But tonight, Julienne did not come to him as a desperate child determined to sell her body for survival. She came to him as a woman, and a beautiful one at that, with a body she could have shared with any man in Monaco, if she so chose.
And still she’d chosen him.
He couldn’t deny he liked the symmetry of it.
Cristiano couldn’t go back in time and change that brief, terrible moment when he’d very nearly turned his back on the girl she’d been. Very nearly abandoning her to her fate with whatever jackals populated places like this. Vile men like his own father, selfish and destructive and heedless of the damage he caused.
So easily could Cristiano have broken her and condemned her younger sister, too, simply by walking away from Julienne that night.
He carried the weight of that, two bright lives he could have extinguished in one fell swoop, around with him. They were an enduring reminder of how close he’d come to becoming more like his father, the cost of housing and educating and outfitting them negligible to a man of his wealth—and a small dent indeed next to the soul he’d nearly lost.
They had been an act of kindness to prove he had it in him. Then an act of penance for the other things he’d lost that night.
One way or another, Julienne and her sister had long been his personal cross to bear.
And it was tempting, oh, so tempting, to put them down once and for all.
“Are you going to answer me?” Julienne asked, and she tilted her head slightly to one side as she asked it, once again signaling how little she was intimidated by him. It was a novel experience. Cristiano should have been outraged at her temerity. Her lack of respect.
Instead, he found himself intrigued.
“How can I?” he replied after a moment. “I don’t know what it is you are offering.”
“Me. I’m offering me.”
“I appreciate the offer. And that you are no longer making it while barely legal.” He considered her, the light from behind the bar making her face seem very nearly luminous. “But you see, I have rules.”
“I’ve worked for you for ten years, Mr. Cassara. If, all of a sudden, you did not have rules for every given situation, that would be concerning.”
He thought of his guilt, his shame. That brief, glaring moment when he had understood himself to be no better than the father he disdained with every particle of his being. The father who had humiliated him, rampaged through his childhood and laughed in the face of his pain.
How easy would it be to wash that moment away. He had saved the girl, after all. And the result of what he’d actually done—instead of merely thought—was Julienne.
Julienne, the youngest vice president in the history of the Cassara Corporation—aside from Cristiano himself.
Julienne, who looked at him without the calculation he had grown to expect in the eyes of women who dared attempt to get close to him—or rather, to his plump bank accounts. Julienne, whose toffee-colored eyes were filled with heat. Longing, even.
He had come back to this terrible place at least once each year since that night to stand a vigil. To remember who he’d nearly become.
Maybe, a voice in him suggested, it is time to let it go.
Cristiano followed an urge he would normally have tamped down, hard, and reached across the scant inches between them. He fit his hand to the curve of her cheek, and traced his way down the delicate line of her neck to find the hollow of her throat. Then, lower, to the soft skin visible in the open neck of her silk blouse that hinted at her breasts below.
And watched in a dark delight as she flushed, bright and hot.
The precise shade of her nail polish.
“I do not do entanglements,” he told her severely. Though he was questioning himself already, as the heat in her skin shot through him, pooling in his sex. His body was tight, ready. And suddenly, it was as if he’d spent years wanting nothing more than to drive himself deep and hard inside her. “I like sex, Ms. Boucher. But I do not traffic in emotional displays.”
Her breath was choppy and her eyes were hot, but her voice was cool when she spoke. “I hope I have never given you reason to imagine that I was particularly emotional.”
“The boardroom is not the bedroom.”
“Indeed it is not. Or you would have found me distinctly indecent, long before now.”
He liked the notion of that. And suddenly there were too many images in his head of missed opportunities in the office...the kinds of images he never allowed to pollute his mind. The kinds of images he kept behind the walls of all those compartments inside him, because to lose those separations was to become too much like his father. When he wanted instead to be like his grandfather, the man who had taught him how to build partitions. And use them.
But walls were coming down all around them tonight.
“You have always struck me as a woman who likes to be in charge.” He continued to trace an absent pattern this way and that, in and around her low collar, drawing in the wild heat she generated. And far too aware of each breath she took. “But I’m afraid I am far too demanding for that.”
Julienne shivered, as if the prospect of his demands was too delicious to bear, and he thought he might actually eat her alive. Here and now. Hoist her up on the bar and indulge himself at last.
That would be a bookend, indeed.
“What sort of demands do you mean?” she asked, and her voice changed. Gone was all that coolness, lost in a husky sort of heat that he could feel like a caress, there where he hungered for her the most.
It made him think of dark rooms, deep sighs.
He shifted again, and looked around, trying his best not to surrender to that drumming thing inside him. His blood, his pulse.
His need and his hunger.
Not cut out of him, as he’d believed all this time. But waiting.
Only waiting for a woman who dared.
But despite the riot inside him and the delicious idea he’d had concerning the bar, this was not the place to indulge himself. There were too many unfriendly eyes that watched his every move, especially in the moneyed halls of Monte Carlo, where too many well-fed enemies would leap at the chance to see and exploit his weaknesses.
Or his wants.
To Cristiano’s mind, they were the same.
He took Julienne’s hand in his and then he tugged her behind him, leading her back out of the dimly lit bar and into the hotel proper. He didn’t look back at her. He didn’t need to. He could see her in the mirrors they passed, looking flushed and ready.
He felt the pulse of greed deep in his sex.
Instead of leading her out into the grand lobby that was filled with guests and tourists alike, he moved deeper into the hotel. Then branched off into one of the smaller marble halls festooned with luxury shops. He kept going until he found an alcove, tucked between a shop filled with disgracefully overpriced perfume and another stocked entirely with nonsensical shoes.
And once there, away from prying eyes if not entirely private, he backed her to the wall. Then propped himself over her there, one hand on either side of her head.
Cristiano watched, rapt, as she fought for breath.
How had he failed to truly see her all this time?
“Any and all demands,” he said, finally answering her question. What demands, indeed. He could write a book or two and it would only skim the surface of the things he wanted. Needed. And would demand of her. “I like things the way I like them. Is that a problem for you?”
“I’ve been taking your orders for ten years.”
He liked the way her eyes flashed. He liked that simmering defiance, right there beneath her cool exterior. He wanted to lick up all that elegance and see how she burned.
“One night, Julienne.”
“You say that as if you imagine I might have started making a hope chest.” She tossed
her head with that same defiance and a streak of temper, too. “I assure you, Mr. Cassara, this is a sexual invitation. That’s all.”
“One night,” he said again.
“I heard you the first time.”
“It bears repeating, cara. I would hate for there to be any...confusion.”
And he watched as another streak of temper made her toffee-colored eyes darken.
“How patronizing.” And she scowled at him as if he wasn’t caging her against the wall. “I’m the one who propositioned you, in case you’re the one who’s confused. Twice, now. Perhaps that’s what bears repeating.”
“The only word I wish you to repeat is my name,” he told her, low and dark, and leaned in then to get the scent of her in his nose. Sweet and hot at once. His pulse thickened, beating hard into his sex. “No more of this Mr. Cassara when we are naked. Cristiano, please. Shout it, sob it, scream it. All are acceptable. And all bear endless repeating, as I think you’ll find soon enough.”
And he was so close he could see her delicate shiver.
“How sure you seem that you won’t be the one crying out my name.” Julienne smirked at him. She actually dared smirk at him. “Particularly when we have yet to establish if there’s the slightest bit of chemistry between us. Perhaps there will be nothing here but apologetic grimaces and embarrassment.”
“My mistake,” Cristiano said.
He didn’t argue the point.
He moved closer and took her mouth with his.
No finesse. No gentility or politeness. Simple, potent greed.
He took what he wanted, a bold mating of lips and tongues. He tasted her, he took her, providing a comprehensive example of precisely the kind of demands he meant.
He didn’t go easy on her at all.
And she met him, his Julienne. She pushed herself off the wall, twined herself around him, and the fire of it roared through him. The gut punch, hot and mad, slammed into him. It made him question the limits of his own control, when he prided himself on never, ever losing his grip—
When he pulled away, his own breath was hard to catch. Her eyes had gone dark and wide, and Cristiano wanted nothing on this earth but to bury himself inside her, again and again.
Assuming he lived through the single night he would allow her.
The single night he would allow himself.
And as he fought to find his control again, he wondered, for the first time in his life, if one night would be enough.
A sentiment that should have sent him reeling. Running for the hills, but her taste was in his mouth. Sweet and salt, all woman, and he thought it entirely possible that she might be the undoing of him, after all.
The mad part of it was, he couldn’t seem to care.
“One night,” he said again, rougher this time. Because he was talking to himself. “That’s all I have to offer.”
“All you have to offer me? Or all you have to offer, in general?”
He didn’t know how she knew to ask him that.
But the grief was always in him, the shame his constant shadow, and he told himself that was what made him reach over and run his thumb over her full, tempting lower lip. He wanted to sink his teeth into her. He wanted to breathe her in, then get his mouth where she was sweetest.
“Does it matter?”
He watched her chest rise, then fall. He could see her nipples, tight and hard beneath the silk blouse she wore. He caught the faintest hint of her arousal and his mouth watered.
“One night,” she agreed. Almost solemnly. But then she smiled. “But I hope you don’t have performance anxiety. It would be depressing if you failed somehow to live up to all this hype.”
He smiled then, edgy and wrong, and had the distinct pleasure of watching goose bumps break out all over her body.
“Let me worry about that. All you need to worry about is how many times you scream my name.” He leaned closer and sampled the goose bumps on her neck, then smiled there, against her skin. “Remember it, please. Cristiano. Though in desperate circumstances Oh, God is also acceptable.”
When all she did was pant a little, her eyes glazed over with heat when he angled himself back to look at her, he laughed.
And then he took by the hand this woman who he intended to purge tonight, one way or the other. He led her out of the alcove, back to the lobby elevators, and then spirited her away to the penthouse suite he’d taken on the very top floor.
Where he intended to keep her until dawn.
Using every last scrap of the dark.
Until they were both fully sated.
And perhaps, at last, truly saved from the mistakes he’d made ten years ago.
CHAPTER THREE
THIS WAS WHAT she’d wanted.
Julienne’s mouth felt beautifully tender. She pressed her fingertips against her lips as Cristiano ushered her into his hotel suite, sensation pulsing hot and raw from that point of contact all the way down to her toes.
She expected him to turn on the lights. Indulge in suitably urbane conversation, dry to match the cocktails. Or whatever it was men like him did in situations like these.
But instead, he kissed her again, barely getting the door closed before his mouth was on hers.
Dark. Hot.
So greedy it almost hurt.
And there was some part of her that couldn’t quite believe that a man so controlled, so deeply ascetic, could carry all this passion within him. Could have been carrying it deep inside him somewhere, all this time.
But she couldn’t care about that now. Not when his mouth was on hers and his hands roamed everywhere, finding her breasts and then taking possession of her nipples.
As if they were his.
As if she was his.
They were still in the entryway, though she hardly saw it. Or cared. She had the sense of more marble, more mirrors, and the pervasive sense of tremendous wealth—which was to say, nothing special in the Cassara world.
But his mouth was still on hers, beguiling her and bewildering her, and she stopped worrying about where they were. Only that he was with her.
Cristiano’s hands were restless, moving where they pleased. One dove beneath the waistband of her skirt to find the curve of her bottom. The other drifted to her waist, then up, pushing her bra out of his way to hold her naked breast in his palm.
All the while he kissed her, intoxicating her. Making her press into him. Making her wish she could crawl inside him.
She had never understood the word demanding before. Not really.
Cristiano was overwhelming behind a desk. But here, unleashed...
He was like a hurricane.
He kissed her with a ferocity that should have terrified her. That might have, if it hadn’t been for the sensation that howled and shook through her with every stroke of his hand, his tongue. She felt strung out between his taste and his touch. The insistent fingers on her breast and then, below, the way he traced his way over her bottom. And kept going until he found his way to her front, and the furrow of her molten heat.
And then he was inside her, two fingers deep into the center of her need.
A wicked twist, and then more of that unreal dark laughter against her mouth as she bucked into him. And moaned.
“My name,” he murmured.
Another demand.
Then he pressed down hard, thrusting deep, and Julienne dissolved.
She heard a keening sound, but all she was conscious of were those thick, strong fingers inside of her—thrusting so wickedly, with such certainty and skill.
She sank from one peak only to find herself tossed up hard into another.
And all the while, Cristiano laughed.
Low, male, deeply satisfied.
But still, it was laughter. And Julienne wanted to hoard it. Gather it up and hold it close, for all those yea
rs she would have sworn to anyone who would listen that this man didn’t know how to laugh. That he never had. That he simply wasn’t made that way.
He pulled his fingers from the tight grip of her sex. Then, impossibly, he lifted them to his own mouth.
Julienne watched, torn somewhere between a sharp, hot longing and a crisp embarrassment as he licked his fingers clean.
“All this time.” His voice was a wondering rasp. “All this time you sat across tables and desks from me. You’ve walked in and out of my offices on five continents. And all this time, you have tasted like this.”
She felt as if she ought to apologize, though she couldn’t quite speak. And her heart felt fragile and fierce at once, there where it swelled behind her ribs. Cristiano peeled her away from the wall and her knees wobbled beneath her when she meant to stand.
Her reward for that was that dark laugh of his again, a rough, masculine music she thought she would hear inside her forever.
Then he picked her up, tossing her over his shoulder with an easy strength that reminded her of the ancient conquerors who surely lived in his blood.
He strode through the darkened rooms of his hotel suite and she saw glimpses of bright lights heralding the Monte Carlo nightlife through the windows, gleaming antiques strewn about the palatial living spaces, and with every step, the quiet whisper of five-star luxury.
And when he put her down, he tipped her over onto her belly. Julienne tried to orient herself in the dimness of a new room, taking longer than she should have to recognize that he’d bent her over the side of a tall bed. And she tried to take stock, she did—but her body was his now. Not hers.
Never again yours, a voice said in her so clearly she almost flinched at the sound. His always. His forever.
And she could no longer tell if she was shuddering because of that voice, or because of him. Or some wicked, ruthless combination of both.
She felt him behind her, crouched down with a hand on one ankle, and all she could manage to do was moan.
“These legs,” he said, in that same tone, like a dark incantation. “I worked so hard to keep myself from noticing these legs, Julienne. The temptation of them. And the shoes. Always the shoes, higher and higher by the year.”
The Italian's Pregnant Cinderella (Passion In Paradise Book 8) Page 3