From New York With Love: Rumours on the Red Carpet / Rapunzel in New York / Sizzle in the City

She shook her head. ‘I believe I would prefer to continue calling you Mr Steele. Not that we’ll ever meet again after this evening. But even so—’

‘Why not?’

Thia gave a lightly dismissive laugh at the sharpness of his tone. ‘Because you inhabit this world and I—I inhabit another one.’

‘And yet here you are...?’

‘Yes, here I am.’ And she wouldn’t be coming back again if she could help it! ‘I really do have to go back inside now—’

‘And look for your friend?’ he prompted harshly.

‘Yes.’ Thia grimaced, very much afraid that she and that ‘friend’ were going to have words before the evening was over. Certainly she had no intention of letting Jonathan get away with bringing her to another party like this one and then leaving her to go off somewhere with the beautiful Simone. Jonathan’s habit of just forgetting Thia’s existence the moment they arrived at one of these parties was becoming tedious as well as a complete waste of her time, when she really didn’t enjoy being here.

‘Who is he?’

‘It’s really none of your business,’ Thia snapped in irritation at Lucien Steele’s persistence.

Those silver eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening. ‘At least tell me where you’re staying in New York.’

She gave an exasperated grimace. ‘That’s even less your business! Now, if you’ll excuse me...’ Thia didn’t wait for him to reply before turning on her four-inch-heeled shoes and walking away, her head held determinedly high as she forced herself not to hurry, not to reveal how desperately she needed to get away from Lucien Steele’s disturbingly compelling presence.

Even if she was completely aware of that silver gaze as a sensual caress across the bareness of her shoulders and down the length of her spine and the slender curve of her hips!

Lucien Steele was without doubt the most disturbingly sexual man she had ever—

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Jonathan demanded the moment she stepped back into the Carews’ huge sitting room. The expression on his boyishly handsome face was accusing as he took a rough hold of her arm.

An entirely unfair accusation, in Thia’s estimation, considering he was the one who had gone missing with their hostess for almost an hour, leaving her to be approached by Lucien Steele!

‘Can we talk about this somewhere less...public, Jonathan?’ She glared at him, very aware of the silent—listening?—presence of Lucien Steele’s bodyguard, Dex, just feet away from the two of them. ‘Preferably in the privacy of your car, once we’ve left,’ she added pointedly.

Jonathan looked less than pleased by her last comment. ‘You know damned well I can’t leave yet,’ he dismissed impatiently, even as he physically dragged her over to a quieter corner of the room.

‘Could that possibly be because you haven’t yet had a chance to say hello to Lucien Steele?’ Thia felt stung into taunting him as she rubbed the top of her arm where Jonathan’s fingers had dug so painfully into her flesh that she would probably have bruises to show for it tomorrow. ‘I noticed you and our beautiful hostess were noticeably absent when he arrived.’

‘What does that mean?’ he glowered darkly. ‘And what the hell’s got into you, talking to me like that?’

‘Nothing’s got into me.’ She gave a weary sigh, knowing that not all of her frustration with this evening was Jonathan’s fault. Her nerves were still rattled from that encounter with Lucien Steele on the balcony—to a degree that she could still feel the seductive brush of those chiselled lips against her cheek and the warmth of his breath brushing against her skin... ‘I just want to leave, that’s all.’ She grimaced.

‘I’ve told you that I can’t go just yet.’ Jonathan scowled down at her.

‘Then I’ll just have to go downstairs and get a taxi—’

‘It’s a cab,’ he corrected impatiently. ‘And you aren’t going anywhere until I say you can,’ he added determinedly.

Thia looked at him searchingly, noting the reckless brightness of his eyes and the unaccustomed flush to his cheeks. ‘Have you been drinking...?’

‘It’s a party. Of course I’ve been drinking!’ Jonathan eyed her impatiently.

‘In that case I’m definitely taking a cab back to your apartment,’ Thia stated firmly.

‘I said you’ll leave when I say you can!’ His eyes glittered.

Thia’s cheeks warmed as she stared at him incredulously. ‘Who do you think you are to talk to me like that?’ she gasped.

Jonathan’s expression darkened. ‘I think I’m the man who paid for you to come to New York!’

Her eyes widened incredulously. ‘And you believe that gives you the right to tell me what I can and can’t do?’

‘I think it gives me the right to do with you whatever the hell I feel like doing!’ he sneered.

Thia felt the colour drain from her cheeks at the unmistakable threat in his voice. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Jonathan.’ Her voice shook as she tried to hold back tears of hurt. ‘But I do know I don’t like you like this. You’re obviously drunk. Or something.’ She wasn’t a hundred per cent certain that reckless brightness in his eyes and the flush to his cheeks had been caused by alcohol alone...

Jonathan certainly wasn’t behaving this evening—hadn’t been for the past four days, if she was completely honest—like the charming and uncomplicated friend she had known in England...

She drew in a deep breath. ‘I think it’s best if I leave now, Jonathan. We can talk later. Or tomorrow—’

‘You’re staying put, damn it.’ He reached out and grasped the top of her arm once again, the fingers of his other hand like a vice about her wrist as he twisted painfully.

Thia gave a gasp at the pain he was deliberately—viciously—inflicting on both her arm and her wrist. ‘You’re hurting me, Jonathan,’ she breathed, very much aware of the other guests in the room and the curious sideways glances that were now being sent their way.

‘Then stop being so damned difficult! I’ve said you aren’t going anywhere and that’s an end to it—’ Jonathan broke off abruptly, his gaze moving past Thia and over her left shoulder and his eyes widening before he abruptly released her arm and wrist and forced a charmingly boyish smile to his lips.

Thia’s spine stiffened as she guessed from the sudden pause in the conversation around them, the expectant stillness in the air and the way her skin tingled in awareness, exactly who was standing behind her.

Only one man had the power to cause such awe in New York’s elite and the ability to possess the very air about him...

The same man who exuded such sexual attraction that it caused every nerve-ending in Thia’s body to react and strain towards the pull of that raw sensuality!

Lucien Steele...

* * *

Lucien had remained out on the balcony for several more minutes after Cynthia Hammond had walked away from him, giving the hardness of his arousal time to subside even as he pondered the unexpected fierceness of his physical reaction to her.

Her skin—that pearly, luminescent skin—had been as soft and perfect to the light caress of his lips against her cheek as he had imagined it would be, and he could still smell her perfume...something lightly floral along with underlying warmly desirable woman. The same warmth that had surrounded him, enveloped him, as he’d shrugged back into his evening jacket ready for returning to the Carews’ party as if the woman herself were wrapped around him.

Lucien couldn’t remember the last time he’d had such a visceral reaction to a woman that he wanted to take her right here and right now. If he ever had...

All the more surprising because Cynthia Hammond, at little over five feet tall, ebony-haired and probably only twenty or so, wasn’t the type of woman he usually found himself attracted to. He had always preferred tall, leggy blondes, and women nearer to his own age of thirty-five. Women who knew and accepted that his interest in them was purely physical, and that it would be fleeting.

Cynthia Hammond looked too young, too inexperienced to accept the intensity of passion Lucien would demand from her even for the brief time that his interest lasted. And it would be brief—a week or two, a month at the most—before Lucien once again found himself feeling restless, bored with having the same woman in his bed.

No, better by far, he had decided, that he stay well away from the too-young and too-inexperienced Cynthia Hammond.

And he would have done so if, when he had finally stepped back into the Carews’ apartment, Dex hadn’t felt it necessary to take him to one side and inform him of the way Jonathan Miller had verbally berated Cynthia Hammond the moment she’d returned to the party, before physically dragging her away.

Did that mean that Jonathan Miller, the star of one of the television series currently airing on Lucien’s own network, was the friend Cyn had come to the party with?