Demanding His Billion-Dollar Heir / The Scandal Behind The Italian's Wedding
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Maria felt a little sad at that. As if somehow he’d taken away the promise of something that would be…good?
‘Perhaps I should just get it out of the way, then.’
He huffed out a gentle laugh—not at her, she realised. With her. There was a difference.
‘Perhaps,’ he said ruefully.
‘Would you do me a kindness, then? Would you kiss me?’
He met her gaze then, this man whose name she did not even know. And she felt it. That low hum through her body, as if his penetrating stare could reach into the depths of her soul and figure her out, understand her. That was what she’d wanted, she realised. All this time, all these years. Someone to understand. And, having done so, choose to stay.
His eyes roamed her face, looking for what, she didn’t know. The hairs on her arms lifted and goosebumps raised across her skin. She resisted the urge to shiver beneath his gaze, because she was scared. Not of him, but of what was happening to her. She’d never wanted something as much as she did his kiss. He frowned for a moment, as if fighting some inner battle she couldn’t imagine. He reached out his hand and raised her chin with his finger, looking at her, inspecting her almost.
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded, unable to speak. Wondering if he would walk away instead, or give into this strange web woven around them, separating them from the rest of the world.
He moved slowly, as if giving her the chance to turn away, to change her mind. She watched, wide-eyed and fascinated as he bent his head towards her, and…instead of pressing his lips to hers, he passed them, pressing his cheek to hers, stroking it almost, the heat warming her skin and heart, and she heard him breathe in, as if taking her into him, only to finally turn his head back towards her and almost brush a kiss across her lips. Once, then twice.
Her heart soared at the gentle yet firm feel of his lips against hers. Something within her rose to the surface of her skin, clamouring to reach out to him, to feel more than the simple contact of his finger beneath her chin and his lips against hers.
Desperate and fearful that he might pull away, that he might take this away from her, she reached up, inexpertly, to either side of his face, the soft hair of his beard against her palm, her fingers brushing the silky thick strands of his hair. Holding him gently, pulling him back towards her in case he turned away.
His lips hovered barely a centimetre away from hers, she felt his breath against hers, she drew it into her lungs and her stomach clenched as she wished so much that she knew what to do next. Instead, they hovered on this almost kiss, fire scorching through her veins, heart beating so wildly she thought she might never find equilibrium again. Then, as one, they moved, coming together—she opened to the tongue he’d pressed against the seam of her lips and she met it with her own, the first shocking feel of him against her, inside her, filling her and delighting her completely. She lost herself to the kiss, the dance of their bodies, the impossible almost dizzying feeling that consumed her.
She felt his hands in her hair, his fingers curling into the thick tendrils and tightening just a little in a way that strangely made her feel both safe and wanted at the same time. She stretched into the feeling, trying to hold on to each different strand of emotion and desire he was wringing from her with just a kiss.
She couldn’t hold back the moan of pure pleasure that fell from her lips to his and regretted it instantly as he finally broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers, breathing as harshly as she, as if as shocked as she.
‘Is it…is it always like that?’ she dared to ask.
‘No,’ he replied darkly. ‘Never.’
He took her hand in his, gently pulling it down from the side of his face, his thumb pressing against the palm of her hand soothing a little of the hurt, until it tripped over the scar that stretched over her palm to the top of her wrist. She pulled her hand away, rubbing at the scar with her thumb, not from pain but from the tingles and sparks his touch had created there.
She huffed out a little laugh, disguising her shock from the pleasure he’d just given her.
‘My stepmother hates them.’
‘What?’ he asked as if confused.
She shot a dark look his way. Surely he hadn’t missed the callouses, the little scars and nicks around the pads of her fingers, and the larger burn scar that topped the oblique arch of her palm.
‘My hands. The scars. She thinks that all well-born ladies should have delicate, unblemished, dainty hands and bathe in milk daily.’
‘And sleep on rose petals, I’m sure.’
‘And wrap themselves in cotton wool,’ she replied, continuing their word game.
‘And what do you think?’ he asked quietly, as if more weighed on her answer than just her thoughts about herself.
Maria turned her hands over, inspecting them impartially for the first time in a very long time. Seeing them as more than a body part, but as the tools she used to create her jewellery, to meld and mould precious metals, to create beautiful things.
‘I think they speak of hard work and sacrifice, hard-earned lessons, and I am proud of every single one of them.’
It was strange to hear her talk of the thing that had blighted so much of his life in a way that was full of pride and defiance rather than disgust or sick fascination. He had certainly met both those reactions. And then there was the other kind. The women who simply viewed what he could give them, in spite of the scars that covered almost half of his torso. The women who were more interested in his wealth or what pleasure he could give them.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she said dismissively and he laughed. Properly then, out loud, from deep within him. She turned back to him, curiosity shining in her eyes.
He nodded once, quickly loosening his tie, releasing the button behind it and, moving his head to the side, he pulled slightly at the collar of his shirt. He knew that she would see the tendrils of scars that licked at his neck glinting in the moonlight. Then held out his arm, the same side of his body, and released the cufflink that held his shirt sleeves in place to reveal the edges of the scars that reached from his neck to his wrist.
‘I’m sorry.’
As he secured the cufflink, forgoing the button at his neck, he reflected that he’d heard that phrase so many times. From the doctors and nurses who had originally treated him, even from Malcolm. And worse, from the women who decided they couldn’t bear to be near him, to touch him. They’d all held that tone. Apologetic and, more often than not, disgusted. But this woman’s voice held neither of those and for the first time he found himself asking, ‘For what?’
‘That you feel you have to hide them.’
A jolt passed through his body. No one had ever said that to him. No one had ever accepted his scars so simply and his mind went blank. Well. Almost blank. Because suddenly he was plunged back into the memory of their kiss. He’d not lied when he’d said that a kiss had never been like that for him.
Even now he felt the throb of desire coiled tight within him. His heart was still racing, which had probably accounted for why he had shown her his scars. Perhaps unconsciously he’d been trying to scare her away. Because she was threatening to undo him in a way he’d never experienced before.
‘Passionate, mindless kisses that are all-consuming, thoughtless and more than a little selfish.’
His words came back to haunt him and he realised the truth of them. Because it had made him selfish. Her kiss had made him want more, a need rising within him, demanding to be heard and satisfied. More. He laughed at himself cynically. He didn’t just want more, he wanted it all. Everything she could give him. Need fired his blood, throbbing thick and heavily through his veins. He desperately fought the urge to haul her into his lap and simply feast on her like the beast he was.
‘They’re from smelting,’ she said, cutting through the raging desire he felt and pulling him back to the present. ‘It’s—’
‘I know what smelting is.’ His voice had come out harsher than he’d intended and she had noticed, if her look of confusion was anything to go by. ‘Professional interest. Mining.’
She nodded as if that explained everything, including his seven-point-four-billion-dollar net worth that she clearly didn’t know about. ‘You don’t like it though,’ she stated.
‘I don’t like fire.’
‘I can’t work without it,’ she replied, not dwelling on the probable cause of his injuries. She tapped the series of silver bracelets hanging loosely on her wrist. Jewellery. She must make jewellery.
He wished she hadn’t said that. Because now there was an image of her taming molten silver, harnessing the power of fire and heat—his greatest foe—and bending it to her will. It would require a greater deal of strength than he’d thought her capable of only ten minutes before. But looking at her now, the pride and innate confidence about her work…her scars even, made her glorious to him.
‘One of your own making?’
‘Yes. My first piece,’ she said lovingly of the simple silver band, not smooth like so many others, but beaten, textured, perfectly imperfect.
Matthieu hadn’t realised how strong the cast of light was from the ballroom until it went out. The charity gala had ended and the staff of the hotel had clearly finished their clean up. A brief glance at his watch showed that it was nearly two a.m.
‘What are you going to do now?’ he asked, almost reluctantly.
She shook her head and shrugged a delicate shoulder. ‘Not sure. I can’t go back to the suites as my brother will be there and I’m not ready to…’ Her rich accented voice trailed off.
‘You can’t stay out here all night.’
He might be a bastard, but he wasn’t that much of a bastard. She had started to shiver as if the gentle light from the hotel behind them had offered both warmth and illumination. He shrugged out of his jacket and placed it around her shoulders, resisting the urge to smooth down the material that swamped her small frame. She smiled her thanks up at him and he cursed the innocence shining in her eyes. If only…
‘The hotel is fully booked from the gala. You can have my suite.’
And for the first time that night it was as if his words had broken the spell. There, finally, was that hesitation, that sense of insecurity about his intentions, about him. It was only to be expected, from women who got in over their heads, women who weren’t quite ready to ‘bed the beast’ as he’d heard one such descriptor of himself. She need not worry. He could never touch an innocent such as her.
‘You will have it to yourself. Alone,’ he concluded firmly.
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, standing, firmly tucking his desires and wants for her away. He held out his hand to her. ‘Come.’
CHAPTER TWO
MARIA FOLLOWED HIM through the dark halls of the hotel, still clutching the bottle of champagne she had snagged earlier in the evening, thankful that he had his wits about him when hers felt as if they’d fled. Because at first when he’d told her that she could have his suite, she’d been momentarily unsure. But when he had added that she’d have it to herself, alone, she’d been…disappointed.
Which was silly. Even she could recognise that. After all, she’d told him that she’d been in love with another man only hours ago. But Theo had never, ever, installed feelings that this man had conjured from her with his presence, his touch…his lips.
She knew she should be ashamed, but she couldn’t quite bring the feeling to mind. His impressively broad shoulders took up almost the entire width of the hallway she followed him down, gentle night lighting casting him in shadows. He was huge in comparison to her. Maria didn’t usually consider herself small at five foot four, but he must be well over a foot taller than her.
He drew up short at the last doorway at the end of the corridor. Turning to one side, he slid the slim black key card over the electronic plate beneath the handle, pushed the door open and gestured for her to enter.
She stepped past him, registering the oaky cologne that made her think of autumnal woods, earth and something else…something musky and enticing. Her thoughts on that, it took her a moment to recognise the sheer opulence of the room she had entered and she nearly gasped.
Yes, her family might have once been well versed in luxury, but her little flat-share in South London had adjusted her expectations. And this? Plush cream carpets met floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the stunning night panorama of Lac Peridot, her gaze instantly drawn to where the two opposing mountains met low in the distance.
From the corner of her eye she could make out almost obscenely expensive furnishings and a doorway that presumably led to a bedroom and en suite bathroom, perhaps. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the view from the windows, just beyond which she could see a small wooden deck with a table and chairs.
She turned, expecting to find him right behind her, wanting to even, but instead, she was surprised to find him hovering at the threshold as if reluctant to enter.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said, her words a whisper that pitched somewhere between humour and surprise.
‘Do you need it?’ he asked with a small answering smile curving his lips.
‘I’d like to thank you properly.’
‘Matthieu.’
She repeated his name, the word rolling off her tongue, shaped by her accent, and read sudden and shocking desire in his eyes as she did so. She felt it. Bound to it, to him. Firing in her a confidence she didn’t know that she possessed.
‘Thank you, Matthieu.’
He shook his head, dismissing her thanks, and made to turn, but she wasn’t ready for him to go. Not yet.
‘I—’ she said, halting his departure, but also desperately searching for something to say, something to bring him into the suite, to her. ‘I told you a secret. Before you go, would you share one with me?’
He frowned then, as if remembering her earlier confession, as if choosing whether to give into her request, and something passed over his features, something hard won.
‘What? Like my favourite colour?’ he asked, stalking towards her silently on the plush carpet.
‘No,’ she said, casting her head to one side, taking the entire breadth of him in her gaze. ‘It’s blue,’ she asserted and then smiled when she caught the look of surprise. ‘Your suit is deep blue, your watch straps are blue leather.’ She shrugged her shoulder.
‘That simple?’
‘It usually is,’ she replied, using his words from earlier that evening. He liked that, she could tell and it warmed her strangely, somewhere beneath her breast bone.
He had reached her and, now that they were standing so close, she had to crane her neck back to look at him. He really was breathtaking, his piercing eyes, a colour similar to rich honey, bearing down into hers.
‘It’s my birthday,’ he said, his voice barely above a whisper, as if it really was a secret to be shared.
‘Truly?’ she asked as a wide smile pulled at her mouth.
‘I don’t…usually do celebrations,’ he said somewhat distastefully.
She wanted to tell him then that she understood. That she hated her birthday too. But it felt…too personal, too intrusive. His birthday was about him. Not her. She pulled up the bottle of champagne she still clutched, and offered it to him, wondering whether he would take a sip this time.
He gently took the neck of the bottle in his large hands, put it to his lips, making sure there was enough air angled in the throat of the bottle not to funnel the bubbles over him.
But not once did he take his eyes from hers. After he’d taken a mouthful, he passed the bottle back to her and she placed her lips where his had been. The knowledge of it fired her blood once again, bringing a blush to her cheeks and the low v between her breasts. She followed his actions as she took a sip, faintly happy that she didn’t end up with a face full of bubbles and look as naïve as she felt in that moment.
She didn’t know what she was doing…how to do what she wanted to. And she really wished that weren’t the case. Wished, suddenly, for experience to entice, to draw him to her. To know whether it was just her enthralled to this madness.
Matthieu could see it—what her body was asking for—and feared that she wasn’t even aware of it. And God help anyone when she became aware of her power. The beauty of this woman could fell armies.
‘You know my name,’ he stated.
She smiled and nodded her head slowly, understanding the implied question, and delighting in teasing him for it. And surprisingly, he liked it. That teasing sense of her with no emotional undercurrent or ulterior motive. He watched as the teasing morphed into something else…something more primal yet serious.
‘Maria. Maria Rohan de Luen.’ It was said with a slightly Spanish flare and he mentally rolled it around his mind, liking the way it bounced within him. Unconsciously he mouthed the words, drawing her attention to his lips. The way she looked at his mouth caused that infernal beast within him to roar with pride and need and all the things he knew he should lock down tight. He should not be here. Not tonight, when this woman was threatening his cast-iron defences against things he had not thought of for years.
A timely reminder and one he needed to heed. He nodded once, to himself at his decision made, and then again at Maria, silently bidding her adieu. Because if he didn’t leave here soon, he might not leave at all. And she was too pure, too innocent for that. Had never been kissed until this night.
He gave her an almost apologetic smile, the gesture unfamiliar on his lips, and turned to go. He had reached the door, his fingers around the handle before her words stopped him.
‘Before you go, can I ask one more thing?’
He turned his head, not a single clue as to what she might ask for. But whatever had run through his mind, it hadn’t been what she proceeded to say.
‘Would you show me your scars?’
White noise was all he could hear in his mind and below that, somewhere deeper, a furious roar, snarling and gnashing as if some great wound had been reopened. It must have shown on his face, because Maria took a step back for which he felt instantly regretful. He didn’t want her to be scared. But she would be if she saw them. They all were.
Instantly he was transported back to the first time he’d bared himself to a woman. At seventeen, he’d been naïve enough to think that Clara had cared for him. The swift fury that streaked through him at the memory of betrayal had him turning away from Maria.
But…
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘That you feel you have to hide them.’
And why couldn’t he show them to Maria? It wasn’t as if he would ever see her again after this night, not once he left this room. She’d found strength and pride in her own scars, but what would she find in his?
‘They’re not pretty,’ he warned.
‘I don’t care for pretty,’ she responded defiantly, not once taking her eyes from his. There was that strength again. The steel that he recognised encased in soft perfection.
Gritting his teeth, he turned and stalked back to her, lifting his shirt from his trousers as he did so. One by one he undid the shirt buttons and still she didn’t drop her gaze. The women he usually spent his time with either hungrily sought out the scars that had fuelled his reputation as a beast, or were barely interested in anything above his belt.
Having reached the last button, he took one last look at her before shrugging out of the white shirt and casting it aside, standing there before her unwavering gaze. Maria didn’t break the connection between their eyes, not immediately and he gave her credit for that. But finally he closed his eyes, unwilling and unable to see those beautiful features puckered with disgust.
He felt her close the distance between them, the heat from her body pressing against his skin. The undamaged skin, because his nerves had been dulled by the injured tissue and skin grafts that covered nearly half of his torso. He felt her circle him, could have sworn he felt the weight of her gaze sparking a thousand starbursts across his body, even the damaged parts. He sensed when she had come back to face him and braced himself as he opened his eyes. But where he had expected revulsion and horror, even the morbid fascination he occasionally experienced, instead he saw wonder and something like awe.
Maria was enthralled. Utterly and completely. I don’t like fire, that was what Matthieu had said. Yes, his torso had been badly disfigured from the scars that swept around his forearm and reached up to his neck, where she’d seen the silvery traces earlier in the evening. They covered almost half of his chest and, she had seen, wrapped around his flanks and up across his shoulder blades. The twists of tissue, strangely pale, nearly white against his tanned skin, and in some places shiny and criss-crossed from what she could only presume to be many, many skin grafts to help the full thickness burns she could see were from years ago.
The patterns she found on his chest were painfully beautiful to her and she couldn’t even imagine the kind of agony he must have experienced for these to heal, nor the time it must have taken. His skin had reformed over the powerful muscles of his arms, just as large as she’d imagined, and the scars rippled over the muscles in his abdomen, the powerful outline of a six pack that spoke to a brutal physical training regime. Because that was what screamed at her most as he stood there, shirtless, his lower limbs encased in low-slung blue superfine trousers. Strength and raw power. Power that was almost straining at some kind of self-imposed leash.
‘What do you see?’ he asked. Demanded almost.
And she said the words that had come to her mind. ‘Magnificence.’ Raw masculinity, but she couldn’t let herself say that last out loud. Because it spoke too much to her desire for him. It would have betrayed her.
She reached out a hand, but he caught it in the air between them. His large fingers wrapping easily, firmly but gently, around her slim wrist.
She threw her gaze to his, aware that her breath had hitched in her lungs. Aware that her skin was on fire as surely as his had once been. But hers was an invisible flame, one created by him and the need to feel his skin against the palm of her hand. Not from curiosity, but the desperation to make that connection. To feel that same incredible sensation she had experienced when they had kissed earlier. And then she realised to her shame how selfish that was. Just as he’d said earlier about passion. But it was more than that. She wanted to be with him, to soothe that ragged sense of…of…she couldn’t put a name to what she saw in his eyes.
She pressed past her hand, still clasped in his, and closed the distance between their bodies. He held himself still, but she could see what an effort that took and she was torn…torn between recognising the stress he put himself under and the need to offer consolation. Instinct won out and she pressed a gentle kiss to his chest, on his pectoral muscle that had the twist and turn of a scar that had shaped itself in such a way that made her think of a great white oak tree, gnarled but majestic.
She traced the trail her lips covered across his chest with her free hand, delighting in the hitch in his breathing as cruel as it was. Because she wanted him with her in this. As utterly devastated and destroyed by the attraction that flamed between them. Though she was innocent, she could recognise the desire in his eyes, recognise it because she felt it within herself.