by Tara Pammi
The melancholy that had gripped her, it was an ache to be with Dante.
To spend time with him in comfortable silence like now, or trading snappy comebacks, to discuss stoicism and pop culture—three guesses who was into which—to laugh with him, to understand what drove that razor-sharp mind and fueled that ambition, to touch him, to have the freedom to run her hand over his cheek whenever she wanted, to sink her fingers into his thick hair, to press her mouth to his in a quick kiss every time he got that brooding look in his eyes...
To be just a woman with him. A woman he liked and respected and wanted. Their lives were intricately twined now, for the first time seeing each other clearly and her feelings consumed her.
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “You were right. I...I think I’ll move back here. There’s just more room here and once the novelty of our announcement dies down, it’s not like the media can see if we’re spending our nights together in one room. I mean, in the same house. We both work insane hours anyway.”
In the dim light of the lamp, his scowl was downright ferocious. “What?”
“As big as your flat is, it’s...like living in each other’s pockets. This way, we’ll have more freedom, more...space.”
“More space to do what, precisely? See your ex again? Should we expect him to come knocking on the door any moment now? Is that why you wanted me to leave?”
She jumped off the bed, fury burning away that achy longing. “That’s unfair. The last thing I’d do is have a secret affair while the whole world is crowing about our wedding as the most romantic thing in the decade. Not that you deserve my...fidelity. I just can’t do this anymore.”
She turned to leave the room, to leave his unfair comments to himself, but he grabbed her arm.
Ali ended up against him, his legs straddling her hips, her hands on his chest. He rubbed her back gently, his breath feathering over her forehead. The scent of him made her skin tight. The incredible warmth of his body made hers hum.
She wanted to stay like that the entire night. An entire lifetime.
His hands were gentle as he clasped her cheek, a slumbering warmth in his eyes. “If it’s the agent, I’ll make some calls. If it’s the charity that worries you, don’t. And if it’s the media scrutiny that’s bothering you, it will die down soon.
“You’re...you’re so much his daughter, Alisha. Driven and grounded. I was wrong to think you were a spoiled princess. Whatever the problem is, I’ll fix it. I owe it to Neel to do right by you.”
Just like that, he tramped all over Ali’s budding feelings. She didn’t want his loyalty or his sympathy because she was her father’s daughter. She wanted him to see her. Alisha. “It’s you.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. “You make this all strange and wrong and hard. I feel like I signed away more than those blasted voting shares.”
Shock filled his eyes. Slowly he pulled his hand away. “I would never harm you, Ali.”
She nodded. He didn’t get it. He would never get it. Ambition and goals and reputations, those things he understood. Matters of the heart were a different matter.
She was terrified that slowly, irrevocably Dante was stealing hers. And if she didn’t stop it, if she didn’t steel herself against him, if she was foolish enough to offer it to him, he would crush it into a thousand pieces.
Still, she asked. “Are you happy to pretend that kiss didn’t change anything between us?”
After a long time, he blinked slowly, tension pulling at his mouth. “Yes.”
She fisted her hands. “I don’t have your self-control, nor do I want to suppress every little thing I feel when I genuinely like you. I can’t live with you and pretend as if I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.”
She pressed her mouth to his, every breath in her bracing for him to push her away. His lips were soft and firm. Scooting closer on her knees, hands on his shoulders, she tasted the skin just under his ear, felt the shudder that moved through his hard body.
He tasted like heat, like heaven, like homecoming.
When he gripped her hands to push her away, she trailed her tongue up to his jaw, alternating with nips and bites until she reached the sexy hollow of his throat. She pressed her tongue against that hollow, feeling his pulse inside her. Feeling the power of his body inside her. “Tell me the truth just once. Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll do whatever you ask. I’ll never talk about this again.”
Without waiting for an answer, she nipped his skin, hard, long, with her teeth. He growled, a drawn-out erotic sound. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest and she let his hard body take even more of her weight. Tipsy, drunk, delirious, she felt a buzz at his harsh breaths. She pushed her hand down his broad chest, over the hard ridge of his abdomen to his belt and below. His breath was like the bellows of a forge in her ears.
Her hand found the waistband of his trousers and then the zipper. Belly clenching, she traced the hard ridge pressing up beneath the fabric. Up and down, just with one finger, until he grew harder and longer beneath her touch. Nerves tight, she covered him with her palm. His shaft twitched against her hand, making her mouth dry.
God, an incredibly unbearable erotic rush filled her very veins. He was that hard for her. She could have died and gone to heaven, just for that.
He gripped her wrist like a tight manacle, stilling her. But he didn’t push her away. And Ali pushed her advantage.
Sinking her fingers into his hair, straddling his hard thighs, she pressed shamelessly closer. Their mingled groans rent the air as his hardness pressed against her sex at just the right spot.
Rough hands tugged her by her hair and then he was kissing her with a ferocious hunger that matched her own. Teeth banged as he plunged his tongue inside her mouth and dueled with hers. His tongue thrust and withdrew from her mouth, making her sex clench. Whorls of sensation built in her lower belly. The kiss whipped her senses into a frenzy.
Mouth open, he left damp patches on her throat. His lips soothed while his teeth bit, and soon Ali was sobbing for more. She pulled his hands from her hips to her breasts, the tips aching for his touch. “Please, Dante...more.”
She didn’t care that she was begging. That she was raw and vulnerable and all the things she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be with him. But whatever madness had her in its grip seemed to hold him too.
Still holding her gaze, he brought his mouth down to her neck, to the upper curve of her breasts. “Pull your T-shirt up.”
Fingers trembling, Ali did it. He traced the seam of the white lace with his tongue, a dark fire in his eyes. Transfixed, Ali watched as his rough mouth found the peak jutting up lewdly against the thin silk fabric.
His fingers were so unbearably gentle when he pulled the lace cup down. Her breast popped out, jutted up by the tight wire of her bra, the peak tight and begging for his attention.
Breath hung in her throat as he closed those sinuous lips around it. She jerked her hips against his when he pressed his tongue against her nipple and grazed his teeth over its surface.
She moaned, and twisted her hips in mindless abandon when he sucked her nipple and the curve of her breast into his mouth. The pulls of his mouth, the thrust of his hips, the press of him against her core...sensation upon sensation built in her lower belly. She was moaning, she was panting. He used his teeth against the plump tip and Ali felt like she was lifting out of her body.
She thrust against him, shameless in her pursuit for release, her thighs in a death grip around his hips, her fingers holding his mouth to her chest, her heart beating like a fluttering bird against its cage.
Relentless waves of pleasure beat down over her, drenching her sex in wetness. Her throat felt hoarse from all the screaming. She hid her face in his shoulder, a strange joy fluttering through her veins.
A torrent of curses ripped from D
ante, puncturing the deafening silence around them with a contained violence. He dislodged her onto the bed.
He ran a hand through his hair, standing against the door, his chest heaving, a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. His hair was sticking out at all angles because she’d pulled and tugged at it to her heart’s content while he’d made her body sing.
“Cristo, this is your childhood bedroom, in his house!”
The aftershocks of her orgasm unfurled through her pelvis even as tears filled her eyes.
No, damn it, she wasn’t going to cry. She’d wanted what had happened, she wanted a lot more. But neither was she going to enter into a cycle of self-pity. She wasn’t going to beg him to give this thing between them a chance.
She’d shown him, told him what she wanted. Now, it was up to him. She had far too much self-respect to beg a man to act on what he clearly felt for her.
Ali pulled herself up on the bed.
His head jerked up at that moment, the shadow of his hunger for her still in his eyes.
Dark color slashed his razor-sharp cheekbones as that hot gaze drifted down to her breasts. Her nipples were swollen and tight from his fingers, from his mouth. His evening shadow had left a mark on the upper slopes.
Chin tilted, Ali faced him. Her insides were a gooey, painful knot, while her hands shook. Holding his gaze, she hooked her bra together and pulled the straps into place, adjusting the cups at the front. It was a push-up bra, designed to create cleavage.
And still, he stared. She looked around for her T-shirt and pulled it on. Then she raked her hands through her hair, hair he’d tangled by pulling it while he plundered her mouth.
There wasn’t a part of her body on which he hadn’t left an impression. Just the memory of his erection rocking into her was enough to send a sweet ache between her legs.
“Ali—”
“It happened. I’m not sorry it did. With all the pheromones running wild in my system right now, I think it’s impossible to regret that.” She held his gaze, for the first time since she’d seen him as a thirteen-year-old, hiding nothing from him. “It was the most amazing experience of my life with a man I like, I respect and I want. Don’t cheapen it, don’t tell me why it’s wrong. Don’t take this away from me.”
He walked toward her with each of her words. Ali flinched when he clasped her cheek reverently, when he rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “Do you know, that’s the first time in a long while that I’ve forgotten what I stand for? Seeing you come apart like that...” Naked desire filled his eyes. “I’ve never lost my mind like that. I’ve never wanted a woman so much that it’s messing with my work, never. The passion in your kiss, the honest desire in your eyes, the sounds you make when you climax...they will haunt me for the rest of my life. For all my fortune, you’re the one thing I can’t afford.”
Ali braced herself, like a leaf in a cool autumn wind. Whatever emotion she’d spied in his eyes drained away, leaving that cool, unflappable mask. “You and me, this can’t go anywhere. I don’t do relationships and doing this with you, when I know I can’t give you anything else...that will just make me the kind of man I spent my whole life trying not to be.”
“What kind of a man would that be? A man who feels emotion, a man who clearly cares for those around him, a man capable of far more than he lets himself give?” Ali demanded. Her own strength surprised her. But then, Dante had always been capable of pushing her.
His eyes flared, something almost like fear in them. God, she was being delusional. What could a man like Dante fear?
“I deserve at least an explanation after that orgasm you gave me.”
This time it wasn’t fear, but self-disgust. “If I take you tonight, just because I want you, because you want me, knowing that all I can give you is a cheap, torrid affair under the guise of this marriage, it’s a betrayal of all the trust your dad gave me.”
“Papa has nothing to do with this.”
“Neel will always have everything to do with me and you, Ali,” he shouted the words at her. Self-disgust painted his features harsh. “If I screw you against the wall, here in his house, it makes me the same selfish bastard as my father was.”
“Jesus, Dante, your father fleeced thousands of euros from innocents. How can you say you’re the same?”
“I’ll be the same because you’re innocent and I’ll have given in to my basest desires. And all I’ll do is take what you give and then discard you when I tire of you. What I want from you—the only thing I want from you—are those voting shares. And you’ve already given them to me.”
The cruel finality of his words pierced Ali like nothing else she’d ever experienced. How could it hurt so much when it was what she’d expected?
When she didn’t really know what she wanted from him?
It felt like giving up but she nodded anyway. Survival instinct took over.
She stiffened when he took her hands in his and pulled her into his arms. The tenderness of his embrace stole her breath. Earlier, it had been the way he’d played her body, made her mindless, and now this side of him...
Who knew there was so much depth to the hard man he showed the world? Who knew that even his rejection would only make her like him even more?
She felt his mouth at her temple, the long breath he drew in her hair, the slight vibrations that seemed to shake his shoulders. Her arms went around his waist loosely, for he was the safest place she’d found in a long time. “I understand why you want to leave the flat. But for now, for tonight, will you please come home with me, Alisha? I can’t... It would eat me up to leave you here. Do this for me. Por favor, bella mia.”
Ali laughed into his neck, even as her tears seeped out and soaked into his skin. Raw vulnerability cloaked her and still, it seemed what had happened, what he said couldn’t happen, couldn’t puncture the bond that had formed between them.
“What?”
Tilting her head back, she looked at him. Stared into his eyes. Her chest ached at the concern she saw in them. How had she ever thought him uncaring? “I didn’t think you knew that word.”
He smiled back at her, lines at his eyes, teeth flashing. “I know it.” His gaze swept over her face, as if he couldn’t help himself. “I just didn’t think there would come a day when I would say it to you.”
Still smiling, Alisha withdrew from his hold. Shying her gaze away, she packed up her things into her tote bag. “Just for that, I’ll make sure you say it again and again to me. In fact, I’ll make sure, somehow, I make you beg, Dante.”
She walked out of her teenage bedroom without looking back, feeling as if she’d grown a thousand years in just one evening, wishing Vikram was here to hug her, wishing Papa was here to hold her in her confusion, wishing she weren’t falling for Dante.
Wishing, once again, in the very same house like she’d done all those years ago, that she could change Dante’s mind, that she was enough, wishing he cared about her more than he did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT SEEMED TO Dante that the universe or some karmic superpower was conspiring against him.
What he’d done with Ali, to Ali, in her bedroom, of all places... The memory of her flushed face, the image of her lush breasts in his hand, the sensation of those brown tips so hard on his tongue, the wildness of her body as she rocked into him and found her pleasure... Dios mio, it haunted him in the fortnight he’d spent in Tokyo on business.
Even in his dreams, Ali was there, taunting him, teasing him, the trusting smile on her lips, the raw desire in those eyes just as arousing as the invitation of her naked limbs.
Until he’d driven her to his flat that night, and bid her good-night at her bedroom door, he’d been terrified that she would refuse him. That he had crossed a line he never should have, that she wouldn’t forgive him for his seesawing behavior.
No trip had ever felt so long. Because he�
��d never had anything to come home to before.
When he’d returned late at midnight, she’d already been in her bedroom. Somehow, he’d buried the urge to knock, to check that she was really in there. Even though his security team had assured him that she was.
This morning, he had another important meeting with the shareholders. He canceled it.
There was a ruckus involving the Japanese firm and some miscommunication about production schedule and delivery dates between his team and their team. A ten-billion-dollar contract and thousands of new jobs hinged on the deal he had negotiated.
Instead of the usual urgency to smooth out the knots, all he felt was a strange tiredness for his job. Cristo, he’d been working nonstop for almost twenty years and this morning he wanted to damn it all to hell.
It had taken Izzy a few tries—at the end of which she’d remarked on his distracted mood—to tell him that all of his management team was sitting on tenterhooks, waiting for his wrath for such a major communications blunder. They were right, he didn’t tolerate sloppiness or inefficiency in himself, or his teams. They went through rigorous training and usually his employee base, especially the upper management team, were people who’d been with him for years. And if a mistake of this proportion had been made, the person responsible would have informed him of it immediately and taken corrective steps.
In the end, Dante had figured it out.
It was all Nitin’s doing. His petty little revenge was causing havoc. He had been attending meetings he hadn’t been invited to behind Dante’s back, promising to take the lead on communications and then dropping the ball, leaving some unsuspecting newcomer to take the fire all the while their Japanese client waited for an important communication. It was exactly the kind of games that had made Neel distrust his brother wholly, that had made him try to keep Nitin’s corporate decision-making ability severely limited.
That Dante had unequivocally taken a controlling stake in Matta Steel after acquiring Ali’s voting shares was a bitter pill for Nitin to swallow.