by Tara Pammi
Clamping her thighs together at the thrill in her own blood, Clio licked the soft head.
His harsh groan fell on her ears, a thunderous roar that goaded her on.
On the next breath, Clio fisted her hand at the base and took him in her mouth.
Tasted the hard length of him in a long suck that sent little tremors to her own sex. She continued as he shuddered beneath her caresses, as he cursed and groaned.
“Now this feels like quite the power trip, Bianco,” she whispered, and before she could breathe again, she was on her stomach on the bed.
“We will see who has the power, bella,” he threw at her, before he pulled her onto all fours.
On the next breath, he held her hips still, and thrust into her wet heat.
Closing her eyes, she made a ragged sound that ripped from her. His hand snaked out under her, and kneaded a heavy breast as he set a rhythm that left her with no thoughts of power.
Only sensation remained. Only he and she remained, joined together in the most intimate of bonds.
And as he pushed her onto her release and found his own, only pleasure remained.
Not contracts, not shadows of old fears, nothing but the man who was a perfect fit for her. Nothing but the man who had awakened every part of her.
“I found the proof today, Stefan,” Clio whispered, as she lay supine in Stefan’s arms. Maybe it was the fact that after a long time, she felt completely at peace. That she felt secure about herself, about the direction her life was heading in.
Even if the future was still an enigma.
Maybe it was just the fact that the man who held her to him so tightly with his arms around her, as if he couldn’t let go, had made love to her so well that the postcoital haze had lent her false courage.
The thing she knew for sure was that she wanted to tell him. She couldn’t remove his pain about losing a friend of so many years, but she could at least give him the satisfaction of bringing Jackson to justice at last.
Stefan stilled behind her. It was so complete that she wondered if he breathed anymore. Suddenly, his arm around her felt like a lead weight.
“I have lost every penny I had.” The words rushed out of her haphazardly, the weight of saying them out loud stunning her anew.
“What, bella?”
The sheets rustling around her, Clio lifted his arm and turned around. Caught the resigned look in his eyes just as he blinked and chased it away.
With the gears in her head running finally, understanding dawned in her.
She swallowed the knot of hurt in her throat that felt like glass. He had thought she was commenting on the state of her funds, asking for a handout in a roundabout way.
Kicking into a sitting position, he pulled her up, until she was sitting by his side on the enormous bed. When he looked at her again, there was nothing but curiosity. “What are you talking about, Clio? If you need money, all you have to—”
Clio stopped his words with her palm over his mouth, before he could deal her more than a surface scratch. It was his automatic reaction to any question, from any woman regarding money, she pacified herself.
He had made a conscious decision to ask her politely about it instead of seething with distrust and contempt.
It was a step forward in their fragile relationship.
That was the best she was going to get from him.
Pulling her hand into his, he laced their fingers together and kissed the back of her palm. “Clio?”
Shaking her head to chase away her stupid misgivings, Clio offered him a small smile.
“I’m sorry. It hadn’t quite sunk in and saying it out loud finally did.”
With his finger under her chin, he tilted her face up. “Clio, I want honesty between us, bella. Above everything else. That’s how this began,” his knuckles tapped her chin, “and that’s how I would like us to continue.”
Her stupid, grasping, desperately greedy mind latched onto the fact that he wanted this, whatever this was, to continue.
She was on a slippery slope in this relationship they had now, and yet, she wasn’t scared or afraid.
All she cared about right now was that he wanted her, in his life, in whatever capacity it was. Her heart thudded so loud it was a wonder he didn’t hear it. “Of course. Do you remember I told all you guys about my aunt Grace once?”
“The one who hated your parents and vice versa?”
Smiling, Clio nodded. “She had always been sweet to me when I was growing up. She died a couple of years after I came to Columbia. I went to her funeral and found out that she had bequeathed me a bit of money. I think it was her way of high-fiving me for walking away from everything that my parents had wanted for me.”
Stefan grinned. “Sounds like a sweet lady.”
“She was. You should have heard her swearing. She did it like a sailor. Anyway, it took a few years for the legalities to go through and I received the money a year after we graduated. About twenty-five thousand pounds.”
Pushing back from her, Stefan stared at her. “But if you had that much cash in hand, why did you have to borrow from Christian? Why not use it to secure your rent or to pay off your school debts?”
“Because my parents knew that Aunt Grace had bequeathed me that money. My mother even commented that for all the claims I had made, I was happily taking handouts. So I locked it up in a secured bond, determined to make it in New York through my way.
“And when I was broke, it was better being obligated to Christian than letting them learn that I needed help.”
“You are a stubborn woman, bella. Isn’t it enough you turned your back on such a prestigious family and started a new life halfway across the world?”
“Why didn’t you go back to your parents after Serena left? Why start from scratch, Stefan?”
Thunder dawned in his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“We’re talking about what made us who we are today.” Kneeling in front of him, she clasped his cheeks when he would have moved away. “We’re talking about you and me, no one else.”
Tension seethed in his shoulders but Clio held on to him. “Serena walked away from me because I was nothing without my parents’ fortune. She made me question my very belief in myself. I was determined to prove her wrong, determined to make the fortune she wanted all on my own. Pride and shame, bella, I was drowning in them so much that I hurt my parents for so many years.”
The flash of pain that wreathed his features pierced through her. That it could still affect him so much...
“After all these years, do you not still realize it is her loss, Stefan? To walk away from you because your parents disowned you, to leave a man like you behind...”
God, he had loved that undeserving woman so much, with all of his heart. To have a man like Stefan love her unconditionally like that... Clio couldn’t imagine what it could even be like. The very thought had such a mesmeric, compelling quality to it that her entire being resonated with it.
She kissed his mouth, heat and tenderness and affection and a hundred other things rushing out of her on a wave she couldn’t curtail. “That woman was a first-class moron, if I may say so.”
A smile curved his mouth. “Wow... Are you sure you don’t need to wash out your mouth?”
“Oh, don’t encourage me, Bianco. It could get a lot dirtier, believe me. The reason I liked Aunt Grace so much was because she had no problem cursing in front of kids either.”
“I can’t wait, bella.”
Clio laughed against his mouth, a river of joy flooding her.
As if it was as natural as drawing breath, he captured her mouth with his. Molten heat uncoiled in every nerve, every muscle. It was as if her body knew what he could give, and craved it.
Tongues dueling, lips scraping against teeth
, in a matter of seconds, they were both breathing hard.
Somehow, Clio had climbed into his lap and was straddling his erection. With a moan, she moved, the crease of her sex rubbing against his, sending erotic tingles through her lower belly.
Cursing, Stefan locked her hips before she could do it again. Color bled into his cheekbones, his nostrils flaring. “As much as I would love nothing but to be inside your wet heat, bella, I want to hear your story more.”
Sighing dramatically, Clio smiled. “Oh, to be denied sex for a story... Your libido and prowess has been overestimated by the media, Bianco.”
He bit her lower lip as punishment and a hundred nerves jangled within Clio. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can have me, Mrs. Bianco.” His grin was so natural, so filled with that openness he had possessed so long ago that her breath caught in her throat. “Any way you want.”
“Fine. But don’t forget your promise.”
It was the first time he had actually smiled after a conversation about Serena and the poison she had spewed in his life. For that smile, she could give up all the money in the world.
Clio hugged the fact to herself like a proud accomplishment.
“What about the money your aunt Grace bequeathed you, bella?”
Knowing that his mood was going to worsen, Clio slipped off him and got to her feet. “I met Jackson a few years later. Until then I put Aunt Grace’s money in a CD that I couldn’t break for five years. It had matured a year after I met him. And he talked me into investing it in his hedge fund company.”
The room went from warm to ice-cold in a matter of seconds.
Uncoiling his huge frame from the bed, Stefan reached her. “And?”
“I have known it for a while at the back of my mind from the bits and pieces I have heard him mutter about over the last year. And I have seen proof of it now. He lost most of the investors’ money.”
“That’s a risk you take with hedge funds, bella.” Pulling her to him, he wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry you lost the money she gave you, Clio. I’m sorry he deceived you in so many ways.”
Clio went into his embrace as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. And the fact that he had done something nonsexual and intimate without reservation, it blunted the shock of realizing another level to Jackson’s deception.
That something her aunt had given her out of love was now lost to her hurt more than the fact that she was basically penniless. Again.
“That’s not it. From all the claims he made, and the returns he’s been showing in his statements, my investment should have grown by leaps and bounds.”
She went back to her bedroom and grabbed the files. He was heading into the kitchen, so she laid them on the table. After a few seconds of rifling through it, he stared at her with icy fury in his eyes.
“These records show your investment had nearly fifty percent returns. But the actuality is that he’s lost it all? He’s fronting the funds from somewhere else?”
“Looks like it,” Clio whispered.
Instantly, she was lifted off the ground in a bear hug. “You did it, bella. You found it.” Putting her down, he cradled her face in his palms. “That’s all we need to expose him, bella. Jackson won’t recover from this.”
“It doesn’t feel like an achievement, Stefan. I have a sick feeling in my gut. Everything he did, everything he ever said to me, it was all such a big lie. How can I ever—”
She was more than surprised when he pulled out a dining chair and pulled her onto his lap. His long fingers tracing the angles of her face, he pressed a kiss to her temple. Held her within the cocoon of his embrace. “Shh... It’s all his shame, Clio. Not yours.”
It was a place Clio never wanted to leave, and the want was so visceral that she shivered.
* * *
Holding Clio in his arms as she trembled, seeing the pain in her beautiful gaze abate as he kissed the lush curve of her mouth, Stefan finally felt at peace after a long time.
Strange since seeing his parents after so long, unburdening his shame and guilt with his father, and making love to Clio, the day should have been an emotional roller coaster.
Yet the facts that Clio had uncovered about Jackson, that he finally had a chance to bring him to justice for all the wrongs he had done to so many people, freed something inside him.
He couldn’t find it in him to be angry with Clio anymore for interfering. Instead, he felt grateful.
With her actions, she had only shown him how much power he had given Serena’s rejection over his very life. And yet here she was, struggling to find herself again after Jackson had stolen so much from her.
In the face of her strength, Stefan felt some of his own bitterness melt. He lifted her and carried her back to her bedroom, drenched in the realization that a small part of him could trust a woman again.
However their marriage had started, it seemed he had a wife who bore his name with care and honor and duty.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TWO WEEKS LATER, Stefan and Clio arrived in Gazbiyaa, Zayed’s desert kingdom, the evening before Zayed’s wedding was to take place. The desert palace glittered in the setting sun, breathtakingly beautiful, a haven of luxury amidst the stark landscape of the desert.
Stefan and she had been shown to a suite in the wing of the palace that was away from the festivities of the wedding and provided privacy, just as Rocco and Olivia, and Christian and Alessandra had been.
With Stefan catching up with Rocco and Christian, and feeling a bit fragile to face the other women yet, Clio toured the Gazbiyan palace with a bevy of maids—at least the portions that she was allowed to without infringing on the customs of a kingdom that clung to its traditional roots. A kingdom that Zayed was determined to pull away from the brink of war with its neighboring nation.
Everywhere she looked, there were festivities going on with a pulse of joy beneath them.
The next evening, reunited with Rocco’s wife, Olivia—they had bonded over her and Stefan’s kissing scandal at Christian’s wedding—and Alessandra, who was beginning to show a growing baby bump, she visited Nadia, Zayed’s intended.
Even as Stefan and she were taking part in Zayed’s extravagant wedding, back home in New York, Jackson was under investigation by the SEC. The guilt she had initially felt had eased as more and more of Jackson’s illegal business practices began to come into light.
Driven by greed, he had fleeced so many people.
Under Stefan’s expert guidance on all things related to the charity and its finances, she had hit the ground running in terms of her work. When he looked at her now, there was nothing but admiration and respect in his gaze.
She had achieved everything she had set out to do when she had stumbled into his suite at the Chatsfield with her life in tatters.
As much as she had feared ruining their fragile relationship, making love with Stefan was the most natural path they could have taken.
More than a week went by where they lost themselves in learning, exploring each other, where Stefan, as if determined to be the only man in her thoughts, seduced her so thoroughly that Clio felt like a new woman in her own skin, free to embrace her wants and desires.
And the more she let herself go with Stefan, the tighter he bound her to him with his own desires. Sometimes he would wake her up with kisses, make love to her so slowly, with such thorough care that she thought her heart would burst out from his tenderness.
Other times, his desire was touched by a desperate passion that shredded his control, that had once had him taking her against the wall in the lounge, seconds after he had returned from burying Marco.
I needed you so desperately, bella, that a week has never felt more like a lifetime.
At those times, she felt like she wouldn’t be able to breathe if he stoppe
d.
The different depths to his desire left Clio addicted and just as desperate as him. And terrified that he was slowly, but irrevocably stealing a part of her soul.
Because as demanding and giving as he was when it came to sex, he didn’t say a word to her out of that context. She had begged to go accompany him to Marco’s funeral, wanted to share the ache of that moment with him. But he had stubbornly denied her.
It was as if he could communicate with her only through sex.
Now, as she dressed for Zayed’s wedding, Clio trembled when the gold silk caftan slid over her skin with a whispered caress, imagining Stefan taking it off her. She remembered the heat of his erotic promises, the addictive strokes of his tongue at her core, the sinuously abrasive texture of his skin, the whipcord strength of his thighs...
It was as if he was spreading through her every cell, every thought until he was a permanent part of her.
Grabbing her hairbrush, Clio ran it through her hair and met her reflection.
He deftly alleviated her concerns and yet didn’t give anything of himself that he didn’t want to.
The default pattern of their relationship.
As they stood witness to Zayed’s own wedding, amidst the noise, extravagant pomp and celebration, amidst the acres of garden and incredible feasts unlike anything she had ever seen, Clio finally pinpointed the root of the growing panic within her.
It was the uncertainty of what tomorrow with Stefan would bring.
And yet, she didn’t dare ask him where they were headed or what he wanted. Couldn’t bear to hear him say they were done with each other. Not yet.
As usual, every small thing she required, from the elaborate, long-sleeved designer dress to the jewelry that would go with it; from the gold-colored sandals to her bangles; everything had been arranged as it suited to Mrs. Bianco’s status.
He would give her everything but would he give her even a little piece of his heart? How long was she willing to let this uncertainty hang over her?
And how had she, again, found herself in that very spot where her happiness, her entire sense of self hung precariously on the whims of a man, and one who had ruthlessly warned her that he had nothing to give her?