the desire in his eyes. A man’s desire for a woman. She stood and walked over to the window. Her hair swished across her shoulders, the gold hoops skipped at her ears, and the little string dress played peekaboo with her hips. She tugged on one of the hoops and turned to face him, her heart pounding. “You seem jittery. Is there any reason?”
His voice snagged on a rough edge in his throat. “Maybe it’s because you’re not looking as ugly as usual to me tonight, Flower. I think you’d better go.”
She summoned all her cover-girl tricks. She leaned against the glass, angled her hips, and extended her legs. “If you want me to go…” She bent one knee just until it opened enough to expose the inner curve of her thigh. “… you’ll have to make me.”
Something inside him seemed to snap. He slapped his glass down on the bar just as he’d done in a dozen films. “You want to play games? Okay, baby. Let’s play.”
He started coming toward her, and she belatedly remembered this wasn’t a movie but her real life. She told herself to get out of his way, but he caught her before she could take a step. Her hips bumped into the window. He curled his hands around her arms. “Come on, kid,” he whispered. “Show me what you’ve got.”
His head swooped down, and he closed his mouth over hers. His teeth ground into her bottom lip as he forced her mouth open. She tasted whiskey on his tongue and tried to tell herself this was Jake. His hands slipped under her dress to her panties. He slid them down just far enough to cup her bare buttocks. When he pulled her hard against him, her newfound sense of power evaporated.
He pushed her dress higher, and the fly of his jeans scraped the bare flesh of her stomach. His tongue probed her mouth. He was too fierce. She wanted soft music and beautiful flowers. She wanted sinuous bodies blurred beneath a soft-focus lens, not this raw carnal attack. She pushed against his chest. “Stop.”
The harsh sound of his breathing rasped in her ear. “This is what you want, isn’t it? You want me to treat you like a woman.”
“Like a woman, not a whore.” The lover of her daydreams had vanished. She pulled away from him and stumbled toward the front door, desperate to get outside before she burst into tears. But she needed her purse. Her car keys. She turned back to get them in time to see him pick up the telephone.
Her lust-crazed attacker had vanished. He looked tired and sad. She studied him more closely, trying to see him with her head instead of her bruised heart. Suddenly he became as transparent as one of the glass walls in this cantilevered house.
He spoke into the receiver, all business now. “Do you have a suite available for tonight?”
She walked toward him, her keys and purse forgotten.
He fixed his eye on the fireplace so he didn’t have to look at her. “Yes. Yes, that’ll be fine. No, just one night-”
She took the phone from him and set it back on its cradle.
He wasn’t a man who could be easily taken by surprise. He pulled on his hostility like an ill-fitting costume. “Haven’t you had enough for tonight?”
She stared him straight in the eye. “No,” she said softly. “I want more.”
A pulse ticked in his throat. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Nobody’s ever accused you of being the world’s greatest actor, but even for you, that was a lousy performance.” She softly mocked him. “Big bad Bird Dog Caliber trying to scare off the good girl.”
He raked his hands through his hair. “Leave it alone. Just leave it alone.”
“You’re a chicken. No guts.”
“I’ll drive you to the inn.”
“You want me,” she said. “I know you do.”
His jaw clenched, but he kept his voice even. “After you get a good night’s sleep-”
“I want to sleep here.”
“I’ll pick you up at the inn tomorrow morning and take you to breakfast. How about that?”
She shaped her lips into a model’s pout. “Golly, Uncle Jake, it sounds super. Will you buy me a lollipop, too?”
His face darkened. “How much am I supposed to take? What the hell do you want from me?”
“I want you to stop trying to protect me.”
“You’re a kid, damn it! You need protecting.”
“That kid crap is getting old, Jake. Really old.”
“Go away, Fleur. Please. For your own good.”
She couldn’t take one more person telling her what was best for her, especially not Jake. “I’ll decide that.” She tried not to show her heart in her eyes. “I want you to make love with me.”
“Not interested.”
“You’re a liar.”
She saw the exact moment when she won. His head came up, and his lips thinned. “All right then. Let’s see what you’re made of.” He caught her arm and steered her across the room toward a ramp, not exactly dragging her, but coming close. They went up the slope, through an arch, up another ramp. She wanted to slow down. “Jake…”
“Shut up, okay?”
“I want to-”
“I don’t.”
He led her into the master bedroom, which had the biggest bed she’d ever seen. It rested on a platform directly beneath an enormous skylight. He scooped her in his arms, just like in her daydreams, climbed the two steps, and dropped her in an unceremonious heap on the gray and black satin spread.
“Last chance, Flower,” he growled, his expression forbidding. “Before we hit the point of no return.”
She refused to move.
“Okay, kiddo.” He crossed his arms over his chest and pulled off his sweatshirt. “It’s time to play with the big boys.”
Her grip tightened on the coverlet. “Jake?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re making me nervous.”
He opened the snap of his jeans. “Tough.”
He was still trying to scare her away, and he whipped off his jeans. Seconds later, he stood at the bottom of the bed, clad only in a pair of black briefs. She wished he were wearing friendly white cotton, or something baggy and faded like his swim trunks. She’d seen his chest a dozen times, but never so much of his stomach. It was flat and solid, taut, sculpted muscle. Her gaze dropped to the forbidding vertical shaft the briefs were too small and too tight to conceal.
“You’re overdressed.”
He wanted her to back off, but she wouldn’t. He needed to understand exactly how tough she was.
His hand shackled one of her ankles, and her toughness began to dissolve. He untied her sandal and pulled it off, then did the same with its mate. His eyes lingered on her exposed skin. She pushed herself into the pillows. He was so grim. “I don’t want it to be like this,” she said.
His eyes touched her breasts, her hips, swept down her legs. “Too bad.” He leaned forward and tugged open the tie at the top of her dress.
“I’d rather not-”
He caught her by the shoulders and drew her up into a kneeling position.
She gulped. “I think we should-”
He whipped the little string dress over her head. “I’m sick of playing the good guy around you. From the day we met…” He reached for the hem of her slip.
She pushed his hand away. “Not like this. This isn’t how I want it to be.”
“We’re playing by grown-up rules now.” He tugged on her slip and pulled it free of her hair. She was kneeling on the bed in nothing but panties and her swaying gold hoops.
“Now I can see all those parts of you I had to pretend not to look at on Friday.”
“I know what you’re trying to do, and I won’t let you. I won’t let you make this
