Page 47 of Disguised as Love

Sasha came forward with a pair of velvet heels. Peep-toed pumps with a tiny satin bow sitting atop the heel at the back. I slipped them on and again felt that sense of protection. As if velvet could protect me from whatever laid in wait for me.

I twirled in the mirror and then came face-to-face with Cruz who’d stepped toward me. I was on a circular platform in front of the mirrors, and between that and the heels, it brought me almost eye level with him.

“It’s too much for a funeral,” I said honestly.

“Maybe,” he replied, equally honest. “But I think he would have liked that.”

My eyes closed at the wave of pain those words caused me. Cruz didn’t know my father beyond whatever his files and reports told him, and yet he was right. Papa would love to see Mama and me in magnificent dresses. Clothes that spoke of how far he’d come from the street urchin to the billionaire living in an old Romanov palace.

I turned to Alexia. “Do you have something for Mama?”

She smiled at my acquiescence and nodded. “A suit of the reverse fabric. Velvet swirled with satin, but still cut with strips of the chiffon. I’ll have it sent to the house with your dress, shall I?”

I nodded.

Done with me, Alexia turned her focus to Cruz. “Remove these disgraceful excuses for clothing,” Alexia demanded as she tugged at his T-shirt.

He shot me a look, and I couldn’t stop my lips from twitching as her command made the mountain that was Cruz Malone shift nervously. Alexia seemed to read it as well and found it equally humorous.

“Come now, Mr. Woods, you do not have anything I haven’t seen before, and your girl has certainly seen it plenty of times,” she taunted.

But instead of finding this funny, her words caused me to still because I hadn’t told her Cruz’s undercover last name. I’d simply called him Antonne. Even though I was almost certain Cruz knew this as well, he didn’t give any sign of it. Instead, he smirked and reached over his head to pull his T-shirt off from the back, and I think everyone in the room held their breath.

He was sculpted in every way possible. Muscles upon muscles carved into human stone. He had several scars. One where his appendix might have been removed that was barely noticeable, and another jagged one starting just above his heart and ending at his left shoulder. He had a tattoo that trailed down from his collarbone, over his shoulder, and partially down his left arm that consisted entirely of sheet music. Notes and chords blended across the woven page, but no lyrics. You’d have to know the piece to understand its meaning.

Cruz bent and untied his laces before rising to undo his pants, and I knew I should have looked away, but I couldn’t. I was mesmerized by the perfect cut of his body and the silky skin that cried out for me to run my pale fingers over the shadowy expanse. Our bodies were as contrasting as our height, our childhoods, and our lives. We didn’t fit, and yet I felt as if there were invisible strings tied around my wrists, dragging me closer to him.

Our eyes were glued to each other as I inched toward him. I leaned over to pick up the clothes he’d thrown down, even though I knew one of Alexia’s staff would have done it, and as I bent, he grabbed me at my waist and pulled me backward. My rear slammed into his groin, and a large hand slid the zipper of the dress down. I stood up fast, dropping his clothes but aligning our bodies?my back to his front. He pushed his nose into my hair and teased my ear with his teeth. Heat filled me all the way down to my nether regions.

“Fair is fair, little one. I strip. You strip.” The deep command of his voice ripped through me. Lava burning inside my skin.

I let the dress fall away from my shoulders and stepped out of it.

One of Alexia’s ladies ran forward to pick it up before it crumpled into a heap, but neither of us really registered it. Instead, my eyes locked with Cruz’s in the mirror right before he slowly let them trail over every part of my body the way I’d just taken in his. A sensuous stroll over my taut tips showing through the almost see-through pink lace of my bra and down over my flat stomach to the curve of my hips in matching lace underwear. My body felt like liquid metal as lust pummeled through me. I ached to know what our bodies would feel like joined in all our intimate places.

When our eyes met again in the mirror, something had shifted between us. As if we’d actually twined our bodies together all through the night. As if he knew every inch of me inside and out.

Alexia’s voice ripped through the air, erasing whatever spell had come over us. “I have not seen chemistry like this in a very long time. Maybe not since Manya and Petya came here the first time.”

When I looked to the staff, they were staring with glazed expressions. Alexia smiled, fanning her hand in front of her face.

I moved away, trying not to show the flush of embarrassment I felt at the raw lust that had passed between Cruz and me right in front of them. I went toward the dressing room where I’d left my pile of clothes, all the while knowing that no matter what I put on, I’d never truly be able to hide myself from this man again. He’d seen things in me no one ever had.

I took longer than necessary dressing. My hands were trembling, and my body was shaking. It was then that I realized I hadn’t once, since he’d gotten into the car back at the palace, yelled at him for dismissing me in front of Damien. We hadn’t been able to talk in the car, and then I’d been distracted with the people tailing us and now with the magnificent dress and his bare body.

By the time I emerged, I was ready to give him a piece of my mind but was stunned into silence again. He was in a gorgeous black suit lined ever so slightly with gold threads. Knowing Alexia, they were real gold. He looked like he should have been gracing the cover of a magazine instead of hiding behind a shield and a gun. He was beautiful in a way that was hard to describe even when I knew words in Latin and Russian that many people had never heard before.

The suit needed to be adjusted because it fit his large shoulders but hung too loosely along his carved abs and narrow waist. The staff was measuring and adjusting as I approached. He removed the jacket to reveal a salmon-colored dress shirt with the same gold-threaded stripes, and it suddenly hit me how well he fit into my parents’ world. He would look perfectly at home at any of the million-dollar charity events and expensive restaurants that catered to them. I was unsure how anyone?including Gennady, Volkov, and Malik?had ever looked at this man and seen only a foot soldier. He was a knight. A king. An emperor.

I turned to Sasha. “I think I’ll take that champagne now. Or if you have vodka, I’ll take that.”

Her eyes widened, but a smile lit her face, and behind me, I heard Cruz chuckle. It was soft and full of meaning I couldn’t afford to feel. I sat down on a settee, downed the first glass of champagne, and poured a second as I watched Alexia trade his suit for slacks and silken T-shirts, soft cashmere sweaters, and jeans carefully distressed, along with an array of boots and dress shoes.

After about thirty minutes, I could tell Cruz was done. He’d allowed them to shape and coddle him, and he was ready to move on. He kept on the pair of jeans he was in and pulled on a baby-blue cashmere sweater over a white T-shirt before sliding into a brown leather jacket that Malik would have envied. He looked nothing like the man who’d walked in the door of the boutique with me, and yet more himself than I’d seen him look since showing up on my doorstep in Stanford. It was a strange dichotomy, as if I was finally seeing the real Cruz Malone.

While Alexia and her staff took the things he’d agreed to buy and bundled them to ship back to the estate for us, he walked over to me. His eyes met mine as he reached for the glass in my hand, took it, and tossed back the remaining contents. It should have pissed me off, but somehow, the intimacy of it, as if he’d drank from my glass a million times before, stuck in my throat.

“We done?” he asked as he let his eyes slide down me once more, returning the flicker of the flame I’d barely chased away and turning it back into an inferno with a mere look.

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