Page 17 of Lethal Legacy

He shuts it, but he remains grinning the entire way back to Malaga. I toy with the idea of taking him to the boxing ring and reminding him of exactly howwokeI am not, but I don’t have time. I don’t have time for anything—and particularly not for the unholy distraction that is Miss Lucia Lopez.

I rub a hand over my face and stare out the window. Hearing Dimitry mention her by name annoys me. The fact that he’s noticed her at all annoys me, particularly long enough to call her lovely. It’s the wrong word for her, anyway.

Snarky?Yes.

Feisty?Definitely.

Tempting, intriguing, and insanely sexy?Tick.

Fucking dangerous?

Absolutely.

Watching her delicious curves in that ridiculous uniform sashay up to serve my coffee, not to mention the daily battle to make her blush, has become the hottest ten minutes of my day. The smoky sideways glance of topaz eyes as she decides what insult to hit me with. Scraping her teeth over that absurdly full lower lip as she thinks of a comeback, a habit I’m almost certain she’s unaware of. Watching her shorts ride up that delectable ass when she bends down to the fridge. She might have ordered in Russian water just to score a point in our game, but I hit the jackpot every day when she has to bend over and get a bottle of it out of the fridge. I’ve been fighting the urge to bend her lush, tantalizing curves over any available surface for months. And now that I’ve had my hands all over her, my dick is obsessed with finishing the job.

Multiple times. Oneveryavailable surface.

I need to get under some model ASAP.

I don’t do relationships. I do mutually beneficial situations that satisfy my cock and leave my head alone. I don’t date, and I certainly don’t take advantage of those less fortunate than myself. I know how it feels to be the person washing dishes out back or serving coffee to rich pricks who don’t remember your name. It’s the reason I tip properly, and the reason I felt like a class A bastard after I handed Miss Lopez her ass for a mistake that wasn’t hers.

Then she’d run from my office without a word—and without taking the tip.

If she’d just taken the goddamn envelope, I could have walked away with a clear conscience, I tell myself, even though the way my cock throbs at the mere memory of her bending over my desk makes a total liar out of me. And after implying that she’d spent the nightrolling around in some man’s bed,as she put it, sending an envelope full of money over to the café with my assistant would definitely send the wrong message.

Not that it matters, if I’m never seeing her again. And it’s none of my business if, or indeed who, Lucia Lopez is, now or at any point in the future, rolling around in a bed with.

I grind my teeth.

Keep telling yourself that.

I’m a possessive prick, always have been. I keep what belongs to me close. Safe. I don’t allow anyone to take what is mine.

The thought of some other man putting his hands anywhere near the sweet curve of Lucia’s ass, or the bee-stung lips my dick has some seriously filthy ideas about, kicks something primal inside me into gear. Which is the only excuse I have, poor as it is, for almost losing myself entirely with her the other day in my office. It took every ounce of self-control I possess not to tear her shorts off and get balls deep inside her hot, wet, and insanely tight pussy.

Pizdozh.

Not a chance my hard-on is going down after that thought.

But Lucia Lopez isn’t mine. Even if I wanted to change that, there’s no room for her in the clusterfuck that is my personal life.

As if in confirmation, my phone lights up with a call fromnanny agency be nice. I grind my teeth even harder.

“Mrs. Laidlaw,” I say as politely as I can manage, glaring at Dimitry, who is smirking in the passenger seat. “What an unexpected pleasure.” I put the call on speakerphone. If I have to listen to this bullshit, Dimitry can fucking well suffer with me.

“I’m not calling with good news, I’m afraid.”

When do you ever?

I stifle the retort with an effort. “What seems to be the problem?”

“I’m sorry to inform you,” Mrs. Laidlaw begins, in a tone that suggests she isn’t sorry at all, “that Stefania has terminated her employment as your children’s nanny.”

“What?” Aghast, I grip the phone hard enough that I’m going to need a new one. “The Holy Week school holidays are coming up. The children will be off school for at least a week—”

“And perhaps you should have considered that.”

Mrs. Laidlaw launches into a tirade of complaints, the broad thrust of which are that my godchildren are the spawn of the devil, and that I am Satan himself.

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