Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 (29 page)

He gave her a bedeviling smile. “As they did of mine?”

She groaned. “Believe it or not, I used to be a very suave negotiator. But don’t hold my big mouth against the project, okay? I do believe your story can change lives, and although I know there is no advance that wouldn’t make you yawn, if this is a bestseller—and I can’t imagine it won’t be—Le Roi will only keep what would float us and the rest goes to charity. All returns will be distributed for free wherever you choose.”

He frowned. “You company is in trouble?”

“You didn’t know?”

“I ran a personal background check on you. If I’d decided to talk business, I would have run the business check.”

So that was why he hadn’t brought up her company’s Castaldinian connections. He didn’t know of them. She might not be able to tell him of her connection with his father, but she had to inform him of those, before he ran that check.

He ran a tender finger down her cheek. “Tell me.”

And she told him. Everything. Everything she could.

He’d stilled when she’d mentioned Castaldini, his expression going opaque. When she fell silent, he lowered his eyes, lost in thought. Then he finally looked back at her. His eyes were glittering with wonder.

“So this is why you were interested in me originally.”

She gave a difficult nod. It was the truth, but not the whole truth. And she was not at liberty to share the rest.

“This
is
fate, for you to be connected to my homeland, to seek me out, to let me find you through this connection.” He rose, came around, pulled her to her feet, his hands filled with such gentleness. Thoughts scattered on his kitchen’s porcelain floor as he put a loose arm low around her waist. “But don’t worry, about anything. Everything is going to be fine, I promise.”

She blinked up at him in confusion as he walked her back through his hangar-sized penthouse. “What do you mean?”

They passed through a twenty-foot-wide arch into a sitting room with one wall made of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the most spectacular view of Manhattan and the ocean that she’d ever seen.

“Just what I said.” He took her to the wall window, his smile the essence of reassurance. She looked down the eighty-floor sheer drop and pressed back into him. He tugged her a couple of steps back where she could get the full impact of the view without activating any twinges of acrophobia. “Everything will work out.”

And that was clearly all she’d get from him on the subject.

She stood there, unable to fracture the moment, break the meld, her body a battleground of desire and dread. Then he whispered against her temple, “I never wrote anything, let alone a book. I was the worst essay writer in my class, in any language. My essays, to borrow an Americanism, sucked. A few dry-as-tinder lines with a sledgehammer of a conclusion along the lines of ‘Own your mistakes or you’re screwed.’”

She pushed away at last, put much-needed air between them, raised an eyebrow. “As you always do?”

He took her ridicule with a grin. “I try. I’m trying now.”

She gave him a considering look. “Hmm. It’s clear you owned far more mistakes than not. In your professional life. That’s why
that
isn’t screwed.” He grimaced at her allusion that
his personal one was. “Anyway, that sledgehammer would be perfect for the heading of a chapter. That’s the kind of succinct conclusion I want you to fill the book with. Coming from you, the epitome of phenomenal success, you have the platform and the credibility to make self-help gurus of the known universe look like they’re spouting unsupported nonsense.”

“I might have the platform and the credibility, but I also have a handicap to negate them both. I write like you sing.”

She burst out giggling. “Trust me, you can’t be that bad.”

He grinned back at her, riddling her sight with blind spots. “See, another handicap. No subtlety. I was trying and failing to hint that I’ll need help.” He pulled her to him, his hands filled with careful power as he contained her. “Lots and lots of it.”

She moaned. “Durante…”

He lowered his head. “
Sì, Gabriella.
Say my name like that.”

She averted her face before his lips connected with hers. It was like leaping over one volcano to plunge into another. His lips scorched down her face instead, her neck, his whispers of her name an invocation, a supplication, tampering with all electrical activity powering her. Her brain waves blipped, her heart rhythm plunged into arrhythmia.

She gasped, pushed at him. He let her go at once, his gaze heavy with desire and regret. “Still punishing me?”

“I don’t indulge in pointless posturing. Life’s too short.”

“Exactly. And this, along with the past ten days, is time we won’t get back.”

“Philosophy is great, when one can afford it. I can’t. Life is also too short to spend any of it feeling as miserable as I did during those ten days.”

He reached for her again. “And you won’t. I promise.”

She scrambled away as if from the ledge of this skyscraper. “I-I came up here for two reasons, Durante. Because I believed you were interested in my offer. And because I couldn’t take one more would-be paparazzi covering our little sideshow.”

He grunted. “Forget them. They don’t matter.”

“Really? Strange. You condemned me based on ‘facts’ people like them perpetuated.”

“
Ero uno sciocco,
I was a fool. A moron.”

“
And
a senseless jerk. Oh, wait, am I allowed to say ‘jerk’ to Your Highness? No? Bummer. I’ll say it anyway.”

“You’re allowed to say anything to My Highness as long as you deem to talk to me at all. But senseless jerk that I am, I came to my senses. Don’t I get points toward a second chance for that?”

“You would have, if you
had
come to your senses. Which you didn’t. I slapped some sense into you. You were wallowing in your senselessness and decided to seek me in spite of what you believed, not because you no longer believed it. You thought I was a succubus but were risking being drained of life to satisfy your curiosity and lust. Or was danger what fueled your desire, sort of like the rush of sticking your hand in a snake pit?”

“I was doing it in spite of the danger I thought you represented, not because of it. I don’t get my kicks that way.”

“You get them by thinking the worst of people. By never giving them the chance to defend themselves, condemning them and carrying out the sentence. And if one of your victims is your own father, I guess I was in great company.”

“
Maledizione,
Gabrielle…
sì, bene?
It’s true, only those who matter can make me react emotionally. I’ve only ever had those crippling feelings in relation to two people in my life. My mother and my father. Now you.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel special? I got the full, mutilating effect of your anger because of how much I mattered?”

“Hard to believe but…
sì.
”

“What’s freaking impossible to believe is you. I live with a lot of casual cruelty, but now I know how it can hurt when someone who
matters
doles it out. I have no support system and the only one who’ll defend me is me. The only way I know how
to do that is to stay away from you. So if you’re not interested in my offer if it doesn’t come attached with me in your bed, say so and let me go.”

“You said you understood why I reacted the way I did. If you do, then you realize it will never happen again.”

“All I know is that you judged me based on unsubstantiated evidence. The evidence against you was as damning, yet I believed my own senses, my own mind, my own experience of you.”

He raked his fingers through his hair, linked them at the back of his head in a gesture of a man at a total loss. He closed his eyes, rumbling the unmistakable fury of self-abuse. Then he opened them, all previous lightness and cajoling gone.

“I’ve broken your trust in my basic fairness, in my ability to always treat you with consideration and respect.”

Every muscle in her face trembled. He’d put her biggest fear in words. She nodded. A tear splashed on her lip.

He winced as if the tear had hit his flesh, burned it. “I would offer amends, anything at all, but it seems I hurt you too much and it won’t matter what I do, not now.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I
was
interested to hear your offer. And you’ve convinced me. I agree to the basic concept, but we’ll work out the specifics. Send me the draft of the contract at your convenience. I’ll inform you of any amendments at the earliest.”

When he said no more, she stuck her hands at her waist. “So what are you saying? ‘You don’t want my amends so I won’t bother to make them’? And then what? ‘Would have been fun knowing you’?”

His eyes probed her. “What are
you
saying, Gabrielle?”

“That it’s surely heartening to see how long you thought ‘making amends’ warranted. It’s been—” she flicked a look at her watch “—forty-eight minutes. That must be an all-time record for you. Bet you don’t even consider apologizing to anyone. Guess that’s another thing that makes me mighty special. Yay me.”

“Are you being a contrary female,
Gabriella mia?
Saying you want something, then getting disappointed when you get it? Or are you saying no when you mean yes, to make me grovel?”

“Are you being a condescending chauvinist, Your Highness? I was commenting on the limits of your perseverance. When I didn’t collapse under your charm after a few nudges…poof. Suddenly it’s “I would do anything, but you don’t want me to, so I’ll save myself the trouble.’ Talk about staying power. Lack of, that is.”

“Do watch what you say to me right now,
Gabriella mia.
I am in a very critical condition. I’m a breath away from an all-day-and-night campaign to prove my…staying power to you.” Desire forked from every point his eyes touched to her womb. He trickled a phantom touch down her cheek. “I was letting you go because I thought you were still raw, that I was causing you more distress. I was giving you a couple of days to cool down—
maledizione,
I probably wouldn’t have lasted a couple of hours. Then I was coming after you and never stopping until you gave me a second chance.”

“Great. And because
never
has forever scope, you won’t mind if I go now. Plenty of time for ‘we’ll see, won’t we’ in forever…”

And she was in his arms, singed in the inferno of his ardor. “Don’t walk away,
bellissima.
I’m the knee-jerk jerk here.”

“Let me go and no one will get hurt, Your Royal Jerkness.”

“It’s too late. I would have gotten hurt if I’d let you go before I laughed with you, caused your tears, tasted your hunger.”

“Durante…” Her voice broke as she put her fear into words. “You’re way out of my league.”

“You’re the only one I want in mine. Say you want me, too.”

She squeezed her eyes, shuddered. “You
know
I do.”

“Then forgive me,
Gabriella mia.
And don’t be afraid, I won’t consider this license to forgive myself.” She succumbed, nodded, buried her face in his neck. He groaned in relief, branded her forehead in a convulsive kiss.
“Grazie molto, bellissima.”

She burrowed deeper into his neck. This was inevitable. He was inexorable. She craved him with such intensity that she no longer cared if it all ended horribly tomorrow. She had to have now.

“Now tell me…” He swept her up in his arms. “Would you mind if I took you fast and ferocious the first couple of times?”

“T
he first couple of times?”

Durante lips spread at the squeak in Gabrielle’s voice, the disbelief in her eyes. At having her precious weight and surrender filling his arms after almost losing her, in so many ways.

And he had almost lost her. In the one way he wouldn’t have been able to live with. Through his own actions.

She was everything he’d felt she was from the first moment, everything that captured his imagination and commanded his appreciation, roused his soul and aroused his senses. Proud and fierce, sharp and quick, pure of heart, rich in soul, as vulnerable as she was indomitable. He’d read her as accurately as she’d read him. He was certain now. No more doubts. He’d never let the outside world come between them again.

This time, and from now on, there would be no holding back. There’d be only holding on. He’d never let her go.

He gathered her tighter in his arms, filled his eyes and senses with her beauty as she clung to him, answered her incredulity.
“Maybe after the second time I’ll be able to slow down a bit. I can guarantee slow, though, so slow until you beg, until you faint with pleasure, after the third time.”

“The
third
time?”

“Do you hear an echo?” He smiled into the eyes he could swear were emitting silver heat and hunger and…anxiety?

He wanted to kick himself. With what she’d suffered at a man’s hand, she could be totally misinterpreting his words.

He stopped in the massive vestibule separating reception and living quarters. Even though everything in him screamed not to lose contact with her, he gently put her down. She swayed, clung to him, her eyes a mixture of drugged arousal, confusion and alarm.

“What are you thinking,
bellissima?
”

She blinked at him. “Thinking? You think I can think now?”

“You look…anxious.” She bit a lip that trembled her confession. He cupped her face, freed that lip with a caressing thumb. “Is there anything you want me to know? Anything you don’t want me to do? Anything that might trigger distasteful memories?”

Understanding crept over her face, followed by urgency. “No! No, Durante, don’t think that, please. If I’m anxious it’s because I don’t know if I can…you see, I-I’ve never…you know…”

Suspicion rose in him at her embarrassment, became certainty in a heartbeat. “You never enjoyed sex.”

“I-I know I can, since I-I…”

“You pleasure yourself. But you never climax with a partner.”

Her color became dangerous. “Do you know everything? Or are you reading my mind?” She shut her eyes in mortification.

He brushed her eyes open with both thumbs. “And I told you I’ll take you fast and ferocious and you thought I’d take my pleasure and leave you feeling used and frustrated.”

“No, no…I know you wouldn’t…it’s me…I’m having…”

His lips twisted. “Performance anxiety.”

“You
do
know everything!” She buried her face in her hands,
before dropping them, exhaling, eyes downcast. “Way to go, huh? Telling you that now, ruining everything.”

“You told someone before, probably your ex, and he used it to blame you for his shortcomings,” he growled. Giving that piece of trash a taste of his own medicine was fast becoming an emergency. “And of course he told you how he never failed to please other women, women who miraculously attain orgasm through their own feminine normalcy, even with a fumbling, repulsive, self-seeking, two-minute scumbag who thinks all he has to do to be a great lover is get an erection, insert and ejaculate.”

She coughed a distressed laugh. “Basically…yeah. Apart from that description of him, which he of course didn’t say, but was and did. This is uncanny. How do you know that? Do you know men like that?”

“There
are
no men like that. He’s not a man, he’s one of a breed of inferiority-ridden, ugliness-infested bastards who feel nothing but the urge to relieve their pathetic itches, who know no higher motivation than to grab, use, and when confronted with their own deficiencies, abuse.”

She nodded, averted her eyes. “I agree.”

He frowned. She didn’t look as if she did, not fully. “But?”

She looked as if she hoped the parquet floor would become an ocean she could plunge into and never resurface. “But in this case, it wasn’t his fault alone. I-I tried with others…many others…”

Images charred imprints on his mind. Of her, in other men’s beds, her body open to their exploitation, at their mercy…

A wave of nausea rose until it tinged his sight with yellowed bile, something monstrous, grotesque ripping him open from the gut outward, fang and talon.

Jealousy. Something he’d never imagined feeling before.

Next moment, it subsided. It had no soil to take root in. The past meant nothing, not hers, not his. Or hers did only in terms that he must adjust his approach, from the freedom of taking
by storm the woman he’d thought experienced, holding nothing back in his certainty that she could match his ferocity, know her preferences and demand them from him, to the care of taking the woman who’d experienced nothing but abuse and dissatisfaction.

“You were a virgin when you married him?” She nodded, her unease bordering on pain. “And we know how you felt about him. And those others—how did you feel about them?”

“I felt nothing, really. It wasn’t about feelings. It should have been about physical gratification.”

“Did you feel a fire inside you that could only be extinguished by physical union with any of them?”

“Uh, no, nothing like that. But I didn’t hate the sight of them. They didn’t fire me up, but they didn’t repulse me, either.”

“So you were trying to force yourself to eat when you weren’t hungry, things which from the scent and look of them, weren’t appetizing at all. Is it any wonder you didn’t enjoy your meal?”

She stared at him before hooting with laughter. “That’s priceless. And perfect. I was trying to eat limp, taste-free, homogenous-looking veggies because I was told they were good for me.”

“Limp, eh?” He watched her wipe tears away, stopped himself from gathering her up again. She needed to sort this out in her mind before he took it to the realm of the flesh, where even he had no experience. Not with what would happen between them. “And how did I make you feel when you first saw me? How am I making you feel now?”

Her eyes widened, wonder seeping in, inching away agitation. “I saw you, and everything around me…vanished. Everything inside me started…tingling. I ached every time you moved and spoke. It got so bad, I wanted to scream. But it was also so good. Incredible. Like everything was enhanced, like there was this super charge of…
life
powering me. You made me feel with parts of me I was unaware of. And it hasn’t stopped since, not even when you weren’t there. I have only to think of
you for you to affect me. Even when something else forces itself into my focus, you exist here now…”

Her hands flew to her head, pressed convulsively, before cascading over her face, her neck, her breasts, her abdomen and then lower, where they crossed and stroked their way from her hips upward until she was hugging her own arms.

He felt as if she had taken him inside every part of her, had him wrapped around her now.

“You’re everywhere, a burn my blood carries to every inch of skin, a pressure building inside me. And then you look at me, talk to me, and it all becomes overwhelming. Flames burst out wherever your gaze lands. Currents bolt through me at the sound of your voice, at your touch. But it’s your desire that…that…” She stopped, consternation clenching her face. “I’m doing a lousy job here. I can’t describe it. And that was the easy part, the physical one.”

He did have superhuman powers. He bit back at the urges sinking their fangs in him, didn’t devour her in one go per his original impulse. Even though he was almost certain he’d give her as explosive a pleasure as he’d get.

The “almost” part stopped him. That and the need to show her the truth. About herself. About what he felt for her. There’d be endless time later for all levels of unrestrained mating.

He moved until his thigh brushed hers. Her chest heaved, her nipples conquering the thickness of her blouse through her open jacket. The creaminess of her skin had long disappeared in a tide of pink. Her lips were glazed with the flush of blood, skin taut over swelling flesh. His mental possession was doing this to her. He had the power to make her feel he was ravaging her for real just by imagining it so fiercely.

His forefinger skimmed her nose, her lips, down, until it rested at the edge of a now-visible cleavage, tormented them both with gossamer glimpses of what would be. “So when you feel all that, what do you expect it would be like with me?”

She moaned. “I-I don’t know, okay? I just need to feel you, be with you.”

He held her at arm’s length. He couldn’t just grab her. He had to prove to her that she was a sensual being of the highest order, attuned to such a level of sensitivity only a specific vibe—his—would release her potential, that any other’s had been bound to grate, to even injure.

Yet he couldn’t just claim that she’d been made for him, as he was now certain. He could only show her. And how he would.

But she was looking at him as if he’d stuck a knife in her gut. She wrenched herself from his detaining hands, almost ran away. He was so surprised that she was in his reception area, scooping up her briefcase when he caught up with her.

He put himself between her and the elevator. He had to be careful here. He didn’t know what was upsetting her now.

“Any hope you’ll explain where you think you’re going?”

“Away. Before I mutilate the mood I just murdered.”

That was the one thing he hadn’t extrapolated as a reason for her sudden flight. Her surprises would never cease.

“I bet when you spent all this time cajoling me, you thought you were in for hot sex, not a sex therapy session with a thirty-year-old frigid divorcée.” She took a step back, preparing to circumvent him. “No harm done, though. I hope. So—”

He dragged her to him, slammed her length against his, the collision a need, a must. Her briefcase slapped the floor as she arched into him, a carnal sound keening from her, her hands clawing an anchor in his flesh.

He wanted her to sink in all the way, penetrate him to the bone. His growl sounded feral as he snatched her off her feet, aching at how totally she distrusted her influence, how she’d been sought out only by men who had dealt her self-esteem and expectations of others one blow after another. It only made her trust in him that much more precious.

He captured her hands, withdrew enough to take one to his
heart, the other to the erection that hadn’t subsided since he’d seen her. “So…which part of me seems not in the mood,
bellissima?
”

“This-this isn’t just a typical male reaction? All my pathetic confessions didn’t turn you off, here?” She freed the hand on his erection, pressed it to his head.

He pressed back, showing her he needed her assuagement. “I don’t have male reactions if ‘here’ doesn’t sanction them. And none of what you told me was pathetic. It ranged from criminal to inept on the men’s side, and tragic to futile on yours. But I am honored beyond expression that when it came to me, you knew, like I did, that nothing that happened before applies to us. And it doesn’t. This
is
us, and you have nothing to worry about. Not now, not ever.” He turned his lips into her palm, planted his pledge. “You’ll find only pampering and pleasure in my bed, support and protection everywhere else. I promise.”

She surged forward, tears brimming over, and hugged breath out of him. “Oh, Durante, just take me. Take me before I wakeup.”

He threw his head back in exultation and relief. “This is one dream we’re not waking up from. This I promise, too.”

And she did something that made his whole being quiver as if it were about to explode.

She curled up against his heart and subsided. The extent of trust in the gesture almost brought him to his knees with emotions he’d never experienced. Gratitude, humility.

He crushed her to him, drank her down to her last moan. She only gave more, rubbed against him, opened her lips over any part she could reach of him and her legs as far as her pencil-slim skirt would allow, offering all the exquisiteness and passion that was her. He wanted to probe her, go berserk on finding her soaking, burning, crazy for everything he’d do to her. Then he wanted to do it all.

But something niggled at him. Something vital. He couldn’t remember what. His mind had shut down, her arousal hitting
him like a full-body blow. He’d better put the plan he’d just come up with into action, keep her with him until he remembered. He held her off, cupped her face. “Tell me,
Gabriella mia,
how do you feel about flying?”

Gabrielle had said she felt fine. About flying. And Durante had kissed more of her sanity away before walking out.

He now returned, a force of nature enveloping her as he led her out to his soccer field of a veranda.

She squinted into the sun as it glowed red on its descent into the ocean. Flying, huh? Literally or figuratively?