Page 10 of Just One More Night

In anything.

But he had seen a vision in a shitty back alley two years ago. And even though he would have said he believed in visions even less than in the dour Orthodox god of his childhood, long since happily renounced, he had immediately known one thing above all others.

A man should never turn down a vision, no matter how inconvenient it was.

Though the wordinconvenientwas a mild way indeed to describe how he’d spent the past twenty-four months.

None of his former associates—because a man like him didn’t have friends—had understood. But then, how could they? All they’d seen was Stefan systematically dismantling a network he’d worked hard to put in place, removing himself completely, piece by piece.

For no good reason, he was sure they would have said if he’d encouraged such conversations. Because his network made money and for a long while, that was the only thing he’d cared about. It was the only thing that mattered to most of his associates, as it had to him, too. Before.

Only people who had always lived safe and secure—and rich—ever imagined that money wasn’t power.

But he’d met her in Budapest and everything had changed.

He couldn’t have explained it himself. He’d seen Indy March, bright with a fresh beauty though it had been the middle of the night. And no one who was wandering around that particular neighborhood at such an hour could possibly have beenfreshin any sense of the word. Still, she was such a tiny little thing, with glossy dark hair and a heart-shaped face. Picking her way through the rubble and ruin of the world he lived in as if she hadn’t noticed the state of it.

She’d looked at him the same way.

His heart, that useless organ, had stopped. Then kicked back in, hard.

She had looked like an angel, and what fallen man could resist?

He couldn’t. He hadn’t.

And now here she was on her knees again, only this time Stefan had no gun aimed at her head. No collection of associates he barely tolerated himself. This time, she appeared before him of her own volition. Not because she’d wandered down the wrong alley in the wrong part of the wrong city.

Not to mention, she’d had two years to think better of the whole thing.

These were all important distinctions.

His cock might have been rock hard, the way it always had been every time he’d thought of her since he’d dropped her at the airport in Budapest, but he was in no rush now. Not now.

Because she was here. And Stefan could see from the expression on her face that her hunger was as fierce as his.

“Welcome to Prague, foolish girl,” he murmured, settling back in his chair and regarding her almost lazily. “Why don’t you tell me, at last, how you ended up in that alley?”

Her chest moved, telling him she was breathing too hard. He liked it. And though he saw a kind of dismay on her face, or possibly impatience, she didn’t argue with him. She settled back on her heels, giving him the opportunity to miss that flowy little red skirt she’d worn before that had fueled any number of fantasies since. She shoved the silken mass of her hair back from her face and smiled at him.

As if this was a proper dinner date in whatever squeaky-clean world she came from.

Though he knew what her world was like. All its fresh, bright, happy details. A man might trust a vision all he liked—but a wise man verified it.

Only wise men survived the kind of life Stefan had built for himself, then destroyed.

“I was at a club,” she told him, and her voice was as lovely as he remembered it. Sweet and sultry all at once, with that American Dream accent of hers. “It was just down the street in some crumbling-down warehouse I couldn’t find again if my life depended on it. I wanted a breath of fresh air and a little walk and then there I was. In the middle of your... Situation.”

That was significantly less celestial. He studied her, the laziness giving way to a frown. “You wanted towalk. At that hour. You didn’t notice what kind of neighborhood you were in?”

Indy shrugged, and his eye was drawn to how delicate she was. She was such a little thing. He remembered, vividly, picking her up. Holding her against him, his imagination wild with all the ways a man of his size could indulge himself with a tiny little creature like her—but he’d urged himself to be careful.

He might not have been a good man, but he didn’t break his toys.

Then she’d proved herself more than his equal. She’d showed him a libido to match his and better still, the ability to take his cock even if she hurt herself doing it.

Men changed their lives for far less.

That night had been warm, as he recalled. She’d worn a strappy little tank top, a tiny little backpack like the one she’d tossed aside here, and that filmy red skirt that had haunted him ever since. And loads of necklaces and bracelets that marked her as one of the carefree backpacker set who polluted most of Europe—and the world—with their vast privilege wrapped up as wanderlust. Today she wore skinny gray jeans that seemed pasted to her and a flowy sort of T-shirt that did as much to expose her midriff as cover it. She still wore a ton of bracelets, but the only necklace she wore today was the key to his villa.