Sinful Seduction

by Ann Christopher

  “It’s okay, buddy.” Sandro kept up the mantra, even when his throat grew tight and hoarse and his own unhappiness threatened to choke him. “We’re going to be okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m never leaving you again.”

  Eventually, some internal switch deep within Nikolas was flipped, and it was over. Having cried himself out, the boy had nothing left to focus on but his embarrassment, which seemed to be overwhelming. He gave Sandro’s chest a hard push and broke free, hanging his head while he wiped his eyes and nose with the bottom edge of his T-shirt. Then he cleared his throat, shoved his hands deep into his pockets and shuffled his feet.

  He seemed to be waiting for something.

  Sandro, feeling clumsy and inadequate and wishing he had a child psychologist on retainer to advise him during excruciating moments like these, cleared his throat, too.

  The kitten continued to mewl.

  This was one of those moments, wasn’t it? Where a good TV father would offer a couple more words of comfort and wisdom. Too bad Sandro was the only one around.

  “So…” Since his throat still wasn’t clear, he coughed, opened his mouth and prayed for a word or two to come. “Things are, ah, kind of crazy around here right now, but they’ll settle down.”

  “I doubt it,” Nikolas grumbled, now studying his own toes. “You need to work things out with Sky. Don’t blow it, man. You’ll never do better than her. You know that, right?”

  Out of the mouths of babes, eh?

  “I know,” Sandro admitted, and since they were discussing hard truths tonight, he decided to throw another one into the mix. “I’m not sure I deserve her, though.”

  Nikolas waved a hand, flapping away Sandro’s biggest vulnerability.

  “Oh, you don’t deserve her—”

  “Thanks ever so much.”

  “But she’s crazy about you. I don’t think she’ll want to leave here unless you drive her to it. So don’t drive her to it. And give me the kitten. You’re strangling her.”

  With that, he snatched the kitten—Leia, right? —away from Sandro and headed down the hall toward the kitchen, cradling her against his chest in a protective grip.

  Leaving Sandro to wonder how to get himself out of the hole he’d dug with Sky.

  * * *

  About an hour later, after much pacing and moody ruminating, but no further drinking, Sandro lingered at the top of the stairs, trying to decide what to do.

  His first option was to head down the west wing to Skylar’s bedroom, where he’d spent the most incredible night of his life, prostrate himself at her feet and beg for her forgiveness for being a jealousy-racked jerk who couldn’t handle even the vaguest suggestion that he might lose the happiness he’d only just found.

  Option two was to head down the east wing to his own room, spend the night in a lonely and hard bed of his own making, wait until morning to commence the begging, and pray that cooler heads would prevail by the time the sun came up.

  Option three was to head down the east wing to Tony’s room and try to talk to him again, also begging forgiveness.

  He hesitated in the dark hallway, trapped by indecision.

  So what else was new?

  Maybe he should just go to bed and try it all again—

  A distant howl cut through the silence, so raw and wounded that it chilled him like a dive into an icy northern lake. He whipped around, straining his ears against the night’s utter stillness, and tried to isolate the source of all that pain.

  Sky? Nikolas? Mickey should be asleep in the guesthouse by now—

  The noise came again, louder and more desperate this time, a shrill cry of unending pain. It went on for so long that he was able to get a bead on it.

  Tony.

  His body sprang into action, operating on instinct and sprinting with a blind panic he hadn’t felt since his feet touched American soil again. He banged through Tony’s door and into the room, searching wildly for the danger even though he knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t find any.

  A blast of frigid air hit him in the face, so cold that it burned his lungs on the inhale.

  What the—?

  The balcony doors were open, allowing the wind to whip up a frenzy of hard rain and flapping drapes. It was a meat locker in here, too icy for any human warmth to survive for long.

  The moon’s dim glow penetrated enough for him to see that there was nothing out of place. There was also no Tony. The giant four-poster bed loomed out of the shadows, but Tony wasn’t in it and, judging by the smooth linens, had never been in it.

  Listening with his entire being, he heard only absolute silence inside the room.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Pausing to click on the small lamp on top of the dresser, he strode to the balcony doors and snapped them shut. There. That was better. But where the hell was—

  That eerie wail rose again, pleading and indecipherable. Sandro’s flesh crawled with sympathetic anguish as his ears zeroed in on the source.

  The sofa. The noise was coming from behind the sofa.

  He was there in two strides, crouching at one end of the sofa, where it had been slid away from the wall just enough for an underweight man to stretch out on a nest of blankets. There was no pillow. Tony writhed, facedown, and struggled against the night terror that wouldn’t let him go.

  Jesus.

  Determined to be gentle and not screw this up, Sandro reached out, touched his brother’s thin shoulder and squeezed. There was no give in the tight muscles; he might as well have been touching reinforced steel. And despite the sub-zero temperature in here, Tony’s flesh burned through the thin cotton of his T-shirt, generating enough heat to scorch Sandro’s fingers.

  Tony turned his head to the side, but didn’t wake up.

  Sandro hovered, just in case. Maybe Tony had settled down for now, but who knew? And how could he breathe with his face smothered in the blankets like that? What if Sandro didn’t hear him the next time? What would happen—

  Without warning, Tony doubled up, curling in on himself and heading for the fetal position, except that there wasn’t room for it against the wall. His face twisted; his mouth opened in a silent scream.

  “Talia,” he cried. “Talia!”

  Screw it.

  Throwing caution to the wind, Sandro grabbed both his shoulders and shook him.

  “Tony. Wake up.”

  That seemed to do the trick. Tony surged upright into a sitting position, his back to the wall and his long legs bent against his chest. Wild-eyed, he looked around and tried to get his bearings, and then his expression coalesced into another one that Sandro had seen too many times before.

  Ah, shit.

  Tony lashed an arm out, reaching under the blankets. So did Sandro. A brief, grunting struggle followed, and Sandro clamped a hand down on Tony’s wrist and held on for dear life.

  Tony, meanwhile, brandished a hunting knife.

  They fought, the blade glinting at face level between them. Since Sandro didn’t plan to kill or be killed in a crazy domestic accident after they’d both survived the war and come home in one piece, he squeezed Tony’s wrist even harder.

  “Tony! Wake up! It’s me, Sandro!”

  Tony blinked, some of the snarl leaving his face. “Sandro?”

  “Yeah, idiot. It’s your brother. So don’t kill me, okay?”

  Tony’s expression cleared and his eyes came into focus. “Sandro.”

  “You okay?” Sandro asked warily.

  Tony ran his free hand over the top of his head. “Yeah.”

  “Maybe you could drop the blade.”

  Tony, to his great relief, dropped it.

  Feeling much better, Sandro surged to his feet and extended a hand. Tony took it in a hard grip. Sandro gave him a tug, and the next thing he knew, Tony was on his feet but still in motion.

  They came together in one of those punishing, backslapping hugs that was more a test of a person’s pain threshold than a display of affection. Swaying and too
choked on their mutual emotional torment to manage any words, they held each other upright.

  It wasn’t until this precise moment of reunion that Sandro realized how much he’d missed this other half of himself, and how sick he’d been without him.

  “I’m sorry, man,” he said gruffly, his face wet with the kind of tears that a soldier hated to cry. He squeezed the back of Tony’s neck, anchoring him here, to his house and his family, where he belonged. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry—”

  The only consolation was that Tony was also having problems with eye leakage.

  “I missed you, you punk,” Tony told him, giving his cheek a hard kiss. “I missed you.”

  Overcome, Sandro did the only manly thing left, which was to make a joke and hope they could pretend this interlude never happened.

  “Yeah, okay, don’t get crazy,” he said, breaking free and turning away.

  “I didn’t dismiss you, soldier.”

  Lashing out, Tony hooked him around the neck and bent him up in the same headlock he’d been using on him since they were three. Sandro struggled, but the truth was, it felt good.

  Really, really good.

  “Okay.” Tony turned him loose with a rough shove that tumbled Sandro onto the sofa. “Now you’re dismissed.”

  He collapsed beside him and they sat there together, breathless and a little stunned by this turn of events.

  “Night terrors, eh?” Sandro asked after a while.

  Tony shrugged. “It’s the war that keeps on giving.”

  Sandro hesitated, not wanting to set anything off again but determined to get his brother the help he needed.

  “Are you, ah—”

  “Seeing anybody?” Tony finished for him. “Taking anything? Yeah. This is better, actually. If you can believe it.”

  “It takes time.”

  “Time,” Tony echoed dully. “Yeah.”

  “What’ll you do?”

  Another shrug. “Maybe take a stab at the auction business. Listen—” he swung around, turning to face Sandro on the sofa and picking his words carefully “—about Skylar—”

  A few minutes of brotherly reconciliation, it turned out, did not kill, or even maim, the roaring jealousy inside Sandro’s chest. He felt his jaw tighten into finely tuned piano wire.

  “I’m not giving her up,” he said flatly. “She belongs with me.”

  Judging by the sudden flash of annoyance in Tony’s eyes, he didn’t appreciate the tone, but that was too freaking bad. They needed to get a few things straight between them, and Skylar was not a gray area. He squared his shoulders, gearing up for a battle, but Tony surprised him.

  “Yeah, she does.”

  “Just so we’re clear—wait, what?”

  “If you’re pulling that tough-guy shit with me, then this conversation’s over,” Tony said. “Let me know.”

  “Fine.” With a lot of difficulty, Sandro reined in his possessive streak and locked it in its cage. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  Tony nodded, looking mollified, but when he opened his mouth again, the words didn’t come. The moment stretched, heading into awkward territory. Sandro waited, studying his knees, and pretended he didn’t see the way Tony’s cheeks flooded with color or the way his nostrils flared.

  “The thing is,” Tony said finally, “she was never…like that…with me.”

  Thunderstruck, Sandro stared at him and wondered if he was saying what he thought he was saying.

  “When I walked in on… Jesus. Don’t make me say it, man.”

  Sandro thought about the way Skylar melted down in his arms and the way she looked at him. The way she’d always looked at him. How she’d been saying, over and over again, how much she loved him.

  And he got it.

  He also understood something else with stark clarity: Tony was a million times the man Sandro was. Because there was no way—no way in a thousand lifetimes and a million universes—that he could ever stand aside and wish Skylar happiness with another man.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “I, ah—thanks.”

  Tony’s gaze narrowed with warning. “She loves you, man. You better take good care of her so I don’t change my mind about wanting her back.”

  Sandro now knew that it didn’t matter what Tony wanted. Skylar’s choice was the important thing here, and they all knew she’d picked Sandro.

  “I plan to treat her like a queen,” Sandro assured him. “Now I have a question for you.”

  Tony raised a brow, looking wary.

  “Who’s Talia?” Sandro asked.

  * * *

  Slippers, Skylar remembered. She needed her slippers, which she’d kicked under the bed the other night. Oh, and also the blue sweater she’d worn the other day, which was probably still draped over the back of the armchair. So she’d have to get that when she went downstairs. She eyeballed her mostly packed suitcase, which was open on the bed, and checked the time: five thirty-three. In the morning.

  Which was a tad too early to head to the airport for her three-thirty flight.

  The sensible thing to do, since it was still dark outside, would be to go back to bed and try to get some sleep. Too bad she wasn’t in a sensible mood. It was more like a scream-in-frustration-and-rip-her-hair-out-by-the-roots-and-then-smash-something sort of mood.

  And underneath all that? Blinding terror.

  Because despite all the progress she’d made and the relationship she’d thought they were building, Sandro was still trapped by his guilt and shackled to his honor. Now that Tony was alive—and thank God for that! —wasn’t it only a matter of time before Sandro dumped her? What would she do then? How would she recover when he smashed her heart to dust?

  Tony, meanwhile, was a train wreck in progress; she knew it. Who would help him once she ran away? She didn’t delude herself about this whole packed-suitcase thing. She was turning tail and running, and it really chapped her hide, because she wasn’t a coward. Not normally, anyway.

  If she left, how could she and Sandro ever work things out?

  How would they—

  Someone tapped quietly on her door.

  She stilled. Deep inside her chest, her heart did several cartwheeling backflips.

  She was still frozen with indecision when Sandro, wearing a T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms, slipped inside the room and closed the door, shutting them in together with so many seething emotions that Skylar was sure she’d explode.

  He looked just like she felt: wired and exhausted. Dark circles ringed his eyes, and his face had tightened with tension, making him all sharp edges and intense eyes.

  He didn’t smile.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  Here it came. The big kiss-off, filled with noble sprinklings about what he could or could not do as an honorable brother and blah, blah, blah. Anger surged, because she was pretty sure nothing she could say right now would change his mind, but she damn sure wasn’t going to go down quietly, packed suitcase or no.

  “I can’t believe you’re going to throw our whole relationship away because of a goodbye kiss. I know how it probably looked, but it didn’t mean anything. I just don’t understand—”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “—how you can think that there’s still something between me and Tony. I mean, come on. Think about it. We had our chance and it didn’t—”

  “And I want you to unpack all your stuff and stay here with me.”

  “—work out, so you have to know that I—wait, what? What did you say?”

  He stepped closer, his glittering gaze locked with hers.

  She held her breath, not wanting to miss it this time.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said slowly. “Stay with me.”

  Oh, God.

  One of her shaky hands flew up to cover her heart and keep it from bursting out of her chest.

  “You—you’re in love with me?”

  “You know I am.”

  That was a great start, but wit
h him it was only half the battle.

  “And you know I love you, right? You.”

  Those familiar dark shadows tried to float across his face, but he blinked them away. She watched, disbelieving, as a smile curled one side of his mouth.

  “After my performance earlier? I’m not sure you should.”

  “Sandro.”

  “Come here.”

  She went and he caught her up, lifting her off her feet until only her toes skimmed the floor. She locked her arms around his neck and held tight, home where she belonged and determined to stay there. He clung to her waist and buried his face in the curve where her shoulder met her neck, breathing her like the air. They might have stayed like that forever, but, as always, the heat between them burned too bright to be ignored.

  “I need you,” he told her.

  “I know.”

  “Now.” He swung her around and laid her across the bed, his face hard and dark as he swept his T-shirt over his head, dropped it to the floor and went to work on his pajama bottoms. Straightening, he revealed a jutting erection that was full and thick, which was good because she was more than ready.

  He crawled onto the bed and loomed over her, finding his place in the cradle between her open thighs and yanking her panties down her legs.

  “Now.”

  “I know.”

  She’d already slithered out of her silky robe and reached for him, her back arching and hips thrusting with no conscious command from her brain. It had always been this way with him, since that first time they laid eyes on each other.

  Heat. Instinct. Home. Nothing else was important.

  A quick stroke with his fingers told him how hot she was and made his eyes roll closed with what looked like ecstasy. She waited, her breath stalled in her throat, but instead of the insistent surge of his dick, she felt those talented fingers again as he touched her there, right there—

  “Knock it off.” She writhed, not sure if she wanted him to stop or not. “I want you inside me when I come.”

  He shrugged, flashing a hint of a smile that was more wicked than remorseful.