You Are Mine (31 page)

Now though, there was no discernible emotion behind his flat amber gaze. She could have been anyone. Just a pretty woman in a pretty dress. No one special.

It was like a door shutting firmly in her face. A door she hadn't known she'd wanted to look behind. Except she did now. She wanted to smash the lock and bust it wide open.

Eva shifted subtly in her seat, letting the split up the side of her gown ease open. It felt odd to reveal herself physically, and not entirely comfortable since the split went up to mid-thigh. But she wanted more of a reaction than the one he was giving her, and this might do the trick.

Sure enough, his eyes flickered down to where the white skin of her leg was revealed.

It was only a second, but she saw a spark of brilliant gold flare in his gaze.

Satisfaction curled like heated smoke through her, along with a strange relief.

So he did still want her. She hadn't realized how important that had been to her until now. Well, that was good. It meant she had power here, and if he thought she didn't know how to use it, he was fucking wrong. She could learn, she was quick like that.

“So,” she said conversationally, leaving the split in her dress open. “What's the deal with ignoring me for the past two days?”

He wasn't looking down now but there was a certain tension both to his jaw and to the ostensibly relaxed fingers folded in his lap. “I thought you might want distance.” His voice held its usual reasonable, smooth tone. “Especially considering what happened between us.”

“‘What happened between us,'” she echoed, sounding out the words. “That's very coy of you. I think you meant ‘you throwing me out after tying me up and fucking me senseless.'”

The subtle tension in his jaw tightened further. “I didn't throw you out, Eva. You pushed the line and I gave you the consequences. It's not my problem if you didn't like it.”

“Oh, I understand that. I just didn't know the consequences would include two days of you ignoring me completely.” She eyed him, gauging his reaction. “Do you sulk like this with all your submissives or is it just me?”

A flare of warning in his eyes. She was pushing the line and she knew it. “You're not one of my submissives, Eva.”

“So just tell me then.”

Zac's expression hardened into granite. “I'm not explaining myself to you.” The edge of authority in his voice was a hard slap.

She shivered, unable to help herself, anger and arousal arrowing straight through her. Strange to realize now how much she liked challenging him, pushing him. He'd told her that before, that she did it because he was both safe and dangerous at the same time, and she knew the truth of it now. Perhaps subconsciously she always had.

He stared at her cold and hard, every part of him locked away.

And, shit, she didn't want that. She wanted his heat, his intensity. The man who'd knelt before her and consumed her, not this perfect English gentleman with his forbidding manner and stiff upper lip.

“Don't pull the Dom shit on me here,” she said flatly. “Do I look like I'm tied up in your chair waiting for a flogging?”

Another flicker of brightness in his gaze, faint but there. Like an ember fanned by a breath.

Then it died.

Zac refolded his hands in his lap. “I know you're nervous about tonight, angel, but taking it out on me won't help.”

Oh crap. He would have to bring that up. And she'd been doing so well not thinking about it.

The heat in her veins began to ice over, the silver beads on her purse digging in to her fingers.

No, idiot. He's distracting you.

Yeah. So he was. Which meant she was getting to him.

“How is asking you a perfectly reasonable question ‘taking it out on you'?” she asked.

His eyes glinted. “I gave you a perfectly reasonable answer. There's no need to push me.”

Of course he'd know what she was trying to do. He wasn't stupid. Unfortunately.

“Sure, a perfectly reasonable answer that happens to be a fucking lie.”

He tilted his head. “Because I don't want to be questioned as to my motives, it means I'm lying? Let me ask you this then. Have I ever lied to you, Eva? Even once?”

Bastard. She had no answer to that because he was right, he'd never lied to her. Yet … he hadn't liked her questioning him, that was obvious. Admittedly he'd never liked that, but she was sure this time there was more to it than merely ‘I was giving you space.'

He'd never ignored her before.

You've never slept together before either. Perhaps this is what he always does. Perhaps you really
are
just another of his subs.

She swallowed, her chest going tight and sore. She'd never felt possessive over anyone before but she felt a wave of it now. At the thought of him with other women, him treating her as if she was just another of the subs he picked up wherever it was he picked subs up from.

She didn't fully understand why but she didn't want to be that to him. Their friendship might have been strange and twisted, but it had been friendship nevertheless, and now that seemed to be under threat by the night they'd shared. A night that he'd initiated.

Wasn't she more important to him than that? Or was it a case of now he'd gotten what he wanted, she didn't matter? He'd been quite prepared to leave her completely if she hadn't given what he'd wanted after all.

I'm a mercenary, Eva. Everything has a price.

And now she'd paid it, she was expendable?

Zac was watching her, the look on his face impenetrable. Waiting for her answer presumably. The one she didn't have.

“No,” she said softly. “You've never lied before. Which makes it strange that you're lying to me now.”

An expression crossed his face then, one she couldn't read, the burning ember in his eyes flaring into life, into heat. She didn't look away.

Maybe hours later, maybe minutes, she became aware that the car had stopped. That there were was a crowd outside and media pushing and shoving, all vying for a good shot of the line of beautifully dressed people going up the stairs of the Met.

They'd arrived.

Zac broke her gaze, turning to glance outside. “So the plan for tonight will be you getting close to Fitzgerald,” he said as if the tension inside the car didn't exist. “Meet him face-to-face. If there's nothing immediately recognizable about him, we draw him off somewhere private.” Zac paused, still studying the crowd outside. “And then I will ask him a few questions of my own.”

There was no doubt as to what this meant.

Foreboding deepened inside her, along with fear. A fear that wasn't about her for once, but was wholly centered on him. On the things he'd done in his past. The damage it had done to his soul. Because he was damaged, there was no doubt about that. And whatever happened with Fitzgerald would only damage him further.

You don't want that to happen.

Eva made herself look at him, at the strong, aristocratic lines of his face. He was so hard, like he was carved from the side of a mountain. Like he could withstand anything, even the power of nuclear blast.

But what if his strength was a façade like hers had been? What if inside he was fragile too, like she was?

Did he have anyone to hold him the way he'd held her?

Of course he doesn't. For the last seven years he's had no one but you.

It hit her suddenly, in a blaze of terrible insight, what a lonely, arid existence that must have been for him. Tied to a woman who didn't want anyone to touch her. A woman he'd wanted to touch.

There was a thick feeling in her throat, emotion choking her.

“Promise me something, Zac,” she said abruptly.

He turned, giving her a quick, sharp look. “Promise you what?”

“That you won't do anything without coming to me first.”

He didn't answer. Because he knew what she meant, oh yes, he knew.

“I want your word.” She put all the conviction she had into her voice, her meager authority. “Or I don't even get out of this car.”

His expression became even harder than it already was. “If you're trying to protect me, angel, you've got the wrong man.”

“Your word, Zac.”

A long moment passed and she thought that he might not give it to her, in which case she'd no idea what to do. Because this was the only thing she could think of. The only way she could show him that he wasn't alone.

Then he said shortly, “You have my word.”

“Say it.”

His tone was utterly blank. “I'll come to you before I do anything.”

It wasn't much, but it was something.

“In that case,” she said quietly. “Let's go.”

Temple had gotten out of the car and had come around to the door. She pulled it open, and the outside noise flooded in. Shouts and cries and the echoes of music, the sound of car engines and horns, sirens, and the grind of buses and trucks. A wall of sound that rushed in like a wave, and she had to take a deep, sharp breath to stop it from drowning her.

Zac got out then turned back, holding out his hand to her.

This was it. Showtime.

Eva took his hand, felt his fingers close around hers. Warm, strong, protective. So familiar.

Loved.

She blinked, allowing herself to be drawn out of the car and into the glare of the assembled media.

Loved.

The thought echoed through her. Love. What did that even mean? Love had been absent from her life almost completely. Maybe her mother had once loved her, but that was only a maybe since the woman had left her when Eva was eight. Her father definitely not. He wouldn't have kept spending money on meth if he'd loved her. Money they'd needed for food. And certainly no one had come after her when she'd disappeared to the streets. No one had reported her as missing. No one had cared she was gone.

What the hell did she even know of love? So why did she keep thinking of the word when she thought of Zac? Maybe it wasn't love. Maybe it was just a twisted kind of Stockholm Syndrome, the way she'd felt about The Man—
Fitzgerald
—toward the end.

He didn't love you. He wanted to get rid of you.

That was true and yet toward the end, she'd felt … cared for at least. In that she'd been given food to eat and a place to sleep. Clothes to wear and books to read. That was a kind of love, wasn't it?

Flashes went off. Someone screamed “Miss King! This way!”

Zac's hand firmed on hers, tucking it into the crook of his elbow the way he had when he'd taken her to the museum the first time around. She couldn't take her eyes off him, and since that was easier than focusing on the screams of the crowds and the dizzying open space above her head, she stayed staring at him.

The light threw the powerful bone structure of his face into stark relief. The slight crook in his nose where it looked like it had been broken once. High cheekbones that gave him a predatory, hawkish look. A beautifully carved mouth, sensual and warm, hungry and demanding. Then there was that tall, massively built frame. So much contained strength and leashed violence. Yet he moved with such athletic grace, as fully in command of his body as he was of everything else.

She remembered that feel of him close to her, burning like a furnace. Him inside her.

“Miss King! Over here! Can you give me a smile!”

“Tell us what's special about tonight, Miss King!”

She'd never gotten to see him because of that blindfold. Never gotten to touch him because he hadn't let her. She'd never thought she'd want to.

But there were a lot of things she'd never thought she'd do that she was doing now, so what was one more?

She didn't look around as they moved toward the stairs. Kept her attention on Zac.

He didn't look at her, his gaze firmly ahead, but that was fine. That allowed her to drink him in and not have to be aware of the crowds, of the media jockeying for position for a shot of the reclusive Void Angel CEO.

She felt calm. The fear was there, but it wasn't paralyzing. Not if she kept focused on Zac. Her hand on his arm, on the feel of his body close to hers.

Inside the building, they joined a queue where invitations were being vetted and guest lists checked. She'd gotten one of her Void Angel staff to make sure she was on the list and that Zac's name wasn't given, that he was only listed as ‘partner.' He always did like to maintain a low profile.

The man checking the lists gave them a smile and waved them through into the party proper, the huge gallery where the Egyptian Temple she'd visited a few days ago stood.

It had been transformed into a major party area, with magnificent colored lighting, tables and chairs clustered into groups everywhere, and a bar at one end. Up on the dais where the Temple itself was—up-lights casting the pillars of the ancient monument into stark relief—a string quartet played.

The whole area itself was packed with the upper echelons of New York's high society, mostly old-money families with connections to America's biggest corporations and financial institutions, as well as Capitol Hill itself. In amongst all of those were a few movie stars and New York personalities, probably invited for a bit of local color.

Eva found it overwhelming.

She clutched on tight to Zac's arm, her heartbeat accelerating, doing her best to act calm and together when all she felt like doing was running and hiding like a cornered animal.

He seemed to be aware of it, drawing her to a quieter spot up one end of the room behind a huge potted palm where they could get a good view of the gallery without being seen themselves.

He didn't ask her whether she was okay or not, which she was grateful for. “Can you see Fitzgerald anywhere?”

The task focused her, and she scanned the glittering crowd, trying to get a handle on the stupid fear that kept closing its fingers around her throat. “No,” she muttered. “I don't see him … Wait. Down there, near the bar. Is that him?”