by Tara Pammi
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 e
verything 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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
OLIVIA BIT INTO the chocolate filled-croissant and stifled a moan as the butter and chocolate melted in her mouth. The pavement café adjacent to Alexander’s building was a little slice of heaven. She had taken to spending most of her time here rather than spend one unnecessary minute with Alexander cooped up in the penthouse.
She had stayed up a few nights, and worked on her pitch, the ideas flowing as she strove to capture them on paper. Now all she had to do was create the presentation and her pitch would be ready. She closed her eyes and leaned back, a smile curving her mouth. The warm, late-afternoon sun caressed her skin. The faint hum of traffic and chitchat enveloped her without jarring her thoughts, which of course, revolved around Alexander.
He had mostly left her to her own devices the past week, during the day at least. But, in the evening, it was another party, or a charity event or in the case of yesterday night, an intimate dinner with friends.
Ever since the night they had encountered his parents, there was a difference in him. Of course, he was back in perfect control, whereas all she had to do was close her eyes to taste him on her lips.
He was polite with her, didn’t throw insults in her face anymore.
He had even made her coffee in the middle of the night when she had been rubbing her eyes determined to finish her work. And when she had promptly fallen asleep with her chin on the table, after drinking the coffee, he’d put away her work neatly, picked her up and tucked her into bed. All through the week, he had let her pick his astute brain, had explained to her all the elements that went into making a marketing campaign a success, without mocking her.
By all accounts, he’d been exceptionally nice to her. She should be glad about it.
But she wasn’t. Not that she would welcome the Alexander who’d been so brutally honest with her, outlined her every failing. But he’d been well, honest, with her. She had known exactly where she stood with him. Now that she had seen a glimpse of the real man beneath, the one who felt pain and grief, the one who had openly acknowledged the attraction between them, she couldn’t forget the savage need that had glittered in his gaze before he had pushed her away ruthlessly.
Even knowing that he had been in pain, knowing that he despised having revealed himself to her like that, she still liked that man.
She leaned back in the seat and clutched her stomach. When had she become such a masochist? Hadn’t she already learned her lesson more than once? What else would she have dared if he hadn’t pushed her away?
Guilt coiled through her belly, raking its nails over her insides. Of all the men in the world, why did she have to be so drawn to her sister’s fiancé?
“You’re hiding from me.”
She jerked straight and tucked her hands in her lap guiltily.
Standing right above her, Alexander cast a dark shadow over her, stealing the sun’s warmth. She shivered as the sheer presence of him pressed on her. Dark and brooding, his expression was in direct contrast to his white shirt.
She swallowed as his gaze swept over her. It hesitated for an infinitesimal moment over her mouth, his pupils expanding against the blue, sending a lick of heat through her. She could feel the tightening of her cheeks, the flush creeping over her neck. She clutched her legs together under the table, glad that she was sitting down.
She straightened up in her chair, and folded her hands. There was a boldness to his gaze, a decisive set to the line of his mouth that scared her.
“I’m not hiding,” she said, the words sounding breathless, not at all like she’d intended. Her heart raced as he pulled out the chair next to her and settled on it. “However, I might beg them to let me live in their kitchen forever.”
He smiled, even though it didn’t reach his gaze. Her arm moved against his as she reached for the last bite of her croissant, sending a tingle up hers. Just as she brought it to her mouth, he deflected her hand toward him, his grip at her elbow gentle and firm. His mouth closed over the tips of her fingers as he tugged the croissant into his mouth.
She reeled back, sensation exploding over every inch of her. She watched as he chewed and swallowed, the movement of his Adam’s apple, the dark glitter in his eyes holding her captivated. He didn’t moan or gush over it, only nodded in understanding.
The silence shrilled around them. She fidgeted in her seat, wanting to move away from him. She opened her mouth and just as quickly shut it as he leaned back. Something was wrong. She didn’t want to ask, she didn’t want to care, he had clearly drawn the line between them. But she hated this awkward tension between them. “Alexander, what’s wrong?”
“Why would you think anything’s wrong?”
“Because you have that look about you.” He raised an eyebrow, a challenge in his expression. She exhaled on a whoosh. She was beginning to understand him a little now, was beginning to pick up the little signals that meant his emotions were far closer to the
surface than he would have her believe. “Like you would like nothing better than to inhale me whole.”
He threw his head back and laughed.
She continued as though he hadn’t interrupted. “Only then, you wouldn’t like yourself for what you’ve done so you’ll spit me out again, uncaring of how that makes me feel. I’m not a punching bag for you to hit whenever something angers you. I’m here because Kim asked me to, whether you believe me or not. And—” she swallowed as his gaze searched hers, his attention never wavering from her face “—for reasons beyond my understanding, I’m attracted to you. So stop yanking my chain. Whatever our differences, I thought you a better man than this.”
He cupped her chin, pulled her closer and all air left her lungs. He angled his face and leaned in. It was the perfect position for him to press his lips to hers. She trembled as he watched her like a hungry hawk. Torture methods probably had nothing on what this man could do to her with just a glance.
“I’m not yanking your chain.” His breath breezed over her lips, sending a ripple of longing through her. “I’ve been fighting the insane urge to kiss you, to strip you of every inch of clothing and take you, until neither of us can move an inch much less think about the right or wrong of what we’ve done. It’s a madness in my blood.” The pad of his thumb brushed her lip. “And before you say I’m pining for Kim again—” his gaze became distant and hard “—let me make it clear for the last time, that she never ever evoked anything as uncivilized in me as you do.”
She pushed his hands away and slacked against the chair, her breathing shallow.
“There. Does that make you feel better?”
The tone of his words could slice through the cup in her hands. “No,” she said loudly, her senses slowly coming out of the fog he seemed to spin effortlessly.
