by Bethany-Kris
“Is that what you call lust?”
Caesar’s tongue peeked out to touch the upper corner of his lip in his smile. “No, actually. I call that interest. See, if lust was all it was, I’d have been satisfied with the taste of you that I already got. I wouldn’t be thinking about more, or wondering which surface would be best in this room to spread you open, and bury my face into your cunt.”
Holy mother of—
“But I don’t think a good fuck is why you had me brought here, and that really wasn’t what I asked for, either,” he finished.
Aria blinked. “You are something else.”
He nodded. “I’ve been told that a few times, yes.”
It was … disconcerting.
Strange.
Curious.
She didn’t like it.
And yet, she did like it, too.
I am a mess.
She needed to get him off of this conversation, and fast. Him talking about spreading her open did nothing but make her hot, and wet between her thighs. Neither of which was something she could afford to focus on right now.
“Why does your father hate you so much—besides the obvious reasons, I mean?” Aria questioned.
Caesar didn’t look the slightest put off by her question, and it didn’t really seem to take him by surprise. His ready answer did kind of take her off guard, though. “I’m not sure he does hate me, actually.”
“Really? I don’t know many fathers who yell at their sons like yours was just doing when they love them.”
His broad shoulders lifted uncaringly. “It’s only because he doesn’t hate me that he hasn’t killed me yet. The better question is what haven’t I done to make him hate me the way I hate him, and why the fuck hasn’t it worked yet.”
Aria blinked, stunned.
So, that was it?
He hated his father?
Why?
“But back to the other thing. Do I get a peek at what’s under your dress tonight, or no? ‘Cause, I am a curious little shit, and—”
“Stop playing games, Caesar.”
He barked out a laugh. “Me? You think it’s me playing games between us? I’m straightforward, Aria. I don’t need to play games. I can’t help if shit affects you, and you can’t hide it. You’re the one who manipulated and tried to blackmail me. And then had me picked up on the side of the street to bring me to a hotel room for a meeting I am sure you could have given me a heads up on in some way. You make demands, you direct the conversation, and you question me about my personal business. So, really, who is playing games between us?”
She stayed silent.
He apparently didn’t care.
Aria stiffened into a stone-still statue as Caesar suddenly moved closer to her with the slow grace of a predator. She couldn’t possibly step away from him—that might make him think she was afraid. She couldn’t tell him to back off—it would look like she was uncomfortable.
It meant weakness.
So, no.
She stayed still with her hard gaze and sly smile firmly in place even as Caesar came close enough to her that she could see those black flakes in the blue of his eyes again. Close enough that the warmth of his body heated the space between them.
Too close, maybe.
“And if you ever think to try that manipulative shit with me again,” he told her, his head dipping low enough that his lips almost grazed hers when he spoke, “then you’ll get the pleasure of learning why people like to say I use sex as a weapon, mia cara.”
“Threats will get you nowhere with me, Caesar, except for a grave.”
Her voice didn’t shake.
Her tone never wavered.
And yet, she still lacked air. Her words still felt hot.
Fuck this man for putting her on edge.
No man did that.
“Try me,” Caesar urged, his lips quirking up in that sexy way again. “I know how damaging it would be for you should someone find out about us, and what you did with me. You think I haven’t done my homework, like you did with yours? I have.”
Again with the threats.
“The better question is, would you?” she asked. “I don’t think you would, actually. I’m just a woman, and what have I really done to hurt you?”
“I fucked my half-brother’s wife because I think he’s an arrogant little shit that needed to be kicked down from his goddamn high horse. They do couple’s counseling three times a week with a priest who tells him he can’t divorce her because it’ll go against God’s will. They have to sit at a dinner table with me at least twice a month, but sometimes more. My father barely punished me for it because he’s still holding onto that idea of me being his favorite even though it kills him inside knowing I won’t ever be what he wants me to be.”
Caesar sneered at the sight of Aria’s widening gaze, adding, “So, yeah, tell me again how I won’t fucking ruin you because you’re just a woman, and you haven’t hurt me. I don’t need you to make something hurt for me to justify being a fucking asshole—I just am. I don’t ever justify anything I do. That would mean I actually give a shit.”
She tried to speak.
Tried to find something to say.
“I …”
Caesar nodded, and took one step back. “And don’t forget it, either.”
She refused to let this man knock her off balance for too long, though. She wouldn’t be a De Rose if she wasn’t resilient, and able to quickly bounce back from anything that was thrown her damn way.
If she couldn’t appeal to his empathetic nature—if he even had the capability to feel empathy for someone else—then she would try a different direction. Whatever it took to get this done, then she would do it.
“Perhaps, I could help you, then,” she suggested.
Caesar tipped his head back, and stared down at her unaffected. “There’s nothing you have or could do that I need or want, actually. There’s nothing you can give me.”
“Maybe not directly. I need you to step back and let me do whatever it is I have to do, and will do to get control of this city. Including your family—your father. It’s what needs to happen, or … in the effort to gaining control, I will get what I want in another way. You could get something you want out of that, couldn’t you?”
“To what, kill my father?”
Aria smiled at lilt in his tone. “Is that what you need and want, Caesar? For your father to be out of the picture for good?”
He said nothing.
His eyes gave away nothing.
He was cold all over.
“Give me what I want,” Aria said, “and maybe in a roundabout way, you will be able to get what you want, too.”
“I still don’t know what that is—what you want, I mean.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Power.”
Because the power to control and manipulate would give her everything else. She only needed to get there first, and she was running out of time to do it.
Caesar came close again—no warning, just all in her space and coloring her vision with him entirely. His head bent down, and hers tipped upward. She wouldn’t be able to move a millimeter without kissing him, but she held back.
“I don’t think that’s all it is, though,” he murmured, “and that’s where I start to get concerned. You can’t trust someone who doesn’t give you all the details.”
“I—”
The click of the door unlatching before it was opened sent Aria stepping back from Caesar quickly even though she knew it couldn’t be anyone that might catch her doing something wrong. And it wasn’t.
Nico stood in the doorway, and his gaze only drifted to her when he said, “Raffe is going to call in ten—he’s on his way back to the hotel from another meet with the smugglers.”
Aria nodded. “Okay, grazie, Nico.”
She looked back to Caesar once the door was closed, and swore he hadn’t once stopped staring at her through the entire exchange.
She hadn’t given anything away—she couldn’t have, not about her husband, or how he made her feel the worst kind of dread and shame all at once.
And yet, he looked at her like he knew something …
“You’re going to have to leave now,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll find a way home, Caesar. Have a good night.”
“I need to find a way to get control of him, or have him work to my benefit,” Aria said, voicing the thoughts that had been troubling her for well over an hour.
Nico glanced at the phone resting on her lap that was now turned off. “Raffe?”
“No. I have him handled.”
Her friend lifted a brow.
Aria rolled her eyes.
“Well, I have him as handled as I can for now,” she corrected. “There’s not much I can do on his side of things until he’s back in the country.”
And even then … none of the things she had planned for her husband would be possible if she didn’t get everything else under control first.
“Ah, you mean Caesar,” Nico murmured.
Aria shrugged, and tipped her glass of schnapps up for another drink—her third glass, and she was starting to feel it. Thankfully, Raffe hadn’t noticed on the phone call or she wouldn’t have heard the end of it, and probably would have still been talking to the bastard.
“He needs to be controlled,” she said again. “I need to know that he’s going to do what I need or want for him to do, even if he doesn’t realize that’s what he’s doing. I can’t have him holding the threat of something over my head like that. It’s a game I am not willing to play.”
“You can’t afford to.”
“I don’t need the memo.”
Nico gave her a look.
She returned it with one of her own.
“You shouldn’t play with fire where Caesar is concerned,” Nico said. “I don’t think he’s the kind of man who responds nicely to that sort of thing.”
To say the least.
“He’s dangerous for me,” Aria admitted, “and not in the obvious way, either. Not in the way that might harm my standing, or any of that. I’m not worried about that. I can handle him there.”
It took Nico a second.
And then two.
“You … like him?”
Aria sighed. “I don’t know what I think about him, frankly.”
“You should probably get that figured out.”
Yeah, probably.
“I have to get control of him,” she repeated for a third time.
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I don’t think you’ll like how I’m going to do it.”
It was time to turn the tables on Caesar, and to let him have a taste of his own medicine, even if it was only to benefit her.
Sex is my weapon.
His words still lingered.
She was going to use them.
SEVEN
CAESAR UNLOCKED THE door to his penthouse, and balanced the phone between his shoulder and ear at the same time.
“You can’t still be thinking about it,” Cain said.
“Thinking—considering. It’s all the same, isn’t it?”
“But why?”
“Maybe there’s something there,” Caesar offered, saying nothing more. The less Cain knew, the better it would be for him, anyway. He didn’t like to involve his friend in his schemes when they got to be too dangerous. It was his way of caring, if it were possible. “I don’t think she’s—”
Caesar stepped into his place, dropped the keys into a waiting crystal bowl next to the door, and quieted instantly. It wasn’t the faint hum of Cain in his ear interrupting him with more concerns, or even the fact that the hallway light was turned on when he knew he had shut it off before he left that day. None of that made him hesitate.
“Hey, you okay?” Cain asked. “You went quiet.”
Was he okay?
That distinct floral scent that seemed to be a favorite of Aria’s lingered in the penthouse hallway. It was faint, sure, but un-fucking-mistakable. All at once, it made his blood boil, his dick hard, and his confusion shoot up.
That woman made him a mess.
“Caesar,” Cain said again.
“Yeah, I’m good,” he replied, snapping out of the daze for a second. “I will call you back, all right?”
“What? We’re having a conversation here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go fuck your wife and blow off some steam.”
“Hey.”
“Later.”
Caesar ended the call, and dropped the phone into the pocket of the blazer he then shrugged off. He also pulled the gun out that he kept hidden in the inner pocket, but left it hanging limp at his side as he walked deeper into his place.
Apparently, it wasn’t just the hallway light that someone had turned on, but also the living room. It was there that he found her—sitting on the chaise that rested in front of the tall floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a busy downtown Philly.
Aria passed him a fleeting glance over her shoulder at his entrance, but little else. She went back to staring out the window as though she had better things to do. “This is a great view.”
Caesar kept a tight hold on his gun—he wasn’t quite ready to lift it or let it go just yet. “How did you get in here?”
“I flirted with the security guard, and told him you were expecting me. A gift from a friend, I said. He fell for it hook, line, and sinker.”
The money he paid for good security in this goddamn shithole, and this is what they do? Well, that fucking idiot was going to have to go.
Caesar didn’t say that out loud.
“I suppose they probably see enough women coming in and out of your place that it wouldn’t be such a stretch for one to be sent to you as a surprise,” she added.
“Wrong.”
Her shoulders tensed, but she didn’t turn around. “Pardon?”
“Women don’t come here. I don’t bring them here, either. Ever.”
Which was exactly why the security should know better.
Aria reached for a glass of water sitting on the small table next to the chaise, and picked it up for a drink. The sight made Caesar’s throat tighten—she had gone further than his hallway and living room if she had gotten herself a drink.
“Did you search my place?” he asked.
“What would I find?”
Caesar arched a brow. “Pretty damn sure that’s not what I asked.”
“Yes, but it is what I asked.”
“You’re insufferable, donna. It’s only the fact that I like the look of your face, and the shape of your ass that I haven’t thrown you out already.”
Aria shrugged dainty shoulders. “Is that why, or is it something else?”
“What else would there be?”
She set the glass aside again, and stood from the chaise. It gave Caesar the perfect view of that ass—he hadn’t been lying when he said he liked the shape of it—covered by a tight, short red dress with a slit in the thigh that would make any man’s mouth water. She bent down to snatch the clutch she’d left sitting on the chaise, and he got a peek of matching red lace beneath the dress.
Goddamn.
Caesar didn’t even realize Aria had turned to look at him because he was too busy taking in the red patent leather peep-toe pumps she wore, and the smoothness of her golden calves. She cleared her throat, and his gaze jumped up to meet hers. He didn’t even attempt to look ashamed at being caught staring.
“What were you saying?” he asked.
Aria smiled a little. “Distracted, Caesar?”
“I don’t know what you expect from a man like me when you wear a dress like that and bend over in front of me. What, do you want me to not look?”
“I like it when you look, actually.”
He stiffened a bit—in more places than one. It was only then that he decided to toss the gun to a nearby couch. Not that he didn’t think she w
as up to something because he did think exactly that. But really, he was more interested in finding out what it was, and he didn’t think he could do that with a weapon in his hand.
Aria hadn’t even given it a second glance, anyway.
“I was saying,” she drawled, ignoring his question altogether, “that maybe there’s another reason—other than the fact you want to fuck me—why you haven’t thrown me out yet.”
“Try me.”
“Maybe you’d like to finish our conversation from last week.”
It wasn’t even a question.
And she was right—to an extent.
Caesar thought that staying quiet and letting Aria speak might be the better option because this woman let more things slip when someone else wasn’t talking. He should have tried to use that to his advantage for now, and see what he could get from her, but he wasn’t very good at that whole self-control thing. It only took a mention of their hotel meeting to make his blood boil.
“You know,” he said before he could stop himself, “I haven’t forgotten how you threatened me.”
Aria nodded. “Good—you shouldn’t.”
“That’s not a good thing to do to a man like me. It pisses me off. And when I get pissed off, bad things tend to happen.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
What?
Her quick-witted yet still flippant replies only irritated him more. Like this was some kind of game for her, and she was enjoying getting under his skin. She didn’t try to make sense, or clarify, either.
Hell …
It also kind of turned him on. Caesar decided right then and there—he was broken. He was some kind of fucked up man that just … was altogether broken.
Ruined.
There was no other explanation.
“I went to see my father today,” Aria said, changing direction in their conversation just like that with everything still left hanging. “He’s a good place to go when I need to clear my head, or get a different perspective. He reminded me—sitting in his prison uniform and behind Plexiglas—that everything and anything is fair game when it comes to getting what I want.”