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Yeah, right. As if he could feel anything for real.
“That’s very...progressive of you. Elevated, even.” At her baleful glance, something that simulated seriousness took over his expression. “No, I mean it. In my experience, when people don’t like someone, they demonize them wholesale, stop granting them even the possibility of fairness.”
She pursed her lips, refusing to consider the possibility of his sincerity. “Lauding my merits won’t work, you know.”
“In granting me a hearing?”
“In granting you leniency you haven’t earned and certainly don’t deserve.” He opened his mouth, and she raised her hand. “Don’t you think you’ve taken your joke far enough?”
For a moment he looked actually confused before a careful expression replaced uncertainty. “What joke, exactly?”
She rolled her eyes. “Spare me.”
“Or you’ll spear me?” At her exasperated rumble, he raised his hands again, the coaxing in his eyes rising another notch. “That was lame. But I really don’t know what you’re talking about. I am barely keeping up with you.”
“Yeah, right. Since you materialized behind me like some capricious spirit, you’ve been ready with something right off the smart-ass chart before I’ve even finished speaking.”
He shook his head, causing his collar-length mane to undulate. “If you think that was easy, think again. You’re making me struggle for every inch before you snatch it away with your next lob. For the first time in my life I have no idea what will spill out of someone’s lips next, so give me a break.”
“I would ask where you want it, but I have to be realistic. Considering our respective physiques, I probably can’t give you one without the help of heavy, blunt objects.”
The next moment, all her nerves fired up as he proceeded to subject her to the sight and sound of his all-out amusement, a demonstration so...virile, so debilitating, each peal was a new bolt forking through her nervous system.
When he at last brought his mirth under control, his lips remained stretched the widest she’d seen them, showing off that set of extraordinary white teeth in the most devastating smile she’d had the misfortune of witnessing. He even wiped away a couple of tears of hilarity. “You can give me compound fractures with your tongue alone. As for your glares, we’re talking incineration.”
Hating that even when he was out of breath and wheezing, he sounded more hard-hitting for it, she gritted out, “If I could do that, it would be the least I owe you.”
“What have I done now?” Even his pseudolament was scrumptious. This guy needed some kind of quarantine. He shouldn’t be left free to roam the realm of flimsy mortals. “Is this about the joke you’ve accused me of perpetrating?”
“There’s no accusation here—just statement of fact. You’ve been enjoying one big fat joke at my expense since you stumbled on me in Johara’s office.”
His eyes sobered at once, filling with something even more distressing than mischief and humor. Indulgence? “I’ve been relishing the experience immensely, but not as a joke and certainly not at your expense.”
Her heart gave her ribs another vicious kick. She had to stop this before her heart literally bruised.
She raised her hands. “Okay, this is going nowhere. Let’s say I believe you. Give me another reason you’re doing this. And don’t tell me that you care one way or the other what I think in general or what I think of you specifically. You don’t care about what anyone thinks.”
The earnestness in his eyes deepened. “You’re right. I care nothing for what others think of me.”
“And you’re absolutely right not to.”
That seemed to stun him yet again. “I am?” At her nod, he prodded, “That includes everyone?”
She nodded again. “Of course. What other people think of you, no matter who they are, is irrelevant. Unsolicited opinions are usually a hindrance and a source of discontentment, if not outright unhappiness. So carry on not caring, go take your leave from Johara and Shaheen and return to your universe where no one’s opinion matters...as it shouldn’t.”
“At least grant me the right to care or not care.” Those unbelievable eyes seemed to penetrate right through her as his gaze narrowed in on her. “And whether it comes under caring or not, I do happen to be extremely interested in your opinion of me. Now, let me escort you back to the party. Let me get us a drink over which we’ll reopen my case and explore the possibility of adjusting your opinion of me—at least to a degree.”
She arched a brow. “You mean you’d settle for adjusting my opinion of you from horrific to just plain horrid?”
“Who knows, maybe while retrying my case, your unwavering sense of justice will lead you to adjusting it to plain misjudged.”
“Or maybe just downright wretched.”
He hit her with another of his pouts. Then he raised the level of chaos and laughed again, his merriment as potent as everything else about him. “I’d take that.”
Trying to convince her heart to slot back into its usual place after its latest somersault, she again tried her best glower. It had no effect on him, as usual. Worse. It had the opposite effect to what she’d perfected it for. He looked at her as if her glare was the cutest thing he’d seen.
She voiced her frustration. “You talk about my incinerating glares, but I could be throwing cotton balls or rose petals at you for all the effect they have on you.”
“It’s not your glares that are ineffective. It’s me who’s discovering a penchant for incineration.”
Instead of appeasing her, it annoyed her more. “I’ll have you know I’ve reduced other men to dust with those scowls. No one has withstood a minute in my presence once I engaged annihilate mode.” She lifted her chin. “But you seem to need specifically designed weapons. If I go along with you in this game you got it in your mind to play, it’ll be so I can find out if you have an Achilles’ heel.”
“I have no idea if I have that.” His gaze grew thoughtful. “Would you use it to...annihilate me if you discovered it?”
She gave him one of her patented sizing-up glances and regretted it midway. She must quit trying her usual strategies with him. Not only because they always backfired, but it wasn’t advisable to expose herself to another distressing dose of his wonders.
She returned to his eyes, those turquoise depths that exuded the ferocity of his intellect and the power of his wit, and found gazing into them just as taxing to her circulatory system.
She sighed, more vexed with her own inability to moderate her reactions than with him. “Nah. I’ll just be satisfied knowing your Achilles’ heel exists and you’re not invulnerable. And maybe, if you get too obnoxious, I’ll use my knowledge as leverage to make you back off.”
That current of mischief and challenge in his eyes spiked. “It goes against my nature to back off.”
“Not even under threat of...annihilation?”
“Especially then. I’d probably beg you to use whatever fatal weakness you discover just to find out how it feels.”
“Wow. You’re jaded to the point of numbness, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got me figured out, don’t you? Or do you? Shall we find out?”
It was clear this monolith would stand there and spar with her until she agreed to this “retrial” of his. If she was in her own domain or on neutral ground, or at least somewhere without a hundred witnesses blocking her only escape route, she would have slammed him with something cutting and walked out as she’d done in Johara’s office.
But she couldn’t inflict on her friends the scene this gorgeous jerk would instigate if he didn’t have his way. She bet he knew she suffered from those scruples, was using the knowledge to corner her into participating in his game.
“You’re counting on my inability to risk spoiling Johara and Shaheen’s party, aren’t you?”
His blink was all innocence, and downright evil for it. “I thought you didn’t care what other people thought.”
“I don’t, not when it comes to how I choose to live my life. But I do care about what others think of my actions that directly impact them. And if I walk out now, you’ll tail me in the most obvious, disruptive way you can, generating curiosity and speculation, which would end up putting a damper on Johara and Shaheen’s party.” Her eyes narrowed as another thought hit her. “Now I am wondering if maybe they didn’t extend an invitation to you after all because they’ve been burned by your sabotage before.”
He pounced on that, took it where she couldn’t have anticipated. “So you’re considering changing your mind about whether I was invited? See? Maybe you’ll change your mind about everything else if you give me a chance.”
She blew out a breath in exasperation. “I only change my mind for the worse...or worst.”
“You’re one tiny bundle of nastiness, aren’t you?” His smile said he thought that the best thing to aspire to be.
She tossed her head, infusing her disadvantaged stature with all the belittling she could muster. “Again with the size references.”
“It was you who started using mine in derogatory terms. Then you moved on to my looks, then my character, then my history, and if there were more components to me, I bet you’d have pummeled through them, too.”
Refusing to rise to the bait, she turned around and stomped away.
He followed her. Keeping those famous three steps behind. With his footfalls being soundless, she could pinpoint his location only by the chuckles rumbling in the depths of his massive chest. When those ended, his overpowering presence took over, cocooning her all the way to the expansive reception area.
Absorbed in warding off his influence, she could barely register the ultraelegant surroundings or the dozens of chic people milling around. No one noticed her, as usual, but everyone’s gaze was drawn to the nonchalant predator behind her. Abhorring the thought of having everyone’s eyes on her by association once they realized he was following her, she continued walking where she hoped the least amount of spectators were around.
She stepped out onto the wraparound terrace that overlooked the now-shrouded-in-darkness Central Park, with Manhattan glittering like fiery jewels beyond its extensive domain. Stopping at the three-foot-high brushed stainless steel and Plexiglas railings, gazing out into the moonlit night, she shivered as September’s high-altitude wind hit her overheating body. But she preferred hypothermia to the burning speculation that being in Aram Nazaryan’s company would have provoked. Not that she’d managed to escape that totally. The few people who’d had the same idea of seeking privacy out here did their part in singeing her with their curiosity.
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