burnished gold gaze, “your contract states that you must give me two weeks following the tendering of your notice.”
    It was Dru’s turn to blink. “You’re not serious.”
    “I may be an ‘oversexed Godzilla,’ Miss Bennett …” He bit out each word like a bullet she shouldn’t have been able to feel, and yet it hurt—it
hurt—
and all the while the gold in his gaze seemed to sear into her, making her remember all the things she’d rather forget. “But that has yet to impede my ability to read a contract. Two weeks, which, if I am not mistaken, includes the investor dinner in Milan we’ve spent months planning.”
    “Why would you want that?” Dru found she’d turned to face him without meaning to move, and her hands had become fists at her sides. “Are you that perverse?”
    “I’m surprised you haven’t already found the answer to that from my ex-lovers, with whom you are so close, apparently,” he threw at her, his voice a sardonic lash. “Didn’t you spend all of those hours of your wasted life placating them?”
    He folded his arms over his chest, and Dru found herself noticing, as always, the sheer, lean perfection of his athletic form. It was part of what made him so deadly. So dizzyingly unmanageable
.
Every inch of him was a finely honed weapon, and he was not averse to using whatever part of that weapon would best serve him. That was why, she understood, he was standing over her like this, intimidating her with the fact of his height, the breadth of his shoulders, the inexorable force and power of his relentless masculinity. Even in a bespoke suit which should have made him look likesome kind of dandy, he looked capable of anything. There was that hint of wildness about him, that constant, underlying
threat
he wore proudly. Deliberately.
    She didn’t want to see him as a man. She didn’t want to remember the heat of his hands against her skin, his mouth so demanding on hers. She would die before she gave him the satisfaction of seeing that he got to her now. Even if she still felt the burn of it, the searing fire.
    “You know what they say,” she murmured, sounding almost entirely calm to her own ears. Almost blasé. “Those who sleep with someone for the money earn every penny.”
    He didn’t appear to react to that at all, and yet she felt something hard and hot flare between them, almost making her step back, almost making her show him exactly how nervous he made her. But she was done with that. With him. She refused to cower before him. And she was finished with quiet obedience, too. Look what it had got her.
    “Take the rest of the day off,” he suggested then, a certain hoarseness in his voice the only hint of the fury she couldn’t quite see but had no doubt was close to liquefying them both. And perhaps the whole of the office building they stood in as well, if not the entire City of London besides. “I suggest you do something to curb your newfound urge toward candid commentary. I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Half-seven, as usual, Miss Bennett.”
    And it was suddenly as if a new sun dawned, bathing Dru in a