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what it’s worth, I feel the same.” He walked out, leaving his toast and tea untouched.
* * *
Mikolas was trying hard to ignore the way Viveka Brice had turned his life into an amusement park. One minute it was a fun house of distorted mirrors, the next a roller coaster that ratcheted his tension only to throw him down a steep valley and around a corner he hadn’t seen.
Home, he kept thinking. It was basic animal instinct. Once he was grounded in his own cave, with the safety of the familiar around him, all the ways that she’d shaken up his world would settle. He would be firmly in control again.
Of course he had to keep his balance in the dizzying teacup of her trim figure appearing in a pair of hip-hugging jeans and a completely asexual T-shirt paired with the doe-eyed wariness that had crushed his chest last night.
He couldn’t say he was relieved to hear the details of her sexual misadventures. The idea of her lying naked with other men grated, but at least she hadn’t been scarred by the horrifying brutality he’d begun to imagine.
On the other hand, when she had finally opened up, the nakedness in her expression had been difficult to witness. She was tough and brave and earnest and too damned sensitive. Her insecurity had reached into him in a way that antagonism couldn’t. The bizarre protectiveness she already inspired in him had flared up, prompting him to assuage her fears, reassure her. He had wound up revealing himself in a way that left him mistrustful and feeling like he’d left a flank unguarded.
Not a comfortable feeling at all.
He hadn’t been able to sleep. Much of it had been the ache in his body, craving release in hers. He yearned to show her how it could be between them. At the same time, his mind wouldn’t stop turning over and over with everything that had happened since she had marched into his life. At what point would she quit pulling the rug out from under him?
“Are you taking me back in time? What is that?” She was looking out the window of the helicopter.
He leaned to see. They were approaching the mansion and the ruins built into the cliff below it.
“That is the tower where you will be imprisoned for the rest of your life.” There was a solution, he thought.
“Don’t quit your day job for comedy.”
Her quick rejoinder made humor tug at the corner of his mouth. He was learning she used jokes as a defense, similar to how he was quick to pull rank and impose his control over every situation. The fact she was being cheeky now, when he was in her space, told him she was shoring up her walls against him. That niggled, but wasn’t it what he wanted? Distance? Barriers?
“The Venetians built it.” He gazed at her clean face so close to his, her naked lips. She smelled like tea and roses and woman. He wanted to eat her alive. “See where the stairs have been worn away by the waves?”
* * *
Viveka couldn’t take in anything as she felt the warmth off the side of his face and caught the smell of his aftershave. She held herself very still, trying not to react to his closeness, but her lips tingled, longing to graze his jaw and find his mouth. Lock with him in a deep kiss.
“We preserved the ruins as best we could. Given the fortune we spent, we were allowed to build above it.”
She forced her gaze to the view, instantly enchanted. What little girl hadn’t dreamed of being spirited away to an island castle like in a fairy tale?
The modern mansion at the top of the cliff drew her eye unerringly. The view was never-ending in all directions and the ultracontemporary design was unique and fascinating, sprawling in odd angles that were still perfectly balanced. It was neither imposing nor frivolous. It was solid and sophisticated. Dare she say elegant?
She noticed something on the roof. “Are those solar panels?”
“Naí. We also have a field of wind turbines. You can’t see them from here. We’re planning a tidal generator, too. We only have to finalize the location.”
“How ecologically responsible of you.” She turned her face and they were practically nose to cheekbone.
He sat back and straightened his cuff.
“I like to be self-sufficient.” A tick played at the corner of his mouth.
Under no one’s power but his own. She was seeing that pattern very clearly. Should she tell him it made him predictable? she wondered with private humor.
A few minutes later, she followed him into an interior she hadn’t expected despite all she’d seen so far of the way he lived. The entrance should have struck her as over the top, with its smooth marble columns and split staircase that went up to a landing overlooking, she was sure, the entire universe.
The design remained spare and masculine, however, the colors subtle and golden in the midday light. Ivory marble and black wrought iron along with accents of Hellenic blue made the place feel much warmer than she expected. As they climbed the stairs, thick fog-gray carpet muffled their steps.
The landing looked to the western horizon.
Viveka paused, experiencing a strange sensation that she was looking back toward a life that was just a blur of memory, no longer hers. Oddly, the idea slid into her heart not like a blade that cut her off from her past, but more like something that caught and anchored her here, tugging her from a sea of turbulence to pin her to this stronghold.
She rubbed her arms at the preternatural shiver that chased up her entire body, catching Mikolas’s gaze as he waited for her to follow him up another level.
The uppermost floor was fronted by a lounge that was surrounded by walls of glass shaded by an overhang to keep out the heat. They were at the very top of the world here. That’s how it felt. Like she’d arrived at Mount Olympus, where the gods resided.
There was a hot tub on the veranda along with lounge chairs and a small dining area. She stayed inside, glancing around the open-plan space of a breakfast nook, a sitting area with a fireplace and an imposing desk with two flat monitors with a printer on a cabinet behind it, obviously Mikolas’s home office.
As she continued exploring, she heard Mikolas speaking, saying her name. She followed to an open door where a uniformed young man came out. He saw her, nodded and introduced himself as Titus, then disappeared toward the stairs.
She peered into the room. It was Trina’s boudoir. Had to be. There were fresh flowers, unlit candles beside the bucket of iced champagne, crystal glasses, a peignoir set draped across the foot of the white bed, and a box of chocolates on a side table. The exterior walls were made entirely out of glass and faced east, which pleased her. She liked waking to sun.
Don’t love it, she cautioned herself, but it was hard not to be charmed.
“Oh, good grief,” she gasped as Mikolas opened a door to what she had assumed was a powder room. It was actually a small warehouse of prêt-à-porter.
“Did you buy all of Paris for her?” She plucked at the cuff of a one-sleeved evening gown in silver-embroidered lavender. The back wall was covered in shoes. “I hate to tell you this, but my foot is a full size bigger than Trina’s.”
“One of your first tasks will be to go through all of this so the seamstress can alter where necessary. The shoes can be exchanged.” He shrugged one shoulder negligently.
The closet was huge, but way too small with both of them in it.
She tried to disguise her self-consciousness by picking up a shoe. When she saw the designer name, she gently rubbed the shoe on her shirt to erase her fingerprint from the patent leather and carefully replaced it.
“Change for lunch with my grandfather. But don’t take too long.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, poking her head out to watch him cross to a pair of double doors on the other side of her room, not back to the main part of the penthouse.