Consequence Of His Revenge

An acrid lump of self-blame still burned black and hot within him. He had had to take that smoldering coal in hand, shape and harden it with an implacable grip, and pull himself into the future upon it.

Since then, nothing happened without his will or permission. He was ruled by sound judgment, not his libido or his temper. Certainly not his personal desires. Yet anger had got the better of him yesterday. She had. And emotion was threatening to take him over again today, especially when she muttered, “No. You shouldn’t have.”

The utter gall of her was mind-blowing.

She clattered the cookie sheet and spatula into the sink. Her ponytail was coming loose, allowing strands of rich mink and subtle caramel with tiny streaks of ash to fall around her face. It gave her a delicate air that he had to consciously remind himself was a mirage. That vestige of grief in her expression might be real, but the flicker of helplessness was not. Fagans landed on their feet.

“Look,” he said, more on edge than he liked. “Helping my grandmother was a nice gesture, but I’m not giving you back that job, if that’s what you were after.”

She lifted her head. “It was a coincidence!” She dropped some cookies into a brown paper bag and offered it to him. “Here. Tell her I’m glad she’s feeling better.” Her hand tremored.

He ignored the offering. “She wants you to come for dinner.”

“I have plans.” A blatant lie. She set the bag on the counter between them.

“I’m not letting you hold this over me. Or skirt around me. Put on a dress and let’s get it over with.”

“I’ve packed all my dresses.”

“Is that your way of asking me to buy you a new one?” He had played that game a lot and couldn’t decide if it grated that she was trying it. Under the right circumstances, he enjoyed spoiling a woman. Cami’s heart-shaped ass in a narrow skirt with a slit that showed off her legs—

“No,” she said flatly, yanking him back from a fantasy that shouldn’t even be happening. A pang of something seemed to torture her brow. Insulted? Please.

“What do you want, then? Because clearly you’re holding out for something.” He had to remember that.

“And you’re clearly paranoid. Actually, you know what I want?” Her hand slapped the edge of the sink. “I want you to admit you’ve been receiving my payments.”

“What payments?”

“Are you that rich you don’t even notice?” She shoved out of the kitchen and whisked by him to the rickety looking desk, then pulled up short as she started to open a drawer. She slammed it shut again. “I forgot. It’s not here. His name is, like, Bernardo something. It’s Italian.”

“What is?”

“The letter! The one that proves I’ve been paying you back.” She frowned with distraction, biting at her bottom lip in a way that drew his thoughts to doing the same. “My brother has the file, though. He took it last fall.”

“Convenient.”

“God, you’re arrogant.”

He shrugged, having heard that before. Recovering his belief in himself had been the hardest part of all. His ego had taken a direct hit after misjudging her father. He’d questioned himself, his instincts and his intelligence, which almost crippled him as he faced the Herculean task of recovery. In the end, he had no choice but to trust his gut above anyone else and get on with the work. He would have been dead in the water otherwise.

He refused to go back to self-doubts. He faced everything head-on and dealt with it as expediently as possible. “Let’s get past the games. I know you have a hidden agenda. Speak frankly.”

“I don’t! I’m exactly what I look like. I applied for a job for which I am fully qualified. You came along with your sword of retaliation and cut me off at the knees. Then I was nice to a little old lady who happens to be your grandmother. Now I have to move and get back on my feet. Again.”

Her hand flung out with exasperation as she spoke. She smelled like the cinnamon and vanilla she’d been baking with, sweet and homespun. All smoke and mirrors.

“How was I supposed to know you would buy the Tabor when I interviewed six months ago? I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. You’re the one out to get me.” She managed to sound quite persecuted.

He shook his head, amazed. “You look like you’re telling the truth, but so did your father. It’s quite a family talent, I have to say.” Then, because he was so damned tempted to reach out and touch her, he neutralized that secret weapon of hers. He gave her luscious figure a scathing once-over and said, “Of course, he didn’t work the additional diversions you employ.”

Her jaw dropped open with affront, but her gaze took a skitter around the room. She blushed, seeming disconcerted. Caught out, even. “I’m not—You showed up here unannounced! As if I’d throw myself at you.”

“No?” He was needling her, determined to maintain the upper hand, but that tiny word seemed to flick a switch.

She flung back her hair to glare at him. “You’re the last man on earth I’d want anything to do with!”

She faltered as she said it and tried to give him a scathing once-over, but her lashes quivered. He could tell by the way they moved that her gaze traversed his torso and down to the muscles in his abdomen. His stomach tightened with the rest of him. In those charged seconds, he grew so hot, his clothes should have incinerated off his body.

When she brought her gaze back in a flash of defiance, there was a glow of speculation in their depths. The light shifted, or, more accurately, the fog of animosity in her eyes dissolved into a mist of desire.

The air shimmered, hot and oppressive between them. All an act, he reminded himself, but, What the hell. He ought to get something.

* * *

“If you want to talk about compensation, I’m listening.” He suddenly seemed really close. His voice was like whiskey-soaked velvet.

“What?” She took a step back, reeling from the way her body was betraying her. She was trying to rebuff him, but everything about him overwhelmed her senses.

She came up against the wall and he flattened his hands on either side of her head, not touching her, but caging her. She set her hands on his chest, alarmed then intrigued by the layers of heat and strength that pressed into her fingertips. He was pure vitality, enticing her hands to splay and move in a small stroke of curiosity that quickly edged toward greed.

How did he disarm her so quickly? How had they even wound up like this? She could feel his sharp nipples stabbing into the heels of her palms and it pleased her. Excited her. She wanted to run her hands over his chest and onto his lower back, exploring everywhere.

She had to quell a whimper of helplessness. This desire was terrifying and exhilarating at once. Deadly, yet impossible to ignore.

His pupils swallowed all the color in his eyes, drawing her into the darkest unknown.

“What are you offering?” His arousal was so tangible in his voice, it felt like a caress from her shoulder down her chest. A sweep of bumps rose on her skin and her breasts grew heavy and swollen.

“Cold?” The corners of his mouth deepened and she couldn’t read his eyes.

This was bizarre and damning, yet compelling. She felt as though a drug had been released in her system that made her languid and euphoric. She didn’t move away. Couldn’t. Her breaths moved unevenly, and she could swear she felt the brush of his erection against her.

His muscles were like iron. Rather than shoving him away, she dug her fingers into flesh that had no give, exploring against her own willpower. How could the inherent strength in him, that wasn’t even being exerted against her, make her so weak?

He was doing something to her, though. It was a force that gripped her without effort. He wasn’t even touching her. She was the one touching him, yet she couldn’t escape. Couldn’t make her body push him away. She stood there and watched his face draw closer, filling her vision. She waited, lips parting, mind blank, until his mouth touched hers. Hot.

Why she held still for his kiss, she didn’t know. It was beyond stupid, yet she let it happen, wanting to know something she couldn’t even define. She tensed, maybe expecting punishment. Cruelty, even. He wasn’t a kind man. She already knew that.

He was cruel as he kissed her, but in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. He used gentleness to tease her lips into opening wide, then slowly worked their mouths into a firmer fit, angling and sinking closer, waiting until she was moving her mouth against his before he settled in to fully plunder.

A deep quiver rang through her. Recognition. As though she’d been waiting all her life for this. Her body gave a small shudder and sighed in relief. This one.

That should have scared the hell out of her, but she was so entranced by the sense of discovery, by the flood of heat and need, she let the kiss continue. She let it draw out, going on and on while she sank deeper and deeper into sweet pleasure.

She had never progressed much further than a kiss. Had never wanted to. Not like this. This kiss was beyond anything she’d ever known. It was right. It picked up all the pieces of herself she’d left scattered and broken and fit them together again, making her feel whole and alive. Omnipotent.

Worldly and womanly and exalted.

Her fingers moved, testing the firmness of his pecs, then slid in a blatant caress across the flex of his muscles, squeezing and shaping, tracing the ridges of his ribs and flowing to the hollow of his spine.

He growled and dropped his hands to her waist, stroked her hips in a sweeping circle of his big hands, then he cruised his palms up to cup her breasts, thumbs raking across her nipples. The twin sensation was so sharp and electric, she bucked.

He settled the weight of his hips against hers, pinning her to the wall, forcing her to take that continued gentle torture of her nipples. Heat plunged into her loins, and there was no denying what she felt there. She was screamingly aware of the stiffness of his arousal against her. His thighs were hard and hot, pressing hers to open so her mound was firmly in contact with that hard, hard shape. She throbbed under the pressure of him against her so intimately. When had she ever wanted something so earthy and base? Never. Not before this moment and this man who kissed her to the point she stopped thinking.

His thumbs circled and teased with an expertise that made her wriggle, the acute stimulation lifting her hips into his. More. That’s all she could think as she kept kissing him, suffocating, but unwilling to stop. Keep doing that. I want more.

The way they were consuming each other was blatant and more primal than anything she’d ever known. Her arms lifted to circle behind his neck, arching her breasts into his relentless hands. He pinched her nipples and she whimpered at the pleasure-pain, legs growing weak and pliant under the pressure of his. She stroked her fingers through his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the short, crispy strands, before drawing his head down to increase the pressure of his kiss to the point of near pain. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

His tongue thrust in and her hips ground against his, seeking the most acute sensations she could find. Nothing had ever made her act so animalistic. That’s why she’d never gone all the way. She’d never been compelled to by her own body, but oh, the way he was massaging her breasts was driving her crazy. She was so aroused, she actually mewled with loss when he lifted his head and dragged his hands down to her hips.

He watched her as he held her still for the blatant, deliberate thrust of his hard sex against hers. The flush on his face was barbaric, dark and satisfied as she gasped and met his erotic movement with a wanton, inviting rock of her own. A moan escaped her lips as she climbed ever higher on the steps of arousal toward the precipice of bliss.

Her hands clenched in his shirt and she pressed her head into the wall, giving up her lower half to his, inhibition gone. She had to bite her lip against groaning even louder as he rubbed against the bundle of nerves that was barely protected by the thin fabric of her yoga shorts. Her eyes fluttered closed and she held her breath, quivering with tension, so close—

With a hiss, his hands hardened on her hip bones before he thrust her back into the wall, releasing her to step away.

Stunned, she scrambled for purchase on the empty wall, panting as she fought to remain standing. Her body screamed for his, making this rejection the height of cruelty.

His cheek ticked, but he didn’t look nearly as shattered as she felt. He was aroused, but held a cynical gleam in his eye that cut her to the bone.

“We’ll finish talking about that later. Get dressed. Comb your hair. We’re running late.”

“What?” Her knees threatened to buckle.

If she thought he sounded strained, or as though he balanced on a razor’s edge of his own, the impression evaporated as he smiled, merciless and self-assured. The peaks and valleys in his face stood out in sharp relief, light and dark. Beautiful and indifferent.

“Since the compensation you’re offering comes with such a high rate of interest—” the corner of his mouth curled at his own pun “—I’ll give you a chance to make your case. But my grandmother is expecting us.” He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist, the face black and numberless, with only two needle arms. “We need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You want to finish talking now?” His withering inflection told her they wouldn’t be using their mouths for words.

CHAPTER THREE

“NO!” CAMI SHOVED off the wall and stumbled toward the sofa, where her backpack sat open. She grabbed at the cowl-necked pullover that came to hand and hugged it to her front. “Get out.”

She wanted him away from her so she could make sense of what had just happened.

His nostrils twitched and he gave her a long moment to absorb that by leaving, he was getting what he wanted. He wasn’t obeying.

“I’ll wait in my rental. If you’re not out in ten minutes, I’m coming back.”

Her heart pounded. She bit her lip against saying another word, gripped by incredulity, but having enough sense to know she needed him out of here so she could get herself back under control. As the door clicked, she sank onto the sofa and tried to decide if she wanted to cry or scream or swear. Maybe all of the above.

Why had she kissed him? Let alone so lustfully he thought she was offering to prostitute herself? It was humiliating!

It hadn’t felt humiliating while they were doing it, though. He’d made her feel things she’d never felt with anyone.

Why him?

All her life she’d waited for the right man. Dating and relationships were distractions she couldn’t afford, so avoiding going all the way hadn’t been difficult. It wasn’t as though she thought of her virginity as holy or golden, but she came with baggage and liabilities. She didn’t feel like a catch. When she did have sex, she expected it to be with someone who had earned her trust, loved her for who she was and deserved this part of her life that was, as yet, unmarred by memories of anyone else.

Now Dante Gallo had barged in and set the bar on sexual encounters to unimaginable levels. She very much feared reaching it again would be unattainable. Where would she meet another man who made her feel like that?

“Oh!” She buried her face in her pullover, still restless and tingling. Aroused, damn him. She was sensitized and filled with yearning. She would have slept with him. Totally would have let it happen, which wasn’t her at all. She’d never understood when other women behaved wildly, having sex with courier drivers in the back of a van or going home with a stranger, saying things like, I was really into it. We got carried away.

Cami had disparaged such stories. She never got carried away. She had secretly feared there was something wrong with her. Like she was a tiny bit frigid.

Nope. She just hadn’t meant Dante Gallo.

But he was the wrong man. Totally, utterly and completely.

Yet she could still feel that deliberate way he had thrust against her. In that moment, she had felt as carried away and with someone as it was possible to feel. She had thought they were both in the moment, edging toward ecstasy together.

A fresh rush of excitement flooded her loins along with a sting of fresh mortification. He hadn’t been nearly as caught up, and she should have been thinking about—

She jerked her head up, ardor finally subsiding as she remembered what they’d been talking about before the kiss.

How did he not know about her payments? She was so faithful about making them. Had been for five hard years, no matter what other financial disaster had befallen her. There was always something. A rent increase or her brother’s new shoes.

Despite making a decent salary and living very frugally, she was consistently flat broke because she made the equivalent of a generous mortgage payment to Dante Gallo every single month.

His playing dumb about that had her popping onto her feet and dragging on some proper clothes. She didn’t care about dinner with his grandmother, but she wasn’t about to face him in next to nothing again.

Or let him come barging in after her.

She put on the outfit she had left out for her travel to Vancouver tomorrow. It was a classic wool miniskirt in charcoal, black tights and the soft blue pullover she had squeezed a couple of tears into a minute ago. A pair of knee-high boots that were actually worth a fortune finished it off. The mother of a ski student had given them to her because they hadn’t fit in her suitcase back to France. That was precisely the reason Cami had left them out to wear tomorrow.

She felt tough and feminine and confident every time she zipped the supple leather up her inner calf. They had just enough heel to give her some swagger and always earned her compliments, boosting her ego.

She had needed that kick of self-assurance as she prepared to leave for Vancouver and her brother’s decrepit sofa in his shared basement suite in a dodgy part of the city.

With a glance at the clock, she saw she had two minutes to run a brush through her hair and lock her door. She tapped her bank code into her phone as she walked outside, searching her recent transactions until she found the one from last month.

She glanced up as she reached the parking lot and paused.

Dante was on his phone, too, leaning on a black SUV. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low and heavy, bringing on early dusk, casting him in uneven light. He was shadows and power and had touched her as if she belonged to him. She still felt his hands on her, still felt under his spell.

No. She was a steady, levelheaded, smart woman who controlled her own life. She had grown up fast and shouldered responsibilities way beyond her years.

Yet he erased that by lifting his glance. A fair distance separated them, but she felt him take her in from eyelashes to boot tip.

She had never felt so anxious for approval. So green and uncertain in herself or her own autonomy. Her near climax at the touch of his body was right there, torturing her with her own weakness.

Yet, maybe there was a twisted piece of her that felt so guilty about her father, she wanted Dante’s punishment and blame. Maybe that’s why this attraction was blindsiding her this way.

“You look nice. Grazij.”

His words stung through her, mostly because she was so affected by the lukewarm compliment. “I didn’t dress for you. Here.” She strode forward, holding out her phone as if it was a shield that could deflect all his barbs and ability to undermine. “See?”

He didn’t take the phone. He steadied her hand and glanced at the screen.

She held her breath, pulse tripping while she tried not to be affected by something so innocuous as his touch over the backs of her fingers. Everything they’d done in her apartment came rushing back to torment her. She wanted to pull back, but made herself stand there, heart hammering, watching for some kind of change in his expression. She thought she might have stopped breathing and begun to shake.

* * *

Dante didn’t know what the hell he was looking at. He was still half-blind with lust. This woman had got him so hot, so fast, he’d nearly lost control from a randy bit of necking. She had gone from wary and surprised, to participating, to what appeared to be a surrender of the most exquisite kind.

Appeared.

Somehow, at the last second, he had remembered who she was and hadn’t let her get the better of him. He’d had to stand out here in the spit of spring rain, counting down the minutes with a barely acknowledged hope that she would defy him. Speculating what he would do if she forced him to go back in there and finish what they’d started had not helped cool him off.

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