Stefan knew better.
He would wager that Indy March knew exactly the effect she had on him. On anyone and everyone, but right now, just him. She sat there naked with only his T-shirt on, her hair wild from the last time he’d had his hands in it, eating with such relish it became a sensual act when she licked her fingers. Looking totally unselfconscious, though he knew better.
It wasn’t that she was calculated. He wouldn’t accuse her of that. She was far too generous with her body, her responses, her need. It was more that she was aware.
The thing was, he liked it. His cock liked it more.
She had slept in late, which wasn’t surprising after her travel the day before—not to mention the night they’d had. He had gotten up with the sun, as was his custom no matter what kind of night had gone before. It had long been a way he had exercised control over a life that had sometimes seemed to be forever careening where it wished.
One of the only things life with his father had taught him.
He had gone for a long, looping run through this quiet neighborhood, the kind of place he couldn’t have imagined well enough to dream about back when he thought his father was the whole of the dark, unkind world. Stefan had pushed himself, trying to clear his head of all that need and passion...if only to prove he could.
As always, he had failed.
Indy had still been asleep when he’d returned, curled up in a soft ball in the center of the bed he’d put to use in a hundred different creative ways, all night long. Her face had been hidden by a thick curtain of her hair, so he had brushed it back, sighing a little at the curve of her cheek. The way she looked so serious as she slept, a far cry from the laughing, flickering creature she was by day.
Mi-ai intrat în suflet, he’d said, because he knew she couldn’t hear him. And even if she could, he would not translate the Romanian phrase for her.
Because she did not need to know that she had entered his soul. Become a part of him.
No matter what happened.
His chest had ached enough that he’d found himself tensing, and he’d left her there as he’d showered and dressed, then had gone about his day as if it were any other. As if he hadn’t been aware that she was finally here, in this house, where he’d pictured her a thousand times.
Stefan had never trafficked much in imagination. His father’s backhand had taught him the folly of expectation early, a lesson he had taken to heart. But when it came to Indy, he found himself indulging in the kind of what-ifs that he knew better than to entertain.
The man he’d been two years and one day ago would not have recognized him now.
He chose to take that as a good thing.
A very good thing, as men who lived as he had often found themselves dead.
Whatever else happened, he told himself now, he would always be grateful that an unexpected vision in the form of this foolish, beautiful girl had appeared before him in that alley. Then led him out.
Because it had been in the dismantling of his various operations that he’d truly seen how much the cancer of it all had spread. It was possible that had he not pulled out when he had, he would have found himself incapable of it later.
That would mean, among other things, that this house would have stood empty. That he would never have discovered what it was like to wake up in a place he loved, a place where no one would show up at his door uninvited, bringing their ugliness and violence with them. That he would never have known what it was to sit high above Prague on a summer afternoon, across from a beautiful woman with the wind in her hair.
That he would never have known this.
It would have been a loss worth grieving, though he never would have known what he’d missed. Somehow, that made it worse.
He sat back in his chair. He enjoyed the sun on his face. He waited to see what his Indy would do next.
After she finished with her coffee and breakfast show, she sat back and stretched. Stefan noticed with great appreciation how her hard nipples showed against the soft fabric of his shirt. As if she knew it, Indy pulled the T-shirt off, shooting him one of her liquid, sparkling glances as she got up. Then she sauntered over to the edge of his pool, pausing for a moment at the edge.
Appreciation wasn’t a strong enough word to describe his reaction to seeing her there above the deep blue water, naked and lush and perfect, a better monument to Prague than all the statues on the Charles Bridge down below.
Indy tossed back her hair, then dove in deep. He stayed where he was, watching as she swam beneath the water, sleek and sure.
She surfaced, slicking her hair back, and then smiled at him as she floated there, another vision. This one drenched in light.
“Don’t you want to join me?”
He only smiled. “I prefer to watch.”
And he got why she’d said she wasn’t like other girls. She didn’t pout as many would. She didn’t try to cajole him. She shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her if he did or didn’t join her, then turned and went back to her swimming as if that was what she’d wanted all along.
Stefan understood why she had a trail of lovers behind her, a battalion or two at least, each and every one of them determined to pin her down.
But he wasn’t concerned about that. Because he knew what all of them didn’t. He knew the truth of her. He’d seen it.
And even if he hadn’t, she’d come back to him.
Proving, whether she cared to admit it or not, that the
