A Devil in Disguise by Caitlin Crews Read Free Book Online Page A

all he stood for. It horrified him unto his very bones.
    Never again,
he’d vowed when he was still so young.
No more feelings.
He’d felt far too much in the first eighteen years of his life, and done nothing but suffer for it. He’d decided he was finished with it—that succumbing to such things was for the kind of man he had no intention of ever becoming. Weak. Malleable. Common. He refused to be any of those things, ever again.
    And he’d let that drive him for nearly two decades. If something was out of his reach, he simply extended his reach and then took it anyway. If it was not for sale, he applied pressure until it turned out it was after all—and often at a lesser price thanks to his machinations. If a woman did not want him, he simply took pains to shower her with her heart’s desire, whatever that might be, until she decided that perhaps she’d been too hasty in her initial rejection. If a bloody assistant wanted to leave his employ, he simply replaced her, and if he felt she should stay, he gave her whatever she wanted so that she did. He bought whatever he desired, because he could. Because he would never again be that little boy, marked with his mother’s shame, expected to amount to little more than the sin that had made him. Because he did not, could not, and would not
care.
    Not that he did now, he assured himself. Not really. But whatever this was inside him—with its deep claws and driving lust, with its mad obsession over a woman who had tried to leave him twice today already—it was too close. Much closer than it should have been. It pumped in his blood. It made him hard. It made him
want.
    It was outrageous. He refused to allow it any more traction.
He refused.
    “Ready one of the motorboats,” he said in a low voice, and heard a burst of action behind him, as if the yacht’s entire staff had been poised on a knife’s edge, waiting to hear the order. “I will fetch her myself.”
    He detected a note of surprise in the immediate affirmative answer he received, because, of course, he was Cayo Vila. Something he had clearly lost sight of today. He did not collect women or employees, they were delivered to him, like any other package. And yet here he was, chasing after this woman. Again. It was impossible, inconceivable—and even so, he was doing it.
    So there was really only one question. Was he going out to drag her back onto the yacht and continue to tolerate this ridiculous little bit of theater until he got what he wanted? Or was he going out there to drown her with his bare hands, thereby solving the problem once and for all?
    At the moment, he thought, his narrowed gaze on her determined figure as it made its stubborn way through the sea, away from him, he had no idea.
    “Are you going to get in the boat? Or are you so enjoying your swim that you plan to make a night of it?” Cayo snapped from the comfortable bench seat in the chic little motorboat where he lounged, all dark and dangerous above her.
    Dru ignored him. Or tried, anyway.
    “It is further to the shore than it looks,” he continuedin that same clipped tone. That mouth of his crooked in one corner, though there was nothing at all like a smile about it. “Not to mention the current. If you are not careful, you might very well find yourself swept all the way to Egypt.”
    Dru kept swimming, feeling entirely too close to grim. Or was that
defeated?
Had she truly kissed him like that?
Again?
Cadiz had been one thing. He had been so different that night, and it had seemed so organic, so excusable, given the circumstances. But there was no excuse for what had happened today. She knew how little he thought of her.
She knew.
And still, she’d kissed him
like that
. Wanton and wild. Aching and demanding and hot—
    She would never forgive herself.
    “Egypt would be far preferable to another moment spent in your company—” she threw at him, but he cut her off simply by clicking his fingers at the steward who operated the