Christmas at the Tycoon's Command

by Jennifer Hayward

  “You’re beautiful,” he said huskily. Reverently. “God, I’ve wanted to see you like this.”

  The look in his beautiful eyes made her fall apart inside. The heady male scent of him, the unmistakable musky smell of his desire, the iron-hard strength of his thighs beneath her were like seeing, feeling, the world in Technicolor again. She didn’t think she could ever get enough of it.

  She moved closer, seeking, needing more. Encountered hot, aroused male, burning her thighs through the material of his pants.

  Oh. He was phenomenal. As into this as she was.

  She melted into him, liquid with longing. Emboldened by the power she held over him. Whispered his name against his mouth.

  “Chloe,” he murmured, even as he took more of her weight in the hands he slid to her hips, rocking her against that most impressive part of him. “This is madness.”

  She bent her head and tugged his sensual bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t care.”

  His hand at her hips rocked her more firmly against him. Deeper, higher, the inferno raged until she was a slave to it. Until nothing existed except what he was making her feel. She whispered how much she wanted him in his ear. He told her how much he loved to hear her talk to him like that. How passionate, how honest her response had always been.

  She gasped as he gripped her bottom tighter and raked her against the hard, aroused length of him, the wet, thin fabric of her swimsuit a delicious friction against the intoxicating steel beneath his pants.

  Fire seared through her. She whimpered, moved against him, desperate, hungry for him to assuage the sweet ache between her thighs. For him to make her feel the things only he had ever been able to make her feel.

  He angled her more intimately against him, giving her what she asked for. Ground himself against the aching center of her again and again until she sobbed her release in his ear.

  “God, that is sexy,” he murmured, a hand at her buttock holding her there, rotating his body against her until he’d wrung every last bit of pleasure out of her. “Give it all to me, sweetheart,” he rasped. “All of it.”

  She collapsed against him, gasping for air. Shattered by the force of her release, incoherent with pleasure, rocked by the experience they had just shared. He had taken her apart, dismantled her. She felt exposed, bare, in a way she’d never experienced before.

  She laid her head on his chest, listening to the pounding of his heart as he held her. Soothed her. Brought her back down to earth with the smooth stroke of his hand across the bare skin of her back.

  * * *

  Nico wasn’t actually sure when he’d lost his mind. It might have been the sight of Chloe climbing out of the pool, dripping wet in the sexy white bikini, all of that flawless, creamy skin on display. Or maybe it had been that first sweet touch of her mouth against his. The palpable vulnerability that clung to her like a second skin. But he hadn’t been able to resist her. Or maybe it was himself he hadn’t been able to refuse.

  His breath a jagged blade in his chest, he clawed back control. Every male urge he had said to finish it, to take what he had always craved. To burn them both to oblivion in what followed, because surely it would be amazing. And completely, utterly insane.

  He rubbed a palm against his temple, head hazy. What the hell was he doing? Was he really that weak that one kiss had been enough to dismantle the promises he’d made? To forget he was her boss...in a position of authority over her?

  Or maybe it had been the whiskey, something he never should have started on. Another lapse in judgment.

  He pulled in a breath, fury at his mother for starting this, disgust with himself, mixing in a potent brew. There was still time to assume control. He hadn’t let things go that far.

  Chloe pulled back to look at him, those devastating brown eyes of hers wide and shell-shocked, luminous with desire. “Nico,” she murmured, reading the regret on his face. “Don’t. I—”

  He pulled her bikini top back into place, his hands fumbling over the ties as he redid them. Stood up, with her in his arms, and carried her inside. He didn’t trust himself to talk with her half-dressed, and he sure as hell wasn’t continuing what they’d started.

  Taking the stairs to the second floor, he strode down the lamp-lit hallway and set her down outside her bedroom door. Leaning a hand against the wall, he pulled in a breath. Searched for something to say. But his lack of control when it came to her was such a lapse of judgment, any coherent thought dissolved in a red tide of fury directed solely at himself.

  “That,” he said harshly, “should not have happened.”

  She lifted her chin. “I wanted it to happen,” she said evenly. “We have something, Nico. Ignoring it is only making it worse.”

  He gave her a withering look. “You are too vulnerable to have any idea what you’re saying, and I’m too much of a son of a bitch not to have walked away. So find a way to get it out of your head, Chloe. For both our sakes.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NICO WOKE WITH a pounding headache. His alarm clock sounded like a fire engine, the sunshine pouring through the windows threatened to blind him, amplifying every throbbing beat of his head. Swiping at the clock with his hand, he silenced it. Sagged back against the pillows.

  The events of the night before infiltrated his head. His mother showing up...that red-hot scene beside the pool with Chloe... Merda.

  He hauled himself out of bed, showered and drank a gallon of the black coffee his housekeeper brewed for him, apparently not unused to the aftereffects of the whiskey phenomenon with Lazzero’s hard-partying nights. The idea of walking for hours in the bright sunshine seemed an abhorrent idea, but as his golf game was with the president of the largest beauty retail chain in America, canceling was not an option.

  He left the house with a thermos of coffee tucked under his arm and a prayer of silent thanks Chloe was still in bed, because he could definitely wait until dinner to address that giant misstep.

  Sliding into Lazzero’s Porsche, he gunned the powerful car to life and followed Ocean Boulevard to his destination, a pristine stretch of blue ocean flanking his right.

  You’re angry, Nico... Perhaps you need to find forgiveness to find peace.

  Chloe’s words from the night before echoed through his head. He tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. Damned right he was angry. His mother had been a selfish, bitter creature who’d beguiled his father with her undeniable beauty, then made him pay every day of his life for getting her pregnant with him, even though, by all accounts, she’d been a dancer of mediocre talent who’d resorted to teaching to pay the bills.

  Money had been the currency his mother had been willing to trade in. His father had sold what was left of his soul to give it to her. And when he’d eventually folded under the pressure, his mother had made him pay for failing to provide by walking out on New Year’s Day.

  Forgive her? He took a sip of his coffee. Wiped an infuriated palm across his jaw. Never. He was the one who’d had to pick up the pieces after the flashy-suited banker had left the Di Fiores’ Greenwich Village home after delivering his instructions to repossess the house and everything in it. He was the one who’d taken one look at his father’s grief-stricken face, his father who was no longer there, and assured his brothers that everything was going to be okay, when, in actual fact, he wasn’t sure it would be at all.

  He jammed his foot on the brake as a car cut in front of him. Hell yes, he was angry. Furious with his mother for approaching him like that when he’d made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her. He was also, he conceded, furious with himself for his own lack of control. For drowning himself in whiskey, pouring out the whole sordid story to Chloe and allowing himself to fall under the spell of a woman he’d vowed to keep his hands off.

  A wave of bitter self-recrimination washed over him. He should have walked away. Instead, he’d put his hands on her, on everything he’d wanted from the first moment he’d seen her in that dress last night, and crossed the line.
Had been so caught up in her uninhibited, innocent responses to his caresses, in the heat they’d generated together, he hadn’t thought—he’d just taken.

  Clearly he needed to find a better solution to his problem than the one he currently had. Luckily, he observed grimly, as he pulled into the perfectly manicured front entrance of one of Palm Beach’s most prestigious golf clubs, he had eighteen holes to find it.

  * * *

  Find a way to get it out of your head.

  Unfortunately, all Chloe could think about was last night with Nico as she brooded over a pot of coffee on the terrace in the morning sun. Hot, erotic, what they’d shared was indelibly burned into her head, never to be forgotten.

  The way he’d looked at her...the things he’d said. It had been even more intense, more amazing, than her eighteen-year-old self had remembered.

  Her skin burned, a flush spreading from her chest up to her cheeks, singeing them with a fiery heat. Nico had been as caught up in the moment as she had been. As if he’d been giving in to his feelings, too. As if he hadn’t been able to help himself. It validated everything she’d thought about them all those years ago. As if that had been the truth of them.

  To know she could affect him like that, that she could make him lose control, shook her to her toes.

  And then he’d walked away. Again.

  She sank her teeth into her lip. Stared out at the sparkling, azure sea. She had seduced Nico into kissing her. Pushed him over the edge. With the hopes that what? He would take her to bed? That he would say to hell with the consequences, of which there were many, admit that what they had was special and be so lost in the moment he wouldn’t be able to resist her?

  Her stomach turned over on a low, antagonized pull. He had confided in her. That meant something, because Nico never talked to anyone. Now she knew the experiences that had shaped him—why he never formed lasting attachments with women. Because he didn’t trust them.

  Which should be a giant, blinking yellow caution sign. One she should heed for her own self-preservation. Instead, she felt exhilarated. Invigorated. Alive. She’d put herself out there, gone after what she’d wanted for the first time in her life, and it had been amazing. And that was where her thought processes began and ended.

  She spent the day on the beach, until the sun slanted lower in the sky, Nico’s return from his golf game imminent. Then she peeled herself off the lounger and headed up to the house to shower and change for dinner.

  Sliding on a short, baby-doll-style dress in moss green silk that hinted at her curves in the subtlest of ways, she caught her hair up in a simple high ponytail, applied a light dusting of makeup, then made her way downstairs, her stomach tight with nerves.

  Nico was waiting for her on the terrace. His skin tanned an even darker brown from the day in the sun, muscular body clad in faded jeans that clung to his powerful thighs and a black T-shirt that did the same for his amazing abs, aviator sunglasses on his face, he was drool worthy in a way that stopped her heart in its tracks.

  Also vastly intimidating.

  “How was your day?” he asked evenly, clearly back in full Nico control.

  “Lovely.” She could play this game, too. “Yours?”

  “It was a good networking day.” He tipped his head to the side. “I thought we might have a drink before dinner.”

  A good idea. They could have a mature, honest conversation about last night so her stomach would stop crawling with nerves.

  He poured her the glass of white wine she requested. Fixed himself a sparkling water with lime and leaned back against the bar, cradling it between his fingers. Chloe sank her teeth into her lip.

  Was he going to take the sunglasses off or was she going to have to guess at what he was feeling?

  As if he’d read her mind, he reached up and slid the glasses off. His cool gray gaze met hers. “I think we should talk about last night.”

  “Agreed.” She took a sip of her wine with a hand that trembled ever so slightly. Eyed him.

  “It can’t happen again.” Flat. Definitive.

  “Why?”

  His gaze narrowed. “Would you like me to list the reasons? Because I am your boss. Because you are my responsibility, Chloe. Because it would be a big, giant mess.”

  She shook her head. “That’s an excuse, and you know it. Yes, we have to work together, but our current situation is already complicating that. As for you being my boss,” she said, shrugging, “that’s semantics really. I own Evolution, Nico. It’s my company. So there is no power imbalance between us. Which only,” she concluded, “leaves us with the real issue here—that you keep walking away and why.”

  “I don’t sleep with the people I work with,” he said matter-of-factly, “regardless of any power imbalance. It’s a policy of mine. And you are my responsibility, that’s a fact. I am your regent.”

  “And last night?” she prompted, lifting a brow. “What was that? Because I would say we well and truly crossed the line.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “It was a...slip on my part.”

  Humiliation fired her cheeks, the clear regret in his voice activating that deep-rooted insecurity she did so well. “Because I threw myself at you again?” she suggested huskily. “A pity kiss to get me off your back?”

  His lashes lowered in a hooded gaze. “You know that’s not true.”

  “Then what was it?” She shook her head, frustration stinging her skin. “I’m going a little crazy here, Nico. I think I’m imagining things one minute, then I’m sure I’m not the next. You’re hot, then you’re cold. Which is it?”

  A flicker of antagonism marred his deadly gray cool. “What would you have me say?” he bit out. “That I wanted to make love to you last night? That I was one step short of carrying you to my bed and taking everything you were offering? Because we both know that I was. And where would that have gotten us?”

  Her insides dissolved, the sensory impact behind his words slamming into her brain with visceral effect. How close to the edge he’d been with that iron-clad control of his.

  “To a place of honesty,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself. “What you said to me the night of the board meeting. About me hiding from you. Hiding from myself. You were right, Nico. I have been. Because you make me feel things I’ve never felt with anyone else. Things I want to explore—things I’m terrified to explore. But by far, my worse crime has been hiding from myself. Denying what I want and need in life because I’m too afraid to go after it. So last night I did.”

  His eyes widened imperceptibly, before he schooled his expression back into one of those inscrutable looks. “You don’t want me, Chloe. The relationships I have with women are short and transactional. A few enjoyable nights spent together, a dinner or two thrown in and then I walk away. There are rules to it.”

  “That’s right,” she murmured, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Your rules. Those personal entanglements you avoid like the plague. Funny, when I’ve never asked for that from you. Maybe you should ask yourself what you are hiding from.”

  His jaw hardened. “Chloe. Stop pushing.”

  “Why? Because we might finally get at the truth here?”

  He muttered an oath. Strode to the edge of the railing to stand looking out at the ocean, a long silence passing between them. “I made a promise to your father to take care of you. I won’t break it.”

  She blinked. Followed him to the railing. “What promise?”

  He turned to face her. “Last spring, your father developed a cough. He thought nothing of it, but when it persisted for a few weeks, he went to see his doctor. He was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer. Told he had two years to live.”

  Her breath whooshed from her lungs. “Lung cancer? He didn’t smoke.”

  “He did back in his Wall Street days. He said it was a bad habit that had finally caught up with him.”

  Her brain struggled to process what he was telling her. That step back her father had taken...his pristine will and succe
ssion planning. It all made sense now. He had known he was going to die. That he would not be around to guide Evolution.

  “I don’t understand,” she said numbly. “Why didn’t he tell us?”

  His gaze softened. “He didn’t want to worry you. He told your mother, of course. Me—because he wanted to get the succession of the company in order—to ensure Juliette and you girls were taken care of before he made the news public. Which he wasn’t going to do until he had to because he felt the rumor and speculation would be harmful to the company.”

  Hot emotion bubbled up inside her, threatening to spill over her carefully contained edges. “You should have told me,” she rasped. “I could have come home from Paris. I could have spent that time with them. Time I will never get back.”

  “Your father didn’t want that,” he said evenly. “He wanted you to live your life. He wanted to see you fly. It was his wish. I couldn’t just circumvent it.”

  “Yes, you could have.” She threw the words at him, hands tightening into fists by her sides. “How many openings have I given you to tell me this, Nico? I knew a piece of the puzzle was missing, I asked you, and still you didn’t tell me. Where is that trust you were demanding? I’m not seeing it.”

  He pushed away from the railing. Reached for her. She stepped back, eyes on his.

  “I was trying to protect you,” he said quietly. “You’ve had enough blows. I needed you focused on saving Evolution with me.”

  “And you didn’t think I could have handled it?” She threw him an infuriated look. “Why does everyone think I need my decisions made for me? Do you think I’m that delicate that I can’t handle the truth?” She waved a hand at him. “I’m a grown woman, Nico. You keep telling me to have confidence in who I am—to believe in who I am—but you won’t trust me enough to make my own decisions.”

  He regarded her silently for a moment. “You’re grieving, Chloe. It makes you vulnerable.”

  Vulnerable. That word she was beginning to hate. “What about my uncle? Does he know?”