by Maisey Yates
“Per favore.” He whispered the broken words in Italian, and his need was the final bit of fuel on the flame.
She released her hold on what was left of her control.
“Yes,” she said, her voice a sob. “Please. Please take me.” She was desperate, and she didn’t care if he knew it. And it wasn’t just for pleasure, but for a connection. For an answer to the deep, unending emptiness inside her she hadn’t been aware of until this moment.
“You want this?” he whispered, the words frayed. “You want me inside you?”
“Yes,” she moaned, arching against him.
He kissed her lips before moving away from her, opening the drawer of the nightstand by the bed and producing a little square packet.
A condom.
Oh yes, they weren’t done. This was it. She was going to lose her virginity now. To him. And she couldn’t even muster any fear. No shame. No doubt. Because she just wanted. More of what he’d given her only moments ago, more of being skin to skin with him. More of his lips against hers, his body in hers. She wanted more.
She wanted it all.
He worked the buckle on his dress pants and shoved them partway down his lean hips before positioning himself over her, and tearing open the condom. He was still almost entirely dressed, and she saw nothing but the deft movements of his hand as he rolled the condom over himself.
But when he moved to her entrance, she felt the blunt head of him, stretching her, tearing the thin barrier she’d never before given much thought about. She tensed, squeezing her eyes shut tight as the burning pain reached its peak, then dissipated slowly after he’d buried himself to the hilt.
She gritted her teeth, fought to keep from crying out, but she wasn’t successful. A whimper escaped her lips and she shivered beneath him as pain laced its way around all the beautiful pleasure she’d felt only a moment before.
He swore, violent, rough against her ear, and pushed himself up, dark eyes blazing into hers. But he said nothing.
Instead he angled his face and kissed her, long and deep, as he withdrew slowly from her body before sliding back home. It didn’t hurt at all that time, and as he established a steady rhythm to his thrusts, discomfort faded to a kind of neutral fullness, and from there grew, expanding to a deep, pulsing pleasure that was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.
She arched against him, as she’d done when he’d gone down on her, meeting his every thrust, the motion sending little sparks of heat through her, a familiar tightness coiling low in her stomach.
She felt him start to shake, felt the control in his movements start to slip. A groan escaped his lips, and he bucked hard against her, freezing above her, pushing them both over the edge to oblivion.
When she came back to herself, she was lying on her back, starting at an unfamiliar ceiling, with his warm, protective weight covering her. As if she was something precious.
Except...he wasn’t protective. And she wasn’t precious.
She was nothing more than a criminal, who had tried to make good for a while and failed. And he was...he was...
She tried to push away the reality that was crowding in. Tried to ignore the truth she would have to face eventually. She didn’t want to. Not now. Not while pleasure was still buzzing through her. Not while she still felt so good.
The power she’d felt only a few moments before was slipping through her grip like sand through an hourglass and there was no way for her to turn it back over and start again.
Then he was up, moving away from her, turning and walking into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind him.
And she could only lie where she was, still staring at that ceiling. At the way the molding formed different tiers and textures. She listened to the sounds of the streets outside filtering up, audible even through the closed windows.
Life was moving out there, and yet, in here, in this room, in this moment, she was frozen.
The bathroom door opened and Rocco reappeared, his shirt buttoned, his pants redone. Except for the lack of tie, he looked exactly as he had done when he’d first walked into the restaurant. As though nothing had happened. As though past minutes hadn’t existed.
They might have just shared cake and coffee, instead of their bodies.
“I have a meeting to get to,” he said, his voice as unaffected as his exterior. “You may stay here if you wish. The room is paid for through the night.”
“I...I...”
“That is all I will be requiring from you. Though, I confess, I didn’t expect you to give in quite so easily.”
His words were cold, distant, and she tried to recapture the feeling she’d had moments ago, of feeling close to him, and found she couldn’t. She would wonder if it had all been in her mind except she was still naked, on the bed.
She sat up, holding her hands over as much of her body as she could. Trying to reclaim some modesty, some dignity, some...something.
“I would have taken a lot less from you, cara mia, but you played the part of whore so well, who was I to stop you?”
She felt as if she’d been slapped, a sick, cold feeling of shame trickling through her veins. And she had no mask to recall. None to put in place and hide her nakedness, her vulnerability. “But you...I...”
“Speechless?” He arched a dark brow. “It was quite good, I’ll give you that. But, regrettably, I don’t have time for seconds.” He bent and picked up his tie, tying it quickly before buttoning his jacket.
He was untouched. Invulnerable. And she was still stripped. Of everything.
“As I said, I require nothing more from you. Consider your debt paid.” He turned away from her. “The sex was...incredible. But I’m not sure it was worth a million dollars. I think, in the end, you got the better part of the deal.” He strode away from her, pulling the door open and pausing, turning to face her. “I want you to remember something, Charity.”
He waited. Waited until her heart was thundering so hard she was certain he could hear it. Waited until she was certain she would be ill. Waited until she couldn’t hold the question back any longer.
“What?” she asked, her throat dry.
“That it was just as I said. I made you beg for it.” Then he walked through the door, and let it close firmly behind him.
Charity just sat there in the center of the bed, tugging her legs up to her chest. She looked down at the white bedspread and saw a smear of blood and the full horror hit her.
A tear slid down her cheek, a sob shaking her body.
Dear God, what had she done? What had he made her into?
She’d never been a “good girl.” Never been honorable or honest. How could you be when the first skill you learned was tricking strangers into thinking you needed money so you could bring it back to your father? How could you ever be good when you’d been straddling the lines between right and wrong from the beginning?
But there were lines she had never crossed. She had never used her body like this.
And now...
The room is paid for...
No. She wouldn’t stay here. She couldn’t. And she wouldn’t let that damned lingerie touch her skin ever again.
Another tear slipped down her cheek and she wiped it away, anger fueling her now. She could fall apart later, but for now, she needed to handle this.
She had made a mistake. A terrible mistake. She had revealed herself to him. Her real self, not just her facade. You didn’t show yourself to a mark, ever.
He was still a mark. That was all. And she would never make such a mistake again.
She picked up the phone that was by the bedside and dialed the front desk. “Yes,” she said when the woman on the other end answered. “I’m in Mr. Amari’s room. I need a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Medium. Some sneakers. Size eight. And a bra. Thirty-six B. Just charge i
t to the room.”
She hung up and sat back down on the bed. She wasn’t touching that dress, those shoes, or the lingerie again.
The sweats were a fair trade.
It was the last thing she would ever take from Rocco Amari. The very last thing.
After this, she would forget about him. About this hotel room. Where she had lost her pride and her virginity all at the same time.
From this moment on, Rocco Amari was dead to her. She would leave this experience here, over and done.
She’d used her body to escape, so she would damn well see that it was an escape. No more cons. No more helping her father out with one last thing.
She would leave here, and go into her new life, with a fresh start.
After this, she would not speak of him. She would not think of him. She would take nothing from him ever again.
CHAPTER THREE
ROCCO AMARI WAS a bastard. In every sense of the word. He’d been aware of that from an early age. From the time he’d first been teased by other neighborhood children for not having a father to the moment he’d watched his mother, a grim look of wounded pride on her face, accept money from an employee of the man who’d sired him, to help them keep the modest house they called home. Provided they never made contact with him.
Yes, he had known, then and always, that he was nothing more than an illegitimate child born to a rich man’s unwanted mistress. And as time had gone on he had learned that playing the part of the bastard in the colloquial sense served a man well in his ascent to success.
Though, in his case, the role had become his reality. There was no place in his life for conscience, no place for compassion. He had learned, long ago, that a man had to look out for himself because when push came to shove no one else would.
Venture capital was not the sort of business that lent itself to being sentimental or soft. Yes, it was about building businesses, but you had to be willing to cut dead branches. And Rocco was more than willing.
A man had to protect what was his, because other men wouldn’t hesitate to try and claim it for themselves.
And given that he was a bastard, and given that he took a dim view of compassion, he found himself irritated by the fact that the conscience he had no place for felt seared by his encounter with Charity Wyatt.
He had never meant for it to go so far.
The plan had been to bring her into the hotel room, strip her bare, humiliate her and leave. Perhaps, not an overly sympathetic plan, but nowhere in his planning had he imagined he would actually... No. Trading sex for his stolen money had never been a part of the plan. Yes, he had intended to flirt with the line. He had always intended to do that. But Charity was a thief, and in his mind she was just lucky he didn’t believe in more medieval forms of punishment.
But things had not gone according to his plan. He had lost control.
Which was, perhaps, the most unforgivable part about it.
The rest he could have forgiven himself for. But not the loss of control.
By taking her to his room, by commanding her to strip, by making her beg for him, he had been proving to her that she was in over her head. That he commanded the situation, as he did all things. But her rich, dark eyes had met him in challenge as she’d taken the expensive, overtly sexual clothing off her body, revealing the perfection beneath. And something had flipped. He had not proven his control. She had broken it. Yes, he was certain he had humiliated her, but at what cost? At what cost to his own pride?
It had been nearly two months since their encounter, yet at night he still woke up drenched in a cold sweat, dreaming of soft delicate fingertips trailing down his stomach. Of rich, dark curls spread out over his chest. Coal-black eyes looking up at him with wonder.
It was the wonder that got him. Because it wasn’t anything he had never seen before. Certainly, women had looked at him with desire, with satisfaction, but never with the kind of awe he had seen in Charity’s eyes. And he knew why.
He clenched his hand into a fist. He shouldn’t care. What did it matter if a woman had made love to a hundred men, or one? It didn’t. It shouldn’t. Not to a man like him.
And yet it mattered.
It made his sin feel that much greater, when he didn’t wish to feel as though he had sinned at all. Normally, he lived his life exactly the way he chose to, conducting affairs with women as he saw fit, spending his money as he chose, drinking as much as he desired. He didn’t answer to anyone, least of all the archaic idea of black-and-white morality. Life on the streets of Rome had taught him early on that morality was only for the middle class.
Those who had nothing couldn’t afford it, and those with billions could pay to bypass it.
And yet here he was, regretting a sexual encounter with all the guilt of a choir boy. Concerning himself over the virginity of a woman who had been far from innocent regardless of her past sexual experience.
It was unacceptable as far as he was concerned. As it was unacceptable that the woman was still taking up so much space in his mind. It was also unacceptable that he was still without his money.
He had not intended to let her off the hook on that score, either.
But as he had deviated from his plan, he had yet to regroup and decide what he would do now.
He could not pursue prosecution now. As he had promised absolution in exchange for sex. However, he’d never intended to actually have sex with her.
But he had. And that limited his options.
That damned conscience again. Where the hell had it come from? He should have no qualms about either one of those things.
His intercom buzzed and he pressed it, annoyance coursing through his veins. “What?”
“Mr. Amari—” his secretary, Nora, sounded harried “—there is a woman here who refuses to leave.”
Rocco gritted his teeth. This was not the first time, nor, he imagined, would it be the last. It was either Elizabeth, a woman he’d ended his association with a little over three months ago, or it was someone entirely random, hoping to fill the currently vacant position of mistress in his life.
Too bad for whoever it was he didn’t enjoy being pursued. He liked to be the one directing the pursuit.
“Tell her I am in no mood.”
“I did. She is still sitting here.”
“Then have security remove her.”
“I thought I should call you before I resorted to that,” Nora said, her tone conveying that she found the idea of having a woman forcibly removed from the building distasteful. He didn’t find it distasteful in the least. If she didn’t want to be carted out, then she should have obeyed the command to leave in the first place.
“Next time don’t bother. Have security remove her as a matter of course. You have my permission.”
He heard a muffled shout, and response from Nora. She must have put her hand over the receiver. And then she was back. “Mr. Amari, she says her name is Charity Wyatt, and she says you will want to see her.”
His blood ran cold. Rage following closely, thawing out the ice.
He didn’t want to see Charity Wyatt unless it was in hell.
Of course, in many ways he felt he was already there. Put there by his very own fallen angel. Who had now crawled back into the pit to pay him a visit.
“Send her up,” he said, shutting off the intercom. He would regret this. And yet, he couldn’t resist the temptation. To see her one more time. To shove her skirt up around her hips and take her again, bent over his desk this time. To prove that she was just as helpless in the face of this attraction as he was. Prove that he wasn’t weak.
He stood from behind his desk and began to pace the room, pausing as soon as he heard a knock on the door. A timid knock. Clearly, Charity Wyatt was not quite so defiant as she had been the last time they met.
She wasn’t defiant for long. She melted quickly enough beneath your touch.
He gritted his teeth and willed his body back into submission. “Come in.”
The door opened, and the sight that greeted him was a surprise. It was Charity, but not as he had ever seen her before. Gone was the beautiful, sleek siren he had taken to bed in the hotel suite. Instead, standing in front of him was a woman wearing black pants and a T-shirt. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back into a ponytail that looked as if it would suit a schoolgirl better than a woman in her early twenties.
The only makeup she appeared to be wearing was a smear of gloss over her lips, the rest of her face bare. There were dark circles under her eyes, as though she hadn’t slept.
One thing was certain; she was not here to conduct a seduction.
He fought against the hard punch of disappointment that slammed into his gut. He shouldn’t care. He would listen to whatever it was she had to say, and go out and find the nearest socialite and drag her back to his penthouse.
That was his problem. He had been working himself into the ground since his encounter with Charity, and he had not had a chance to be with anyone in the time since. Nearly two months was far too long for a man like him.
Still standing there looking wide-eyed and wounded, she made his gut twist hard. She was not supposed to be here, this woman who had destroyed his control.
He needed her gone.
“Well, obviously you aren’t here to screw me. Which makes me feel very short on patience,” he said. “You had better speak quickly.”
She met his gaze, completely unintimidated by his attempt at scaring her away. “I am certainly not here to... That,” she said, her tone haughty.
He let out a heavy sigh, looking down at the paperweight on his desk. Straightening it before looking at her again. “I find myself growing more impatient. Either get on your knees for me or get out.”
“There are no circumstances on earth that would find me on my knees for you. Not begging you, not pleasuring you. That is my firm promise.”