She didn’t laugh, either, but he was sure he could hear the hint of it in her voice when she answered him. “I don’t need to destroy you. You appear to being doing that job all by yourself.”
“I was under the impression that you were here to perform an impartial assessment, not an assassination.”
She moved farther into his vast, sprawling office. He watched her reflection move across the room, a liquid, rolling walk, all hips and glory, and he stopped pretending that the way she affected him had only to do with his temper. She was wearing another pair of those impossible heels, and Matteo was forced to face the somewhat confronting notion that this woman was not only doing her best to make a fool out of him in front of his business associates—she was single-handedly turning him into a foot fetishist.
He would make her pay for that, too.
“I’m not following you,” came her cool reply. He watched her walk to the front of his desk, then shift to lean against it. She folded her arms over her chest, she cocked out one hip, and he knew she understood every square inch of the power games she was playing. At another time he might have applauded it. “I assume you feel that your character is being assassinated, is that it?”
“With a hatchet, Dr. Fellows.”
He didn’t have to see that smirk of hers to feel it, like one more knife shoved deep into his back. “Your character is your business, Mr. Combe. You explained to me that you felt justified in all of your choices. How, then, could I take a hatchet to your good name? Surely that would only be possible if you felt some sense of shame.”
“Because you are determined, one way or another, that you will make me feel this shame. No matter what it takes.”
“That you’re even discussing the possibility of feeling shame feels a great deal like a breakthrough. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.”
He turned then, holding on to his control by the barest of threads. He could feel temper, yes, but something far darker—and much thicker—pounding in his veins. Making his skin feel too tight. Making his self-possession feel threadbare at best.
But then, this was where he had always operated at his fullest capacity. When he was the most challenged, he shone the brightest.
He hoped he blinded her.
“You will have to tell me what you think it will take,” he growled at her. “Do you require me on my knees? Shall I rend my garments at your whim? You will obviously only be satisfied by a very specific performance. Why don’t you tell me my lines?”
Her smile was placid, but her dark eyes gleamed. “If it is not genuine, Mr. Combe, how can it be counted as real?”
“Tell me, Doctor. How would you know the first thing about genuine sentiment for one’s family?”
He took satisfaction in the way she stiffened, as if she hadn’t expected the hit. Her gaze flashed into something darker and he liked that, too.
“I would strongly caution you against making this personal,” she said, and this time her voice was stern. As if she thought he might back down simply because she sounded like she was in charge.
But Matteo wasn’t her client. As she had amply illustrated.
“Why ever not, Dr. Fellows?” he asked, his voice quiet. But he could tell by the way her chin lifted that she wasn’t fooled by his tone. “My board of directors feels that they can excavate my personal life at will. Why shouldn’t I do the same with the blunt instrument they have sent to do their bidding?”
“Am I...a tool in this scenario?”
“What you are is a woman who has no experience whatsoever in the sorts of relationships that led me to the choices I made at my father’s funeral.”
“You don’t think I’m capable of assessing human relationships. Is that what you just said?”
Matteo felt everything in him focus on his target, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers before he reached out with them and ruined this little trail of breadcrumbs he was leaving for her.
“Your parents are lofty intellectuals,” he told her, as if she might have missed that. “Academics who have spent their lives locked away in elite institutions, catering to children of the rich and famous.”
“I’m going to stand back and wait for the irony to hit. If I were you, I would duck.”
“They had you when they were quite old, relatively speaking. You have no siblings. As your parents were each only children themselves, you have no extended family of any kind. Which made it doubly challenging, I imagine, that they ignored you so thoroughly as you grew up, if their lack of attendance at what might reasonably be considered your milestones is any guide. What I’m suggesting to you is that when it comes to the kinds of familial bonds and debts that govern the lives of most people, your view is necessarily limited by your experience.”
“I live in the world,” she shot back at him, with heat, and he wondered if she knew that she’d betrayed herself. That he could see he’d landed a hit. “Last I checked, the world was filled with human beings and human relationships. In fact, I made those things the focus of my life’s work. Rest assured that even if I never experienced the delight of a house filled with siblings—or even numerous houses shared with one much younger sibling and a whole lot of staff, like you—I have made a deep and comprehensive study of every possible permutation of human emotion.”
“Furthermore,” he said, the way he would if he was in a business meeting and didn’t wish to acknowledge that someone else had spoken, “you appear to lack any actual personal relationships yourself.”
She flushed at that, which told him a great many things he doubted very much she wanted him to know. Then she stood straighter, and he was sure he could see her vibrating with her own temper.
But unless he missed his guess, with decidedly less focus.
“You have absolutely no right to go digging around in my life,” she hurled at him.
“It seems only fair. Since you’ve taken a backhoe to mine.”
“You do realize, of course, that this is more evidence of the kind of antisocial behavior that got you into this position in the first place?”
“I am a man who does my research. I leave nothing to chance. No one who knows me—particularly my board—could possibly imagine that I would allow someone access to me, my thoughts, my entire life, and not perform my due diligence.”
“You must be very proud of yourself,” Sarina said, after a moment, that flush still betraying her emotions. He wanted to touch the heat of it. Taste it, even. “Does it make you feel more in control of this downward spiral of yours to think you’ve unearthed the truth about me?”
“You have no relationships,” he repeated, as if he was delivering judgment from above. “You’re a driven, ambitious, professional woman. You live and breathe your work, and you usually do both from hotels. Your parents are fully preoccupied with their research. As far as I can tell, you are entirely solitary.”
They were standing, facing off, as if a brawl was about to break out. And Matteo knew that he was his father’s son, because his blood sang at the thought. But he was also heir to the San Giacomos and all the scheming and plotting that had made them one of Italy’s most prominent families—for centuries.
Sarina should have done her homework.
“You must be under the impression that if you taunt me with my own life, this will somehow... Break me? Put me off my game? Unfortunately for you, Mr. Combe, all it does is give me further insight into your character. I wouldn’t be concerned about anyone else performing an assassination when you seem so willing and able to do it yourself.”
She’d wrestled that flush on her cheeks into submission. Now she gazed back at him pityingly, which he assumed was meant to make him feel small. Off balance.
But Matteo could see the way her pulse racketed around in her neck, and he knew better.
That response—the response he’d thought he’d seen in Venice,
but hadn’t pushed—was what he’d been banking on. Somehow, he contained his own roar of victory.
“It turns out I have a fascination for psychology,” he said instead. “For example, I cannot help but wonder why a woman who lives such a lonely, empty life imagines that she should set herself up as a world-renowned expert on the very emotions and relationships she lacks? I should as soon declare myself an authority on literature. I’ve read a book, after all.”
“Keep digging that hole, Mr. Combe.”
Matteo moved then, prowling closer to her and keeping his eyes on that telltale pulse. It was possible it was her own temper, of course. But when he moved closer, he saw the way her eyes widened. The slight flare of her nostrils. And, sure enough, that pulse in her neck sped up.
He knew attraction when he saw it. He felt an answering lick of fire in his own body.
And that triumph beneath it like a naked flame.
“This is very personal for you, is it not?” He stopped when he was within arm’s reach, close enough that he could see the faint tremor that ran over her skin “There is nothing the least bit clinical about this meeting. Or the previous one. You are here to perform a hit job, no more and no less.”
She shook her head, but he knew she could feel the heat between them—growing stronger by the second the longer they stayed in such close proximity—because he could.
Sarina cleared her throat. “You must realize that every single word that comes out of your mouth is a nail that you, and you alone, are hammering into your own coffin.”
But then she lifted her hand. He thought perhaps she meant to mime the hammering of a nail. Or perhaps she meant to swat at him. He would never know.
Because what she did instead was...place it on his chest. In the hollow between his pectoral muscles.
And for a simmering moment, they both stared at her hand.
While everything went electric.
When Matteo lifted his gaze to hers, he saw more heat on her cheeks—and a kind of horrified confusion all over her face. While around them, the world simmered and burned.
She started to snatch her hand back but he caught it and held it there. Then pressed his advantage, leaning closer, straight into all that fire.
“I understand that you are nothing but a mouthpiece,” he said, low and dark, like love words in the middle of a very long night. She shivered. “A recording device that plays back my every utterance so that my enemies can cluck and shake their heads and pretend to be affronted.”
Her hand flexed against his chest. It made a mockery of her attempt at an icy expression and he thought she knew it, because there was still too much heat. Lightning and thunder, and he wasn’t prepared for any of it.
But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it.
“Or, alternatively, I report back to my client,” she said, though her color was still too high. “Which is perfectly appropriate.”
Matteo let her go, noting exactly how long it took her to notice he’d released her. And then to pull her hand back. As if she’d accidentally slapped it down on a hot stovetop and had only then realized it.
He waited a moment, but the heat storm kept raging, loud and hot. He slid his palm down over her jaw, holding his hand there.
Holding her right where he wanted her.
The heat was extraordinary. It raged in him, thick and insistent. And he could feel the way she trembled at his touch, and that kicked in him hard. So hard he almost forgot what game he was playing.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she asked, though her voice was different now. Almost breathy. Soft and uncertain, like that odd, arrested look in her eyes. And the fact she didn’t pull away.
But he wasn’t here to understand her. He was here to win.
No matter that her skin felt like silk, warmed through and made specifically for him.
“Were you attempting to show me that you were in control when you put your hand on me?” he asked quietly. “Without asking? I think in some quarters, that’s considered the very definition of toxic behavior, is it not?”
“It was a moment of temporary insanity,” Sarina replied, but without so much as a trace of her usual smirk.
And the battle was won. Matteo knew it.
But her cheek in his hand was soft, warm. And he could feel the jolt of it, straight down into his sex, like a promise. Those precarious heels she wore with such ease put her mouth right there within reach, and all he’d have to do was bend his head to lose himself in her taste. Her heat.
The sweetness he was sure was there, right under the surface—
“Mr. Combe.”
Her voice was crisper then. Very nearly the matter-of-fact tone he recalled from Venice. He was certain she was going to order him away from her—
But she didn’t. She didn’t jerk her head out of his grasp. She didn’t tell him to step back. She didn’t flinch, or shout, or threaten him. She gazed back at him as if this was all out of her hands.
Or as if she didn’t know what was roaring there between them any more than he did.
He could feel that pulse of hers, telling him truths he was certain she never would.
And echoing his own, the one that whispered he was risking his own destruction here.
“If we’re nailing my coffin shut,” Matteo murmured, because she felt like silk, he wanted to rub his way all over her, and he should have been afraid of the ferocity of his reaction and the fire that raged between them—yet he still wanted to win, “we had best make certain it is airtight.”
And then he bent his head and tasted that clever mouth of hers.
At last.
CHAPTER FOUR
SARINA WAS BETRAYING herself in every possible way and she didn’t know why.
Or how.
Only that she couldn’t seem to stop.
She had walked into this office in full control. Of herself—and of Matteo, she’d been certain. She had delivered her first report to her clients when she’d returned to her hotel that night in Venice and had been gratified not only with how thankful they were, but how eager they’d seemed to hear each and every opinion she had on the topic of their deeply problematic CEO.
Dropping by unexpectedly on her various subjects was one of her favorite tricks. Backed into a corner, powerful men either rose to the occasion or, like Matteo, responded badly.
She’d had death threats. Red faces and bulging veins, with promises to rip her limb from limb. She’d been propositioned, bribed, and once—memorably—had been forcibly removed from the premises by a security team.
Sarina had delighted in each and every over-the-top, rage-soaked response. Each time a man responded that way, it confirmed she was absolutely right to do the work she did. To divide the good from the corrupt, then take the bad ones down, one by one, so they couldn’t use their wealth and power to hurt others.
And if there was the odd bit of discomfort in that, or even just the fear of it, she was always more than happy to put herself on the line. She knew in her heart that Jeanette would have done the same for her had their situations been reversed. Jeanette, who had been the one to teach Sarina how to stand up for herself in the first place. Jeanette, who had been the scourge of the would-be bullies in their elementary school. Jeannette, who had taught Sarina that there was almost nothing that couldn’t be solved with a belly laugh and the liberal application of ice cream.
But this was something else entirely.
Matteo was completely outside of her experience—and he was kissing her like he knew every single sinful thing her body was capable of when Sarina wasn’t sure she did.
She should never have touched him. She didn’t know why she had. Why her hand had taken on a life of its own and found its way to his chest—and then stayed there. And she should have slapped him the moment he’d put his hand on her face, but she hadn’t, and she di
dn’t know why.
Liar, a little voice inside her whispered then. You know exactly why.
And it was this.
It was his mouth on hers, hot and demanding.
It was his taste, male and heady and astonishingly addictive.
He was ruin and temptation and as if he knew it, he angled his head and took the kiss deeper. Wilder.
And all of that was bad enough.
But then Sarina forgot herself entirely, forgot everything she had ever vowed or believed, and kissed him back.
And everything...slid out of place.
It shifted, igniting inside of her. Then it exploded.
There was no other way to explain how her arms ended up wrapped around his neck. How he didn’t move a muscle and yet she surged up on her toes, plastering herself against the front of that dark, absurdly well-fitting suit that did nothing to erase her memories of his biceps and that T-shirt back in Venice.
None of it made sense, but he tasted like fire and he taught her about need.
One luxuriant slide of his tongue against hers at a time.
Sarina felt intoxicated. Drunk inside and out, while her breasts ached for more, and between her legs, what had been a pulse in that villa in Venice became something more like a drumbeat.
He was the one who pulled his mouth away, and Sarina let out a small, greedy sort of sound she would have assured anyone who asked she wasn’t capable of making.
Matteo’s dark eyes glittered, smoke and need.
“Make certain you give every detail of that kiss when you deliver your report,” he rasped at her, his voice like gravel, though she could feel it all over her—inside and out—like a terrible caress. “I would not wish the board to miss a single detail of your response, enthusiastic as it was.”
Shame slammed into her, thick and dark. Sarina pushed back away from him the way she should have done from the start, but it was useless. She could put space between them, she could marinate in her own dawning horror at what she’d just done—enthusiastically, as he’d said—but there was no pretending it hadn’t happened.
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