by Tara Pammi
* * *
Stefan pocketed the sheaf of papers that he had collected from the printer in Zayed’s office and stepped out into the enormous gardens in front of the majestic Gazbiyan palace.
The most extraordinary stunts were being performed in honor of Zayed’s wedding and yet the flutter of excitement in his gut felt stranger than anything he had seen.
For the first time in years, he felt as if he could have a different kind of life, felt as if Clio could fill the void he had been determined to ignore.
Burying Marco who had had such a long and wonderful future ahead had made him think hard about his own life.
He could never love Clio, never be the man who believed in it. But he wanted a future with her. And just the prospect of taking his wife home and making love to her in their bed...it was the best thing he had looked forward to in a long time.
Spotting her, Stefan laced his fingers through hers.
“Boys’ club dispatched for the night?” she said with a smile.
He nodded, without bothering to clarify that he hadn’t been with Rocco or Christian. Or that he had been cooped up all day in the office that Zayed had lent him, on a phone call with his lawyer. Or that he hadn’t slept a wink in over a week deciding what to do.
Pulling her close to his side, he let his hand wander over her hip just as the sky burst into a million colors.
A chorus of laughter and shouts erupted from the crowd.
“You were hard to find after the wedding ceremony, bella,” he whispered at her ear. “Almost as if you were avoiding me.”
Slowly, the tension in her lithe frame dissolved. Reaching a hand up, she pushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. The intimate gesture pierced through Stefan, finding a vulnerable spot.
Her mouth tightened and then relaxed. Slowly, she pulled herself back and looked around. “I just wanted some time to think.”
Stefan hooked their arms and tugged her away from the festivities.
When she didn’t budge, he turned around.
There was a wariness in her eyes that he didn’t like. Knew it was there because of him, because he had kept her at a distance the past couple of weeks.
“I want to stay back for a little while more.”
Fighting the first urge to let her be, because there was something in her tone, in the look in her eyes that prickled his skin, he clasped her face. “I told a guard I was looking for a woman with hair the color of fire, and eyes like emeralds and skin like the softest rose. Told him that she was the most poised, the most breathtaking woman dressed in a gold dress that floated with every step she took and that she looked like a queen.”
Shaking her head, Clio laughed. “Flattery will get you nowhere with me, Bianco.” She was laughing and yet it had a forced quality to it. “And it’s Nadia that’s the Sheikha among us. I’m the pauper, remember.”
“The guard reminded me of that, the part about Nadia at least. But said he could also understand why I would come to that erroneous conclusion. And then pointed me toward you.”
As they reached one of the tents that were erected away from the celebration, she dug her heels in.
“Come on, bella. I want to show you something.” He sounded eager, like a schoolboy, yet he couldn’t control it.
It had been so long since he had looked forward to anything so much, so long since he had wanted something in life beyond another business deal.
“I have already seen it, Bianco. And as much as I agree that it’s spectacular, I don’t think a tent amidst a crowd of festive and raucous Gazbiyans is the place or the time to get it on.”
Laughter poured out of him, shaking his chest, loosening every muscle. When she argued further, he lifted her and brought her into the tent.
When Stefan finally put her down, Clio looked around the soaring, tented structure with her eyes wide.
The interior walls were decorated with lush Persian rugs and priceless silks. Low-slung divans with a number of pillows in vibrant colors with golden tassels sat on three sides. On the fourth was a four-poster bed with a sheer veil resting around it.
* * *
An image of Stefan and her on the bed instantly flashed in front of her eyes, an insistent pull of desire between her legs. And yet something in her also recoiled at it.
She had laughed about it outside, but inside she was trembling with anger and a powerlessness that she loathed.
Only realizing how silent he was being, she turned around and found Stefan’s gaze on her. The molten desire instantly heated her skin.
When he pulled her into his arms, excitement flared, her body automatically craving more. When he buried his mouth in the crook at her neck, at the spot that drove her crazy, snuggled into her behind so tightly that his arousal pressed into her, branding her, she pushed back into his touch, needing more.
Yet, another warring emotion emerged, polluting the want. God, she had tried so hard to not ask anything of him. To hold herself aloof, to not define their relationship in any way.
Self-disgust roiled through her and she pushed away from his touch.
His head recoiled, hurt flashing in his gaze. “Clio, is something wrong?”
“No. Yes. I hate what you’re doing to me. I hate what I’m letting you do. I hate that I can’t say no when you touch me.”
His mouth tight, he rolled his shoulders. “You’re doing just fine now, bella.”
“I can’t become that shadow of myself again, Stefan. You either want this thing between us, or you don’t.”
“That’s all I have been thinking about these past weeks, Clio.”
A sheaf of papers materialized in his hand, and Clio’s heart sank to her gut.
It was a contract, she knew without looking at it. Another piece of paper that would define her exit from his life.
And just the thought of walking out of his life, the thought of not sharing that suite with him, the thought of not laughing with him and not loving him again sent her into a spiral of pain so acute that she shivered all over.
Oh, God, how she had fallen in love? Where was this unbearable avalanche of emotion coming from?
How was it even possible that she still possessed this much capacity to feel? What did it say about her that after everything she had been through with Jackson, she had so easily surrendered her heart to a man even more ruthless?
How was she to survive now?
She sank to one of the divans, her legs refusing to hold her up, a hollow emerging in her chest.
When Stefan joined her on the divan, she flinched. “Just spell it out for me, Stefan,” she managed somehow.
“Look at me, bella.”
“No.” She clutched her eyes closed, desperate to keep herself together. From the beginning, he had seen her at her lowest, her weakest. Now, she couldn’t bear to betray herself, couldn’t bear to have him look at her with pity.
Couldn’t bear for him to know how irrevocably lost her heart was.
When his fingers landed on her chin, she swatted him away. “Tell me where you want me to sign, Stefan.”
But he didn’t let her leave. Locking her arms, he knelt on the rug before her. “Look at me, Clio. It’s not what you think.”
Shock pinging across every inch of her, Clio looked down at him. His face was so gorgeous that it hurt to look at him. His gaze touched her with such naked, honest desire that her heart ached.
It hurt to look at him, to touch him, to feel his heart and to know that he would never be hers.
“What do you mean?”
“I want us to start fresh, bella. I want to try this marriage for real.”
Her heart thudded so fast that it was a wonder she didn’t have a heart attack. Throat aching, she forced the words to form. “What’s the catch? What are those documents?” she
said, so terrified of the answer, and yet so hopeful that he would say there wasn’t one.
That all he needed was her acceptance.
That all they needed was time with each other.
Her hope would cripple her if not kill her.
And Stefan crushed it under his Italian loafer when he said, “You get five hundred million dollars when you sign it.”
“Five hundred million dollars? I don’t understand.”
“No matter what happens in the future, I want you to have security. I want you to—”
“So you don’t expect us to last, then?”
“Nothing in life has guarantees, bella.”
Nausea bubbling up her throat, Clio searched his face, wondering if he was joking. Praying that it was a nightmare she would wake up from. Hoping it was one of her migraines playing a trick on her.
Because this couldn’t be happening, could it? Another man wasn’t measuring her worth, equating her love with money, was he?
“I don’t get it, Stefan. You’re paying me so that you can buy the trust you apparently can’t show in me? Like all the celebrity couples who first draw prenups to protect their assets from each other?”
“You do not have any assets.”
“Exactly. So are you protecting yourself?”
He cursed so long and loud that Clio had goose bumps on her skin. “You’re completely misunderstanding this. I tore up the old contract. I hate how Jackson cheated you. I want you to never have to worry about...”
“Really? After a decade of knowing me, you think all I want is a free ride through life?”
“No. This is something I want you to have, something for my own peace of mind.”
Clio shook her head, understanding dawning. She shot up from the divan, furious energy burning through her, looking for an outlet, even as a deluge of pain broke her within.
It was so easy to think it was her fault, so easy to think he was doing this because she didn’t have any money, to think it was because he lacked trust in her motives, in her.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t about her at all.
Stefan knew her better than any other person in the entire world. But the freeing thought only gave way to another gut-wrenching truth.
“Five hundred million dollars—is that my price tag, Bianco?” she said gasping for breath. “Because I’m sure if you have a chat with your buddy Jackson, he will tell you that I should come in a lot cheaper.”
The most unholy fury dawned in his gaze. He grabbed her arms in a viselike grip, a vein throbbing in his temple. “Don’t you dare talk as if Jackson and I are the same kind of man, bella. Don’t you dare cheapen yourself.”
“So the man does bleed,” Clio threw at him, agonizing fury coming to her rescue.
“Stop twisting my words.”
She grabbed the contract and threw it on the ground, tears falling over her cheeks. “God, you still don’t get it, do you, Stefan?
“This is the price for everything we share, Stefan. This is the price for our happiness, our life together that you’re talking about. You’re buying me, my affection, tainting every word I would say to you, attaching a price tag to even the sex we have.”
“Enough, Clio! You’re reading this all wrong.”
Shaking her head, she ran a hand over her cheeks. “The sad part is you don’t even realize it. You’re giving me money because that way anything I offer you, you already have a reason for it. Because you don’t have to accept anything I give you.”
“No, bella.” His olive green gaze turned hard, untouched. “You told me you didn’t want anything from me. And I told you I don’t want anything from you.”
“All I wanted was one sentence that you wanted this to be real between us, that you wanted to at least try. That you want to see where we could go from here.”
“It is what I want, too.”
“With a caveat, yes. The awful thing is I’m so anxious in here—” she rubbed her chest, as if she could relieve the tightness there “—so tempted to just sign the damn papers, to accept the little crumbs you will throw me. So in...so in love with you that I’m prepared to just take whatever little you give me. How pathetic is that?”
Stepping back from her, he looked as though she had struck him again. As though he couldn’t bear to hear the weight of her confession.
As though he never wanted to set eyes on her.
As though she had stuck a knife in his back while smiling to his face.
And it was the haunted expression in his gaze, the horrified look that sealed her fate for Clio, that ripped her last thread of hope into pieces.
He would never accept her love. He would never give her his trust.
“You’re not in love with me. You’re deluding yourself like every other woman that has come into my bed before you. I warned you about that, bella.”
The nasty barb landed where he intended, lacerating her, carving a nice little slice in her breastbone.
That he would throw his own past in her face, that he would dirty him and her and what they shared, only showed how much her declaration rattled him, how deeply buried his heart was.
She wished she could be furious with him, she wished she could hate him for it.
But all she felt was a keening gnawing that ate through her gut.
“I didn’t think I would ever feel like this again, that I would ever want to place my happiness in another man’s hands. But it’s not my fault. Even with the block of ice you have for a heart, even with the poison you have held on to all these years, you’re kind and funny and you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met.”
He recoiled as though she had struck him again. “That is proof enough that you’re still lost, Clio.” He sounded so far away.
“No. Finally I know myself, Stefan.”
“How can you forget the pain Jackson caused you? How do you even know what you...what you claim is real?”
“By putting a value on you and me, our happiness together, you have showed me how priceless I am, how all consuming and incredible my love for you is. And how little it will always mean to you, how we could do this—” she moved her hands between them “—for the next decade and you will still never give me what I want, what I deserve.
“You’re my knight, Bianco, once again saving me from my own desperation. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for, the best lover for a woman with tattered self-esteem. But to spend a lifetime with you...it will destroy me.”
His gaze darkened, inch by inch of his face hardening as if he was willingly shutting himself down.
“Don’t do this, Clio,” he said, grabbing her. His mouth branded her in a fiery kiss that almost broke her resolve. Her knees melted and she clung to him as he seduced her with tenderness and passion. “We can have a good life together.”
Clasping his cheeks, she pushed him back, stared at the storm gathering in his gaze. He wasn’t untouched by this. But it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.
She was greedy, she wanted all of him.
“No.”
“Stay, bella.” Even now, he only commanded with that hard look in his eyes, even now, he held his heart locked away from her.
Even now, he scowled at her because she had dared to fall in love with him.
Smiling through the tears in her eyes, Clio shook her head. “I would have, a few hours ago. I would have danced with joy, thrown myself at you. But I can’t now. I don’t want your money, and I don’t want the little you offer of yourself. Have a nice life, Stefan. And thank you for teaching me my own worth.”
Without looking back, Clio stepped out of the tent and into the open grounds.
A thousand sounds and scents greeted her, but nothing could touch her past the audacious hope ringing through her that he would ch
ase after her, that he would kiss her and hold her and tell her that everything would be fine. Tell her that he had made a colossal mistake and that he wanted her in his life.
That he wanted to be loved by her.
But he didn’t.
And the emptiness around her only made her realize what she wanted that much harder.
She wanted the Stefan who had admitted to having a wild, reckless thing for her.
She wanted the Stefan who admired her and respected her.
She wanted the Stefan who had been one of the warmest, most openhearted men she had ever met.
She wanted to lose herself in his arms and be the woman he lost his control over.
She wanted to be the woman that made him smile, laugh and she wanted to do it for years to come.
She wanted them to be friends, lovers and so much more. She wanted the contract ripped and burned, she wanted his millions and her penury to never come into the equation between them, in any form.
She wanted it to be just her and him and their love for each other.
Clio wanted all of him, every breath and every cell, every thought and every sigh, every kiss and every touch.
And the want was so deep, so raw that it was a physical ache in her gut. That want was so desperate that she shook all over, waves of pain splintering inside her.
But this time, she would not settle. She would not let a man, even the one who she loved with every breath, define what she was worthy of.
Because she deserved all of him.
* * *
Stefan sank to the divan, reeling under Clio’s angry accusations, reeling under the weight of her confession.
So in love with you...
Those words pierced him even as he recoiled at the fury that had been shining in her glittering gaze, even as he couldn’t believe the truth of it.
How could she love him? How could he begin to believe her when there was nothing to love, when he had given her nothing but pain?
How could she ruin everything by bringing that word between them?
He had no use for her love. He had nothing to give her back. And the one thing that he had wanted to give, the one gesture he had made because he cared about her, she had thrown in his face.