by Olivia Gates
“Why all this…antipathy?” she asked.
“Durante blames me for terrible things, things I haven’t been able to prove I wasn’t responsible for.” Okay. So it was more complicated than she could imagine. She really couldn’t form an opinion here. She shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her. And she wanted it to stay that way. “But it doesn’t matter what he believes. He must come back, Gaby. It’s not only that I need my son—Castaldini needs his power and influence.”
Scratch the no-opinion status. No matter Durante’s reasons, he was a callous creep if he not only didn’t care about his father’s incapacitation but also about Castaldini’s troubles. And she was supposed to make him care?
She asked that, and the king nodded. “I know you can. You’ll come in with a fresh slate and views, with legitimate business offers and concerns. But give me your word that you’ll never tell him of our connection. That would make him send you straight to hell. And none of us can afford that. The situation is grave, and I must be clear. I want you to do anything to make him come back.”
His words had echoed long after their goodbyes. What he’d meant by anything was so glaringly clear, it was blinding. Seduction.
She was resigned to her femme fatale reputation. But it hurt that even the king thought seduction was one of her weapons, her only one, even. Still, she excused him. He was old and sick and desperate to resolve his problems, to secure his kingdom’s future.
And then, what he’d proposed was a worthy cause. If she succeeded—seduction certainly not on the menu of maneuvers she’d use—everyone would come out a winner. The king would have his son back—a reconciliation that was bound to make said son happier, too—Castaldini would get a heavy-hitter to help its regent pull its fat out of the fire, and she’d stabilize her company.
But the damned prince hadn’t even acknowledged her messages. She could think of only one reason. His initial background check on anyone who approached him must have accessed the usual slander. Seemed he’d thought such unsubstantiated filth enough to condemn her.
Furious, she’d called in a favor with one of his insiders and gotten his schedule for the next week. Besides being impossible to get hold of, he was also known for badgering the privileged into doing more for the world. This function was one of his traps where he wrung what he could get out of them for his favorite causes. She’d intended to intercept him, make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. At least, that had been the plan.
So far, all she’d done was stammer three sentences and got nothing out of him but that disconcerting stare.
She needed results, but she had to restart her own volition first. Or at least the autopilot that had steered her for months now.
One or the other must have kicked in, because she moved at last.
She leaned on the door as she opened it. The exuberance of jazz and the forced gaiety in the overcrowded ballroom slammed into her. But what almost knocked her off her feet was the power of his gaze. He’d been watching for her, as if certain she’d follow him.
Not that she could. Those people who had the same idea as her—of ambushing him here—left her no chink to get through.
He left her no air to breathe as his gaze drilled into her across the ballroom. She began to think it might not be a bad thing after all if she didn’t get a chance to talk to him alone.
She was a seasoned businesswoman who’d been through a battlefield of a marriage and divorce, who’d before and since been pursued by men, had thought she’d seen and tried all kinds, to her crushing dissatisfaction. But Prince D’Agostino fell far outside what she’d thought to be her inclusive experience. To lump him under “man” with those she’d had experience with was as accurate as lumping a top-of-the-food-chain predator with a jellyfish. Something very sure of itself told her she shouldn’t get closer. For any reason.
She should leave. Now.
She had to pry her gaze—her will—from his first.
Somehow she did, was at the door when a rough velvet whisper hit her between the shoulder blades. “Don’t run off yet.”
Logic said that omnidirectional/internal sound effect was the surround system’s doing. But there was no logic here. There was only the influence the voice exercised, the reactions it ignited. The certainty that it was talking to her.
She swayed around, found him on the dais in front of the mic, his gaze still cast on her like a stasis field.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for paying the ten-grand admission fee. But because you’re getting…restless, I’ll fast-forward to prying some real contributions out of you. You have the auction list, but in light of a certain…development, I have made some changes. Now the first item on auction is…myself.”
Two
If Prince Durante D’Agostino had announced he was Superman and launched into the air to circle overhead, there wouldn’t have been a more drastic reaction to his announcement.
Not that it would have shocked her. He did look like some superhuman being as he dominated the scene just by standing there, the rugged nobleness of his features and his leonine forehead accentuated by the swept-back mane of raven satin, the jacket of his sculpted designer charcoal suit casually pushed back by the hand resting on his hip, his white shirt stretching across his torso, detailing the daunting power beneath. He looked like a modern god swathed in the trappings of the times that equalized other men but that didn’t begin to contain the influence he exuded, to disguise his in-his-own-league nature.
His gaze panned the ballroom yet somehow managed not to release hers. That alone kept her heart practically dropping to the polished Carrara marble floor. But what restarted her tremors was what she saw in those eyes—an intensity untouched by the cynical amusement with which he watched the mayhem he’d kicked up.
“Before you get too excited,” he finally said. “I’m not auctioning off all of me, just my ear. Considering how in demand it is, with so many of you attempting to talk it off, I’m offering one hour of its exclusive use.” His lips tugged into what had to be the most arrhythmia-inducing weapon ever deployed on susceptible females. And it had her in its crosshairs. “I already have an opening bid. One hundred grand.”
Now she knew how mamma mia had been coined. It had to have been a woman who’d first exclaimed it, as a brutally gorgeous male plucked her strings.
And she did feel like a marionette, compelled to obey his every tug, any reluctance or misgiving evaporating in the excitement his mischief sent through her. She walked back under the pull of his challenge.
When she stopped at the fringe of the bidding crowd, he put his lips to the mic, implanted hot, wild images and sensations straight inside her, pitched his voice an octave lower. “Do I hear one hundred ten?”
Over three-dozen people, mostly women, raised their hands. She’d beaten them all in speed of response.
His lips spread in satisfaction, his pose grew more languid, a conqueror certain of his victory, indulgent in his triumph. “Thank you. Do I hear one hundred twenty?”
Her hand was up in the air before she could will it to be there. Seemed he’d jumpstarted her competitiveness. More. He’d sparked the first sign of life in her since she’d witnessed her mother’s being extinguished.
He kept raising the bid, and her competition dwindled. Soon suspense was fast reaching the point of overload.
When a dozen hands still shot up in the air when he reached the four hundred fifty grand mark, her stamina snapped and recoiled like an overextended string.
She blurted out, “I bid one million.”
A hush fell. Everyone turned to gape at her.
He straightened, his eyes losing all lightness, singeing hers through the charge that filled the space between them. “Now that’s a nice round figure. Anyone willing to top that? No? Fine, then. I have one million from the lady in blue. Going once, going twice—”
“I bid ten million.”
Durante saw shock seize his mystery woman’s face before he registered the w
ords that had caused it. Only then did he drag his eyes and senses from her and search out the new speaker.
His every muscle tensed. How had he gotten past security? How had Durante not noticed him before?
His security had messed up. As for him, all his faculties had been converged on her, everything else skimming his consciousness without leaving an imprint.
And there was the now-gaunt, wild-eyed Jeremiah Langley. Staring at him like a drowning man would at a lifeboat. A month ago he’d looked at Durante as if at his own killer, before attempting to stab him. Durante couldn’t imagine how Langley had ended up blaming him—and not the investments he’d made against his advice—for his bankruptcy, but he’d hushed everything up, not wishing to add criminal charges to the distraught man’s troubles. He’d also postponed announcing Langley’s bankruptcy until he sold shares that would leave the man with minimal debt. But he’d made it clear to Langley, and to his security—he didn’t want to see the man again. Not in this lifetime.
No one knew how things stood between them, or that Jeremiah didn’t have the ten million he’d bid for Durante’s leniency. He couldn’t call Langley on it without outing him. Langley had cornered him into accepting his so-called bid as the winning one.
And that was his worst crime.
She had already accepted defeat. This time, she was walking away. He might not have more of her. Not tonight. Unacceptable.
He would have more of her. And if he had his way, as he always did, he would have all of her.
Gabrielle felt all animation drain from her system.
The moment her bid had burst from her incontinent mouth, she’d launched into feverish calculations to determine how she could part with that much cash in one lump sum in her current situation. Then that ten-million-dollar sledgehammer had fallen, pulverizing both worry and hope.
So that was it. She’d bid and lost. And he was no longer looking at her. Ten million dollars would distract even him.
So what was that tightening behind her ribs? Disappointment?
How stupid was that? This scheme wouldn’t have worked anyway. She didn’t know how she or King Benedetto could have thought it might. All her moronic endeavor would achieve was to give the scandal sheets fuel for the coming decade. She had to leave before the paparazzi he’d banned from the event got wind of this and ambushed her. Leave. Now. And don’t look back.
She managed that, but still felt as if she were wading through quicksand. His gaze had latched on to her again, robbed her of dominion over her own body. Desperation to get away kicked in.
In minutes she was in the parking lot, running to her car.
She remote-opened her door, was reaching for its handle when a boom cracked the silence of the night.
“Stay.”
She dropped her keys. Her purse. Probably a few months’ to a couple of years’ life expectancy, too.
She slumped against the warm metal and glass as if pressed there by the presence closing in on her. She heard nothing but the blood thundering in her head. The presence expanded at her back, pinning her to her support, squeezing her heart.
She fumbled for the door handle. She’d managed to open the door when that voice hit her again, a quiet rumble this time.
“Stay.”
She clenched her eyes shut, pitched forward, her nerveless weight closing the door with a muffled thud. That one word.
An invocation. Deeper and darker than the moonless night.
She turned around, leaning on the car. And there he was.
The good news was that he kept a dozen feet between them. The bad news was that it made no difference. And why should it? He’d been dozens of feet away in that ballroom and had still overwhelmed her.
“Stay?” Where was her voice? She’d addressed him before in a breathless whisper. This time it was a husky rasp. Both were nothing like her usual crisp tones. “What am I? Your poodle? What’s next? Roll over? Beg…?” She winced, stopped. Where were her brakes?
“How about ‘stop,’” he drawled. “Before you inflame my already-raging imagination beyond control.”
His voice wasn’t the same as what had flowed from the sound system earlier. It was so much more layered and modulated and hard-hitting, the prominent r’s of his accent far more intoxicating. Hearing it without distortion delayed her comprehension of his words. Then it hit her and she almost went up in a puff of mortification.
She couldn’t believe she’d said something so provocative, just begging for misinterpretation. He’d never believe she hadn’t meant anything beyond sarcasm.
But wonder of wonders, his eyes weren’t stained with that knowing derision she was used to from men. His emitted only pure excitement. “Would ‘stop’ be less open to unfavorable interpretation? How about ‘don’t leave’?”
His voice sluiced another rush of heat over her. She quivered. “Still orders, both of them.”
He tilted his head. Light ignited the azure depths of his eyes and carved dimples in his sculpted cheeks. “At least they don’t have canine connotations, if my idiomatic English serves.”
And she did something she’d thought was beyond her, now and forever. She giggled. Giggled.
His eyes widened as if she’d electrified him. He retaliated with something far more debilitating than electricity. He chuckled.
She struggled not to melt into the ground. “You’re pleading less-than-perfect English skills to explain the inappropriateness of barking ‘stay’ at me across the parking lot like that?”
“Barking? Still going with the dog motif, eh?”
“You did bark,” she mumbled in embarrassment. “You frightened me out of my skin. I think it’s still pooled on the ground.”
His eyes swept down her body, until she felt it was her dress that lay at her feet. “From where I’m standing, your skin is still enveloping you like a glove and, propriety notwithstanding, you can see what the sight does to me.”
More heat splashed through her as she fixed her gaze on his so it wouldn’t stray to “see” anything. “See? Perfect English skills.”
“I’m sure my English tutor would love to hear that the ulcer he swore I gave him has ultimately been validated.”
“You gave your teacher hell? You’re pulling my leg.”
“Again, do watch what you say to me, or I might succumb and tell you exactly how and where I want to pull both your legs.”
Images slammed into her. Vivid, tangible. Those large, perfectly formed hands dragging her by the thighs, opening her around his bulk as he bore down on her…
“I’ve changed my verdict,” she choked. “Your English skills are not perfect. They’re horrible. Evil. Sietto un uomo cattivo.”
Suddenly the sounds of the night were amplified in the stillness that echoed between them. Whoever had said one could drown in another’s eyes must have been describing Prince Durante’s endless azure seas and the submersion of their focus.
Just as she felt her lungs using up the last tendril of oxygen, he exhaled. “Mia bella misteriosa…parlate italiano?”
She realized she’d said he was a wicked man in Italian. It had once come to her as unconsciously as English did. She used to talk and think in an inextricable mix, a habit that had faded since she’d returned to the States. This was the first time in many years that she’d reverted to the second-nature practice. It felt as if a missing part of her had clicked back into place.
Then more registered. He’d called her his mysterious beauty, asked if she spoke Italian.
“I lived in Sardinia and Italy from age five until I returned to the States to enter college at seventeen.”
These revelations were way beyond the simple yes his question warranted. But he made her want to do unknown things. Flirt, tease. Confide. It had to be the premium royal testosterone overexposure.
After a long moment when he looked at her as if at a gem with a thousand facets, he breathed, “Dio Santo, what are you?”
“What…? Uh, yeah, I haven’t exactly intro
duced myself yet.”
“No, you haven’t. Exactly or otherwise.”
“Umm…yeah, there’s sort of a reason I haven’t. You see, I’m—”
“You are mia bella misteriosa, who’s done what no woman has ever done—offered money to spend time with me.”
“Now that I find impossible to believe. I bet women offer anything and everything for time with you. I bet most wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t even one-on-one.”
“You think so? Because of who I am?” Her gaze wavered with uncertainty. He elaborated. “Rich and royal?”
Her laugh morphed into a snort that would have made a sailor proud. “Are you kidding? Or are you fishing? Women would throw themselves at you if you were a penniless nobody.”
His eyes flared. “Coming from anybody else, I’d think that a worthless exaggeration, but from you, I know it’s how you see me. For it’s how I see you, too. As for the one-on-one basis, that is the only way I would accept to have time with you.”
A moan of stimulation stumbled over her croak of embarrassment.
Hell, the man was reducing her to a pubescent state. But he was doing something even worse.
He was obliterating the distance between them.
Mesmerized, she took in the control and power that permeated his every move, the breadth of shoulders and chest that owed nothing to padding, the sparseness of waist and hips, the hardness of thighs rippling beneath exquisite fabric as he prowled toward her, a majestic creature by birthright and by merit. Now this was a man to make her revise her stance on swearing off men forever, a pledge she’d made happily years ago.
Which was a crazy thing to think.
Crazier would be to act on such insanity.
She stood there waiting for him to reach her with the same fatalism she’d watch a collision in progress, could think only that no man had ever looked at her like this. As if she was something incredibly unexpected, and unexpectedly incredible. The wonder in his eyes drowned out the urgent voices that yelled that his damage potential would far surpass the devastation caused by any such collision.
