‘You keep telling yourself that, querida.’
She was, dammit, and it didn’t seem to be working a jot!
CHAPTER TEN
DUSK HAD PUNCHED through the day in a bruised swirl of rouge and the same violet-blue as her eyes, and the air was sharp-edged with salt from the Balearic Sea.
She’d gone quiet, Nic mused, drawn inwards with a small pensive frown, and the only reason he could think of was the way he’d given dinner the innocuous title of a ‘date.’
Still, he held her hand in his warm grip, unwilling to let go, knowing full well they were coming off as two inseparable lovers, and ushered her into the best tapas bar in town: a tiny undiscovered hole-in-the-wall discerning locals flocked to.
He leaned in and gave her arm a nudge. ‘You have been on a date before, haven’t you?’
Dios, she must have. Look at her. Those jeans made the blood rush to his head and his groin, making him simultaneously dizzy and hard.
‘Casual’ suited her to perfection. While he lusted after the sexy siren in power clothes, this was a softer look that gave her a girl-next-door vibe and made her so approachable that strangers thought nothing of striking up a conversation whenever they paused. A world away from Finnmark, where she’d been the high-class businesswoman in total control, verging on anally retentive, who’d had everyone on tenterhooks trying to anticipate her next move.
‘Of course I have,’ she scoffed—a tad defensively, in his opinion. Not many dates for Pia, then. Interesting.
While she snapped her spine pin-straight and hiked up her chin Nic laughed inwardly. If she thought those dense ice walls would perturb him she had another think coming.
‘Nicandro! It has been too long, amigo!’
He grinned at the sight of Tulio Barros, the best chef on the planet, dark, short and sharp, with a wicked taste in art. ‘It certainly has, my friend. Glad to see the place hasn’t changed.’
The bar’s main wall was a pastel canvas of tasteful yet evocative nudes from a bygone era, while the other three remained exposed brick. The rich scents of tapas baking, the dark wood slab tables and heavy chairs, the cream tiled floor—all lent the intimate space the warmth this part of the world was famous for. Nic loved it; somehow it reminded him of home, of Brazil, a place he hadn’t visited in twelve long years.
The conversation exploded into a bout of, ‘How have you been? How is business? Who is this beautiful lady?’ and Nic curled his arm around Pia’s waist and made introductions.
He could literally feel the tension ease from her body as Tulio soaked her in his Spanish charm and pointed to a small private table in the corner. ‘Go sit at my table and I will bring some Sangria and my best dishes of the day, yes?’
Pia weaved through scattered handbags and chairs and eyed the seating.
Nic gave her another nudge. ‘Trying to work out how to sit the farthest away from me?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Yes.’
He chuckled darkly, getting a kick out of her blatant honesty. ‘Something I will never allow. Sit.’
With a gorgeous little glare she slid along the bench and Nic followed, until they sat in the corner at right angles, knees bumping, flesh touching and Nic in his element, with a perfect view of the room and her beautiful face aglow from the intimate lighting.
Tulio poured tall glasses of Sangria—which she sucked through a straw, her full lips working rhythmically—and the man went all-out to tease her out of her shell with creamy squid rings, known as chocos, patatas bravas with creamy alioli, llonganissa sausage and tigres—stuffed mussels to die for.
Nic wanted to let loose a string of Brazilian curses as his trousers became too tight for comfort. He knew he was staring but, hell, she ate as if she was making love to her food. As if she savoured and gloried in every delicious morsel. And it was the most provocative sight he’d ever seen.
Those little licks, the slow, erotic roll of her tongue, watching her cheeks concave as she drank deeply—it all had him in a state of agony, with a hard-on that just wouldn’t quit and a craving for her to take him inside the hot cavern of her mouth. It was killing him.
He tried to think of the last time he’d had no-holds-barred sex for hours on end, but all he could remember were some awkward dates and some passable yet mediocre sex. After that he’d told himself it just wasn’t worth the hassle.
He’d meant to ask how many dates she’d been on—continuing their earlier conversation—but the nibbles and tentative bites and succulent licks were messing with his brain.
‘How many lovers have you had?’
As for that steel band around his chest, tightening as he waited for her answer...? That was not jealousy or insecurity or obsessive behaviour. He simply needed to eat. When he ceased being riveted by her.
But this, apparently, had been the wrong thing to ask when her mouth was otherwise engaged.
Choking on a mussel, she lurched forward, and Nic rapped on her back until she could breathe without turning blue.
‘Are you trying to kill me? That is none of your business!’
He gave her back a sympathetic rub and leaned closer to murmur in her ear, ‘Which means none. Are you a virgin, bonita?’
‘No!’ Half the restaurant’s patrons whipped their heads their way and she thumped his thigh under the table with her fist. Then she whispered furiously, ‘For pity’s sake, have you ever heard of a twenty-eight-year-old virgin?’ Snapping upright, back pin-straight, she sniffed—a tad haughtily, if you asked him. ‘I’ve had lovers.’ Yeah, definitely defensive.
‘Good lovers or mediocre orgasms at best?’
Jaw slack, eyes enormous, she shook her head at him. ‘Do you have any filter between your brain and your mouth?’
‘Mediocre, then. Hmm.’ He brushed his fingers over his lips and smiled inwardly when he caught her staring and she licked her own pout. ‘Why do you think that is?’
Had to be control. Pure and simple. He didn’t believe in any of that garbage about there being ‘The One’ with whom sex was not just great, or even fantastic, but life-changing. How could sex be life-changing? What ludicrous hogwash. As for Pia... Come to think of it, he remembered how she’d frozen on the verge of her climax back in Finnmark. He knew the signs. He’d never left a woman unsatisfied in his life.
‘You’ll never experience earth-shattering, cosmic, star-realigning pleasure until you give up control. Always you have to be in control, Pia. If you let go the power of ecstasy you feel will be fifty-fold. You stopped yourself back in my cabin, didn’t you?’
A hot flush slashed across her cheeks. Busted.
‘I know a woman close to the edge, querida. If I had touched you where you were wet and wanting me you would have exploded.’
Darts of pique shot from her eyes, the violet deepening to the colour purple. ‘Wow, Nic, it’s a wonder you can get that head of yours through the door. I just don’t think I’m made for it. It’s nothing to get excited about for me.’
Dios, no wonder she’d resisted him this long. ‘“It” being sex? You can say it, Pia. It’s not illegal or immoral in this country.’
‘Good job, since you’d have been convicted ten times over. Worldwide.’
She stuffed a meatball in her mouth and—call him a masochist—he followed every move.
‘Strange that innocent would never be a word I’d think of with you but often that is exactly what you seem. You need educating, Pia.’
‘And I suppose you’d be the man for the job, right? You’d make it your civic duty to ensure Olympia Merisi experienced a good orgasm?’
His face was a veritable invitation to debauchery in that moment, he knew. ‘Ah, querida, I promise you there’d be way more than one—and “good” wouldn’t even come close.’ Nic leaned forward, dipped his head and drizzled whisper-soft kisses up the curve of her jaw before murmuring in her ear, ‘By the time I was finished with you, you wouldn’t know which way was up.’
Those gorgeous breasts began to heave as she
struggled to suck in air.
‘I think you’ve been hanging around ego-inflators too much, Nicandro. You really shouldn’t believe everything women tell you. Money is the greatest aphrodisiac, and it makes the most expert liars.’
Her voice was more ice than fire, and the cold front washing over him prickled his skin.
Slowly Nic straightened as a lightbulb switched on and flooded his mind, illuminating every aspect of Pia with new meaning. Moreover, he’d have to be blind not to notice the pain that pinched her brow. Hell, he could virtually see her praying that he wouldn’t jump on her faux pas.
‘Let me guess. Some cad broke your heart, Pia?’ It was pure conjecture but she was ripe pickings for anyone who knew her father. Heiress that she was. ‘I imagine men are either intimidated by you or they’re after your father’s money. Is that about right?’
A heart-wrenching combination of reluctance, hurt and rage darkened her eyes and punched him in the gut.
‘You could say that,’ she said, in that hard, icy tone he hadn’t heard for days and frankly had never wanted to hear again.
Now he understood the frozen façade a little better. Once bitten twice shy. Cliché, but true.
‘What happened, Pia?’ he asked gently, knowing it was a bad idea to push but incapable of stopping himself. He didn’t like the idea that some man had damaged her, and that didn’t bode well in light of his grand plan.
She stroked the smooth skin between her eyebrows in that way she did when she was deliberating. Unsure. Then she seemed to come to a decision, because she jerked up her chin and nailed him on the spot.
‘I dropped my guard for no more than a minute. I believed every lie that came out of his mouth. I came to trust him. Then one night we went out on a date and I heard him telling his friends he was bedding Zeus’s daughter to get into Q Virtus, and she was so easy he could marry her tomorrow and have the world at his feet.’
Nic’s stomach took a nose-dive. No wonder she was holding back, defiant, rebelling against the insane biological chemistry between them. She’d been used, and the fact was in her eyes Nic was using her too—for a meeting. Wasn’t he? Of course he was.
He tuned back in to her brittle voice. ‘And do you know what my father said to me? He said, “Trust no man, Olympia. They all have an agenda. You want people to take a woman seriously? You stop acting like a whore.”’
The way she said woman—as if it was something to be ashamed of––rang alarm bells in his head. Hell, no, he wasn’t having this—and it had nothing to do with any deal.
‘Enjoying making love and being close to a man doesn’t make you a whore, Pia. You have so much beauty stored inside you, and if you don’t stir it up and let it flow out it will wither and die. Sex—making love—makes you feel alive. There’s nothing to be ashamed of about that.’
The delicate curve of her throat convulsed. ‘Are you saying this as a man who needs me in his bed to gain an audience with Zeus, or as a friend,’ she taunted, reminding him of his words. ‘A friend without benefits.’
‘A friend. I promise you.’ Oddly enough, it was the truth. ‘Forget who I am or why we’re here, sharing one another’s company and great food. Do not let your past ordeal with a man dictate a future of a cold, solitary life. Was he your last lover?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly, distractedly, as she glanced around the room, her gaze bouncing from one loved-up couple to another almost wistfully.
Nic swallowed hard, reached for her hand on the table and wrapped his fingers tight around hers, squeezing until he had her full attention. ‘Keeping your distance, holding people away from you, denying yourself affection and a loving touch doesn’t make you stronger, Pia. If anything it makes you weaker, because you’re doing it out of fear.’
Her blonde brows drew down into intent little Vs, as if what he was telling her was far beyond mentally taxing. That over-active, constantly analysing brain of hers would be her downfall, he was sure.
‘You’re a beautiful, sensual woman, Pia, not meant to be alone. There’s so much fire inside you. No matter what happens between us, promise me you’ll remember that. Be open to trying again. Not all men are dishonest, lying philistines and...’ Nic trailed off.
I’m not either, he wanted to say, but that would be a barefaced lie. At least to her. Ironic that the one woman he wasn’t being honest with was the one he wanted most.
Suddenly he felt as if someone had just picked him up and torn him clean down the middle. He wanted to crush the fool who’d bruised her heart, but he was about to do the exact same thing. Take advantage of her name, of who she was, exploit her for his own ends, use her just as badly as her last lover had.
Settling back in his seat, Nic closed his eyes, unsure if he could do it. Maybe he could find some other way to get to Zeus. And what if you can’t? He was so close. After so many years he was now days away from facing the man who’d taken his parents from him, stolen his legacy, ruined his life.
Torn—so damn torn. Why was this tearing him apart? Why did he want her so badly? Why was he even considering her happiness before his own? His father’s obsessive compulsions sprang to mind, but he squashed them just as swiftly. He was not his father!
Dammit, why was everything going so disastrously wrong?
* * *
Pia sat at the glass-topped table in Nic’s penthouse, laptop open in front of her, gazing at the stunning sight of nightfall—a swollen waxy moon and a sky bursting with diamond-studded brilliance, its glow shimmering over a town that bustled with cosmopolitan chic glamour and frenetic energy.
Nic was backing off. Had been since the restaurant last night. The big seduction routine had crashed to a halt with the subtlety of a ten-car pile-up.
Often she caught him staring at her intently, with a voracious hunger that made her want to crawl out of her skin, but otherwise he was the perfect gentleman. Nic—the perfect gentleman? It was surreal. Maybe he’d been taken over by an alien life force or something. It was worrying to think he had such depth.
She’d half expected him to cancel their trip to the Picasso Museum that morning but, Nic being Nic, the idea hadn’t seemed to cross his mind. Nor had cancelling tonight—their last night in Barcelona—and escorting her to his samba club in the old town. If someone had told her a month ago that she’d be sitting like some idiotic schoolgirl with a crush, counting down the hours, she’d have told them they were mentally insane. Yet here she was. Verging on lunacy.
Except no other man had ever looked at her the way Nic did. Predatory. Hungry. Just the heat in his whisky-coloured gaze, running hotly over her skin, their flames dancing in the dark depths like a physical manifestation of the blazing inferno that continued to rise up between them had Pia willing to do anything and everything he desired.
The bing-bong of an incoming e-mail diverted her attention to her mailbox.
No news. Nothing to link Carvalho to the hype at QV. He looks clean. Know more when I’ve spoken to PI in the morning.
Be careful, Pia.
J.
Careful? Wasn’t she always careful? Always playing by the rules, using her head, emotionally barren. But with Nic she felt every sensation as if her senses were torn open and raw. As if she’d been held under the power of sensory deprivation her entire life—and maybe she had.
Her thoughts were severed by the ping of the elevator and the sight of Nic—all sweat and ripped muscle—coming back from his run.
Heaven help her, one look and her body simultaneously sighed in relief and flamed with heat, like some primal animal seeing her mate.
His hair was damp, the thick waves plastered to his brow. Beads of sweat dripped from his temples and clung to his chiselled jaw. And she could just imagine those corded, flexing muscular arms and his thick, powerful thighs moving with athletic grace as he pounded the pavement.
He scratched the hard ridges of his belly absently as he sauntered over, his dark gaze searing, as if he’d missed her face. ‘Working again, querida?’
‘Some problems at the club.’ Pia looked at him closely but he didn’t flinch at the mention of Q Virtus.
‘Let your father deal with it, Pia,’ he said, brisk and decisive.
She almost told him she didn’t have that option.
‘We’ll leave in twenty minutes. I’m taking a quick shower.’
Can I be a fly on the wall?
Honest to God, he was sex incarnate, and the thought of another night lying alone in his huge bed in the guest room, thinking of how he’d made love to her mouth, how his thick hardness had nuzzled against the apex of her thighs, was a new form of persecution.
One hand on his hip, he didn’t move an inch towards the shower, just stared at something beyond her left shoulder, and as she looked closer she could see stress bracketing his eyes. ‘Is everything okay, Nic?’
Finally he met her gaze and his mouth shaped for speech, as if he wanted to tell her something. Something important, if his deep frown and tight jaw were anything to go by, and Pia felt as if she teetered on the edge of a cliff, waiting for a fall. His eyes lingered on her for long moments but he didn’t answer her, didn’t say a word, and after a frustrated clench of his fists he stalked off to the massive en suite bathroom.
Pia blew out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding and slumped against the chair.
‘By the way,’ he said, loud enough to be heard through the penthouse. ‘There’s a box on your bed; you’ll need it for the club tonight.’
There was?
Pia launched from the seat and tried not to dash through to her room like a child on Christmas morning. There on the pristine white sheets of the enormous four-poster bed was one of the boxes from the designer boutique; signature black, with a huge gold velvet sash tied into a sumptuous bow.
Her breathing grew a little fast and she rubbed her hands down her jeans.
A gift. Nic had bought her a gift. The man she’d watched from afar, the man who’d saved her life, the man who desired her like no other ever had. Surely this shouldn’t feel so huge, so momentous, and yet that was exactly how it felt.
The Ultimate Revenge Page 12
