A Ruthless kind of love

The ballroom was a glitter cage. Chandeliers poured light into every corner, violins swooped over the buzz of money voices, and air had that wraithlike sheen of high perfume and greed. Elena Marlowe had never been so out of her depth in her life.

She stood on the periphery of the throng, black silk gown clinging to her form like a mourning shroud, the rim of the champagne flute chilled against her skin. She did not mingle. She did not come in order to be groomed like some man's trophy. She came as an assignee, a reluctant observer in a society that was alien to her. The thought caused a shiver along her spine.

And still, she could sense it-that pins-and-needles sensation of being watched.

Her spine tensed before she'd spun half around. He was the other side of the room, by the bar.

He didn't belong, either-not that the others did. When men swaggered and blustered, this one stayed silent, deadly, his black tuxedo fitted to a body that pulsed with power. He didn't need to intrude; he didn't need to be. He was adamant in a voice that boomed he never once heard the one word: no. His dark, inscrutable eyes fixed on hers as if the rest of the ballroom melted away.

Elena's own throat constricted. Something deep within her growled warning. She ripped her face away, only to feel the weight of his eyes still upon her.

A wrist was ensnared in a hand.

"Miss Marlowe," slurred the drunk smile of one of her editor's friends. His mouth whiskey-tasting, his grip too tight. "You are lovely. May I-"

"No," she snarled, trying to squirm loose.

The man just laughed, holding her closer. "Don't play games. I insist-"

"Let. Her. Go."

The voice cut through the noise like a knife. Smooth and cold and commanding.

Elena froze.

The man in the black suit materialized out of nowhere-huge, ominous, the acrid smell of his aftershave cutting and burning, reminiscent of the smell of heated metal fumes. His presence overwhelmed her, of a kind that warped the air itself.

The investor brushed her aside with a flinch under that intense scrutiny. Without a word, he melted into the crowd and disappeared.

There was a pause between Elena and the stranger. Her heart was pounding in her ears, her skin tingling with a presence that she could not shake.

"Are you all right?" His voice softened now, but no less commanding.

She swallowed. "I could have done it myself."

His brow furrowed. His lips curled, but not in a smile, a sneer of laughter at her expense. "Perhaps. But I dislike men playing with what does not belong to them."

The words hit her like a match to tinder. What in the world don't they have. Their haughtiness made her want to strike him-although the tone, the very commanding tone of it, sent sparks flying up her breast and terrified her.

"Excuse me?" she managed, her voice smaller than she wished.

His eyes locked with hers. He didn't blink, and he didn't back down. As if he could see through every obstacle she had worked so doggedly to erect around herself.

"Do you always interfere in other people's affairs?" she spat, trying to put steel into her voice.

"Only when I want to," he said, an equanimity about his words that suggested that was all there was to it.

The nerve left her breathless. This man wasn't asking-this man was used to commanding. His arrogance of the sort that shattered resistance before it ever had so much as a chance to form.

"You shouldn't-"

But he moved toward her, close enough that she could feel the vibration of his breath along the whorl of her ear. His voice a whisper, lethal in its softness.

"You'll see," he breathed, "I don't always do what I should."

Her gut tightened. Promised and threatened, the words were bound together.

And then he withdrew, as suddenly as he'd appeared. "Enjoy the rest of your evening, Elena."

She stiffened. He'd said her name. She hadn't provided it.

Before she could ask him how he'd known it, he melted into the crowd, was gone as if the ballroom swallowed him up.

Elena's heart stalled, thudding. Terror gripped her ribcage, but it was tangled with something she couldn't let her brain acknowledge. Attraction.

No. No, she didn't. He was danger. Men like him always were.

She lingered no longer, his presence burdening her like a specter. On the ride home, she tried to remind herself that he was nothing more than another condescending man, one she would never lay eyes on again. But the pitch of his voice-icy, authoritative-would not be silenced.

Not until she reached the apartment, by which time she'd nearly given up on it.

Nearly.

For when she came in, the tableau brought her up short.

A single white rose, whole and unblemished, on the table by the window. Lost. Irrecoverable. Meant.

She gasped with shock. She hadn't placed it there.

Her heart stumbled to burst, half-way between fear and something infinitely worse: the thrill of knowing she'd already been taken.

And against her will, a shuddering thrill ran through her.