That had been another of the injustices he’d dealt her as he’d discarded her, evaluating her only based on her sexual role, as if she’d never offered him anything else. That had cut deeper into her the more she’d dwelled on it. It had taken her a long time to recover her sense of self-worth.
She bet he didn’t count her among those teachers fate had blessed him with.
A finger ran gently down her cheek. “You’re at the top of the list of those people.”
She blinked. He admitted that?
“I owe you for most of the bad decisions I didn’t make before the good ones I did make.”
Her heart stumbled, no longer knowing how hard or fast to beat, thoughts and emotions yo-yoing so hard she felt dizzy.
She shook her head as if to stop the fluctuations. “Is this admission part of your efforts to ‘put me at ease’?”
“It’s the truth.”
“Not according to you six years ago. Or forty-eight hours ago.”
His eyes misted with something like melancholy. “It’s not the whole truth, granted.” Now, what did
that
mean? “But I’m sick and tired of pretending this didn’t happen, that there were no good parts. There were…incredible parts. And no matter why you offered me this guidance, you did offer it, and I did use it to my best advantage, so…
grazie mille, bellissima.
”
This time she gaped at him for what felt like an hour.
What did this confounding man want to do to her? Was he truly suffering from a multiple personality disorder? What else could explain his contradictions?
But he’d already said he wouldn’t explain. So there was no use pursuing it.
Deciding not to give him the satisfaction of a response to his too-late, too-little thanks, she cast a look around. “I still think this level of luxury is criminal.”
His smile dawned again, incinerating all in its path. “Sorry to shoot down your censure missiles, but this isn’t my jet. It’s the Castaldinian Air Force One.” So her earlier observation was true! “Ferruccio put it at my disposal as soon as I told him of you, in his efforts to see me hitched…ASAP.”
As he grinned as if at a private joke, something inside her snapped.
She whacked him on the arm, hard.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise that became hilarity, and then he was letting out peal after peal of laughter.
“Had your joke at my expense?” she seethed.
“I was actually basking in your abuse,” he spluttered.
“Why didn’t you say you developed masochistic tendencies in your old age? You don’t need to manipulate me into obliging your perversion. The desire to shower abuse on your unfeeling head is my default setting.” She’d bet her glare would have withered rock. That hunk of unfeeling male perfection only chuckled harder. She attempted a harder verbal volley. “That this jet isn’t yours doesn’t exonerate you. You probably have your own squadron that puts it to shame. But apparently you’re so cheap you’d rather use state property and funds.”
“Damned if I do and if I don’t, eh?” He didn’t seem too upset about it, but looked like she’d just praised him heartily as he picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. “Sheathe your claws, my azure-eyed lioness.”
She gritted her teeth as his lips moved against her knuckles. “Why? Didn’t you just discover that you relish being ripped to shreds?”
He sighed his enjoyment. “Indeed. But it works better when you’re slamming me over my real flaws. Being pretentious and exploitative isn’t among my excesses and failings. If you think so then you haven’t kept abreast with my pursuits.”
That made her snort. “You mean you think it’s possible to avoid those? When your face and exploits are plastered everywhere I go? You even come out of the faucet when I turn it on. My building has turned to your services for heating.”
His laugh cracked out again.
In spite of wanting to smack him again, that sense of fairness still prodded her to add, “But among all that obnoxious overexposure, I do know your corporations have substantial and varied aid programs.”
That seemed to surprise him. “The world at large doesn’t know about this side of my activities. I wonder how you knew.”
Her smirk told him two could play at withholding answers. “It’s I who wonders what you’re after with all the discreet philanthropy. Are you playing at being Bruce Wayne? If you are, all that’s left is for you to don the cape, mask and tights…” She paused as his laughter escalated again then mumbled, “Since making you feel great is nonexistent on my list of priorities, I’ll shut up now.”
He leaned closer until his lips brushed her temple. He didn’t kiss her, just talked against her flesh. “I’d beg you not to. I don’t think I can live now without being bombarded by the shrapnel that keeps flying out of your mouth.”
She kept said mouth firmly closed.
To incite another salvo—she was sure—his lips moved to the top of her cheekbone, in the most languid, heart-melting kiss.
She jumped to her feet, nerves jangling.
He was somehow on his feet before her, blocking her way. “If you’re not going to abuse me, how about you use your mouth for something else?” He waited until her chagrin seethed and blasted out of her in a searing glare before adding in provocative pseudo innocence, “Eat?”
“It’s safer for you if I’m not near cutlery tonight.”
“Nonsense. I’m not in the least worried. What’s the worst you could do with disposable ones?”
This was beyond weird. Had he always had a sense of humor, but just hadn’t turned it on in her presence? Why did he have it perpetually on now?
Giving up trying to understand this baffling entity, yet refusing to give him an answer, she turned away, headed to the lavatory. She needed a breather before the next round.
When she came out, she faltered, trying to breathe around a lump that materialized in her throat.
He’d taken off his jacket. And had undone a few buttons on his shirt. And rolled up his sleeves.
It probably wouldn’t affect her any more if he’d taken off all his clothes. Okay, it would, but this was bad enough. The imagination that was intimate with his every inch was filling in the spaces, or rather, taking off the rest of his clothes.
He smiled that slow smile of his, no doubt noting the drool spreading at her feet. Then he extended that beautifully formed—and from experience, very talented—hand in invitation.
She covered the space between them as if by his will alone, unable to stop devouring his magnificence.
Reality again outstripped imagination or memory. The breadth and power of his shoulders and chest had owed nothing to tailoring. They were even magnified now that they were covered only in a layer of finest silk. His arms bulged with strength and symmetry under the material that obscured and highlighted at once. Those corded forearms dusted with black hair tapered to solid wrists. His abdomen was hard, his waist narrow, as were his hips, before his thighs flowed with strength and virility on the way down to endless legs.
Magnificent
wasn’t even a fitting description.
He sat back down on the couch, patting where he wanted her to sit. On his lap.
She wanted to. To just lose her mind all over him, let him seduce her, own her, drain her of will and blow her mind with pleasure, again and again and again, for as long as it took him to have enough of her this time, and to hell with caution and the lessons of harsh experience.
Before she decided to take a flying jump into the abyss, he engulfed her hand in the warm power of his and gave a tug that was persuasion and urgency itself. She tumbled over him, her skirt riding up as her thighs splayed to straddle him.
The moment she felt him against her, between her legs, the rock hardness and heat of his chest and his erection pressing against her breast and core, arousal surged so fiercely she almost fainted. Then his lips opened over her neck, and she did swoon, melting over him.
His hands convulsed in the depths of her hair, harnessing her for his devouring as his mouth took pulls of her flesh, as if he’d suck her heartbeats, her essence into him. Her head fell back, arching her neck, giving him fuller access, surrendering her wariness and heartache to his pleasuring.
She needed this, needed him, come what may.
“You feel and taste even better than all the memories that tormented me,
Gloria mia.
”
She jerked and moaned when he said her name the way he used to, Italianizing it, making it his. It inflamed her to hear it, maddened her. The way he moved against her, breathed her in, touched and kneaded and suckled her…it was all too much. And too little. She needed more. Everything. His mouth and hands and potency all over her, inside her.
“Vincenzo…”
The same desperation reverberating inside her emanated from his great body in shock waves. Then he heaved beneath her, swept her around, brought her under him on the couch, bore down on her with all of his greed and urgency. Spreading her thighs, he hooked them around his hips, pressed between them, his daunting hardness grinding against her entrance through their clothes. Her back arched deeply to accommodate him, a cry escaping from her very recesses, at the yearned-for feel of him, weight of him, sight of him as propped himself above her, his eyes molten steel with the vehemence of his passion.
“Gloriosa, divina, Gloria mia…”
Then he swooped down and his lips clamped on hers, moist, branding, his tongue thrusting deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason. Pressure built—behind her eyes, inside her chest, deep in her loins. Her hands convulsed on his arms, digging into his muscles, everything inside her surging, gushing, needing anything…anything he’d do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his manhood filling the void at her core, thrusting her to oblivion….
“We’ll be taking off in five minutes,
Principe.
”
The voice rang in a metallic echo, not registering in the delirium. It was only when he stopped his plundering kisses that it crashed into her awareness, that it made sense.
He froze over her for a long moment, his lips still fused to hers. He moved again, took her lips over and over in urgent, clinging kisses as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he was gulping what he could of her taste before he could have no more. Then muttering something savage under his breath, he severed their meld, groaning as if was scraping off his skin. It was how she felt, too, as his body separated from hers.
She lay back, stunned, unable to move. Dismay at the barely aborted insanity drenched her, even as need still hammered at her, demanding his assuagement. His heavy-lidded gaze regarded her in denuding intensity, as if savoring the sight of what he’d done to her. Then he reached for her, caressed and kneaded her as he helped her up on the couch.
He secured her seat belt before buckling his as the engines, which she realized had been on for a while now, revved higher and the jet started moving.
They were really taking off.
Everything was going out of control, too far, too fast.
And she had no idea where they were going. Figuratively and literally.
The latter had a definite answer. And in an existence that had no answers, past or future, she had to have at least that.
“Where are we going?”
At her unsteady question, he pulled her closer, his eyes blazing with unspent desire. “How about we keep it a surprise?”
“How about I go demand that your pilot drop me off?”
He tutted. “I see I have to surprise you with no warning next time.”
“Since you can’t take me somewhere without warning unless you develop teleportation, too…”
“Or kidnap you for real and keep you tied up and gagged on the way.”
“…then get a
real
surprise when you finally untie and ungag me. Something broken or bitten off or both.”
Looking even more aroused and elated, he gathered her tighter, put his lips to her ear, nipped her lobe and whispered, “We’re going to Castaldini.”
Six
G
lory had one thought. That she wasn’t going to repeat his words. No matter how flabbergasted she was that he’d said…
“Castaldini.”
God.
No.
He was making her echo his declarations like a malfunctioning playback.
She pushed out of his arms, whacked him on both this time, as hard as she could.
“No, we’re
not
going to Castaldini,” she hissed.
He caught his lower lip in beautiful white teeth, wincing in evident enjoyment at her violence, rubbing the sting of her blow as if to drive it deeper, not away. “Why not?”
She barely held from whacking him again. “Because you conned me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“When you said we were flying, I assumed it would be to another city or at most another state.”
“Am I responsible for your faulty assumptions? I gave you all the clues, said I’m taking you where the most exclusive jewelry on the planet awaits you. Where did you think that was?”
“I didn’t realize you were playing Trivial Pursuit at the time. And why go all this way for a ring? What’s that hyperbole about Castaldinian jewelry? Is that exaggerated national pride where you claim everything in Castaldini is the best in history?”
“I don’t know about everything, but I’m pretty sure Castaldini’s royal jewels are as exclusive as it gets.”
“Castaldini’s royal j—” Her teeth clattered shut before she completed parroting this latest piece of astounding info. Shock surged back a moment later. “You can’t be serious! I can’t wear a ring from Castaldini’s freaking royal jewels!”
“
You
can’t be serious thinking my bride would wear anything else.”
“I’m not your bride. I’m your decoy. And that only for a year. But as you said, a year can be a very long time. I can’t take the responsibility for something that…that priceless….” She pushed his hands away when they attempted to draw her back into his embrace. “For God’s sake, during the height of Castaldini’s economic problems, before King Ferruccio was crowned, people were saying that if only Castaldini sold half of those jewels, they’d settle the national debt!”
“Oh, I did propose the solution. But Castaldinians would rather sell their firstborns.”
“And you want me to wear a ring from a collection that revered, for any reason, let alone a charade? You expect me to walk around wearing a kingdom’s legacy on my finger?”
“That’s exactly what you’ll do as my bride. In fact, you yourself will be a new national treasure. Now that’s settled…”
“Nothing’s settled,” she spluttered, feeling she was in a whirlpool that dragged her deeper the more she struggled. “I won’t go to Castaldini. Now tell your pilot to turn back.”
A look came into his eyes that made her itch to hit him again. One of
such
patient reasonableness. “You knew you’d go to Castaldini sooner rather than later.”
“I thought you said I could say no to your blackmail.”
His nod was equanimity itself. “I said I wouldn’t expose your family if you said no. But if you say yes, I’ll make sure they will never be exposed.”
Ice crept into her veins again. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“They’ve committed too many crimes. It’s only a matter of time before someone finds out what I have. Marry me and I’ll do everything in my power to wipe their trail clean.”
“That’s just another roundabout blackmail.”
“Actually, it’s the opposite. Before, I said I’d hurt them if you say no. Now I’m saying I’ll help them if you say yes.”
Her head spun, her thoughts tangling like a ball of twine after a wicked cat had gotten to it. He was the feline to her own cornered mouse.
“I don’t see how that’s different. And even if I say yes…”
He caught her hands, pressed them into the heat of his steel muscles. “Say it,
Gloria mia.
Give me your consent.”
“Even if I do…”
“Do it. Say you’ll be my bride.”
She squirmed away from his intensity. “Okay, okay, yes. Dude, you’re pushy.”
He huffed mockingly. “Such eagerness. Such graciousness.”
“If you think I owe you either, you’re out of your zillion-IQ mind. And this doesn’t mean anything’s changed. Or that’s it’s not still under duress. It certainly doesn’t mean I consent to going to Castaldini now.”
He sat back, all tension leaving his body, a look of gratification sweeping across his breathtaking face. “Give me one reason why you’re so against going.”
She had to blink to clear the glaze of hypnosis from her eyes. “I can give you a volume as thick as your prenup.”
“One incontestable reason should suffice. And ‘because I don’t want to’ doesn’t count.”
“Of course what I want doesn’t count. You made
that
clear.”
His pout made her want to drag him down and sink her teeth into those lips that had just reinjected his addiction into her system. “I made it clear that I changed my mind, about many things. Be flexible and change yours.”
“I don’t owe you any flexibility, either. I let you steamroll me by letting me think this was going to be a short trip inside my country. I didn’t sign on to leave it.”
“As my bride, you will leave it. Though not forever.”
“Yeah, only for a one-year term. But I get to choose when that will begin.”
“I meant you’d always be free to return, to go anywhere. This time, you can go back to New York tomorrow if you wish.”
“I don’t want to leave New York in the first place. I can’t just hop to another country!”
“Why not? You do that all the time in your work.”
“Well, this isn’t work. And speaking of work, I can’t drop everything with no notice.”
“You’re on vacation, remember?”
“I have other things to do besides work.”
“Like what?” He met her fury with utmost serenity.
“Okay, I changed my mind, too. You’re not a bulldozer. You’re an ocean. You’d erode mountains. No, a tsunami. You uproot everything, subside only with everything submerged under your control.”
He chuckled. “As much as I enjoy having you dissect and detail my vices, food is becoming a pressing issue. I had the chef prepare favorite dishes from Castaldini for you to sample.”
Her hands itched to tweak that dimpled cheek, hard. “Don’t change the subject.”
Ignoring her, he undid his seat belt, then leaned into her, undoing hers. “You really shouldn’t risk me getting any hungrier—in every way.”
Her gaze slid to the evidence of one hunger and…whoa.
She tore her gaze up, only to slam into his watchful, knowing, enticing one. Gasping with the need to explore him, she said, “Even in food you’re giving me no choice.”
He separated from her lingeringly, pushing buttons in a panel by the couch. It was still only when he stood up that she realized they were cruising steadily.
“I am.
My
choice is to feast on you and to hell with food. I’m giving you the choice to avoid what you really want by choosing food, for now.”
She bit back a retort. It would be silly to deny his assessment, when only the pilot’s announcement had saved her from being wrapped around him naked right now, begging for—and taking—everything.
Exasperated with both of them, she ignored his inviting hand to rise and walk to where he indicated. Behind a screen of gorgeous lacelike woodwork at the far end of the lounge by the closed quarters was a stunning table-for-two setup.
Though everything in the compartment felt like authentic masterpieces, with the distinctive designs of seventeenth-or eighteenth-century Castaldini, the furniture was discreetly mounted on rails embedded in the fuselage. Exquisite, delicately carved, polished mahogany chairs were upholstered in burgundy glossy-on-matte floral-patterned silk. The matching round table was draped in the most intricate beige tape-lace tablecloth she’d ever seen, set over longer burgundy organza, with its pattern echoing the stunning hand-painted china laid out on top. Lit candles, crystal glasses, a vase with a conflagration of burgundy and cream roses, linen napkins, silver cutlery and a dozen other accents—all monogrammed with the royal insignia of Castaldini—completed the breathtaking arrangement.
She looked up at him as he slid the chair back for her. “I somehow can’t imagine King Ferruccio here.”
His eyebrows rose as he sat across her. “You mean you still think it’s my jet?”
It hadn’t occurred to her to doubt that or anything else he’d said. She’d believed his every word, declaration and promise.
Which was only more proof that fools never, ever learned.
She sighed. “It’s not that. The rest of the jet is so grand, befitting a king and then some. But
this
setting is too…”
“Intimate?” he chimed in when she made a stymied gesture around the dreamily lit space. “Your senses are on the money. This section was designed by Clarissa as her and Ferruccio’s mile-high love nest.”
Glory’s simmering heat shot up, imagining all the pleasure that could be had here, and feeling she was intruding on someone’s privacy. “You sure he’s okay with you invading it?”
“He scanned my fingerprint into the controls.”
“Let me put it this way, then. Are you sure he cleared it with Queen Clarissa?”
“What I’m sure of is if he didn’t, he’d love to be punished for his unsanctioned actions.”
Her lips twitched as she imagined the regal figure of King Ferruccio being spanked by his fair queen. “Another D’Agostino with a fetish for female abuse?”
“Ferruccio would let Clarissa step dance all over him and beg for more. But since she’s part angel, she doesn’t take advantage of his submissive affliction where she’s concerned.”
His expression softened as he talked about his queen and cousin. Though she’d been a princess first, the previous king’s daughter, not much had been known about Clarissa before she became the illegitimate king’s queen. Ever since their marriage, she’d become one of the most romantic royal figures in history. Glory had heard only great things about her.
It still twisted her gut to feel Vincenzo’s deep fondness for the woman, to witness evidence that he was capable of such tender affections. What he hadn’t felt for her. What she hadn’t aroused in him.
Oblivious to her sudden plunge in mood, he smiled. “And speaking of access…”
He pushed a button on a panel by the huge oval window to his side. The door of the lounge whispered open. In moments, half a dozen waiters dressed in burgundy-and-black uniforms, with the royal emblem embroidered on their chests in gold, walked in a choreographed queue into the dining compartment.
She smiled back at them as they began arranging their burdens on the table and on the service station a few feet away. Even though domes covered the trays, the aromas struck directly to her vacant-since-she-read-Vincenzo’s-email stomach, making it lament loudly.
His lips spread at the sound, his beauty supernatural in the candlelight. “Good to know you’ve worked up another appetite.” The word
another
came out like a caress to her most intimate flesh. He was playing her body like the virtuoso he was. “Bodes well for your being more interested in food than using me for target practice.”
“I see you failed to acquire harmless tableware. But you like living dangerously, don’t you?” She picked up a fork, gauging its weight and center of gravity as if to estimate a perfect throw. “I mean, silver? Isn’t that deadly to your kind?”
He sat back in his chair, spreading his great body, as if to let her to take aim wherever she pleased. “If I was the kind you refer to, wouldn’t I be ‘undying’ dangerously?”
And she realized something terrible.
She was…enjoying this. This duel of words and wills. She found it exhilarating.
It shocked her because she’d never experienced anything quite like it. Certainly never with him. She’d once loved him with all her heart, lusted after him until it hurt, but she’d never really
enjoyed
being with him. Enjoyment necessitated ease, humor, and those and so much more had been missing from his life. He’d been too tense, too
in
tense, in work and in passion. She’d felt only towering yet turbulent emotions while he was around.
Now, this new him was just plain…
fun.
Fun? The man who was more or less kidnapping her and making her marry him temporarily under terrible conditions and for all the wrong reasons while seducing her out of her mind just because he could?
Yeah. He was doing all that. And was still fun with a capital
F.
It made everything she felt for him even fiercer.
Had she caught his masochistic tendencies? Or maybe she was developing Stockholm syndrome after all?
Again unaware of her turmoil, he pursued their latest topic. “In the interest of not turning to dust if you fling something my way while you attempt to crack open the crab…” He took the fork from her, gathered the rest of her cutlery and placed them on the tray of a retreating waiter.
Admitting that there was no denying, or fighting, the enjoyment, she decided to go with the flow. As he’d recommended earlier, in what felt like another life.
She eyed him in derision. “You could have left me the spoon. It poses minimal danger, certainly a lesser one than the mess I’ll make as I slurp soup directly from the bowl and wipe sauce off the plate with my fingers.”
“Mess away.” Another button had his chair circling the table, bringing him a breath away. “I’ll lick you clean.”
Leaving her struggling with another bout of arrhythmia, he leaned across her then lifted silver covers bearing Castaldini’s royal insignia in repoussé, uncovering serving plates and bowls simmering over gentle flames. Her salivary glands gushed with the combination of aromas—his and the food’s. He filled a bowl with heavenly smelling soup, garnishing it with dill and croutons. Then he reached across the table for his spoon.
Dipping it in the steaming depths, he scooped a spoonful then brought it to his lips. Pursing them slowly, sensuously, he blew a cooling breath over the thick creaminess. It rippled, just like the waves of arousal inside her.
Her nerves reverberated like plucked strings as he drew her to his side, no longer knowing if she felt her heart or his booming inside her rib cage. Then he lifted the spoon to her lips. They opened involuntarily, accepting his offering. She gulped down the delicious, rich liquid, moaning at the taste, at his ministrations.
Vincenzo was feeding her.