by Maisey Yates
“Sadly not.”
“I guess that’s another thing about how I was raised that maybe isn’t so bad. Because now I have worried about it. How my dresses fit, how they look, what you think. But then... Feeling beautiful isn’t so bad. And when you tell me that I am...”
“You like it,” he said.
“I do.”
His stomach tightened, and a smile curved his lips, a feeling of anticipation lancing him. He was very close to having her in the palm of his hand. To having all that glorious skin under his hands. “Vain creature,” he said, injecting a note of levity into his voice.
“Is that a bad thing?” she asked, her tone tentative.
“I find it somewhat charming. Though, I have to ask you now... What have you been thinking about me? You said you had been thinking about our differences.”
The undertone of pink in her cheeks turned scarlet. “That’s silly. Juvenile. You don’t want to hear about that.”
“Oh, I assure you I do.”
He examined the lush curve of her mouth, the dramatic high cheekbones and her dark lashes. She was the epitome of glorious feminine beauty, but there was an innocence there, and part of him wondered just how much.
“You’re just very...” Her lashes fluttered “...big. I’m small. I feel like you could overpower me if you wanted to, and yet, you never have. There’s something incredibly powerful about that. It feels dangerous to be near you sometimes, and yet I know you won’t hurt me. I don’t how to describe that. But sometimes the realization washes over me and it makes me shiver.”
He did something then that he could not quite fully reason out. He released his hold on her hand, sliding his fingertips up her arm and resting his thumb against the hollow at the base of her throat as he curved his fingers around the back of her neck. Demonstrating that power, perhaps.
He could feel her pulse beginning to throb faster beneath his touch, and he felt an answering pounding within his own body.
“What else?” he asked, keeping his tone soft and his touch firm.
“You’re very...hard.”
“Am I?” he asked, lowering his voice further.
She had no idea. He was getting harder by the second. This little flirtation, something he hadn’t quite anticipated enjoying, was adding fuel to the fire of his determination.
“Yes,” she said, doing something completely unexpected, taking her free hand and pressing it against his chest, sliding her palm down to his stomach. “Much harder than I am.”
“You seem like you would benefit from the chance to explore that.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I don’t...”
He reached down, catching hold of her wrist and pressing her hand more firmly against his chest. “I want you.”
He wanted her. Needed her. And not just because he needed her to marry him, because he needed to ensure that she was bound to him. But because he needed something to blot out the unending pain that was coursing through him—had been coursing through him for sixteen years.
Her eyes widened, an innocent stain spreading across her cheeks. “Want me to...what?”
He pulled her even closer, pressing his lips against her ear. “I want you naked,” he said, feeling her shiver against him. “I want to lay you down in my bed and strip that dress from your body. Then I want to touch every inch of you. And then I want to taste you.”
He barely recognized his own voice. It was rough, hard. And he was somewhere past control.
Esther trembled, and he could feel her shaking her head. “No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. I said you were beautiful. I meant it.”
“But that doesn’t mean...” Her cheeks looked like they were on fire beneath her golden skin. “There are plenty of other women you could have. You don’t have an obligation to me. We might be engaged publicly, but we both know that privately...”
“Of course I can be seen with no other woman but you,” he said, “but that is beside the point. You’re the one that I want. You, Esther Abbott. Not anyone else.”
“But I’m not... I don’t know... You can’t. Not me.”
The fire in him burned even hotter, and he was surprised by the strength of his conviction. Yes, it was all tangled up in the need to keep possession of his children, the need to give them the best life possible, and he believed he needed Esther for that, but there was more. In this moment, there was more. It would not be a hardship to convince her that he wanted her. Because he did.
“Yes,” he returned, “you. I love your skin. I want to know if it’s smooth like this all over.” He moved a fingertip over her arm, relishing the tremor that racked her frame. “Your lips.” He moved his fingertip around the lush line of her mouth then, that softness doing something to all of the hard, jagged places inside him. The seduction working better on him than he had intended. This was supposed to be about an end goal, one that extended far beyond finding himself between her beautiful thighs tonight. But it was difficult to remember that with lust pounding through him like a drumbeat.
“Your hands,” he said, moving to curve his fingers around her wrist, caressing her palm slowly. “I want to feel them all over my body. And yes, I could have another woman. I have had them. More than I can count, I won’t lie to you. But I don’t want them now. I couldn’t.” It was the truth in his words that surprised him more than anything else. The fact that this wasn’t simply a calculated statement. The fact that the strange creature in front of him had bewitched him in some way.
That she had compelled him to give her books, of all the ridiculous things. A new one every day because he passed a shop on his way home from work, and he thought of her every time he did. Because she wanted to learn and he wanted her to.
And, Dio, what he would teach her tonight.
“You haunt me,” he ground out, losing hold of the carefully scripted line of compliments that he had put together moments before, going off into the dark parts of himself, where he could scarcely see an inch in front of him, much less guess at what might come out of his mouth next. “My dreams,” he said, the words rough, “and every moment I lay in bed not dreaming because I’m thinking about you.”
Her entire body was shaking like a leaf in a storm, and he felt nothing but triumph. His vision was a blur, a haze of everything but Esther. His mind blank of everything except what would happen in the moments immediately following this one.
She would say yes. She had to.
She pulled away slightly, and he wondered if he had gone too far. If he had been too intense, if he had been too honest.
He made a decision then.
He took firm hold of her arms and dragged her forward, closing the distance between them and claiming her mouth with his own. He wrapped her up in him then, folding her in his arms, gripping her chin tightly as he braced her firmly against him and forged a new, intimate territory between them.
He had kissed her before. But not like this. This wasn’t a show for the people around them. It was not designed for cameras. And it wasn’t designed to end here.
It was a beginning. A promise. A precursor of what was to come. An echo of the act that he intended to follow.
As he thrust his tongue in and out of the sweet, hot depths, as he felt her moan and shake beneath him, he knew that he had won. Because if he could reduce her to this—reduce them both to this—here in the presence of all these other people, then there would be no resisting him once he had her alone.
His father would be angry. Because Renzo had not taken this opportunity to forge new business deals as he had promised. But his father had no idea about the other war that was being raged. The war to keep Esther close, the war to defend the family that was growing inside her even now.
It took all the strength that he possessed to pull away from her. To keep himself from pushing her into the nearest alcove, shoving her dress up her hips and taking her then and there. Claiming her. But that would only further the cause of satisfying his desire. It would not furthe
r the cause of seduction.
He doubted if Esther had ever been taken up against a wall in a public place. And he also doubted if she would find that overly romantic.
As much as his body didn’t care, the rest of him had to. He managed to find his focus in that. And when he turned back around and saw his daughter standing at the back of the room chatting with friends and taking no notice of what had been happening with him—why would she? She had no idea who he even was—it brought him crashing down to reality with an extreme sense of purpose.
“Come,” he said.
She blinked. “We haven’t been here that long. We came all the way to New York for this.”
He laughed, every jagged thing inside him brought to the surface because of what had happened tonight stabbing through him. “No, cara. I came all the way to New York for you. To seduce you. To have you.”
She looked shaken by that, her dark eyes filled with confusion. “You could have had me in Rome,” she said finally, her tone muted.
“But I will have you here,” he said, smoothing his thumb over her swollen lower lip. “With this city in the background, on that big bed in a beautiful hotel. In this place that you’ve never been before, where no other man has ever had you. And I swear to you, you will never forget it.”
She looked away from him, hesitating for a moment as though she were about to say something. But then, she didn’t. Instead, she simply nodded and took his hand.
CHAPTER TEN
THERE WAS A wild thing inside Esther. She had always been afraid of it. From the moment she had first suspected that it was there. Of course, it was that very wild thing that had inspired her to rebel against her family in the first place. That had inspired her to break the strict code she’d been raised in to seek out other things.
That had gotten her thrown out of the only home she’d ever known.
But even when she’d left, she’d hoped to control it in some way. Had never imagined she would give it free rein.
She had told herself that she wasn’t going to find a man, because she needed freedom. She had told herself she didn’t care about making herself look more beautiful, because she had a world to see, and who cared what it saw when it looked back at her.
But there was more to it than that. This was what she had always been afraid of. That the moment she met a beautiful man, the moment that he touched her, she would be lost. Because that wild thing inside her wasn’t simply hungry for the beauty of the world, wasn’t simply hungry for a taste of food.
It was hungry for the carnal things. For the sensual things. For the touch of a man’s hands on her bare skin. For the hot press of his lips against hers, and on her neck, and down lower.
Renzo had ripped the cover off all her pretense. He had exposed her. Not to him—she had a feeling she had been exposed to him from the moment she’d seen him. It was the fact he had exposed her so effectively to herself that had her shaken.
But she wasn’t turning back. Not now. There was no way. Not now that she knew. Not now that she wanted. With such a sharp keenness that it could not be denied.
She didn’t want to deny it.
There was a conversation they would have to have. After this. They would have it after. She didn’t want to say anything that would make him stop now. She had a feeling that he had some suspicions about her lack of experience, but what he had said just a few moments earlier about having her in the city where no other man had ever been with her before made her think that he perhaps didn’t know just how inexperienced she was.
That he hadn’t guessed yet that he was the first man to kiss her. That he would most certainly be the first man to...
She shivered as the limousine pulled up in front of the hotel. She could tell him no. She knew she could. And he would stop.
She thought back to the fierce way he had taken her mouth in that room full of people. It had been something more than a kiss, something so intimate it made her catch fire inside to think about other people seeing it.
He had been beyond himself then, all of that icy control that she had witnessed in him from the first time she’d seen him burned away. Scorched by the fire of the attraction between them.
She swallowed hard, looking over at him, at the hard carved lines of his face that seemed to look even more intimidating now than they ever had. She was fairly certain that he would stop if she asked him to.
Yes, of course he would. He was a man, not a monster. Even if he was a man she could scarcely recognize now. There was an intensity to him that she had never witnessed before. A desperation, a hunger. It mirrored her own and stoked the flames inside her so that they burned brighter, hotter.
He didn’t touch her during the elevator ride up to the penthouse. She was afraid, for a moment, that it might give her too much time to think. That it might allow the heated passion inside her to begin to cool.
But once the doors closed behind them and they were ensconced in the tight space, she found it to be entirely the opposite. She could scarcely breathe for wanting him. For needing him.
The seconds in the elevator stretched between them tight and thick, wrapping around her neck, constricting her throat. By the time the doors opened into the hall, she let out a great gasp, a sigh of relief that she knew he had heard.
He still didn’t touch her as they approached the door and he used the key card to undo the lock. But then he placed his palm on her lower back, ushering her in, the contact burning through the thin fabric of her dress.
And when he closed the door behind them, she was the one who closed the remaining distance between them. She was the one to kiss him. Because she didn’t want him to change his mind. Didn’t want whatever madness he was beholden to to fade. She kissed him with all of that desperation. That need for satisfaction.
She began to frantically work at the knot on his tie, clumsy fingers then moving to the buttons on his shirt.
“Slow down,” he said, his voice a low, gravelly command.
“No,” she said, between kisses, between desperate grabs for his shirt fabric. “No,” she said again, “I can’t.”
He reached up, taking hold of her wrists, his hold on her like irons. “There is no rush,” he said, leaning in slowly, brushing his cheek against hers. It was much more innocuous contact than the kiss from before, and yet it affected her no less profoundly. “Some things are best when they’re taken slowly.”
Taken slowly? She felt like there was a wild creature inside her trying to break out, desperate for release, and he wanted to talk about taking it slowly? She had waited twenty-three years for this moment. To be with a man. To want a man like this. And now, with satisfaction so close, he wanted to take it slowly.
She wanted it done now.
That certainty surprised her, especially after the small attack of nerves that she’d had right before coming into the hotel. There were no nerves now, not in here.
What she said to him out on the dance floor, it had been true. His strength, the way that he kept it leashed, all the while with her totally conscious of how easily he could overpower her, was a powerful aphrodisiac.
“I don’t want slow,” she said, leaning back into him.
And now, he used that strength against her, holding her fast, not allowing her to kiss him again. “Wait,” he said, his tone firm.
He shifted his hold, gathering both of her wrists into one hand, then lowering his free hand to her back, grabbing hold of her dress’s zipper tab and pulling it down slowly. The filmy fabric fell away from her curves, leaving her standing there in nothing more than a pair of lace panties.
It was similar to what had happened that day he’d come to her fitting. But also, like something completely different. She had been facing away from him then, and though she had been able to feel his eyes on her, she had not seen the expression on his face. She could see it now.
All of that lean hunger directed at her, the intensity of a predator gleaming in those dark eyes. He looked her over slowly, making no effort
to hide his appreciation for her breasts as he allowed himself a long moment to stare openly at them.
They felt heavier all of a sudden. Her nipples tightening beneath his close inspection. An answering ache started between her thighs, and she felt herself getting slicker, felt her need ratcheting up several notches without him putting a hand on her.
“See?” he asked, the knowing look in his eye borderline humiliating. “Slow is good. It will be better for you. I don’t know what kind of experiences you’ve had before, but I can guess at the sort of men a woman traveling alone and staying in hostels meets. I can guess the sort of sex those kinds of semipublic quarters necessitate. But we have all night, and we have this room, we have a very big bed. And you have me. I am not a man who rushes his vices, cara. Rather, I prefer to linger over them.”
“Am I a vice?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“The very best kind.”
He leaned in, scraping his teeth across her chin before moving upward, kissing her mouth lightly before catching her lip in a sharp bite. The sensation hit her low and deep, unexpected and sharp, and not unpleasant at all.
He tightened his hold on her, reinforcing his control as he angled his head and kissed her neck, tracing a line down her vulnerable skin with the tip of his tongue. Her nipples grew even tighter, begging for his attention. She knew what she wanted, but she was much too embarrassed to say. She didn’t even know enough to know for sure if it was a reasonable thing to want.