The Platinum Collection: Surrender To The Devil: The Replacement Wife / Heiress Behind the Headlines / A Devil in Disguise. CAITLIN CREWS
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“And what if I want you?” he asked, as if he was a free man. As if he was someone else. As if she’d been the dream all along. “Just you. What then?”
HEAT LIGHTNING CRACKLED between them, making Becca’s nipples pull tight. A low, insistent ache bloomed between her legs. She felt heat flood her face, and something too bright, too hot to be tears sear through her eyes.
She did not even know if she was breathing.
And Theo only lounged there, so close and yet separated by the fancy table and the fussy centerpiece, his gaze hard on her, like a fierce caress. She had the sudden sense that he was far more primitive than his elegant suit and carefully manicured appearance might suggest. She could suddenly see him, deep into him, as if somewhere inside they were the same—a matched set. She could see all the wildness and passion and heat that burned in him, and burned in her, too.
How could she want him like this? A bone-deep longing crashed over her then, moving through her like the rising tide, making her whole body, every cell and every stretch of her skin, yearn.
But they were in public, this was all a charade, and she would never really know who he was looking at that way, would she?
It made her heart hurt. She reached up as if to cover it with her hand before she knew what she meant to do. Her palm flexed below her collarbone before she dropped it back in her lap.
“You don’t,” she said. She meant to sound strong. Dismissive. But instead, her voice got tangled in her throat, and it was only a whisper. “You don’t want me.”
“Don’t I?”
“Of course not.” She tore her gaze from his, and looked down at her plate, scowling fiercely to stem the panic, the emotion, the threat of tears. “You want whatever you’ve been carrying around in your head all these years. I’m the captive audience as well as the show. That’s what you want, not me.”
“I want to know how you taste,” he said, his voice like a drug, narcotic and thrilling, moving over her like his mouth had last night, spinning out fires in every direction, though he did not move. He did not need to move. “Your neck. That hollow between your breasts. I want to taste every inch of you. And then start again.”
She could not breathe. She could not look at him. She was paralyzed—as afraid of what he might say next as she was terrified that he would stop speaking. How could she be so conflicted? Why did he torment her so much? She had never had any trouble with men, and she had thought that all her coworkers’ talk of theatrics and fireworks and life-altering complications were just the stories people told themselves, the way they brightened things up, as real as their claims that they would join the Peace Corps, write that book, or pack up and move to Fiji someday.
But now she knew better. Now she knew. She’d been waiting for Theo to incinerate her. Her whole life she’d waited, and now she burned, and he was in love with a woman he could never have—a woman Becca could never be, no matter what she looked like. It might not be her idea of love—it might make her angry to think it was what he thought he deserved—but none of this was within her control, was it?
“I want to move inside of you until the only thing you know, the only thing you can say, is my name,” he continued, unaware, perhaps, of what he was doing to her with just those silky, disturbing, sensual words. Or all too aware it.
“Stop,” she said then, her voice much weaker than it should have been. Almost as if she was pleading with him. “We’re in public. People are watching.”
“You should feel safe, then,” he said, so arrogant. So offhandedly powerful. So at peace with the sensual danger that thickened in the breathing space between them. “What can happen here, with all of New York looking on?”
“What about your plan?” she threw at him, desperate, even as her breasts seemed to swell and she felt very nearly feverish, hot and then cold. “Is this how you and Larissa acted in restaurants?”
The name was like a slap of cold water. She could see the way it worked on Theo, reminding him. Changing him.
She had thrown the name out there deliberately. So she should not have felt so … betrayed by the way he reacted. So hurt.
“You have already achieved what I wanted today,” he said, all that electricity slipping behind his smooth, corporate mask. Though his eyes still burned, still bored deep into her and stirred her in ways that should not thrill her as they did. “You have been seen in public, all in one piece. No one has looked at you as if you are anything but what and who you appear to be.”
“Wonderful,” Becca said tightly.
He surprised her then, by leaning forward and taking her hand in his again, this time gently holding on when she tried to pull it away. His skin against hers. The heat of him, exploding into her palm, sending shock waves up her arm and into her breasts, her belly.
“But you and I both know what lies beneath the surface,” he said, in that snake charmer’s voice, smoky and low, while his amber eyes made promises that left her aching all over. For him. For things she dared not even think through.
“I already told you,” she gritted out. “You don’t know me, and you won’t. That’s not part of the deal.”
“I know you.” His gaze dropped to their linked hands, and she was sure she could feel the heat of it, scorching her, leaving marks on her skin. “You are prickly and full of pride. Qualities I recognize and even admire. You’ve sacrificed yourself for your sister, no doubt your mother, too.”
“My mother—” she began fiercely.
“Made her own choices,” he interrupted smoothly. With perfect confidence that she would fall silent, and she did, not even hating herself for that acquiescence as she thought she should. As she knew she would later. “But still, you feel guilty. And so you are here, an angry hen set down amongst the foxes, to get what should have been yours by birth.”
“You are a randy dog and I am a chicken,” she said dryly. “What other residents of the barnyard will we be before this is over, I wonder?”
“You use this attitude and your wit as a shield,” he continued as if she had not spoken. “And sometimes as a weapon. You attack before you can be attacked. And you do not back down, even when you must know you should. Sometimes retreat is a strategy, Becca.”
“Then feel free to employ it,” she snapped at him. She wanted to squirm in her seat. She wanted to yank back her hand, leap to her feet and bolt for the door. She could lose herself in the city within moments. She could be back in Boston by evening. She and Emily would figure something out. They always did.
But she didn’t move.
“And you are as fascinated by me as I am by you,” he said then, his fingers tracing patterns against hers, his amber eyes pinning her, paralyzing her—reading into her, seeing truths that she knew she’d never be able to take back.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she whispered, but she didn’t pull her hand from his. She didn’t look away. And she thought her heart was beating so loud that it might drown out the restaurant all around them. The city beyond. The planet.
“I don’t have to flatter myself,” he said softly. Intently. “I have only to look at you.”
And see who? that cold, suspicious, rational part of her brain hissed. And that easily, it broke the spell. Becca yanked her hand from his as if she’d suddenly found it on a red-hot burner. She sat as far back in her chair as she could, though it was not nearly enough space. He seemed so big. As if he was the whole world.
“My mother had no idea how to take care of herself, much less a baby,” she said abruptly, throwing her words out like a lifeline. Theo only watched her. Waiting,