A Devil in Disguise by Caitlin Crews Page B

under a palm tree and stare at the sea,” she said, though the very thought was faintly unnerving, somehow.
    “And be waited upon hand and foot?” he asked, a note in his voice she couldn’t decipher.
    She thought of Dominic’s ashes, packed away in the tin that functioned as an urn and sat in the center of her bookshelf back in London. And of the promisesshe’d made, to him and to herself. That she would let him go into the wind, the water. The least she could do was honor the man he might have been, had he made different choices, or been stronger against his own demons. And she knew that she needed it, too. The closure. The ceremony. A way to let go, once and for all.
    “Something like that,” she said now, not quite meeting Cayo’s eyes.
    He didn’t believe her. She could see it in the way he shifted in his deep leather seat, as he scraped that thick, black hair back from his brow.
    “How debaucherous.” It was a taunt. And it hit hard, though she should have been impervious to him.
    “I leave that kind of thing to you, Mr. Vila,” she snapped.
    Unwisely.
    Everything seemed to pull taut. There was no air, no sound. Dru had the panicked sense that the plane had dropped from the sky—but no, Cayo did not move a muscle, it was only in her head. She felt her heart thud hard against her chest, then slow, and she could not seem to look away from him, from that hard mouth of his that she could not pretend she didn’t crave. From that dangerous light in his eyes as he stared back at her.
    “Is that a challenge, Miss Bennett?” he asked softly, that voice rolling through her, turning all of that need into an ache, insistent and sweet, burning her from the inside out. His cruel mouth moved into a hard smile, and she felt it like a caress. “I will endeavor to live up to your fantasies.”
    Did he know?
Dru felt herself flush. Did he know what kept her awake—what tormented her, what she could see all too clearly even now—that delicious fusionof what had happened in Cadiz and on the yacht and what she imagined came next—
    “But first,” he continued in that silky, supremely dangerous tone, his gaze narrow on hers even as he gestured toward his phone again, “let’s close this deal in Taiwan.”
    Dru felt hollowed out and more than a little lightheaded with jet lag, not to mention her own much too vivid imagination, when they finally made it to what she assumed was Bora Bora, but which could have been anywhere for all she was able to discern in the thick, heavy dark.
    The helicopter they’d taken after their landing in Tahiti set down in a small field lit with tall tiki torches. The night was close and warm, sultry against her skin. She could smell the sea and the deep green of wild, fragrant growing things. The sweetness of flowers hung heavy, like perfume against the dark, and when she tipped her head back to watch the helicopter fly away again, she had to stifle a gasp at the brilliance of the stars that crowded the night sky. The roar of the helicopter faded, leaving only a deep tropical hush behind. It seemed to arrow into her soul.
    “Come,” Cayo ordered her impatiently, and strode off.
    Porters appeared from the darkness to handle the bags, and Dru followed Cayo over a wooden walkway, lit with more torches and hemmed in on all sides with lush greenery. Even in the dark, Dru could all but taste the burst of
jungle
all around her. Cayo was ahead of her, his long legs eating up the distance and before she knew it, she was hurrying—matching her stride to his, just as she’d always done.
    Just like the dog on a leash he’d threatened to makeher, a small voice inside of her pointed out. She shook it off.
    Cayo stopped walking before a large Polynesian-style house with high, arched rooftops and wide, open windows that stretched the length and width of the walls, featuring pulled-back sliding shutters and unobstructed views.
    And on the other side of the walkway was water. Nothing but dark water,