at the assistant, and she mouths wow at me.
Wow what?
Her next words clarify it. “I’d say finding a man who looks at you that way is pretty priceless. Get the dress, honey.” She says all this in a whisper, glancing at Bohdan as he settles on the couch.
Oh, I’m getting the dress, but why is Bohdan looking at me that way? Does he still have feelings for me? Do I want him to?
Chapter Eleven
Dasha
I need to tell Bohdan he can’t stay. He’s messing with my equilibrium, and I have a performance to prepare for. I can’t deal with the distraction. As nice as it is to feel those flutters of attraction after feeling dead for so long inside, I can’t go there. I can’t allow myself to feel anything other than the upcoming performance.
I’m also afraid, if I’m truthful with myself. Bohdan broke me once before, and he clearly still has the power to do so again. For all the things Jasper does to me, they don’t hurt as much as seeing Bohdan with that woman, and that’s because I don’t love Jasper.
I loved Bohdan. I loved him fiercely and blindly, and he took that love and that trust and trashed it.
Glancing at him as he drives us smoothly through the Parisian streets, I clear my throat.
“You have to leave,” I tell him.
He doesn’t reply.
Damn him.
“You took my case, you said so yourself, and you had no right. I bet you didn’t say we knew one another. This is a conflict of interest. So now you need to hand it over to someone else, and you take a different case. I can’t do this. You’re stirring stuff up for me, Bohdan. Plus, it’s not right. It’s not professional. You need to let your employers know you know me and let someone else take this case.”
“It’s not a conflict of interest,” he says.
“What?”
“I’m not investigating anything here, Dasha. I’m simply protecting you. Besides, it is moot as I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then I’ll tell Jasper we know one another from before.”
He swerves across two lanes of traffic, down a narrow street and comes to a stop in front of a closed sweet shop. What the hell?
“Firstly, no you won’t. He suspects something about us, and if you tell him now, after a whole day with me, he’s going to be livid. Now, I don’t know your husband, but he doesn’t seem like a man who handles his dark moods all too well.”
How does he know that? Then again, he probably has to read people well for what he does.
“Secondly, you do that, and I will tell him a few choice stories of my own.”
“Like what?” I set my jaw at him. “There are no stories.”
“Oh, Dasha, there are plenty. Do you remember that time we went down to the lake and swam? God knows what was in that water.” He lets out a soft laugh. “It’s amazing we’re not irradiated by now. I remember it well. I also recall after. You and me, on that muddy bank, no one around. We were wet. Our underwear was dripping, and we kissed and then somehow, we were rubbing against one another and we came. Do you remember?”
He's whispering now, his breath hot against my ear as he leans in.
“I fail to see how this will have any impact on Jasper,” I snap, pushing him back.
“I doubt he’d like you driving around Paris for a day with your ex-lover. I doubt he’d be happy that you’re in the car with the man you let dry hump you until you came crying out his name.”
God, he’s a bastard.
“I really doubt he’d like that you kissed that man now.”
“We haven’t kissed, so you—”
His hand tangles in my hair, and warm lips brush against mine.
Push him off, push him off, push him off.
The alarm is blaring in my mind, but I can’t move. All I can do is feel.
His soft mouth, his hand tangled in my hair hard, and his scent all encompassing. He tastes of peppermint and coffee, and smells of the ocean and heat.
A whimper fills the car, and I realize it’s from me. Horrified, I pull away.
He stares at me, eyes blazing, and slowly he licks his lips.
“I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing here, but it sucks,” I tell him. I’m shaking. I’m also wet. I turn my shame and arousal into anger. “You’ve no fucking right to come back into my life and torture me this way; not after what you