7
NAOMI
He thinks he has me.
Thinks a performance kiss and one brush of his hand beneath a linen-draped table is enough to melt my spine and silence my fire.
He forgets who I am.
I’m the granddaughter of Theodore Kane, the man who could charm a trustee while bleeding out from a bad headline, who taught me to smile with my chin lifted when the floor gave way. I may be the woman he married for show…assuming I’d play the prop while he played the puppeteer, but he underestimated the one thing the Kanes never surrendered: the stage.
Vasso Dillinger wants a performance?
I’ll give him one.
We barely make it through the door of the living room—the one with the impossible ocean view and the limestone hearth big enough to roast his ego—when I turn on him. My clutch hits the marble with a soft, expensive thud. I step into his space the way he stepped into mine all night, and the room tightens like a drum.
His brow arches. His lips tilt, amused. “You’re angry.”
“No,” I say, sliding a finger down the lapel of his jacket, following the clean line straight to the button. “I’m inspired.”
His eyes catch and hold—dark, bright, a storm deciding what to do with the coast. He doesn’t move when I tug the button free or when I smooth both palms down his chest, slow enough to memorize the texture of his arrogance through fine wool and heat. He remains a breathing pillar when I lift onto my toes and let my mouth brush the line of his jaw—no more than a shadow of a kiss, the kind you leave if you want to ruin a man a second later.
“You wanted to sell the illusion,” I whisper, warmth skimming his skin. “Let’s practice better so we can really sell it.”
His hand finds my waist with the surety of someone who’s mapped me before. Whether he means to stop me or drag me closer, I don’t wait to learn. I keep going. My fingers slip into his hair, anchoring, and I scrape my nails against his scalp exactly where I remember he’s weakest.
His jaw tightens; his pulse answers at his throat.
“Naomi.” One word, low and raw. A warning. And—betrayal—my name in his mouth feels like a lit match and is shiver from old chills and the promise of warmth.
I smile against his throat. “What? Can’t take the heat now,husband?”
His breath hisses through his teeth, a knife-slice of sound.
I shift, slide my leg between his, deliberate as a chess move. His grip bites a little at my hips—possession or restraint, I can’t tell, and I don’t care. Good. Let him feel leverage and know it’s mine.
“You think I don’t remember how to play this game?” I murmur, letting my lips ghost his jaw as if confidence were a kind of kiss. “You forget, it’s in my blood. I was raised by the man whoinventedit.”
His eyes, danger-dark and hungry, latch onto mine, and for the first time all night, he’s not entirely certain.
Censure flickers there, yes, but so does something else. Curiosity, the predatory kind. The kind that wants to know how far I’ll go and whether he’ll like the price.
“You’re not the only one who can scheme and seduce, Vasso.”
He doesn’t reply. He can’t. Not with my mouth hovering, not with my fingers at his belt, tugging, loosening, the soft, obscene slide of leather in the quiet. And certainly not with the full length of my body aligned with his, the restraint in every inch of me a dare.
I feel the moment his body surges in response, his cock thickening. Pressing against my belly.
And God help me…it’s affecting me, too.
I tell myself it’s time to stop, that I’ve made the point on the stage he set, and I should step off before I trip, but I can’t seem to pry myself away from the heat of him.
His scent, all sandalwood, sea air, the mineral tang of the night, gets into my head like a song I used to love and refused to delete from my playlist. I feel him harden into rigid steel against and something low in me answers, shameless and entirely female, a pulse that saysyesin a language I’ve outlawed since my life turned into triage.
I have not felt like this about anyone in years—between hospital forms and board meetings, between shielding Grandpa from grief and trying to keep what’s left of the Kanes from dissolving, romance became a luxury item I couldn’t afford. But this—thisis not romance. This is a burner I shoved to low suddenly leaping to high, the pan smoking, the room filling, my brain telling me to reach for the off switch while my body leans into the flame.
And I know him. That scheming I named earlier—it glows at the back of his eyes now, banked but ready, a furnace with the door cracked. If I push one inch farther, we both go in.
