The Billionaire's Innocent

Her blue eyes flashed dark at that. He saw her fists clench at her sides, and there was no particular reason either of those things should pool like lust inside him, but they did. God, the things he wished he could do to this woman.

“I wasn’t a little girl six years ago and I’m not one now,” she told him, and there was too much he couldn’t read then, in her eyes and across her lovely face. “Why don’t you stop threatening me and put your money where your mouth is?”

“If you insist,” Zair murmured, and he made no attempt whatsoever to cloak the threat in his voice then. Or the dark longing beneath it.

He reached over and wrapped his hand around her smooth upper arm. He felt the immediate kick of it, as if it were a far more intimate touch. The fire roared inside him again, making him harder than before, and ready. Almost too ready. He ignored that and tugged her closer to him, forcing her off balance so she swayed into his chest.

“What are you doing?” she hissed as he slid his palm down the length of her arm and took her hand, and he could feel her nerves in the way she jolted at the contact.

Not a whore, then, he thought, with far too much satisfaction, as if he’d had any doubt. Or if she was, she was a terrible one.

“You’re the only woman in the room who isn’t fucking or about to be fucked,” he pointed out coolly. “Let’s rectify that, shall we? But not here.”

Finally, a look of alarm. As if the precariousness of her position was sinking in at last.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said.

“You are.” He didn’t wait for her to reply, he simply started walking, which meant she had to walk with him or be pulled off her feet. She chose to walk, though she kept tugging against the hold he had on her hand. “This is how it works, Nora, or don’t you know that? You don’t choose. I do.”

“Let’s be clear, Zair, that this is who you are. This is the kind of man you are.”

She shouldn’t have said that, and he thought she knew it when he looked at her then without the usual filter he used to hide his temper. Or his dark, twisted soul. He saw her swallow again, almost convulsively. He saw a hectic glitter in her luminous eyes, and he felt a little tremor run through her.

“This is what selling yourself means,” he said softly, and he knew when she flinched that he’d scored a direct hit. He would have to congratulate himself for that later, he thought bitterly. Zair closed his hand harder around her arm and pulled her closer, so he could speak directly into her ear. He could smell her shampoo and the soft scent of her skin. He could feel her heat. And he wanted her, the way he had for years. And as hopelessly, because she was a pretty little heiress who lived in the light and he was the bastard brother of a twisted king, dark unto his very soul. “We go where I want to go. We fuck how I want to fuck. I’ll let you know if I want you to speak. Until then? You keep your mouth shut unless I’m putting something in it.”

* * *

He felt her temper like a living thing between them, but then she ducked her head down and she didn’t argue. And he liked that too much.

“Good girl,” he said again, and he felt her shake at that, too. Almost as if she really were bent like him. Almost as if she found as much pleasure in the act of obeying him as he would have found in issuing orders, if any of this were real. If it weren’t dangerous. If there weren’t too many eyes on them already.

This is the sister of the famous Hunter Grant, Laurette had said in her arch, insinuating way, the fact that she spoke in her native French making it sound harsher, somehow. But you know this already, do you not? He is a great friend of yours, I believe.

We went to university together, Zair had replied mildly. But there is friendship between men, Laurette. And then there are whores. And he’d shrugged, letting his mouth flatten as he did. These things have very little to do with each other.

The woman had laughed. Enjoy breaking her in, Zair, she’d said. Try not to do any permanent damage.

He’d laughed, too, because that was what he did. It was who he was, who he’d been for long enough now that the edges had long since blurred. The boundaries were no longer clear.

I always leave my mark, Laurette, he’d said quietly. Or how will she know I was there?

And that was the trouble. That was always the trouble. The best lies, the best disguises, started with a kernel of truth. He knew his did. He wanted whatever Nora’s game was tonight to be rooted in the same kind of truth—and that was as crazy as it was unlikely. He’d seen her insipid boyfriends over the years. He’d seen the dynamics of her relationships, where she held all the power and was always bored. Even if, somewhere deep inside, she secretly longed to hand over her control in the most intimate of settings, he very much doubted she was ready to face that, and certainly not here. Not like this. Not with him. Those were dark imaginings and best kept locked deep inside him, he knew.

He wasn’t going to force her. Zair could barely tolerate himself as it was.

But his ace in the hole was that she didn’t know that.

He kept his grip on her as he steered her toward the exit, slightly harder than necessary. He pulled out his phone as they moved through the crowd, calling the embassy in Washington, DC, where it was just after 5:00 p.m. He talked business almost idly as his security detail fell into place on either side of him, letting go of Nora only when they were all settled in his private speedboat.

He saw Laurette watching him from up on the yacht’s deck and nodded at her the way he had every time he’d left one of these parties with another pretty girl in tow, but he didn’t end the call. He let his assistant relay his messages as the boat set off for Cannes, and when they hit the shore and were met by his driver, he looked around for cameras before he escorted Nora into the car with the same firm grip, like a bare-handed leash.

He caught his head of security’s dark gaze and the other man shook his head. Which meant a camera Zair hadn’t seen. He let out a breath, turning over the implications of that in his head…but there was no undoing this. There was no un-taking that picture and there was no letting Nora wander off to do this kind of thing again tomorrow night with God knows which monster. There was only hoping the paparazzo in question was too lazy or too glutted on all the Hollywood royalty in town this month to make the connection between another blonde woman on Zair al Ruyi’s arm and former tabloid staple Hunter Grant.

Once in the car, he sat back and made a few more calls to the usual people—the sultan’s primary aide for the daily update on his brother Azhil’s bad rulings and uncertain temper, his other liaison in the palace in Ruyi for the unofficial political mutterings from the regime’s enemies back home—as the car swept them away from the mad glitter of Cannes and up into the relative safety of the hills.

He finally put his mobile away when the car pulled into the long drive that took its time winding around to the sprawling villa he used when he was in the South of France, as befit the ambassador to and half brother of the great Azhil, Sultan of Ruyi. The car stopped at the foot of the curved steps that led to the massive carved entryway, but Nora didn’t move. Zair’s driver opened the passenger door, letting in a cool night breeze that danced around the interior, scented with rosemary and a hint of salt from the sea far below.

And Nora sat like a statue beside him, mute despair etched all over her lovely face.

Zair was certain, then, that whatever she’d been doing on that yacht, she’d never done it before. As certain as he was that she’d never do it again. Not if he had anything to say about it.

And he had quite a lot to say on that topic, in fact. As she would soon discover.

He inclined his head, a silent command that she exit the car ahead of him. For a moment he thought she might crack—but she climbed out instead, squaring her shoulders and straightening her spine as she stood there beneath the stars with the breeze in her hair, and he found he admired her for it. More than was at all wise.

That was as dangerous as anything else.

He ushered her into the villa, dismissing his guards as he went, knowing that only once they’d taken their positions on the grounds outside could he speak freely. Until then, he studied this bright, shining girl who shouldn’t have been here, with him, in this tainted place.

He was looking for clues as to why she’d come to Cannes, he told himself. Looking for weaknesses you can use to your advantage, you mean, the cynical voice inside him said. Or hints that she’s what you’d like her to be.

God, but he was tired of himself.

Nora walked in through the airy atrium, straight through the graceful sprawl of the open reception and living areas to the wall of windows on the far side. Zair followed at a distance. The night was clear and cool, and he thought she could see almost to Italy. The gemlike coastal cities stretched out like a necklace threaded along the shoreline, from Antibes to Cap Ferrat to Monte Carlo, and Nora had never looked more celestial to him than she did then, bracketed here in the hills of France with the whole of the Côte d’Azure at her feet.

But they were both playing deep games tonight, and there was no place for angels in this particular gutter.

He heard the faint beep that meant the villa was clear of any potential intruders and that his guards had retreated to the security quarters elsewhere on the property. And for the first time all night, Zair took a long, deep breath and felt something like himself.

“Nora.”

She turned around then and he didn’t recognize her. That girl he thought he knew was absent entirely from her face, her usually expressive eyes. She was an icy blonde stranger, a confection of smooth limbs and the glorious blond waves that surged over her shoulders. Her blue eyes were a wall he couldn’t see through, and if it was possible, he wanted this tough, unreadable version of her more.

He wanted to take her apart. He wanted her to want that as much as he did.

But it didn’t matter what he wanted. It mattered what he did. And Zair supposed it mattered what she was doing here—because he didn’t buy that she was looking for the kind of rough evenings that friend of hers returned for, year after year.

Everything else was fantasy. And would be reason enough for her brother—his friend, he reminded himself acidly—to kill Zair with his own hands.

“So?” Nora’s voice was challenging and went through him like electricity. She folded her arms over her chest and he watched that belligerent chin of hers tilt up. “How do you want to fuck?”

For a long moment, Zair simply froze solid while red-hot images chased each other through his head. But then he felt his pulse, hard and insistent, drumming through him. She shouldn’t have been here at all, but she was. And for once, he simply acted.

He stalked toward her, taking a deep satisfaction in the way her eyes widened. He knew she wasn’t as cool or collected as she apparently wanted to pretend. He could read it in the way she held herself, the way she reacted—a man with his preferences and years of martial arts training learned how to read the signals a woman showed with every inch of her body.

But it had been a long night even before he’d made it to that yacht, and she was the last person he’d expected to see when he got there. And if she wanted to play this game with him, Zair didn’t think he had it in him to refuse.

He didn’t try.

“Right here?” she asked when he was nearly upon her, her eyes dark and wary, and that scratchy note in her voice that he thought was more than a little bit of panic. If he were a better man, he might not have reveled in it. “Right in front of the windows?”

“Wherever the hell I want,” he growled at her. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

And then he indulged himself, at last.

They weren’t in public anymore. He didn’t have to play his stomach-churning role and make certain he looked the part as he sought his own pleasure. He swept her to him, capturing her mouth with his and letting his hands roam where they pleased. At last. From her soft cheeks to her satiny shoulders, then down the tantalizing, bared curve of her back. He finally found her hips, and he soaked in their lush shape for a moment before he hauled her up against the hardest part of him.

And then he let himself go.

He kissed her the way a dying man might, and he hadn’t understood until that moment how very much he felt as if he really were dying. As if he already had. As if the Zair al Ruyi he’d been all those years ago had ceased to exist when he’d decided to build this new persona, the better to flush out his quarry. When he’d decided he had no other choice.

She tasted as bright and as beautiful as she looked, and Zair wanted to lose himself inside her more than he wanted anything else. More, in that moment, than he wanted the truth and the justice that he’d been seeking all these years.

More.

He kissed her until he thought he might lose his iron grip on himself and even then, when he pulled away, he was so hard it nearly hurt.

And she looked up at him, dazed and wild, her sweet mouth ajar and her breath coming in little pants, and it took everything Zair had not to simply pick her up, wrap her legs around his hips, and sink deep inside her where they stood. She was a slight thing, for all her height, and it would hardly take—

She blinked as if she were the one who could read him. She licked her lips, and when he let out a rough sound at the sight, her blue eyes flew to his.

And then he watched her remember the game she played tonight. He saw that wall of hers come down, hard, and his hands tightened where they were still buried in her hair.

“You need to pay me first,” she said, coarse and sharp.

He felt as if she’d slapped him. He imagined that was the point. He let go of her, stepping back to put space between them and to keep himself under control. He saw the way she tilted back her head, as if she was bracing for his temper.

As if that was exactly what she wanted.

Because, he realized then, she thought he really was the kind of monster he’d pretended to be all this time. She saw only the mask he wore. She thought he was the mask, exactly as he’d wanted her to think. Exactly as he’d wanted everyone to think.

There was absolutely no reason that he should feel that like some kind of grand betrayal. It wasn’t. And he opted not to ask himself why he felt something far too much like grief besides. As if a silly crush a spoiled little girl like this one had had on him throughout her adolescence should have meant something. He knew it didn’t.

Instead of giving her the show of temper she was courting, he reached into his jacket and pulled out the envelope he’d stashed there. It was stuffed full of euros and her eyes widened, as if she hadn’t expected that. Perhaps she wasn’t entirely sure if he was his mask or not.

He held it out, yet didn’t hand it to her.

“You can have it,” he told her. “But it’s not a donation. You’ll have to work for it.”

Zair watched her pale. And he was a lost cause, a twisted creature all the way through, because he liked it, for all kinds of reasons. Chief among them, the fact that she didn’t back down, pale as she’d become. How far would she take this?

“Is there a problem?” he asked, calm again. Cool, while she stared back at him with wide, worried eyes, and he liked that, too. “Because surely you must know this, Nora. This is what hookers do.”

* * *

Nora opened her mouth to automatically object to him calling her a hooker—but caught herself in the nick of time.

Tonight, she was a hooker. It was easier to keep that in mind when she was the one saying the kinds of crass, come-hither-with-cash things she imagined hookers might say. It was a lot harder when Zair did it. It veered a little bit too close to a host of shameful, hurtful feelings she’d assured herself she was immune from because she had reasons for doing this. Because it wasn’t a choice she was making, it was a mission.

This isn’t about you, she reminded herself then. Fiercely. Or him. Or whatever happens here.

“Of course,” she said, forcing that calm note into her voice. She held out her hand and his mouth twitched slightly as he slapped the envelope into her palm. “We can do whatever you want, Zair. Just tell me what that is and we’ll get going.”

There was something different about the way he was looking at her, something she might have called indulgent in a more optimistic frame of mind, but she told herself she was imagining it.

That kiss had rocked her. She could still feel it, everywhere, as if he’d changed the chemistry of her body and she was something different now, something new. She’d thought kissing him on that yacht was hard enough, mind-blowing and insane. Here, all alone, with the sparkling lights of the beautiful French Riviera gleaming down below and a mess of stars above, it had been like throwing herself off the side of the nearest cliff.

She wasn’t certain she’d landed yet.

But she couldn’t let herself think too much. She’d decided in the car ride on the winding roads that led up into these hills that she had to concentrate on getting through this night with him, and that was all. She couldn’t let her age-old fantasies about this man confuse the issue.

And if she had to have sex with him to prove she was the whore she was pretending to be, well, she could do that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him for years. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could convince herself that this was all romantic, somehow. That it was something more than a cold, hard transaction and that Zair, too, was something more than a rich, dissolute john.

And meanwhile, Zair was studying her in that disconcerting way of his, as though he was taking her apart and analyzing every piece of her, and she needed to focus. This wasn’t some random guy with a yen for deviant sexual behavior; this was Zair. She had no doubt that he feasted on political intrigue for breakfast, thanks to his job, and she already knew he was lethal. He was formidable and dangerous on every possible level. If she wanted to keep her secrets from him, it was going to take every last bit of her concentration.

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he asked, proving himself something like psychic, his cool green eyes seeing far too deep inside her head.

“You mean other than fucking?”

“No matter how many times you throw that word at me,” he said with a certain quiet menace she felt spear through her, making her feel breathless and needy and deeply anxious at once, “it won’t make this charade of yours any more convincing.”

Nora realized, in that searing moment, that she’d anticipated having to do this—if she’d truly had to do it at all, as she’d indulged in a rather sepia-toned fantasy sequence of spotting Harlow the moment she set foot on the yacht and the two of them breaking for land before any transactions took place—with a stranger. She hadn’t imagined she’d have to put on this act for someone who knew her.

She’d certainly never imagined doing this with him.

Nora tucked the fat envelope into her clutch, buying herself a little bit of breathing room, and then she eyed him again, wishing she’d thought to wear some kind of body armor tonight. Alas.

“You don’t actually know me very well, Zair,” she said, and she stopped trying to pretend she was the Happy Hooker. She just said it, flat and matter-of-fact. “I’m sorry if you can’t handle this. But it’s not up to you to decide what I get to do for fun.”

“Fun?” He looked so relaxed, suddenly. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his trousers and shifted back on his heels, and Nora knew, somehow, that he was the most furious she’d ever seen him. It should have terrified her. Instead, it made her…tingle. Everywhere. “This is what you find fun? Sucking the cocks of strange men in foreign countries? For cash you don’t need?”

“If I needed the cash, it wouldn’t be fun, would it?”

“And what pleasure do you get from this, exactly?” He shook his head, his gaze darker and more tormented than she’d ever seen it before—but surely that was a trick of the light. It was gone in an instant. “If this is an adrenaline thing, you should consider more extreme sports. Flinging yourself from planes and down the backs of unmapped mountains would be far safer, don’t you think?”

She smiled. “I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Do you extend the same consideration to all the women you buy?”

That fascinating mouth of his moved into something too dark to be a smile in return. “How often do you do this?”

“As often as I feel like it.” Nora tilted her chin up when he looked dubious. “I don’t need your approval, Zair. It’s none of your business.”

“That is where you are wrong.”

“I think you should spend some time thinking about how you only seem to find my participation problematic,” she told him, ignoring the simmering way he was looking at her. “If women selling their own bodies is a bad thing, then it must be equally bad for everyone on that boat. Yet you went there to buy someone. And you only left with me.”

“You were the only woman in the room related to my best friend,” he gritted at her. “What was I supposed to do?”

“You’re wasting my time.” She squared her shoulders when he glared at her, and she wished that she felt as tough as she was acting. Or that he didn’t still appeal to her, despite all of this. “You dragged me away from a boat full of prospects. I didn’t come to France to sit through a lecture. I’m calling a cab.”

She started for the door with her head high, though she was prudent enough to give him a wide berth as she went. Her heart was clattering against her ribs and her knees felt weak, but she thought she could hold herself together long enough to make it into a taxi.

Then she could spend the rest of this terrible night in the fetal position, crying for the death of the Zair al Ruyi who had clearly never existed outside her childish fantasies.

And then start this whole thing over again tomorrow.

She had her hand on the front door and she didn’t hear a thing—Zair simply came up behind her and slapped his own hands against the tall, smooth wood on either side of her, caging her there. He didn’t touch her. But she could feel the heat of his hard body like a furnace, roaring just there at her back, easing into her bones and making her feel weak and greedy.

She was suddenly, powerfully glad that the huge, heavy door was right there in front of her, propping her up. It kept her from sliding into a heap on the ground when he leaned in close, swept her hair to one side, and pressed his mouth to the nape of her neck.

Nora went white hot. Her eyes slid shut while that same wildfire scoured her, hotter than before, burning her alive and making her want more. More.

She felt that bold, sensual kiss everywhere. His mouth was so hot, so clever. He was so big and so powerful, and he touched her so gently, it made her mind blank out while her body shivered into total, needy awareness.

And he knew it.

He laughed, low and dark, and Nora knew that he was as aware of that tightness in her breasts, that flush that lit her up from her cheeks to her navel, even that molten heat between her legs, as she was. He knew everything, as if she were nothing but a wide-open book to a man like him. She suspected she really was.

Even that notion failed to do anything but make her want him all the more.

“I won’t lecture you,” he told her, his voice like a hundred dark dreams, winding through her, pulling those gleaming threads of need inside her so tight they took her breath. “But you took my money, Nora. Surely you must realize that I must take my pound of flesh in return. This is how it works.”