Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  Meaning—not you!

  Gian caved.

  Ariana felt his hand on her thigh, and the grip of his fingers actually halted her words.

  ‘That’s not a good idea,’ she said to Gian, while looking ahead. ‘If you reward me each time I go too far...’

  ‘Would you prefer the discipline method?’

  She threw her head back and laughed.

  Even with Mia at her table, Ariana found that with Gian beside her she could still have such a wonderful night.

  And it was then that she got another reward, for as the desserts were served and shots of coffee were tossed over ice creams, there was a special dish, made just for her. Tutti-frutti.

  Ariana gasped.

  ‘Yes.’

  It was better than being handed chestnuts on a freezing night; it was better than a sliver of gold when she could not face her father’s funeral alone.

  ‘Thank you.’

  She wanted to cry as she tasted the sweet candied ice cream and remembered how her father had, over and over, let her get away with buying three cones, just so she could devour them all.

  Happy memories reigned as little shots of sugar burst on her tongue and when she finished she had to dab at her eyes with her napkin. ‘Ice cream has never made me cry before,’ she admitted to Gian as the waiter cleared her very clean plate. ‘Happy tears, though. It was beautiful, thank you.’

  ‘Shall we get it over with?’ Gian asked as the band struck up.

  ‘Get what over with?’ Ariana said, as if she didn’t know.

  ‘The duty dance.’

  It had been months since she had known the bliss of his arms, and for Gian it had been months with no feminine pleasure.

  He’d known he would only be thinking of her and, besides, no one else had her scent.

  ‘Your perfume,’ he said, as he held her at a distance and resumed their old wars.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ she said, ‘I don’t wear any.’ She looked right at him. ‘You’re the only one who complains.’

  ‘I’m not complaining.’

  ‘Why do you always hold me at such a distance?’

  ‘You know why,’ he said, and pulled her deep in so she could feel him hard against the softness of her stomach. She flared to the scent of citrus and bergamot and testosterone and the roughness of his skin seemed to burn her rouged cheek. ‘You didn’t shave...’

  ‘Because you like me unshaven.’

  ‘Gian.’ She was trying to breathe and dance and deal with the change all at the same time. She simply didn’t understand him. ‘You’ve ignored me most of the night...’

  ‘I tried to,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’ve ignored me for weeks...’ He shook his head, but then nodded when she quoted his impersonal sign-offs. ‘“Kind regards, Gian”?’

  ‘How else could we get the ball done?’

  ‘And after tonight will you ignore me again?’

  He didn’t answer because he didn’t know. He could not afford to think of tomorrow now.

  The judgements of the coroner’s report should be flicking through his mind, except tonight those violet eyes turned his warning systems off.

  He gave her no promises, just told her the card for his private elevator would be in her bag and left her to stumble her way through the rest of the evening.

  The speeches were brilliant, the whole night was perfect, but it felt as though she might faint with desire as she said farewell to the guests.

  ‘We should go for a drink in the bar,’ Nicki said.

  ‘It will be closed.’

  ‘I meant the bar in your room.’ Nicki smiled, but Ariana shook her head. ‘I’m exhausted, Nicki.’

  It was a lie.

  Ariana felt as alive as an exposed wire as she slipped away and took the private elevator to his floor and let herself in.

  It was not the view that she craved, or the stunning surroundings; it was the glimpses of him.

  There were paintings, the sketches of Fiordelise he had told her about, his history and lineage all there on the walls.

  The older Dukes and Duchesses too, and it went right down to his parents, his brother...

  But where was Gian?

  Her eyes scanned the walls.

  Where was the man she adored?

  Then she found him, in a suit, at the desk in Reception, and she frowned at the one single image of him, but her thoughts faded as she heard the whir of the elevator. And her heart moved to her throat as he stepped through the door.

  It had been agony not to touch him, but both were relieved of that agony now.

  As they reached for each other, almost ran to each other, it was like falling into another dimension.

  He was undoing her gown so it fell like a black puddle on the floor. His tongue was cool and his kisses hot as she impatiently pushed down the sleeves of his jacket, and they were so desperate for each other, for more than this.

  He picked her up, dressed only in her underwear, and deposited her onto a vast gold bed.

  His eyes never left her face as Ariana removed her bra and lay on her back, propped up by her elbows and watching him undress.

  He threw off the tie as though it was choking him and she gave a satisfied smile when the cufflinks dropped silently to the carpet for he was as desperate as she.

  He slowed down to take off her strappy high heels. First the right, and he was so annoyingly slow with the strap that she took her other high heel and pressed it into his toned stomach.

  Gian caught her calf.

  She could see his erection, the one that had been pressed against her on the dance floor, and she almost writhed in frustration as he took off her left high heel. Now the soles of her feet were on his stomach as he slowly pulled her silk knickers down, revealing her to him. Finally, he buried his face in her.

  ‘Gian!’ She was shocked at the delicious roughness of him, at the sounds of him, at her own reaction to him, for she was coming as quickly as that.

  Suddenly she was pulsing as he devoured her and then she was falling where she lay, but with him atop her.

  ‘We need condoms...’ she said frantically, for she had cursed herself after the last time.

  ‘There’s been no one since.’

  Those words made her too weak for reason.

  He was holding her naked as she tumbled through space, and for all the terrible decisions she had made in her lifetime, this, Ariana knew, was not one of them.

  He kissed her mouth and her face, the shells of her ears, and the tender skin of her neck as he took her.

  He devoured her and rained kisses and words on her that should not be said to someone you were not prepared to love the next day.

  ‘You make me crazy,’ he told her.

  And that made her heart sing.

  He told her how he had wanted her all night, how he had wanted her for weeks, in fact, all this as he moved within her and stared right into her eyes. The prolonged intensity astounded her, the focus, the climb, the ache of want and the desire to give. Her hips moved involuntarily with his and they were wild for each other, rolling and tumbling across the bed. He took in her flushed features and brushed the damp hair back from her face as he drove into her and gazed at her.

  Help, Ariana thought, for she had never seen Gian so tender before.

  There was passion and there was desire, but there was something else too.

  He was also aware of it, this slip into a deeper caring, this moment, when he rolled her onto her back again, and one lesson in tenderness moved to the next.

  He was up on his forearms, his body sliding over hers, each intimate stroke of him winding her tighter and tighter. His pace built and built and she wrapped her legs around his hips and simply clung on as he took her to wherever he chose.

  He took her to bliss, pou
nding her senses, making her more his with each thrust.

  For Gian it was a dangerous space. He knew that as he looked down at her, her black hair splayed on his pillow, her body tight around his. He would regret this later, Gian knew, but at that moment he didn’t care.

  Especially as he swelled that delicious final time and filled her. Completely.

  And this time it was Gian shouting out her name.

  He dragged her into an orgasm so deep and intense that for a moment she existed there with him.

  It was dizzying...too much...never enough, and she was crying as it was fading.

  And he kissed her back to consciousness.

  ‘I loved my ice cream,’ she told him, and then stopped, because there was another thing that Ariana knew she loved too.

  Don’t say it, she told herself as he turned off the lights with a single bedside switch and Ariana curled into him, loving the feel of being utterly spent yet curiously awake in her lover’s arms.

  Ariana usually hated the dark and the night, but not this night. The thud-thud-thud of his heart and the sound of Gian collecting his breath brought Ariana a sense of contentment in the soft thrum of her body as she came down from the high he had taken her to.

  ‘Why are there no paintings or sketches of Violetta?’

  ‘There are a couple but they need to be restored.’

  ‘And why are there no photos of you?’ Ariana asked a question that could only be asked in the dark, in that black hole where gravity did not apply, where words floated and drifted in nonsensical patterns, before logic applied.

  ‘There are,’ he said. ‘There’s one in the gallery, taken during the royal visit to La Fiordelise—in the entrance hall.’

  ‘You mean the Employee of the Month photo?’ Ariana said, mocking his formal business photo. For some reason her words made them both laugh.

  But then the laughter faded.

  ‘Why are there no photos with your parents?’

  ‘I was not a part of their plans.’

  ‘What were their plans?’

  ‘To party,’ Gian said. ‘And a late baby nearly put paid to that.’

  ‘But it didn’t?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘They carried right on.’

  ‘With a baby?’

  ‘Without,’ Gian said. ‘A lot of nannies, a lot of time in Luctano... It’s better this way, though. It taught me independence, so by the time they were gone, there was nothing to miss. They were never a necessary part of my life, or I of theirs.’

  She could not imagine it.

  Sure, her father had pulled back, but that had been in her twenties, and her mother still called her every day.

  And even though she and Stefano were not as close now as they once had been, she would die if he pulled away so completely.

  Even Dante, always remote and distant, was still a vital part of her world.

  To have no one.

  To miss no one.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t believe you don’t miss them.’

  ‘Truth?’ Gian said, still floating in that void where there were no sides and no barriers hemming you in. ‘I have missed them from the day I was born.’

  ‘Gian?’ She lifted her head when he fell silent.

  ‘Go to sleep,’ he said, but she wanted to ask him how they were supposed to be with each other in the cold light of day.

  ‘What?’ he asked her, when her head stayed up and her eyes remained focused on him.

  Self-preservation struck—or was it sanity?—and Ariana, even with little experience in the bedroom, knew that pushing the issue with Gian would be something she would live to regret.

  ‘I’m cold,’ she said, though she had never felt safer or warmer.

  Ariana knew when, and how, to lie.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GIAN WOKE TO DISORDER.

  Not just the knot of limbs and the scent of sex, for that he was used to, but the exposure of thoughts and the deep intimacies of last night had brought disorder into his mind.

  He did not want to love her.

  Ariana awoke to a cold empty bed and the sound of the shower.

  She could almost feel the weight of his regret in the air.

  There was no sense of regret from her. In fact, she wanted to stretch like a cat and purr at the memory of their lovemaking.

  She had thought nothing could beat the first time, but again Gian had surprised her.

  In his arms, as he’d driven her to the very edge and then toppled them, it had felt as if they were one.

  Not now, though.

  She looked over to the bedside table and the cufflinks he had dropped last night; his tux was hanging over the suit holder.

  Order had been brought to the bedroom.

  Except for the hot mess that lay in his bed, Ariana thought.

  Yes, an utter hot mess, because despite assurances and promises, both to Gian and herself, she had completely fallen for him.

  Well, that was a given...

  No, this was bigger.

  This feeling was almost more than her head could contain.

  It was a cocktail of affection and craving and desire and hunger but she refused, even to herself, to call it love.

  It was lust, Ariana told herself.

  He had turned on her senses, introduced her to her body, and she must not allow herself to believe that the kisses and intimacies shared last night were exclusively known to her.

  Except it had felt as if they were.

  It had felt, last night, when she had been trapped in his gaze, being kissed, being held, as if this feeling had been new to them both.

  She heard the shower being turned off, and she imagined him in there naked, the mirrors all steamed up. She willed him to come out and face the woman who should not be in his bed and she hoped he wasn’t wondering how to get rid of her.

  Oh, God, this was going to be a million times harder than the first time. Then, it had felt like she had been party to the rules, but this time, naked in his bed, she had to find the armour to brazen out a smile and leave without revealing her heart.

  He came out of the bathroom with a distinct lack of conversation and a thick white towel wrapped around his lean hips.

  ‘Buongiorno,’ Ariana said, and looked at Gian with his black hair dripping and unshaven face.

  Unshaven, for Gian had barely been able to bring himself to look in the mirror.

  He had got too close, and what had felt like a balm last night now felt like an astringent. He couldn’t bear to let anyone in.

  More, he couldn’t bear that he was about to hurt her.

  ‘I’ll call for breakfast,’ he said in a voice that attempted normality but failed. She noted that he did not get back into bed.

  Ariana gave a half-laugh at his wooden response in comparison to the easy flow of words last night. ‘You sound like the butler.’

  He said nothing to that and Ariana pulled herself up from the bed. ‘I’ll have a shower.’ It served two purposes: one, she refused to force a conversation on an unwilling participant and appear needy and pleading; and, two, she felt the sudden sting of tears and desperately wanted to hide it.

  ‘Sure.’ Gian said, fighting with himself not to dissuade her. He stepped back as she brushed past and he only breathed again when she closed the bathroom door.

  Why the hell was he like this?

  Gian generally fought introspection, but he sat on the bed and wrestled with his demons.

  The panicked part of Gian wanted the maids to come in and service the apartment so he could get back his cold black heart, instead of fighting the urge to go into the bathroom and join her in the shower before spending a lazy Sunday in bed.

  The buzz of his phone had him glancing at the bedside table. Luna calling at such an earl
y hour on a Sunday morning would generally cause him to curse, yet now he leapt on the distraction and took the call.

  It was not good news, to say the least.

  Ariana, he knew, would freak.

  When he’d ended the call, he made a couple of his own and by then Ariana had come out.

  ‘Don’t worry about breakfast,’ Ariana said, her voice a little shaken, though she was clearly doing her best to control it and keep things light. She had given way to a moment of tears in the shower but she’d pulled herself together and let the hot jets of water flow over her. She would serve herself better to wait until she got home so she could weep alone.

  ‘I’m not really hungry. I might head down to my own suite...’ She wouldn’t even bother putting on her gown. Wearing the robe and with wet hair, anyone who spotted her would assume she had been for a swim in the luxurious pool in the hotel spa. ‘If you could just send my things down to my suite, please...’

  ‘Ariana, wait.’

  As she headed for the door, she stiffened, fighting the surge of hope that he was calling her back to apologise for the shift in mood and the silent row that had taken place. Slowly she turned around.

  ‘It’s better that you hear this from me,’ Gian said, and his voice was deadly serious.

  ‘Hear what?’

  ‘There was a photo taken last night at the ball...’

  ‘There were many photos taken.’

  ‘I mean, there has been an image sold to the press. It hasn’t got out yet and my team are doing all they can to suppress it, but I fear it is just a matter of time.’

  ‘What sort of photo?’

  ‘One of Dante...’

  ‘Dante?’ Ariana frowned. ‘What has Dante got to do with anything?’ Dante’s behaviour had been impeccable last night. He had delivered a speech that had encapsulated the essence of their father and he had worked the room like the professional he was. Though Dante was rather well known for his rakish ways, that had all been put on hold last night.

  Or so she’d thought.

  ‘There is an image of Dante and Mia in the atrium.’

  ‘And?’ Ariana was instantly defensive. Dante was her brother after all. ‘He’s allowed to speak to her, for heaven’s sake. He told us himself to be polite. She’s my father’s widow...’ Her voice faded as Dante handed her his tablet and there, on an eleven-inch screen, was an image that washed away any further excuses.