When I'm With You : When We Touch

It was past midnight when Lucien opened the rear entrance to his restaurant and immediately went on high alert, hushing his movements. In the distance he heard the sound of a low male voice. An intruder had breached his restaurant’s security. Although Fusion was frequently bustling with the chic late-night dinner and nightclub crowd, it was closed on Sunday and Monday. There definitely shouldn’t be anyone inside. Quietly, he closed the rear door, his fist tightening around the polo mallet he carried. He’d been planning on replacing this cracked one with an intact one from his storage closet at Fusion. He had different plans for it now. For the most part, Lucien maintained the vaguely amused, cynical stance of an experienced, world-weary libertine, a man who claimed no family, no country, no creed, and few of the worldly possessions to which he was entitled by law, which were many. But what he did claim, he fought for. Always. He just hadn’t realized that the restaurant he’d recent

“I put him in a cab. Now—what to do with you?” he asked, his gaze dropping over her. Her nipples tightened beneath a stare that was fire and ice at once. Her spine stiffened; her throat froze. The truth was still ricocheting around her skull: Lucien Sauvage owned Fusion. She’d unknowingly put her future in the hands of a man who had rejected her. And nobody rejected her. Well, hardly anybody, at least when she wanted otherwise. She’d definitely wanted “otherwise” with Lucien. Just my luck. Of all the restaurants and gin joints in towns all over the world, she’d had to walk into his, she thought with a panicked sense of amusement. “You’re going to do the only thing you can do with me,” she replied, her voice cool enough for someone who was playing the poker game of a lifetime with a crap hand. It was a mark of their shared past—their onetime friendship—that they spoke English to each other. Both of their mothers were English, their fathers French. It was a commonality they shar

“Let go of me,” she said shakily, not sounding convinced it was what she wanted, even to her own ears. “You should be glad I do let go and worry about the day I don’t.” Her chin went up, pride and anger and hurt battling for room in her consciousness. “I’m not afraid of you.” He pulled on her, drawing her closer, so that her body brushed against his hard length and the fullness behind his fly. He scorched her with that almost otherworldly stare. She waited on a sharp ledge of anticipation, her breath burning in her lungs, when he lowered his head until their mouths were just inches apart. “You’ve always tested me. You’ll always be that girl I remember, foolishly poking at a sleeping snake. You’d better get out of here. You’ve been begging without words to be disciplined since you were a girl, and you have no idea how much I’d love to give you what you so richly deserve . . . what you need.” He noticed her wide-eyed, shocked expression and smiled grimly. “Not so sure of your