Authors: Tara Pammi
That feeling of not being good enough when she had been at one of her father’s lavish parties returned with full force. She swept her hand over her hip, the exquisite silk of her dress restoring her nerves a bit.
“Stop twitching, Olivia,” Alexander whispered into her ear, and she shivered. “You look absolutely stunning.”
How did he read her mind so easily?
Her heart flipped, and she forced herself to draw a breath, to not read too much into it. “So the point of us being here is that someone from the press will see us and come to the conclusion that everything is hunky-dory in your world?” she said flippantly.
His gaze scanned the private ballroom. “The point of us being here is that I have an important business meeting to conduct.”
She looked around the impeccably dressed guests, couples smiling at each other, women checking out each other’s designer duds. She made a mental note to thank him later for her own. Even the best dress in her suitcase would have made her stand out like a sore thumb in this crowd. “This doesn’t look like a business meeting to me.”
He nodded at someone on the other side of the hall and pulled her in that direction. She stiffened as his hard body pressed into her, her skin singeing where he laid his palm on the bare skin at her back. “Not every business meeting is conducted in a boardroom. Some men prefer to cloak it under the guise of a pleasant evening. It gives them a chance to size me up. This particular one being of old school, places high value on propriety.”
She stared at the middle-aged couple he was smiling at. “And you need to impress him?” she said, curious despite herself.
“Don’t look so gleeful about it.” His blue gaze twinkled. In that moment, he was the suave, astute businessman, the one that had been lauded on more than one business magazine. “Actually, it’s he who needs my capital.” She smiled, the pulse of his excitement a tangible thing. “Integrating his business into King Enterprises and bringing it forward into the twenty-first century is the challenge I’m looking forward to.”
Of course.
She nodded and smiled as they joined them.
Henry McIntyre looked her up and down shrewdly as Alexander introduced her. “I’ve been following your business’s progress for a while now, Mrs. King,” he said, his gaze razor sharp. “You’re a rising star, and now that you have the sharpest businessman around on your side—” he tilted his gray head toward Alexander “—I’m sure you’ll leave us all behind in a cloud of dust.”
Olivia mumbled her thanks and settled down. Her hand trembled around the champagne flute as the older man went on in the vein of how perfectly matched they were in every way. She was no stranger to the fact that Kim was successful, as driven as Alexander. Yet Olivia had never felt the hollowness she felt inside. And it had more to do with the man sitting next to her than any career success Kim had achieved. Feeling like a fake of the worst kind, she leaned back against her seat and tuned out the conversation around her.
She was on her third glass of champagne when an excited, almost incoherent babble swept through the banquet hall, like a quiet drone of buzzing bees. Alexander and she turned at the same time. He stiffened in his chair, tension radiating from every inch of him, his skin a stark mask over the sharp angles of his face.
Olivia would have recognized the pair anywhere, even if they weren’t Hollywood stars. Nicholas King and Isabella Fiori. The first thing that stuck her was how much he looked like them. He truly had the best of both the worlds. The second thing was that neither of them was as shocked to see him as he was to see them.
Alexander pushed his chair back and stood up, leveling a furious gaze at Henry, who fell back against the gilded chair.
“I owe her a favor, Alexander. Just hear her out.”
Alexander shook his head, his features set in stone. “You’ve just lost the chance to save your business.”
His words were coated with a dark fury that drew a line down Olivia’s spine.
“Alexander?” she whispered as he tugged her up.
He didn’t respond. Just stared at the approaching couple, his eyes cold and hard. Squashing the questions pounding inside her head, Olivia returned the pressure on his fingers, hoping to get through to him, to break the bubble of emotion that held him immobile in its hold. But he didn’t move, not even a flicker of eyelid.
The silence in the hall prickled along her skin. She swallowed as she looked around. Every gaze in the banquet hall was focused on them with greedy curiosity stamped across their faces, an indecent hunger as though they couldn’t wait to see a crack in the man they all envied, to see him bleeding.
She bit her lip. He loathed losing control, yet he seemed oblivious to anything around him. Her mind made up, she stood in front of him and cupped his jaw. He still didn’t look at her. Pulling some air into her lungs seemed hard work, her heart revving up faster and harder at what she was going to do. She swept her hands into his hair and pulled his head down. The tangy scent of him pervaded her as she arched closer and pressed her lips to his.
She only meant to snag his attention for a minute, to distract him from whatever it was that choked him in its grip.
Instead, his hands crept up her back, circled her nape, pulled her into his hard body with a force that knocked the breath out of her. Her breasts crushed against the wall of his chest, the juncture of her thighs cradled by his, every line of muscle in his body pressed against her shaking ones. Her shocked gasp misted into nothing as he made a rough sound in his throat, and crushed her mouth with his.
Warm and soft, his lips flushed against her lower lip. He tasted like whiskey, like pure, torturous heaven. He pressed his advantage, his tongue invading her mouth, erotic as it dueled with her own, and the intoxicating taste of him exploded inside her mouth. Heat, unlike anything she’d ever known, slithered low and furious in her belly, curling into pinpricks of pleasure all over.
She had wondered about this moment since the minute she had laid eyes on him. Yet reality was nothing like she had imagined. There was no seduction, nothing civilized, nothing
controlled
about what he did to her. He prodded and plundered her mouth, drew her tongue into his mouth, his actions almost savage, as if he needed her taste to sustain himself. A moan escaped her as he nipped her lower lip, his harsh breathing puncturing the sexual cloud fogging her senses. She tilted her head away from him to pull some air, and his mouth trailed over her jaw toward her neck. It was so tempting to stay like that, to take whatever he gave, to let herself go.
But she couldn’t ignore the little voice that said he really didn’t want to kiss
her.
She couldn’t forget she was a stand-in and for her sister, of all people. The passing mention of Kim was enough to electrocute her drugged senses back into reality.
She cupped his jaw, the pads of her thumbs tracing the grooves around his mouth. “Alexander? Get a grip, or I swear I—”
He cupped her face and tilted it up in a rough movement, his gaze blazing. As if he didn’t want to stop. After only a few seconds that felt like another eternity, he nodded and pulled her to his side. Just as his parents reached them. She could feel their gazes upon them. She ran a hand over her trembling lips as she turned around.
“Hello, Alexander.” Isabella drawled his name, her accent thick. Liv searched her voice for a trace of affection. The very lack of emotion sent alarm bells ringing through Olivia. “It is good to see you.”
Alexander didn’t move or bend his head even though it was clear that his mother wanted to kiss his cheek. Nicholas King didn’t utter a word, either. Only stood at his wife’s side, his blue eyes, hard and flinty.
“Isabella,” Alexander said. “I would call it a pleasure but we both know I don’t have your talent for acting. So let me get straight to the point. What the hell are you doing here?”
The silence that followed sounded like a deafening drumbeat to Liv’s ears.
Isabella smiled, not betraying her reaction even by the flicker of an eyelid. But then, the woman hadn’t won an Oscar for nothing. “We are married again.”
Alexander’s fingers dug into Liv’s flesh as his grip tightened on her shoulders. If he had been angry before, Liv didn’t even have a name for the blistering emotion pouring out of him now. “And you thought I would want to celebrate the good news with you?”
He turned Olivia with him, half dragging her toward the exit.
“No,” his mother said behind them. “I want to see Emily. And I won’t let you stop me anymore.”
It was only because she was flushed so close to him, in tune to his every breath, to every nuance in his face, that Liv felt the imperceptible shudder that ran through him. And it sent a pang of ache shooting through her.
But he didn’t turn around. Only halted long enough to utter, “No.”
And just like that, they walked out, Olivia still reeling with shock.
CHAPTER SIX
O
LIVIA
THREW
HER
metallic clutch onto the coffee table and followed Alexander into his bedroom, teetering on the heels. The ride back in the limousine had been filled with nerve-racking silence, punctured only by Alexander’s numerous calls on his cell phone. He hadn’t given her a chance to interject a word.
The sound of a shower running in the bathroom halted her footsteps at the entrance to his bedroom. He didn’t want her there. She knew that as surely as the tingle she still felt in her lips. But she didn’t care. Something had happened and she had no idea what. And she wasn’t going to leave the room until she had some answers.
She undid the winding straps of her sandals. The lush carpet felt heavenly against her bare feet. Moving to the French windows, she pulled the dark curtains away. The king-size bed, complete with black silk sheets, drew her gaze, robbing her mind of everything else. She swallowed hard, wanting to run her hands over the silk, the scent of him rapidly drugging her senses. And that’s how Alexander found her.
Staring at his bed like a sex-crazed twit.
A black towel tied low on his hips, he ran a hand through his hair. “Leave, Olivia.”
Her gaze drank him in, her breath stuck in her throat. He wasn’t overtly muscular, yet there was definition to every muscle in his chest. His hair, still wet, clung to his scalp. Rivulets of water slithered down his chest, tugging her gaze to his washboard stomach and disappeared into the towel. She scrunched her brows as if she could telekinesis the towel to drop.
She knew she heard him, because she felt the responding signal from her own brain.
Move. Run.
Yet it seemed her muscles were incapable of following up. Her skin tingled all over. She licked her lips, rubbed her fingers absently over her nape. Dampness pooled at her sex and yet the man hadn’t even touched her. The sound of his towel hitting the floor, denim sliding over his skin, every cell in her was attuned to each sound he made.
And then he was right in front of her, his bronzed chest rippling with muscles, unzipped black jeans hanging over his hips. Her stomach dipped and dived. “Olivia?”
Her gaze hitched on the strong column of his throat, the corded muscles in his neck. “Hmm?”
“Stop staring and Get. The. Hell. Out.” Her gaze flew to his. His gaze devoured her, the naked hunger in it stripping all rational thought from her. “Or God help me, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”
She shook her head, ignoring the free-falling in her stomach. “I’m not leaving until you tell me what tonight was about.” He took a deep breath and his impressive chest fell and rose with it. “When was the last time you saw them, Alexander?”
“It’s really none of your business.”
She steeled herself against his anger, against the onslaught of sexual tension spiraling around them.
“We crossed that line when you dragged me here.” She turned the diamond ring on her finger, its cold, unfamiliar touch never far from her thoughts, the thought that it would be only this particular one she would ever wear in her life a painful reminder. “Think of it this way, the sooner you answer my questions, the sooner you will be rid of me.”
“Nine years ago, in court.”
Shock rendered her speechless for a few seconds. That explained why he had frozen like that. “But you knew they were in Paris?”
“I knew she was. I’ve heard rumors that she means to sue me for custody of Emily.”
A heaviness gathered low in her stomach. It was almost as if a curtain fell away from her eyes. His insistence on her accompanying him to Paris, the check, his shock at seeing Isabella with his father, everything neatly slotted into place like pieces of a puzzle. She walked circles around him, her mind grappling to understand.
With a possible custody battle coming, of course he couldn’t risk a scandal. “Is this why you dragged me to Paris?”
His silence was answer enough.
“She wouldn’t really engage you in a custody battle, could she? I mean, they could just be rumors.” Even as she said that she couldn’t shake off the utter lack of emotion she had spied in Isabella’s eyes.
He laughed, a harsh sound that sent ripples of fear skating over her skin. He roamed the huge room, which seemed to be swallowed up by his restless energy. He seemed surrounded by a fortress of emotion, like a bellowing volcano struggling to contain itself, nothing like the man she had known so far.
Or was this the true him?
“My mother? She’s capable of anything. Except being a mother.”
He reached her before she could blink, invading her personal space. The heat from his body sent tingles up and down her skin, his scent sending her heart into overdrive. “Is your curiosity satisfied now? Are you happy that after all, I’m a flawed man, no better than you?”
Something had changed in him at the party. The suave, heartless businessman was gone. He was seething, his emotions tangible in his aggressive stance, in the way every muscle in him bunched tight, ready to strike. And she was in the direct line of fire. Still, Olivia couldn’t force herself to move. He was in pain. Her heart contracted with ache. She didn’t know why or how she knew that, but she did.
“I’m not.” She forced her throat to work past the fear. “The idiot that I’m, I want to be here, with you.” She licked her lips, and he moved another step closer.
His gaze narrowed on her lips. “Why?”
She shrugged, unwilling to look into the whys of it. “You just don’t seem like yourself. You need to let it out, Alexander. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do something,
anything.
Throw that glass at the wall. I swear you’ll feel much better.”
His thumb flicked her lower lip, and his gaze drilled into hers. He was thinking about their kiss. Suddenly, she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know what he was thinking, not in this strange mood. “You want to know what I want to do, what would make me feel infinitely better?”
Her knees turned into jelly. Before she could even frame a response, he pulled her hard into his body, his hand curled around her nape. A ragged sound escaped her as his arousal rubbed against her belly, his other hand shaping her hip. The flimsy silk of her dress was no barrier between his hard body and hers. Pangs of desire shot through to the apex of her thighs, only his hand on her keeping her upright. “Do you have an idea now?”
Every nerve ending within her screamed with tightening need as his hands moved up her bare arms. “I want to kiss you again. I want to rip that dress off you, throw you onto my bed and bury myself inside you. Until I can’t move or think anymore, until every cell in me is so numb that I don’t feel anymore.”
A tremor traveled from her nape to her toes, her skin was on fire with need.
“Unless you’re up for that, get out.”
She pushed him back with her hand, feeling a sudden chill. Like a concrete wall, he didn’t even budge an inch. “You don’t want me, you want Kim.” She wasn’t sure who needed the reminder more,
him or her.
“There isn’t a single moment that I confuse you for Kim anymore.”
Her gaze flew to his. There was no disdain or the scorn she had become so used to seeing. Only naked desire. And it messed with what little sense she had left.
* * *
Alexander stared at Olivia, at the shadow that fell over her expressive face as she uttered Kim’s name. But it didn’t have the intended effect. Nothing could puncture the potency of his desire for her now, of the fury, the grief raging through his blood, seeking an outlet.
And what an outlet it would be.
She stood out like a siren in her red dress against the backdrop of his black sheets. The exposed skin at the neckline shimmered brighter than the silk of her dress, her silky hair fighting the confines of its style, every rise and dip of her curves enticing him into temptation.
Before tonight, he had only wondered at his attraction to her, at the way his senses felt so wired into whatever she did, that it was nothing more than a reaction of his body to hers.
He had been wrong.
There was nothing simple about the way he reacted to her.
“It might never go as far as a custody battle, right? I mean your mother said they just want to see Emily.”
Her smile, her obvious delight that his problem was solved shifted something inside him. He had trained himself to not need anything from anyone, and her concern in the face of his harsh words seeped into his blood. Like a whisper of a gentle wave that could easily become a sweep of a violent storm that he couldn’t contain. Like a drop of poison that could pollute the whole stream.
Because seeing Isabella and Nicholas together had already made a dent in him. It was as though the self-control, the discipline he had acquired over the past twelve years had disintegrated into dust at his feet. His mind had flipped back to his childhood, shuffling through a reel of pictures, drowning him in memories he didn’t want, crumbling the defenses he had built.
His parents’ constant fights, Nick’s vicious anger, Isabella’s elaborate power plays to keep his father’s attention, Alexander’s own innate need to protect her, his failure to do so, his pathetic attempts to win her love, to be better, smarter, to excel...as if it might buy her love, as if it might divert her attentions for one second from his father to him.
God, the list went on and on....
Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades.
And as a man who had always acknowledged his own limitations before he destroyed them, Alexander admitted the truth to himself.
He wanted Olivia with every cell in his body, with every breath he pulled into his lungs. It would be sex, it would be escape, but it would also be so much more. Because he’d had a taste of what she could give.
With one kiss, she had dragged him back from the edge. From the fury, from the dark, shameful spiral of his own thoughts. And he had kissed her, reveled in taking everything she gave like a sinking man who had been thrown a lifeline.
She could have just stood there, watched him lose the tenuous hold he had had on himself and let it all go to hell. Yet she had stood by him, pulled him back from the edge in a way only she could have thought of. Her loyalty despite everything he had said to her clashed against his belief that she was selfish to the core.
Even now, her concern, her stubborn stance in seeing him through this, they washed over him, prying open things he had locked away a long time ago, things he never wanted to feel again.
No.
He stepped back from her, the hollow sensation in his gut blaring like an alarm. He didn’t want her, he didn’t need her concern, on any level.
It was only by emptying his life of any need that he’d survived. He could go even so far as to say he was a slow learner, couldn’t he? Because it had taken the worst to happen before he had stopped clinging to that hope that one day his mother would leave his father as she had promised so many times, to shed the fear that he would one day lose her, to overcome the guilt that he wasn’t enough to protect her and himself.
Control, over his fear, over his guilt, over the debilitating need to gain his mother’s love, that’s what had helped him survive.
“You will let them see her, won’t you?”
He dragged his gaze back to her, steeling himself against the worry in hers. “Stay out of it, Olivia.”
Of course, she didn’t. She moved closer to him, her fingers gripping his forearms. He felt her tremble, saw her fight to draw her next breath, her dismay at how easily the need between them flared into life, unraveled them. And still, she didn’t run away. “You’re hurt, Alexander.” Looking at the warmth brimming in her chocolate gaze, he braced himself. It was more deadly to him than anything else he’d encountered. “She didn’t even ask after you. She didn’t—”
“Stop. Just because I admitted to wanting to screw you—” with each word he fought for control until the emotion sifted out of him “—doesn’t mean I need or even welcome your concern.”
“But—”
“
Enough.
Don’t you think you’re taking this pretense a little too far?” He watched like the heartless bastard he was as her face lost its color. “You’re, after all, a stand-in. You’re not obligated to hold up the whole
through better or worse.
I appreciate what you did for me back there but it doesn’t have to continue here.”
She drew back in the slightest of movements, an imperceptible jerk of that stubborn chin. Her hands shaking, her slender shoulders held stiff, she moved to the door. “Of course not. I mistook you for a different man, someone who could still
feel.
But thanks for the reminder that you’re incapable of that emotion.”
Alexander ran a hand over his eyes, feeling as though a crack had inched around his heart. But he couldn’t let it spread. If anything, seeing his parents was a timely reminder of what he could become if he let himself feel.