The Innocent's One_Night Surrender

by Kate Hewitt

  A shudder ripped through her as Cristiano rocked against her and her dress slid into a gauzy pool about her feet. She was wearing nothing but a thong—the style of the dress had prohibited a bra—and Cristiano was fully dressed. Fully in control. Everything about this felt unequal. Wrong.

  ‘Cristiano...’

  ‘I said, don’t talk.’ He trailed his hands along her rib cage and then anchored her hips against him. Laurel couldn’t keep a moan from escaping her as he pushed against her, and a blaze of pleasure pulsed between her thighs. She threw out a hand towards the hall table to brace herself and Cristiano laughed softly.

  ‘You’re not going to fall. Trust me, bella.’

  She heard the sound of him unzipping his trousers and then taking a condom from his pocket and, with a strength she hadn’t expected, she wrenched away, stumbling over her dress before she righted herself. Her breath came in ragged pants as she turned to look at him.

  Colour slashed his sharp cheekbones and his eyes glittered with silvery, metallic intent.

  ‘I may be your mistress,’ Laurel gasped out, ‘but I am not your whore.’ And then, not trusting herself to say anything more, she stalked towards the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  A shudder went through her and Laurel forced herself to blink back tears. What a way to ruin what had been a happy evening. What a way to make her feel excruciatingly cheap. Laurel searched for comfort clothes, but she didn’t have any. Sexy nightgowns, provocative lingerie, coordinated outfits, evening gowns. Not a T-shirt or pair of comfy yoga pants to be found.

  With a sudden cry she tipped a drawer out and let the silky garments spill onto the floor. For good measure she kicked them, lobbing them into the corner of the room. She hated everything about her situation here, and even herself, for responding to Cristiano even when he treated her like the trollop he seemed to think she still was.

  With another cry she yanked the evening gowns off their padded hangers and threw them in the corner with the rest of the slinky clothes and lingerie.

  They might have cost a fortune, but she didn’t want them. Didn’t want any of it. Ten more days, she told herself. Ten more days and then she never had to see Cristiano again.

  Damn it, why did that thought hurt?

  A knock sounded on the door. ‘Go away,’ Laurel called raggedly, the words ripped from her. ‘Go away, Cristiano.’

  She reached for the terrycloth dressing gown hanging on the bathroom door and shrugged into it. Then she pulled the pins from her hair, flinging them on to the dressing table. She’d really been looking forward to tonight. Excited to talk about something that mattered, to feel like more than a mistress. But Cristiano seemed determined to remind her of her lowly status.

  Why?

  ‘Laurel,’ Cristiano called, his voice low. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She stilled at the words, which sounded surprisingly heartfelt. She didn’t open the door, though.

  ‘Laurel? Did you hear me?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure I care, though.’ Which was a lie.

  ‘Please open the door.’

  ‘Why? So you can finish what you started? I’m not interested, Cristiano, and, no matter what our arrangement, I’m not available on demand.’ She choked out the words, hating herself. Hating everything.

  ‘I’m not... I just want to talk. Please.’

  Laurel hesitated, then, because she was so angry and she wanted someone to yell at, never mind what Cristiano wanted to say, she stalked to the door and threw it open. ‘Fine.’

  He turned and walked into the living area and, after a few seconds where she struggled to control her temper and regain her composure, she followed him.

  Cristiano stood with his back to her, having shed his tuxedo jacket and bow tie. Laurel tightened the sash on her dressing gown and stiffened her shoulders. ‘Well? What did you want to say to me?’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘You said that already.’ She was in no mood to be soft and understanding. ‘Although I actually question what you’re even sorry for. You have the uncanny ability to make me feel cheap without even trying.’

  ‘Actually,’ Cristiano said as he turned around, ‘I was trying.’

  ‘Oh.’ Laurel blinked, absorbing that awful statement. ‘Is that somehow supposed to make me feel better?’

  ‘No.’ Cristiano rubbed his jaw. He looked haggard suddenly, the stubble glinting on his jaw, his eyes shadowed. Haggard and yet still so impossibly sexy, with a few studs on his tuxedo shirt undone, revealing the lean column of his throat, the bronzed perfection of his chest. But she couldn’t think about that now. ‘I was just stating a fact,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for that.’ She shook her head slowly as tears threatened once again. But, no, she would not cry. She wouldn’t let Cristiano see how he affected her. Hurt her. And yet she needed to know. ‘Why?’ she whispered.

  Cristiano raked a hand through his close-cropped hair. ‘I... I don’t know.’

  ‘I was having a good time tonight, you know,’ she told him, forcing her voice not to wobble. ‘Talking about things that mattered. Feeling important. A small thing, no doubt, and probably pathetic, but it mattered to me. I’m not... I don’t want to be your...your sex toy.’

  ‘You’re not,’ Cristiano insisted in a low voice.

  ‘Your convenient mistress, then. You pulled me from the gala before it had hardly started, and with everyone watching you took me upstairs and treated me like a—like a—’ Her voice choked and she struggled to go on.

  ‘Laurel, please. Don’t.’ Cristiano sounded genuinely anguished. ‘I shouldn’t have... I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you say. But I still don’t understand why you treated me like that.’ She drew a shaking breath. ‘Do you get your kicks from humiliating women?’

  ‘Of course not.’ He sounded angry now, colour slashing his cheekbones. ‘I wasn’t trying to humiliate you.’

  ‘Just making me feel cheap, then. As usual.’

  ‘Just reminding you of our relationship!’ he exploded. ‘Reminding myself.’ He turned away, raking his hands through his hair again, leaving them on top of his head as he blew out a long, weary breath. ‘And you were enjoying it, so don’t pretend otherwise.’

  ‘I can’t help how I respond to you,’ Laurel returned with as much dignity as she could muster. ‘I wish I could.’

  ‘Do you?’ He let out a humourless laugh.

  ‘Yes. I know what you think of me, how little you think of me, and yet I still melt like butter when you so much as crook your finger. That’s humiliating.’

  ‘You have no idea what I think of you,’ Cristiano said, and dropped his hands.

  ‘Your actions give me a pretty good idea.’

  ‘No.’ He turned around to face her. ‘Because the truth is I think you’re amazing. Smart and driven, kind and compassionate.’ Laurel’s mouth dropped open as she stared at him in complete shock. ‘And that’s the reason I took you from the gala, Laurel. That’s the reason I brought you up here and tried to remind us both that this is just about sex. Because I’m starting to care about you, and I don’t want to.’

  * * *

  He hadn’t meant to say all that. And now that he had Cristiano fought the urge to retreat or lash out, either one, something to mitigate the damage he’d just inflicted on himself. Laurel was staring at him, her mouth hanging open, looking completely gobsmacked, and no wonder.

  ‘Wow,’ she said finally, and she shook her head. ‘Wow. Am I supposed to be touched? Thankful?’

  The scorn in her voice shocked him. He hadn’t been expecting it. He had, he realised, been expecting her to be surprised and moved and—hell!—pleased. He’d given her more emotion, more of himself, than he had any other woman. Yet Laurel didn’t seem to appreciate that fact.

  ‘No,’ he said after a moment, his voice stiff. ‘Of course not. I was just trying to explain.’

  ‘Trying to explain how you behaved like a complete bastard? Thanks. I feel so much better now.’<
br />
  He stared at her, anger crystallising inside him. ‘Glad to hear it,’ he bit out. This is what he got for being honest. He supposed it was better than having her go all dewy-eyed on him, although right now he wouldn’t have minded a little softness. Laurel was all hard, glittering edges, filled with a fury he didn’t fully understand.

  Then, abruptly, she deflated. She walked slowly to an ornate sofa, all gilt curlicues and striped silk, and sank onto it. ‘I don’t understand you,’ she whispered. ‘You start to care about me and you treat me even more like you don’t?’

  Cristiano felt the stirrings of shame and even embarrassment. When she put it like that, it sounded ridiculous and infantile. ‘Basically, yes,’ he said, and sat opposite her. ‘That’s what happened.’

  ‘Why?’

  Cristiano didn’t answer for a long moment. He already felt flayed raw, exposed in a way that made him want to both cringe and attack. ‘Remember when you said you didn’t want to fall in love with anyone?’

  Laurel’s eyes widened and Cristiano silently cursed. He had not meant to say the dreaded L-word. ‘Yes...’

  ‘In a similar way I don’t want to care about anyone,’ he clarified swiftly. ‘Never mind actually fall in love.’

  ‘Because the women you’ve known, your father’s women, were untrustworthy?’

  ‘Yes.’ That wasn’t the whole truth, but it would suffice for now.

  ‘But you seem to get angry when I show I’m not like those women,’ Laurel pointed out with infuriatingly clear logic. ‘When I’m acting differently, like tonight. You got angry because I was talking about nursing, not because I was being as shallow and mercenary as you once assumed me to be.’

  ‘That’s not why I got angry.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  Cristiano stared at her in frustration, his jaw locked so tightly he felt as if he could break a tooth. This conversation wasn’t going anywhere good. Laurel was far too persistent and smart to be fobbed off with some vague half-truths.

  ‘Because you’re too good for me,’ he said finally, the words ripped from him. ‘I want you to be shallow and mercenary, because then this makes sense. A sexual arrangement, nothing more. But when you talk about nursing or your grandfather—or listen to what people say or laugh—then it turns into something else, and I don’t want that.’ He injected a grim note of finality into his voice. ‘At all.’

  Laurel sat back against the sofa, looking a little winded. Then she straightened and said, ‘I didn’t ask you to want it.’

  ‘I know,’ Cristiano said shortly. He hardly needed the reminder, and it rubbed raw, especially now.

  ‘But,’ Laurel continued slowly, ‘Is it such a bad thing—to care about someone? Because if I’m not like those other women...your father’s...then what’s the problem? The risk?’

  And just like that she got to the painful, beating heart of it and Cristiano had no idea how to answer. So he told her the truth. ‘This isn’t about me thinking you’re like them,’ he said. ‘It’s about losing control.’

  Laurel’s eyebrows rose. ‘Losing control? How?’

  Cristiano shifted restlessly in his seat and then in one abrupt movement he rose from the sofa and paced the spacious room, feeling caged by his memories.

  ‘Any serious relationship—a loving marriage, anything—involves a loss of control. A giving up. And that’s something I can’t stand. And, yes—’ he cut across her before she could say anything ‘—it’s because of my childhood. We’re all products of our growing up; you were right there. But it’s not because of my father’s mistresses, or his second wife, or your mother. It’s because of mine.’

  The silence between them felt both heavy and taut. Laurel was gazing at him steadily, a softness to her expression that made him want to bury himself in her arms. Seek comfort when he had given her none.

  ‘What about your mother?’ she asked when the silence had stretched to snapping point.

  ‘She loved my father. And he loved her.’ Cristiano felt his throat working as he swallowed hard. ‘Very much.’

  ‘Was that such a bad thing?’ Laurel asked softly.

  ‘Yes, because their love was...turbulent. Passionate. They were always fighting and falling back in love—throwing vases, breaking plates, what have you.’

  ‘Not every loving marriage is like that.’

  ‘No, but the loss of control is still there. Being enslaved to your emotions and at the mercy of another person.’

  ‘A person you trust.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Cristiano continued pacing, his head down, teeth gritted. ‘But maybe you shouldn’t trust anyone that much.’

  ‘What happened to your mother, Cristiano?’ The question was soft and sad, so full of compassion, that it nearly broke him.

  ‘She and my father had an almighty row. I think they enjoyed arguing, the intensity of it, and of course the passionate making up. This time she flounced out of the house. She’d done it before; I remember watching from the window as she’d speed down the driveway in her little red convertible. I never knew if she was going to come back or not.’ The memories were hitting him now, wave after relentless wave, reminding him of the turmoil and tumult of his childhood. The arguments, the shrieking voices, the feeling, as a boy, that he never knew what to expect. Who to trust. Or what it meant truly to love someone.

  ‘That must have been very hard on you,’ Laurel said quietly. Her eyes were filled with a sorrowful compassion that Cristiano feared would be his undoing. Perhaps her fury and scorn would have been better to deal with. He could have matched them. But this...

  ‘There’s no shame in it, you know,’ she said. ‘In feeling hurt.’

  Oh, but there was. Because it revealed a weakness in him, a gaping, bleeding need that felt like the very life were draining out of him.

  ‘Anyway,’ he resumed after a moment, when he trusted himself to speak normally, ‘that time, that argument, she left in her convertible and she didn’t come back. She died,’ he explained succinctly. ‘Crashed her car straight into a tree.’

  ‘Oh, Cristiano...’

  ‘The thing is,’ he continued, determined to say it all now. ‘It was a straight, flat road. No other cars were involved. And the tree was about ten feet away from the road. So why did she crash? How?’

  Laurel’s face paled, her eyes wide and dark. ‘You mean you think she did it on purpose?’

  ‘It seems likely, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know...’

  ‘That’s what love does to you,’ he finished flatly. ‘It kills you.’ When he said the words out loud they sounded melodramatic, even childish, yet he knew he meant them. Utterly.

  ‘Oh, Cristiano.’ Laurel’s face was suffused with sadness. ‘It doesn’t have to. I have to believe that.’ She let out a sad little laugh. ‘Not that I would really know.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The people I’ve loved have always left. My father, my mother, your father.’ She gave him an almost apologetic look. ‘You might not want to hear that, but I loved him. He was like a father to me for those three years—showing up to school concerts, taking me for a ride in his fancy car. The only father I’ve ever really had, my mother’s parade of boyfriends aside.’

  ‘I... I didn’t realise.’ He hadn’t given Laurel’s feelings so much as a thought when he’d told his father about Elizabeth’s secret bank account—and she’d only been fourteen. How could he have been so thoughtless? So selfish? Yes, Elizabeth had been a thief. But Laurel had been collateral damage, and he hadn’t even cared. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was a long time ago. I didn’t say all that to make you feel sorry for me. I just wanted to say that I understand, at least a little bit. But I guess I’m still hoping that it can be different for me some day, with someone new. They won’t leave.’ Her lips trembled and she forced them into a smile. ‘They won’t want to leave.’

  ‘Laurel...’

  ‘And it can be different for you, Cristiano, one day. One
day maybe you won’t believe that love kills or even hurts. You’ll see that it can heal and restore and strengthen.’

  ‘You have a lot of faith,’ Cristiano said in a low voice. He was unbearably moved by her hope, when she had so little to hope for. So many people had left her.

  ‘Not really,’ Laurel admitted with a shaky laugh. ‘I talk a big game.’

  Cristiano nodded slowly. He felt weary and aching, yet, strangely, cautiously hopeful—although about what, he couldn’t quite say. Wasn’t willing to verbalise.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said after a moment. ‘For listening. For understanding. And I am sorry for...before.’ He paused, weighing his words, his feelings. Truth versus safety. Caring versus control. ‘The question is,’ he said slowly, ‘what do we do now?’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LAUREL SHIFTED WHERE she stood, trying to ease the ache in her feet. Stilettos were not for the faint of heart, and she’d worn them five days running. For the last week she and Cristiano had been touring his hotels across Europe—first Paris, then London, Milan and now Barcelona. He’d been checking on his managers, doing business, and she’d been enjoying seeing places in Europe she’d never thought she’d have the opportunity to see.

  Ever since their surprisingly honest conversation after the charity gala, things had shifted between them. They weren’t in love, and Laurel knew better than to start painting rainbows in the sky or building fairy-tale castles. She didn’t even want to, because she knew dreaming of a happy ending with Cristiano was foolish to the extreme. But she’d started to relax and enjoy their time together, and he had as well.

  They’d chatted, laughed, teased and talked. And made love. Sex was no longer a transaction, but a sharing, an expression...but of what? That was a question Laurel didn’t let herself ask, much less answer.

  They might have made some much-needed strides in their love affair, but Cristiano was still a man who guarded his back and his heart. Trust didn’t come easily, and love didn’t come at all. But at least Laurel was going in with her eyes wide open; she had no intention of falling in love with Cristiano Ferrero. The trouble was, he was starting to make that rather difficult.