The sheer naked greed of his expression twisted her breath through her body. As if it was outside of her own control. As if he held it.
He looked at her as if he wanted to inhale her. Even having little experience with sexual chemistry, Sam knew this. As clearly as she knew the hard tug low in her belly was her response to whatever he was putting out.
She wanted to say something to break the spell, and yet she didn’t want to step outside of whatever was locking them together in their own gravity. Her body felt new, full of needy claws.
Suddenly, the intensity of his stare died down. From one blink to the next. As if it were that easy for him to turn it off. Breath rushed into her lungs in a wave.
Sam blinked, feeling as if all of her insides had been splayed out for this stranger to probe. She’d had too many instances in her life where she’d felt small and powerless. But this vulnerability was different.
Embarrassment made heat crawl up her neck. “You’re not Matteo,” she said, a thread of complaint in her tone.
That thin-lipped mouth flinched in an imperceptible movement. He pushed off from the door, all that violent energy contained. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“You belong to this room, though,” she added, wanting to mollify him.
“No one has ever said it like that.” His gaze took in the study, a tiny flutter of a smile at his mouth. “Point to you.”
With each step he took toward her, that awareness slammed into Sam again. It was not unlike the impact she felt when she trained with a punching bag. Except she didn’t know where to strike to stop it from coming at her, again and again. “You’re mocking me.”
He blinked. “I’m not sure I am.”
Her middle felt like there was a hook there, relentlessly tugging her toward him. “Why do I have a feeling you’re never unsure?”
His lips curved, slashing a dimple in one cheek. But it didn’t warm the cold storminess of his eyes. “You’re beautifulandclever.”
“I’m not beautiful,” she said, half to fight the effect of his words, half because they weren’t true.
She was too skinny, too tall, too angular to be considered beautiful. Not that she didn’t like her reflection when she saw it in the mirror. She’d survived too much at too young an age to not appreciate what she had and who she was.
Her eyes were big and wide, sure. There was a certain symmetry to her features that was pleasing, and her cousin said Sam had a body made for modeling. But she’d never been interested in modeling, and since those were ridiculously arbitrary standards society imposed on women, it didn’t really make any difference to her. Life had always forced a large dose of reality on her, and she preferred it in this too. With this man, though, her protest stemmed from a place of self-preservation. “I don’t like false compliments.”
He stopped a couple of feet from her. Again, she had the sense that every step he took was calculated. Raising a brow, he swept that gaze over her with such thorough possessiveness that a lick of heat trailed behind wherever it touched. When it returned to her face, challenge simmered in his eyes.
Her fingers itched to trace the slash of his brows, the sharp planes of his cheekbones. And not all of it was from the perspective of a portrait artist who was drawn to faces with character.
Frustrated at her own sharp reaction, she said, “I’m looking for Matteo.”
“Did you ask the staff for him?”
“No, but he knows I’m here.”
“How?”
“Are you being thick on purpose?” she asked with a familiarity she couldn’t shed.
“I do not believe so,” he said, his tone calm in the face of her crankiness. But there was something about his steadiness that felt hollow. As if it were simply an act. “I simply want to know how Matteo knows you’re here if you didn’t ask for him.”
Put like that, his question was fair. “You’re right. He might not know that I’m here this exact moment. But he knows that I’m here. In Italy, I mean.”
“How?”
“I used the open plane ticket he gave me. The travel agent would have told him I was on my way. It’s how there was a chauffeured car waiting for me at the airport.”
“This plane ticket—”
“Why are you interrogating me?”
“You walked—no,strutted—into my house as if you were invited, Ms…?”
