Page 27 of Just One More Night

“Is that... Are youdaringme?”

Stefan shrugged. “If you are too afraid to play with a little intensity, Indiana, I cannot help you with this. I have learned to live with other disappointments.”

He saw a series of emotions move over her heart-shaped face. Temper. Dismay. And then, more interesting, that amusement she usually wore so easily. He had never seen her put it into place in quite that way before. Like she was settling into a mask.

She laughed, because she always laughed. Because he thought she’d decided that made her seem exactly as fun—and as bulletproof—as she thought she needed to be.

“You’re reading this all wrong,” she told him lightly. Always so lightly. “I’m not afraid, I promise. I’m just not an intense person. It’s not how I’m made.”

He thought of the way she’d sobbed beneath him last night, her gaze slick with hunger and need, every part of her so tuned into him it was like its own, sweet agony. He thought of the way she had kissed her way over his scars, finding them in his tattoo and taking her time. Making sure she found every last one of them.

And he knew that she was used to controlling things this way. Her carelessness. Flitting from place to place, lover to lover, to the endless soundtrack of her own laughter.

But Stefan knew she was a liar.

All he did was study her until she flushed. And she did, bright and red.

“Bullshit,” he said.

And he made sure that when he smiled this time, it was a weapon.

CHAPTER SIX

HEWASN’TEVENtouching her and yet Indy felt splayed wide open like they were back in that alley.

She’d thought she’d made such a good choice after playing tourist. After wandering around in the summer night, making them part of the crowds doing the same—and therefore not strung out on their connection and all that electric, breathtaking need—she’d thought she could pull him into a dark alley to reframe the admittedly intense beginning of their relationship.

The joke had been on her. Because he’d wrecked her.

Indy felt turned inside out. She didn’t like it.

“It’s not bullshit,” she said, frowning at him.

It was another beautiful, breezy summer’s day in the Czech Republic. Everything outside the endless sweep of windows was green and lush and beautiful. She could see the bridges spanning the Vltava and the spires of Prague Castle from the center of Stefan’s bed, where he’d ruined her fun. Repeatedly and deliberately, all night long.

Last night she’d been so sure that she had this situation under control. She’d been convinced that she could simplybe herself—because she didn’t accept what he’d said, that she was manipulative or unconsciously trying to handle anything—and he would somehow start behaving in a way that made sense to her.

Yeah,she thought now, finishing up her braid while holding that gaze of his.That didn’t work.

Today she was a little bit wiser, maybe. And dressed, thank you. Because she certainly had no intention of prancing around naked in front of him when he was far too good at using her own body against her. One more thing she’d never experienced before, she could admit. Normally she was the one who used her body. And she’d never met anyone who was better at it than she was...until now.

But that didn’t make her afraid. And it didn’t make him right.

“It is bullshit,” he said again, his voice implacable.

And God, the way he looked at her. That hard and steady gaze that left her in absolutely no doubt that he could see straight through her. That he saw everything. Maybe even things she didn’t know about herself, a notion that made her feel far too trembly deep inside.

That and his marvelous accent, that made her think of the taste of that plum brandy on her tongue.

“I understand you like to play this carefree, languid character,” he continued in the same way, all steel and certainty. “But even your orgasms tell the truth, Indiana. You like the easy way out. You don’t like the commitment of anything more. You don’t even want sex if it demands too much of you. You tell yourself you’re made that way, when as we have proven, what you’re made for is me. This.” His blue eyes gleamed, brighter than the sky that stretched on forever outside the windows. “Us.”

Indy told herself she was tired of the earthquakes he kept setting off inside her. The fault lines she hadn’t known were there, tangled and fragile andshakingwhile her heart beat too hard. In parts of her that her heart shouldn’t have been.

“You don’t actually know me at all, Stefan.”

She knew that sounded more defensive than she wanted to sound in his presence. Why not bare her throat to his teeth and see if he really was the wolf she thought he was? She knew he would read too much into it. She knew he would take that tone asproof.

But she couldn’t seem to help herself. There was something beating in her along with her wild pulse, feeling far too much like panic.