by Red Garnier
He nodded, his entire face, his smile, indulgent.
She dragged in a breath, trying not to lose her temper. “Marissa, Marcos.”
“What about Marissa?” His eyes were so black, so intense, she felt as though they would burn holes through her.
Are the rumors true? she wondered. Did she force you into a marriage bargain only so you could once again own Allende? “You loved Marissa. Do you love her still?”
A frustrated sound exited his throat as he flung his hands over his head. “I’m not discussing Marissa now, of all times, for God’s sake!” he exploded.
But Virginia plunged on. “I think it very tacky to jump around from bed to bed, don’t you?”
His eyebrows drew low across his eyes, and he nodded. “Extremely.”
To her horror, her throat began closing as she pulled her fears out of her little box and showed them to him. “She hurt you, and maybe you wanted to use me to hurt her back—” Why else would he want Virginia? She was not that smart, not that special, not that beautiful, either!
She tried to muffle a sob with her hand and couldn’t, and then the tears began to stream down her cheeks in rivers. With a muffled curse, he rose and came around the desk, walking toward her. His face and body became a blur as he reached her, and though she tried to avoid his embrace, her back hit the wall as she tried escaping.
He bent over her, wiped her tears with his thumb. “Don’t cry. Why are you crying?”
The genuine concern in his voice, the soul-wrenching tenderness with which he cradled her face, only made the sobs tear out of her with more vigor. “Oh, God,” she sobbed, wiping furiously at the tears as they streamed down her face.
When he spoke, he sounded even more tortured than she was. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry, amor.” He kissed her cheek. Her eyelashes. Her forehead. Her nose. When his lips glided across hers, she sucked in a breath of surprise. He opened his lips over hers, probed her lightly with his tongue, and said, in a tone that warned of danger, “Please give me ten minutes and I’m all yours. Please just let me…”
When he impulsively covered her mouth, she opened for the wet thrust of his tongue, offering everything he didn’t ask for and more. His kiss was hot and avid, and it produced in her an amazing violence, a feeling that made her feel fierce and powerful and at the same time so vulnerable to him.
The possibility that he was feeling some kind of pity for her made her regain some semblance of control. She pushed at his wrist with one hand and wiped her tears with the other. “I’m all right.”
“You’re jealous.” He took her lips with his warm ones, nibbling the plump flesh between words. “It’s all right. Tell me that you are.”
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“I was when you danced with Santos,” he rasped, “jealous out of my mind. Out. Of. My. Mind.” His teeth were tugging at her ear, and he was making low noises of pleasure as his hands roamed up her sides, following her form, feeling her.
She dragged her mouth across his hair, softly said, “I can’t do this anymore, Marcos.”
He froze for a shocked moment.
In one blindingly quick move, he lifted her up and pressed her back against the wall, pinioning her by the shoulders. “Is this your idea of getting my attention?”
Her heart thundered in her ears. “I can’t do this any longer. I want more.” A father for our child. A man who’ll always stand by me. Someone who cares.
A nearly imperceptible quiver at the corner of his right eye drew her attention. That was all that seemed to move. That and his chest. Her own heaving breasts. They were panting hard, the wild flutter of a pulse at the base of his throat a match to her own frantic heartbeat. “What more do you want?” His voice was hoarse, more a plea than a command.
She grasped the back of his strong neck and made a sound that was more frustrated than seductive. “More! Just more, damn you, and if you can’t figure out it’s not your money then I’m not going to spell it out for you.”
He stared at her as though what she’d just said was the worst kind of catastrophe. Then he cursed in Spanish and stalked away, plunging his hands into his hair. “You picked the wrong moment to share your wish list with me, amor.”
“It’s not a long list,” she said glumly. She felt bereft of his kisses, his eyes, his warmth, and wrapped her arms tightly around herself. “We said we’d talk, and I think it’s time we did.”
“After midnight? When I’m in the midst of closing the deal of my life?”
“I’m sorry about the timing,” she admitted.
She swallowed hard for some reason, waiting for him to tell her something. He didn’t. His back was stiff as he halted by the window. His breaths were a frightening sound in the room—shallow, so ragged she thought he could be an animal.
But no, he wasn’t an animal.
He was a man.
A man who had ruthlessly, methodically isolated his emotions from the world. She did not know how to reach this man, but every atom and cell inside of her screamed for her to try.
But then he spoke.
“Virginia.” There was a warning in that word; it vibrated with underlying threat. It made her hold her breath as he turned. There was frustration in his eyes, and determination, and his face was black with lust. “Give me ten minutes. That’s all I ask. Ten minutes so I can finish here and then you’ll get your nightly tumble.”
His words jerked through her, one in particular filling her with outrage. Tumble!
She began to quake. A chilling frost seemed to seep into her bones.
Stalking around her, he fell back into his chair, was sucked back into his computer, and began writing.
“Tumble,” she said.
He set down the pen and met her gaze. The man was mute as wallpaper.
She signaled with trembling fingers. “For your information.” She wanted to fling her shoe at his face, to shred every single paper on the pile she’d neatly organized atop his desk, but she clenched her eyes shut for a brief moment. “I do not want a tumble!”
Several times, Virginia had imagined how their parting would be.
Not even in her nightmares had she imagined this.
She couldn’t bear to be in the same room with him, didn’t dare glance up to make note of his expression.
Stricken by his lack of apology, she choked back words that wanted to come out, hurtful things she knew she would regret saying, words about being sorry she’d met him, sorry she loved him, sorry she was pregnant by him, but staring at the top of his silky black hair, she couldn’t. Instead she said, “Goodbye, Marcos.”
And Marcos…said nothing.
Not goodbye. Not chiquita. Not amor.
But as she waited by the elevator, clutching her suitcase handle as though it was all that kept her from falling apart, a roar unlike any other exploded in his study. It was followed by an ear-splitting crash.
The clock read 1:33 p.m.
He had what he wanted, Marcos told himself for the hundredth time. Didn’t he? And yet the satisfaction, the victory, wasn’t within reach. Perhaps because what he really wanted was something else. Someone else.
The pressure was off his chest—the lawyers were currently sealing the deal. Allende for a couple of million. Marcos now owned every single share of stock in the company, had recovered every inch and centimeter and brick and truck of what Marissa had taken from him.
It had not taken much at all to bend her to his will; the woman had nothing to bargain with. Marissa had to sell or she’d go bankrupt. She’d held no more attraction for him, as she’d thought, no temptation. After a few harsh words from him and a few tears from her, there had finally been a bit of forgiveness between them.
And with that, everything had changed. By her admittance to defeat, she’d unwittingly granted Marcos the opportunity to color his past another shade that wasn’t black.
He felt…lighter, in that respect. But heavy in the chest. So damned heavy and tortured with
a sense of foreboding he couldn’t quite place.
“You needed me, Mr. Allende?”
His heart kicked into his rib cage when Virginia strolled into his office five minutes after he’d issued the request by phone.
Yes, I need you. I do. And I’m not even ashamed to admit it anymore.
Dressed in slimming black, she held a manila file in her hand, and a few seconds after she closed the doors behind her, Marcos spoke. “You left before the ten minutes were over.”
Silently she sat and fiddled with her pearls, her eyes shooting daggers at him when she spared him a glance. “I realized you wanted your space, so I indulged you.”
Those last words came barbed, as though he’d once spoken them in sarcasm and she were flinging them back at him. She looked tired, his Miss Hollis, he noted. As though she’d slept less than an hour and tossed around for all the rest. Like he had.
He didn’t understand her anger very well. But they’d had plans to speak afterward, had been sleeping together so delightedly he hadn’t expected the loss of her last night to affect him like it had. Were ten minutes too much to ask?
“Ten minutes, Miss Hollis. You can’t even grant me that?”
“You were being—” As though offended by her own thoughts, she bolted upright in the chair, spine straight. “Something of a jerk.”
He choked. “Jerk! This spoken by an opinionated little brat I’ve spoiled rotten?”
The blow registered in her face first, crumpling her tight expression. Marcos raked his fingers through his hair and shot up to pace his office.
He felt like celebrating with her, like marking this momentous day in his career with something even equally outstanding for him personally. But somehow he sensed he had to make amends with her first.
Virginia had wanted him last night. First, he’d been occupied with Marissa. Who’d deceived and lied to him. And who had become so insignificant in his life, he’d forgiven her. After he got what he wanted from her.
All this, thanks to Virginia.
Suddenly, Marcos felt a grieving need to explain, to placate her, to restore the sparkle in her pretty green eyes. Staring around his office, at the papers scattered across the desk, he quietly admitted, “Virginia, I want to make you a proposition.”
Her slow and deep intake of breath was followed by a dignified silence. This was not the way he’d intended to ask her and yet suddenly he had to. Here. Now. Had to know she would belong to him, only him.
They were fighting, the air between them felt electric, charged with anger and lust and something else he couldn’t quite place. Something fuzzy and warm that made him feel close to her even when she annoyed him.
He strode over to her chair and bent, put his palm on her bare knee, and said, with fervor, “Would you be my mistress, Virginia?”
The way she automatically breathed the word no, he’d have thought he’d slapped her. Her eyes shone with hurt and her mouth parted as though she wanted to say something else but couldn’t. “No,” she said again, on another breath, this one made of steel.
“I don’t think you understand what I’m saying,” he said gently, stroking her knee and moving his hand up to clasp hers where it rested on her lap.
“Don’t!” She said it in such a fierce voice that he halted. Even his heart stopped beating. She shook her curls side to side, her face stricken. “Don’t touch me.”
What was this? What was this?
He caught her face in one hand, his heartbeat a loud, deafening roar in his ears. “Darling, I realize you might have misinterpreted my interests in speaking to Marissa, which I assure you were only business. It’s you I want, only you. And I’m very prepared to give you—”
“What? What will you give me?” She stood up, her eyes shooting daggers at him. “Do you even realize that the only thing I’ve been pretending all this time is that I don’t love you?”
His heart vaulted, but his voice sounded dead as he stepped back. The confession felt like a bomb dropped into his stomach. “Love.”
She chose to look out the window. And at last handed him the file. “Here’s my resignation.”
She set it atop his stacks and started for the door, and Marcos tore across the room like a man being chased by the devil. He caught her and squeezed her arms as his paralyzed brain made sense of her words.
“If you’re telling me you love me,” he said through gritted teeth, “look at me when you say it!”
She wrenched free. “Let go of me.”
He caught her elbow and spun her around, and she screamed, “I said don’t touch me!”
Worried the entire floor may have heard that, he let go of her. His chest heaved with the cyclone of feelings inside of him. He curled his fingers into his hands and his fingers dug into his palms, his knuckles jutting out.
“You want me,” he growled.
“No.” She backed away, glaring at him.
“You tremble for me, Virginia.”
“Stop it.”
“You want me so much you sob from the pleasure when I’m inside you.”
“Because I’m pretending to enjoy your disgusting tumbles!” she shot. She was flushed and trembling against the wall, her nipples balled into little pearls that begged for his mouth. But in her voice there was nothing but pain.
“Pretend? When the hell have we pretended?” He crushed her against him, squeezed her tight even as she squirmed. “We’re fire, Virginia. You and I. Combustion. Don’t you understand English? I’m asking you to stay. With me. And be my mistress,” he ground out.
Did she even realize he’d never in his life said this to a woman before? When her lashes rose and her gaze met his, the damaged look in her eyes knocked the air out of him. He didn’t expect the slicing agony lashing through him at her next words.
“I’m not interested in being your mistress.”
When she disengaged from him and pulled the doors open, he cursed under his breath, raked a hand through his hair. All noise across the floor silenced, and he immediately grabbed his jacket, shoved his arms into it as he followed her to the elevator.
He pushed inside before the doors closed, and she turned her face toward the mirror when he demanded, “Do I get two weeks to convince you to stay? I want you here. And I want you in my bed.”
“You want. You need.” Her voice quivered with anger, and its tentacles curled around him so hard he could’ve sworn it would kill him. “Is that what you wanted to speak to me about? Becoming your…mistress?”
His heart had never galloped this way. His plans had never veered off so unexpectedly, so decidedly. Their gazes met. Hers furious. His…his burned like flames. He grabbed her shoulders. The need inside him was so consuming he saw red. “Say yes. Christ, say yes now.”
But the way she looked at him wasn’t the same way she always did. “Do you think that’s what I want?” she asked, so softly he barely heard through the background elevator music. “Did I ever give you the impression I would…settle for…such an offer?”
Stunned that she would look at him like he was a monster, he took a step away from her, and another. His body burned with the want to show her he meant not to punish but to love her with every graze of his lips and every lick of his tongue.
And he said, out of desperation, impulse, the exact second the elevator halted at the lobby floor, “I love you.”
And the words, magic words, ones he’d never, ever said before, didn’t have the effect he’d predicted.
Her laugh was cynical. “See, you’re so good at pretending, I don’t believe you.”
And she spun around and walked away, out of the elevator, away from him, away from it all.
Stunned, he braced a hand on the mirror, shut his eyes as he fought to make sense of the rampaging turmoil inside him.
What in the hell?
Thirteen
Alone in his Fintech offices, motionless in his chair, Marcos stared out the window.
The nineteenth floor was empty. It was 3 a.m. But th
ere was no power on this earth, no way in hell, that he’d go back alone to his apartment. His penthouse had never felt so cold now that Virginia Hollis was gone. The sheets smelled of her. He’d found a lipstick under the bathroom sink and he’d never, ever felt such misery. The sweeping loneliness that had accompanied that unexpected find was staggering.
He’d stormed out of his home and now here he was, inside his sanctuary. The place where he evaluated his losses and plotted his comebacks. Where he’d conquered the unconquerable and ruthlessly pursued new targets. Where, for the last month, he’d spent countless hours staring off into space with the single thought of a raven-haired temptress with pale, jade-green eyes.
And now he stared out the window, blinded to the city below, and he told himself he did not care.
He told himself that a month from now, he would forget Virginia Hollis.
He told himself this was an obsession and nothing more. He told himself the gut-wrenching, staggering throb inside him was nothing. And for the hundredth time, until the words rang true and his insides didn’t wince in protest every time he thought them, he told himself he did not love her.
But it was a bluff. A farce. A lie.
Virginia had her money. Their arrangement had culminated at the Fintech party and had left him with an overwhelming sense of loss he couldn’t quite shake. She’d left him wanting. Wanting more.
Marcos, I love you.
She hadn’t said it in exactly those words—but in his mind, she did. And he’d never heard sweeter words. More devastating words. Because suddenly, and with all his might, he wanted to be a man who could love her like she deserved.
The pain in her eyes—he’d been the one to put it there. Touch of gold? He scoffed at the thought, thinking he destroyed anything he touched that had life. He’d put that misery in Virginia’s eyes and he loathed himself for it.
His proposal, what he’d offered her, not even half of what he’d truly wanted from her, sickened him.
All along, he’d wanted her. He was a man accustomed to following his gut, and he did it without a conscience. He knew when he saw land and wanted it. He knew what he looked for when he bought stocks. He knew, had known from the start, he wanted Virginia in his bed, under his starved, burning body. But now, clear as the glass before him, he knew what else he wanted from her.