Deceit by Fayrene Preston

get rid of her.”
    A chilling wind sent her gown swirling out around her, an undulating midnight blue cloud
    in a midnight black world. Her throat burned with emotion too raw to express. “I’ve got to go.” She turned sharply and started off down the path. “Wait.”
    She felt his hand close around her arm and whirled on him like a wounded animal. “Don’t touch me! I can’t stand it!”
    Puzzlement scored his face as he stared at her. “I couldn’t have hurt you, Liana. ”
    That was really funny, she thought, but found she couldn’t laugh. “Just leave me alone.” She turned again, wanting to put as much distance between them as possible, but she didn’t get very far before the heel of her shoe came down on a pebble and she stumbled.
    Somehow Richard was there to catch her, disgust in his voice. “Lord, you can’t even walk.” He swept her up into his arms and started back toward the house.
    A violent storm of turmoil closed in around her. His strength, his scent, his overwhelming masculinity—his trap had closed around her. “I can make it on my own,” she insisted.
    “Obviously not, Liana. You’re drunk.”
    She was sure she was, but there was more than wine working in her. Her world was spinning out of control, she didn’t know how to stop it, and suddenly she was too tired to try. She went limp against him, winding her arm around his shoulder and resting her head against his chest. “There,” he said. “That’s better.”
    No, she thought. It wasn’t better. It was simply the only choice she could make at the moment. She could detect no tenderness or caring in the way that he held her, but she was too weary to worry about his motives. “Can we just stop our hostility for tonight?” she murmured.
    “A truce?” he asked mockingly. “What an imaginative idea.”
    The lights were brighter now; they were drawing closer to the house. She sighed softly, her breath exhaling against the strong column of his throat. “Can’t you let it go? Even for a short while.” His arms tightened, pulling her even closer against him. “I don’t know. ”
    “Just for tonight. I can’t fight you any more tonight.”
    “Then don’t.”
    There was something in his voice that made her add, “I also can’t make love with you.”
    “Who said anything about love, Liana? I can’t recall that I did.”
    What was the use? she wondered despondently. She should have known better than try to reason with him, but she supposed being held in his arms had warped her judgment. In the future, she’d remember. Their past made reason impossible.
    “Put me down, Richard,” she said as they approached the back of the house. “I don’t want anyone to see you carrying me.”
    “Worried that your glossy image will be destroyed if someone sees you drunk?”
    “I’m not drunk.” And she wasn’t anymore. The wind and Richard had whipped all effects of the wine from her.
    “Don’t worry. No one will see you. By accident, I discovered a back route the other day.” He shifted her weight slightly and opened a small rear door that led into one of the back halls of the house. Once inside, he carried her to a service elevator that transported them to the third floor. Only when they were outside her door did he allow her to stand.
    “Well, here you are, more or less safe, more or less sound. For now.” He waited for some sort of retort from her.
    But she sagged back against the door and her sleepy eyes drooped closed. He frowned. Strands of her pale wheat-colored hair had come loose from their coil and lay in enchanting tendrils against her cheek and shoulders. Thick dark lashes threw shadows over the flawless, nearly translucent skin of her cheeks. Her breasts rose and fell above the low neckline of her gown as she breathed. She made him furious.
    Why the hell did she have to be so beautiful? And why was she so damned tired? And most of all, why, out on the bluff, had she screamed at him when he’d grasped her arms?