Page 7 of Her Forbidden Bargain

“About you.”

“Really?”

“Um…yes. What are you thinking?”

“That maybe I should pull you closer,” he said, suiting action to words.

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and closed her eyes. She knew this was another part of the wonderful dreamland she’d been in for the last week. Being on Mykonos was like being in a fantasy world.

Tristan and his friends were wealthy in every sense of the word and, when she was with them, she was living a life that was far removed from everything she’d ever known.

“Okay?”

“Yes,” she said, her words a sigh. “Though I thought we’d decided that…um, we’d just have a professional relationship.”

“Did we? I think we can both be forgiven for making the most of this moment, on a night like tonight.”

She looked up at him, trying to judge if he was sincere, and she saw something in his eyes. Something she’d never seen in them before.

Lust.

Everything feminine in her clenched at that expression. Here was what she’d dreamed of. And how sad was it that she wanted to accept whatever he had to offer?

“For just this night?” she asked, to make sure she understood what he was offering.

“That’s all I have in me,” he said, but in his eyes she saw the hint of something more.

Some kind of emotion that intimated that he did feel more, but why did she care? Being in Tristan’s arms was enough for her. This moment dancing together was better than she’d ever imagined it could be. She kept breathing deeply, trying to imprint the scent of him in her soul. She ran her hands down his shoulders and back, feeling the strength of his body under her touch.

If she were braver she’d press her body closer to his so she’d have the imprint of him against her to recall when she was back in the office and they were simply employer and employee again.

His finger under her chin startled her into opening her eyes and when he tipped her head back and their eyes met, she realized that there was more happening here than just a dance. She saw something else in Tristan’s gaze. There was such sadness there, she thought. A kind of pain that she recognized all the way to her lonely soul.

Tristan Sabina, lonely?

The thought was ludicrous.

She shook her head. What the hell was she doing? This was her boss. She pulled back, put a respectable few inches between them, and he let her.

She got the message loud and clear. There wasn’t more to this than Tristan feeling lonely at the reception and wanting…what exactly?

She tipped her head to the side as he brushed his finger along the line of her jaw. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I never realized how beautiful your eyes are.”

She caught her breath. She wasn’t beautiful and she knew it. Her eyes were brown. Not the kind of luscious chocolaty color that poets wrote about, just plain brown. She shook her head.

“Yes, gorgeous. I could get lost in them.”

“Tristan—”

He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip and her thoughts dissolved. She felt a tingling from that contact that spread down her neck and shoulders. And she realized that the safe little way in which she’d been obsessed with Tristan had turned into a dangerous and exciting attraction.

She knew that he wasn’t himself tonight. That Monday morning, when they were back at work, they would return to the relationship they’d always had.

A sane person would turn around, walk off the dance floor and go back to her room.

But she’d been alone in her room for much of her life. In a box of her own making where she was safely insulated from pain. From the men who always left her.