Page 55 of Royal Caleva: Luis

She followed the path around an angle of the house to find a glass-and-metal structure rising from the edge of the cliff.

Luis pressed his thumb against the pad by the glass door, which slid open. “And here is our ride down.”

She stepped into the glass-sided elevator car and turned to see the same view as the terrace offered. “This is…insane.”

Luis laughed as the elevator glided downward. “The man who built this house was a cryptocurrency billionaire…until he wasn’t. I was happy to buy it from him at less than what it cost to build, and Mikel has made it even more secure than its somewhat paranoid first owner did. It offers me a place of rest.” The laughter was gone. “I can go barefoot and drink champagne out of the bottle if I choose to.”

“We’ll leave our glasses in the elevator, then,” Eve said, understanding more about the constraints of Luis’s life than she wanted to.

Heat flickered in his eyes as she took his glass and set it on the floor with hers. “Your lips will touch the same bottle as mine,” he said.

Was he flirting with her? That sounded like flirting. But it couldn’t be. Just because she thought he was sexy as hell didn’t mean that he reciprocated the feeling.

“I figure you have a clean bill of health,” Eve said.

“And you?” he asked.

“I’m up to date on my shots,” she said.

His smile flashed for a moment, and the elevator eased to a stop, the door sliding open to let in the roar of surf and wind. She stepped onto the black volcanic sand, finding it slightly cool against her bare feet. She inhaled deeply to savor the exotic scent of the sea.

“Would you mind if I got my feet wet?” she asked. “Before today, I had only been to the ocean once before, so this is a treat.”

“In that case, we should roll up our trousers.” He put the champagne on the floor of the elevator car before bending to turn up the cuffs of his suit pants. For a moment, she just watched the play of muscles in his back under the tightly stretched cotton of his shirt.

“What do you do for exercise?” she blurted, then felt a flush rise in her cheeks.

He looked up from his bent position with a flicker of something hot in his eyes. “I fence.”

“Oh, of course.” She knelt to work on her own pants, a vision of him costumed as a dashing musketeer wielding a rapier dancing through her mind. “Swords are appropriate. Do you wear armor too?”

“No, I reserve that for joint sessions of the legislature.”

She gave a snort of laughter and rose.

“Let’s go feel the Atlantic Ocean on our toes.” He put his hand against the small of her back to urge her forward, and pleasure radiated outward from where he touched her to flare through her body.

He walked so close to her side that occasionally her shoulder grazed his arm, sending more flickers of sensation tingling across her skin. Even the wind blowing her clothes against her body stoked her heightened awareness of the man beside her.

“I don’t know how to thank you for the Vin de Lys cream,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to give it to me.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he asked. “It is from my country.”

“Well, because it’s very expensive. Unless you get samples for free?” she asked in the hope that she could assuage her guilt.

He laughed. “I don’t know how much it cost. My private assistant procured it for me.”

“Trust me, it cost a lot,” Eve said. “Thank you for your generous gift.”

“You sound more upset than grateful,” Luis said as they reached the wet sand flattened by the ebb and flow of the surf, and he dropped his hand from her back. “I hope you were not offended. I was not implying that you need it, but you mentioned you wanted to test its powers.”

“I’m not offended, just overwhelmed. Honestly, I would give it back to you, except I tried it before I realized how expensive it was.”

He touched her shoulder so she looked up at him, almost gasping at the blaze of intensity in his eyes. “Eve, you raised my…our daughter. A jar of face cream does not begin to balance my debt to you.”

“I raised our daughter because I love her. There is no debt.” Eve was fierce in her claim.

Luis waved his hand in a graceful gesture of acceptance. “I have also…disturbed your life. Consider it a compensation for that.”

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