by Maya Blake
‘I have to make a living, Zaccheo.’
‘You still sing?’ His voice had grown deeper, his eyes darkening to a molten grey as he stared down at her. Although Zaccheo’s expression could be hard to decipher most of the time, the mercurial changes in his eyes often spelled his altered mood.
This molten grey was one she was familiar with. And even though she didn’t want to be reminded of it, a pulse of decadent sensation licked through her belly as she recalled the first night she’d seen him.
He’d walked into Siren an hour before closing, when she’d been halfway through a sultry, soulful ballad—a song about forbidden love, stolen nights and throwing caution to the wind. He’d paused to order a drink at the bar, then made his way to the table directly in front of the stage. He’d sipped his whisky, not once taking his eyes off her. Every lyric in the three songs that had followed had felt as if it had been written for the man in front of her and the woman she’d wanted to be for him.
She’d been beyond mesmerised when he’d helped her off the stage after her session. She’d said yes immediately when he’d asked her out the next night.
But she’d been wrong, so very wrong to believe fate had brought Zaccheo to the club. He’d hunted her down with single-minded intent for his own selfish ends.
God, how he must have laughed when she’d fallen so easily into his arms!
She yanked her arm free. ‘Yes, I still sing. And I’d be careful before you start making any threats on my professional life, too. I’ve indulged you with the engagement-ring picking and the makeover and the homecoming dinner. Now I intend to get back to my reality.’
She hurried away, determined not to look over her shoulder to see whether he was following. She made it to her room and quickly changed into her going-to-work attire of jeans, sweater, coat and a thick scarf to ward off the winter chill. Scooping up her bag, she checked her phone.
No calls.
The unease in her belly ballooned as she left her suite.
Zaccheo was seated on the sofa in the living room, examining a small black velvet box. His eyes tracked her, inducing that feeling of being helpless prey before a ruthless marauder. She opened her mouth to say something to dispel the sensation, but no words emerged. She watched, almost paralysingly daunted as he shut the box and placed it on the coffee table next to him.
‘Would it be too indulgent to demand a kiss before you leave for work, dolcezza?’ he enquired mockingly.
‘Indulgent, no. Completely out of the question, most definitely,’ she retorted. Then silently cursed her mouth’s sudden tingling.
He shook his head, his magnificent mane gleaming under the chandelier. ‘You wound me, Eva, but I’m willing to wait until the time when you will kiss me freely without me needing to ask.’
‘Then you’ll be waiting an eternity.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ZACCHEO PACED THE living room and contemplated leaving another voicemail message.
He’d already left five, none of which Eva had bothered to answer. It was nearly two a.m. and she hadn’t returned. In his gloomy mood, he’d indulged in one too many nightcaps to consider driving to the club where she worked.
His temperament had been darkening steadily for the last four hours, once he’d found out what Eva’s father was up to. Pennington was scrambling—futilely of course, because Zaccheo had closed every possible avenue—to find financial backing. That was enough to anger Zaccheo, but what fuelled his rage was that Pennington, getting more desperate by the hour, was offering more and more pieces of The Spire, the building that he would no longer own come Monday, as collateral. The blatant fraud Pennington was willing to perpetrate to fund his lifestyle made Zaccheo’s fists clench as he stalked to the window.
The view from The Spire captured the string of bridges from east to west London. The moment he’d brought his vision of the building to life with the help of his experienced architects had been one of the proudest moments of his life. More than the properties he owned across the world and the empire he’d built from the first run-down warehouse he’d bought and converted to luxury accommodation at the age of twenty, this had been the one he’d treasured most. The building that should’ve been his crowning glory.
Instead it’d become the symbol of his downfall.
Ironically, the court where he’d been sentenced was right across the street. He looked down at the courthouse, jaw clenched.
He intended it to be the same place where his name was cleared. He would not be broken and humiliated as his father had been by the time he’d died. He would not be whispered about behind his back and mocked to his face and called a parasite. Earlier this evening, Eva had demanded to know why he’d been so fascinated with her kind.
For a moment, he’d wondered whether his burning desire to prove they were not better than him was a weakness. One he should put behind him, as Eva had suggested, before he lost a lot more of himself than he already had.
As much as he’d tried he hadn’t been able to dismiss her words. Because he’d lied. He knew how to forgive. He’d forgiven his father each time he’d remembered that Zaccheo existed and bothered to take an interest in him. He’d forgiven his mother the first few times she’d let his stepfather treat him like a piece of garbage.
What Zaccheo hadn’t told Eva was that he’d eventually learned that forgiveness wasn’t effective when the recipient didn’t have any use for it.
A weakening emotion like forgiveness would be wasted on Oscar Pennington.
A keycard clicked and he turned as the entry code released the front door.
Sensation very close to relief gut-punched him.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ He didn’t bother to obviate his snarl. Nor could he stop checking her over from head to toe, to ascertain for himself that she wasn’t hurt or hadn’t been a victim of an accident or a mugging. When he was sure she was unharmed, he snapped his gaze to her face, to be confronted with a quizzical look.
Dio, was she smirking at him?
He watched her slide her fingers through her heavy, silky hair and ignored the weariness in the gesture.
‘Is it Groundhog Day or something? Because I could’ve sworn we had a conversation about where I was going earlier this evening.’
He seethed. ‘You finished work an hour and a half ago. Where have you been since then?’
She tossed a glare his way before she shrugged off her coat. The sight of the jeans and sweater she’d chosen to wear instead of the roomful of clothes he’d provided further stoked his dark mood.
‘How do you know when I finished work?’
‘Answer the question, Eva.’
She tugged her handbag from her shoulder and dropped it on the coffee table. Then she kicked off her shoes and pushed up on the balls of her feet in a smooth, practised stretch reminiscent of a ballet dancer.
‘I took the night bus. It’s cheaper than a cab, but it took forty-five minutes to arrive.’
‘Mi scusi? You took the night bus?’ His brain crawled with scenarios that made his blood curdle. He didn’t need a spell in prison to be aware of what dangerous elements lurked at night. The thought that Eva had exposed herself, willingly, to—
‘Careful there, Zaccheo, you almost sound like one of those snobs you detest so much.’
She pushed up again, her feet arching and flattening in a graceful rise and fall.
Despite his blood boiling, he stared, mesmerised, as she completed the stretches. Then he let his gaze drift up her body, knowing he shouldn’t, yet unable to stop himself. The sweater, decorated with a D-minor scale motif, hugged her slim torso, emphasising her full, heavy breasts and tiny waist before ending a half-inch above her jeans.
That half-inch of flesh taunted him, calling to mind the smooth warmth of her skin. The simmering awareness that had always existed
between them, like a fuse just waiting to be lit, throbbed deep inside. He’d tried to deny it earlier this evening in the hallway, when he’d discovered she still sang at Siren.
He’d tried to erase the sound of her sultry voice, the evocative way Eva Pennington performed on stage. He’d cursed himself when his body had reacted the way it had the very first time he’d heard her sing. That part of his black mood also stemmed from being viscerally opposed to any other man experiencing the same reaction he did from hearing her captivating voice, the way he had been two years ago, was a subject he wasn’t willing to acknowledge, never mind tackle.
He pulled his gaze from the alluringly feminine curve of her hips and shapely legs and focused on the question that had been burning through him all night.
‘Explain to me how you have two million pounds in your bank account, but take the bus to and from work.’
Her mouth gaped for several seconds before she regained herself. ‘How the hell do you know how much money I have in my bank account?’ she demanded.
‘With the right people with the right skills, very easily. I’m waiting for an answer.’
‘You’re not going to get one. What I do with my money and how I choose to travel is my business.’
‘You’re wrong, cara. As of last night, your welfare is very much my business. And if you think I’m willing to allow you to risk your safety at times when drunken yobs and muggers crawl out of the woodwork, you’re very much mistaken.’
‘Allow me? Next you’ll be telling me I need your permission to breathe!’
He spiked his fingers through his hair, wondering if she’d ever been this difficult and he’d somehow missed it. The Eva he remembered, before his eyes had been truly opened to her character, had possessed a quiet passion, not this defiant, wild child before him.
But no, there’d never been anything childlike about Eva.
She was all woman. His libido had thrilled to it right from the first.
Understandably this acute reaction was because he’d been without a woman for over a year. Now was not the time to let it out of control. The time would arrive soon enough.
She tossed her head in irritation, and the hardening in his groin threatened to prove him wrong.
‘Since I need you alive for the foreseeable future, no, you don’t require my permission to breathe.’
She had the nerve to roll her eyes. ‘Thank you very much!’
‘From now on you’ll be driven to and from work.’
‘No, thanks.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘You prefer to spend hours freezing at a bus stop than accept my offer?’
‘Yes, because the offer comes at a price. I may not know what it is yet, but I’ve no intention of paying it.’
‘Why do you insist on fighting me when we both know you don’t have a choice? I’m willing to bet your father didn’t return a single one of your phone calls last night.’
Wide, startled eyes met his for a second before she looked away. ‘I’m sure he has his reasons.’
It spoke volumes that she didn’t deny trying to reach Oscar. ‘Reasons more important than answering the phone to his daughter? Do you want to know what he’s been up to?’
‘I’m sure you’re about to apprise me whether I want to hear it or not.’
‘He’s been calling in every single favour he thinks he’s owed. Unfortunately, a man as greedy as your father cashed in most of his favours a long time ago. He’s also pleading and begging his way across the country in a bid to save himself from the hole he knows I’m about to bury him in. He didn’t take your calls, but he took mine. I recorded it if you wish me to play it back to you?’
Her fists clenched. ‘Go to hell, Zaccheo,’ she threw at him, but he glimpsed the pain in her eyes.
He almost felt sorry for her. Then he remembered her part in all this.
‘Come here, Eva,’ he murmured.
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘Because I have something for you.’
Her gaze dropped to his empty hands before snapping back to his face. ‘There’s nothing you have that I could possibly want.’
‘If you make me come over there, I’ll take that kiss you owe me from last night.’ Dio, why had he said that? Now it was all he could think about.
Heat flushed her cheeks. ‘I don’t owe you a thing. And I certainly don’t owe you any kisses.’
The women he’d dated in the past would’ve fallen over themselves to receive any gift he chose to bestow on them, especially the one he’d tucked into his back pocket.
Slowly, he walked towards her. He made sure his intent was clear. The moment she realised, her hands shot out. ‘Stop! Didn’t your mother teach you about the honey versus vinegar technique?’
Bitterness drenched him. ‘No. My mother was too busy climbing the social ladder after my father died to bother with me. When he was alive, she wasn’t much use either.’
She sucked in a shocked breath and concern furrowed her brow. ‘I’m sorry.’
Zaccheo rejected the concern and let the sound of her husky voice, scratchy from the vocal strain that came with singing, wash over him instead. He didn’t want her concern. But the sex he could deal with.
The need he’d been trying to keep under tight control threatened to snap. He took another step.
‘Okay! I’m coming.’ She walked barefooted to him. ‘I’ve done as you asked. Give me whatever it is you want to give me.’
‘It’s in my back pocket.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘Is this another of your games, Zaccheo?’
‘It’ll only take a minute to find out. Are you brave enough, dolcezza?’ he asked.
Her gaze dropped and he immediately tilted her chin up with one finger. ‘Look at me. I want to see your face.’
She blinked, then gathered herself in that way he’d always found fascinating. Slowly, she reached an arm around him. Her fingers probed until she found the pocket opening.
They slipped inside and he suppressed a groan as her fingers caressed him through his trousers. His blood rushed faster south as she searched futilely.
‘It’s empty,’ she stated with a suspicious glare.
‘Try the other one.’
She muttered a dirty word that rumbled right through him. Her colour deepened when he lifted his eyebrow.
‘Let’s get this over with.’ She searched his right pocket and stilled when she encountered the box.
‘Take it out,’ he commanded, then stifled another groan when her fingers dug into his flesh to remove the velvet box. It took all the control he could muster not to kiss her when her lips parted and he glimpsed the tip of her tongue.
During his endless months in prison, he’d wondered whether he’d overrated the chemistry that existed between Eva and him. The proof that it was as potent as ever triggered an incandescent hunger that flooded his loins.
Sì, this part of his revenge that involved Eva in his bed, being inside her and implanting her with his seed, would be easy enough and pleasurable enough to achieve.
‘I cannot wait to take you on our wedding night. Despite you no longer being a virgin, I’ll thoroughly enjoy making you mine in every imaginable way possible. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll forget every other man that you dared to replace me with.’
Her eyelids fluttered and she shivered. But the new, assertive Eva came back with fire. ‘A bold assertion. But one, sadly, we’ll both see unproven since there’ll be no wedding or wedding night. And in case I haven’t mentioned it, you’re the last man I’d ever welcome in my bed.’
Zaccheo chose not to point out that she still had her hand in his pocket, or that her fingers were digging more firmly into his buttock.
Instead, he slid his phone from his front pocket, activated the recording
app and hit the replay button.
Despite her earlier assertion that she’d grown a thicker skin, shadows of disbelief and hurt criss-crossed her face as she listened to the short conversation summoning her father to a meeting first thing on Monday. Unlike the night before where Pennington had blustered his way through Zaccheo’s accusations, he’d listened in tense silence as Zaccheo had told him he knew what he was up to.
Zaccheo had given him a taster of the contents of the documents proving his innocence and the older man had finally agreed to the meeting. Zaccheo had known he’d won when Pennington had declined to bring his lawyers to verify the documents.
Thick silence filled the room after the recording ended.
‘Do you believe me now, Eva? Do you believe that your family has wronged me in the most heinous way and that I intend to exact equal retribution?’
Her nostrils flared and her mouth trembled before she wrenched back control. But despite her composure, a sheen of tears appeared in her eyes, announcing her tumultuous emotion. ‘Yes.’
‘Take the box out of my pocket.’
She withdrew it. His instructions on the mount and setting had been followed to the letter.
‘I intended to give it to you after dinner last night. Not on bended knee, of course. I’m sure you’ll agree that once was enough?’
Her eyes darkened, as if he’d hurt her somehow. But of course, that was nonsense. She’d returned his first ring and walked away from him after a brief argument he barely recalled, stating that she didn’t wish to be married to a man like him.
At the time, Zaccheo had been reeling at his lawyers’ news that he was about to be charged with criminal negligence. He hadn’t been able to absorb the full impact of Eva’s betrayal until weeks later, when he’d already been in prison. His trial had been swift, the result of a young, overeager judge desperate to make a name for himself.
But he’d had over a year to replay the last time he’d seen Eva. In court, sitting next to her father, her face devoid of emotion until Zaccheo’s sentence had been read out.
In that moment, he’d fooled himself into thinking she’d experienced a moment of agony on his behalf. He’d murmured her name. She’d looked at him. It was then that he’d seen the contempt.
