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Yet, he could still feel that body reverberating with the unassuaged need he’d sent storming through her. That he relished. If not as much as he did seeing that face of pure temptation pinched with worry. She must be wondering if she’d just made an irreversible mistake by baring her true opinion of him so blatantly.
She had no idea how right she was.
“As interesting as your opinions of my intentions are…” he gave her a smile that had had grown men sweating “…this…meeting is over, Clarissa. Now run along and go throw yourself in your father’s loving arms and sob to him over your ordeal at the hands of the conceited, cruel man he threw you to like a human sacrifice. Let him soothe you and tell you exactly why you have to come back to me and beg me to take you.”
Chapter Four
Clarissa went back to her father.
She was delivered back to him, more precisely. Just as Ferruccio had had her picked up like a package, he’d had her dropped back like one. His men had been implacable about carrying out his orders to the letter. He’d said to take her back to the king, and no matter how much she frothed with rage, they took her back to his very door. She’d barely managed to stop them from taking her to his bedside and have him sign a receipt for her.
She entered her father’s apartments, shaking with chagrin, with the ever-expanding shock waves from every second she’d spent with Ferruccio, desperately hoping that everything he had told her had not been because he’d been certain of every word he’d said and of his damned hundred percent success rate.
She closed the door behind her, leaned on it and closed her eyes.
Finally. Some alone time. She needed to inject some semblance of calm and control into her thoughts, and hopefully in her expression and words, before entering her father’s bedroom.
“Rissa, mia cara figlia, where have you been all night?”
She almost jumped out of her skin. Her father, who was so rarely out of bed these days, materialized at the passageway by the door she’d entered through.
Her frayed nerves snapped. “As if you don’t know.”
Pain stabbed dead center in her chest at her father’s grimace of hurt surprise. She cursed Ferruccio with a new fervor. She’d never dreamed the day would come when she’d snap at her father like that. What made it even worse was that what once would have been a mere blink and tightening of lips had become a grotesque, one-sided distortion with the aftereffect of his stroke.
Her heart broke all over again at seeing the evidence of her once all-powerful father’s incapacitation. For her to be the reason behind even a moment of his pain was unbearable.
Her heart thudded as she watched him drag his weakened leg, leaning heavily on his walking stick as he limped to the first chair in his reception area and collapsed heavily onto it.
He sat for a moment, not meeting her eyes, recovering from the few steps’ effort, his breathing erratic. Then he finally rasped, “I knew only that you were meeting with Ferruccio earlier today.”
“The meeting took longer than expected.” She struggled not to let anger and bitterness taint her tone. She shouldn’t let Ferruccio’s words poison her against her father. She needed to hear how things stood from him before she made up her mind who to blame. “Do you know why he asked for me to be the one to negotiate with him?”
Her father exhaled. “If you’ve learned anything about Ferruccio, Rissa, you must know he never declares his reasons to anyone. But I had theories.”
She tensed. “And those were?”
“He’s…interested in you. He always has been.”
All tension drained out of her as if with a punch to the gut. “And yet you sent me to him.”
“Why are you so angry, Rissa?” Alarm suddenly entered her father’s steel-blue eyes. “Did he…upset you?”
“That would be the understatement of the year.”
Alarm was swept aside on a tide of fury. For a moment, Clarissa could see once again the formidable man and king who’d ruled for forty years, who’d made Castaldini a piece of heaven on earth for almost thirty of those. “What did he do? Tell me.”
As if she would. She waved it away. “What’s important here is that you knew he wasn’t interested in my professional acumen. Why did you send me to him when you knew he had a personal agenda?”
“Why would you be so against that?” Typical. He never answered questions, always volleyed one back. “I never understood why you were so…reticent with him. I thought it might be a good time to settle this. He’ll become my crown prince and your future king. And I wasn’t against the possibility of him becoming even more.”
As in her groom. Her skull suddenly felt too small for her brain. “So you thought the opportunity to indulge in some matchmaking had presented itself?”
“What father doesn’t take every opportunity to try to see to his daughter’s happiness?”
“And you thought Ferruccio, of all people, was the way to mine?”
“Who else could be, but someone like him?”
“There’s no one like him.”
“My point precisely.”
“Dio, Padre…” The lament of how deluded his belief was recoiled in her chest as a terrible suspicion descended on her.
What if this was some side effect of his illness? He’d told her he’d been forgetting things, had been unable to focus. What if this skewed thought he’d formed of Ferruccio as her Prince Charming was a delusion he was suffering from? Brought on by his brush with mortality, his current condition? What if he was scared to die and leave her alone, and he’d latched onto Ferruccio as guardian-angel material based on his power and affluence? Maybe fueled by Ferruccio’s expression of interest in her? Or maybe he’d gotten wind of Ferruccio’s pursuit of her and built this imaginary scenario around it?
If that was the case, she should let it go. How could she possibly berate him for wanting the best for her, blame him for trying to see to it the best way he thought he could?
It didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was the real catastrophe Ferruccio had so coldly informed her was in progress.
She inhaled. “Is it true? Is Castaldini in danger?”
Her father blinked. “Ferruccio told you that?”
“Please tell me he was at least exaggerating.”
“I don’t know what he told you.” He averted his gaze as he said that. And she knew that every word Ferruccio had told her was true. “But maybe it’s time for me to tell you the truth.”
“Maybe? Dio Santo, why did you even think you should hide it from me at all? Padre, I’m a grown-up, PhD-holding professional, I’ve been elected a Council member by the people. How could you possibly keep something of this magnitude from me? How did you even manage it, when it seems everyone else knows?”
His lips twisted. His condition leant the grimace even more irony. “I may not be the king I once was, but my word still carries some weight. I demanded that no one tell you.”
She’d start tearing her hair out any second now. “Why?”
“Because no matter how much you’ve grown, how strong you’ve become, you’re still my little girl, Rissa. Because all of Castaldini’s troubles are my fault, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you how big a mess your father has made of everything. I hoped I could fix it, and never have to admit it to you and see disillusion or disappointment in your eyes.”
Her tears gushed. She threw herself at his feet and hugged him around his waist with all her strength, sobs tearing out of her as she burrowed her face in his chest the way she had countless times during her tumultuous childhood, when he’d been the impenetrable fortress she’d taken refuge in. “You’ll never see either in my eyes, Padre. You’ll always be my hero.”
He tried to hug her back, managing to apply real pressure only with his healthy arm, the other one barely capable of smoothing her hair a couple of times before the tremors of weakness made him drop it to his side.
They remained like that, locked in the cocoon of their souldeep connection, the king kissing the top of her head and crooning to her the soothing endearments and the unconditional love that had once been the sole thing that had made her safe enough to sleep, brave enough to live.
Then he began to talk. “It began about ten years ago. I started to lose my perspective in external affairs, to slack off in internal ones. I made many enemies within Castaldini, making it easy for outside enemies to find openings through which to infiltrate our land, take a foothold. I am guilty of glossing over too much, hiding it from all but the highest ranks of Council members. Then I had my stroke. To the world, to the people of Castaldini, the only serious thing seemed to be the market crash, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of problems. I know what you’ll say, that Leandro and Durante are dealing with the financial situation, that things seem stable now.
“But it’s the calm before the storm. With Leandro and Durante regents only, with me still the king, a crisis is inevitable. Without a formidable crown prince and future king, it’s a matter of time before the internal decay weakens the kingdom, until it collapses under the pressures applied by the nations vying to assimilate our resources to feed their expanding needs. Only Leandro and Durante have enough power to stop that temporarily, but they both declined the crown. For the best of reasons, I admit. In their positions now, they’d stave off many immediate dangers, but only a king can have the long-term influence to do it permanently. Ferruccio is the only one left who has the power needed, both financially and politically, to maintain Castaldini’s sovereignty.”
Clarissa lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, waiting for the wave to crash.
Next second, like clockwork, it did.
She shook with it, the fury that had been wreaking havoc on her since she’d left her father’s apartments last night.
She hadn’t slept a wink, had risen from her bed as dawn stretched its first fingers across the sky and paced her room for hours. It was 10:00 a.m. now, and she felt exhausted, beaten.
Castaldini was in clear and present danger.
When she’d realized in how much danger the kingdom was in, she’d raved and ranted that her father should draft either Leandro or Durante to the duty, that they weren’t entitled to refuse when stakes were that catastrophic. But he’d told her why either Leandro or Durante would still end Castaldini as they knew it—Leandro by his incompatible political views, and Durante by bringing an end to the very law around which Castaldini had been built.
She’d struggled to enumerate the measures that could be installed so that either man’s reign wouldn’t do the predicted damage, but her father had countered every one with an undeniable projection of how it would fail. He’d told her that, before she’d become part of it, the Council had discussed everything in dozens of raging closed sessions, until they had admitted there was no other way out. Did she think anything less could have made them reach the decision to make the offer to Ferruccio?
So this was it. It was down to Ferruccio. It was up to him to save Castaldini. He was, in every way, the only one who could.
And that bastard—and the epithet had absolutely nothing to do with his birth, but with his character, his behavior—cared nothing about it. He cared only about getting his way. He wanted his “incentive.” Her.
She’d once thought him a god. He lived up to the belief in many ways. He now did in the most maddening way of all. To save king and country, she had to offer herself at the altar of the vicious deity he’d turned out to be.
She twisted around in bed, reached across to her nightstand, picked up her cell phone.
Time to discuss the terms of her sacrifice.
She pushed the buttons. The private number he said only a handful were privileged enough to have. She’d never called it before. She’d memorized it the first time he’d given it to her, with the second invitation she refused. She was in no position to refuse him…anything…anymore. As he’d said she would be.
The line clicked open before the first ring ended.
He’d been waiting for her. Figured.
She waited for him to speak. To gloat. But there was only a protracted moment of absolute silence on the other end.
He was waiting for her to initiate the second and final round.
Good luck with that, as he’d said. She was holding her breath as she did to get rid of hiccups. She had this ridiculous conviction that if she held it long enough, she’d get rid of this whole nightmare. Yeah, right. By passing out, maybe.
At last he breathed, the sound of his inhalation, then slow exhalation pooling warm moistness at the juncture of her legs. And that was before he murmured darkly, intimately, “Clarissa.”
She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and almost coughed out the air that would have ruptured her lungs if she’d held it in another second. Just get it over with.
She drew in a hasty breath then blurted it out along with the question that had been eating at her. “What did you mean by ‘taking’ me with the crown? You want to marry me, right?”
A bark of cruelly masculine laughter ricocheted inside her skull. “Marry you? Without a long, hard test drive?”
She shut her eyes. How did he do it? How did every word he uttered blind her with arousal even as it also did with anger?
“So you want to have an affair first?” she seethed.
A shorter laugh revved through the ether to buzz through her every bone. “It might be an affair only. You might dissatisfy me, and it would end there.”
She counted to ten. “If you’ll be satisfied with an affair, considering the situation, as you’ve so…kindly said, I have no option but to accept. But I need to set parameters up-front.”
He tsked. “Parameters? How businesslike of you. Highly in-appropriate, when you’re discussing the plunge into sensual decadence I had planned.”
She jerked onto her back, tremors coalescing into one violent shudder before she went still and tense all over. “Had? Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”
He let her reach screaming pitch before he said, “I have.”
She almost felt her components scatter apart with the sudden loss of the tension that had been holding her together. The cacophony of emotion that rushed to fill the void was a deafening mixture.
Relief yelled loudest. Thankfulness mumbled its grudging concession. But to her disbelieving chagrin, it was disappointment that somehow made its whimpers heard over everything else.
It seemed he’d paused, knowing that these reactions would prey on her. His next words made that clear—made them all redundant. “I’ve changed my mind about what you deserve.”
She gritted her teeth. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that for six years, you must remember with crystal clarity, I’ve given you the courtesy of being the pursued. But I’ve decided that you’ve forfeited your right to such consideration.”
“And in your infinite wisdom, what did you decide I deserve?”
“That you must get down from your high tower and do all the running from now on. After all, you’re a record-holding champion at it.”
“If that means you’ll be running ahead, there’s nothing I’d love more than to run after you until you drop.”
She knew his smile turned to its most wicked. The illicit excitement that thrummed through her told her so. “No danger of that. I’m not as fast as you are, but my stamina is legendary.”
And the terrible thing was that she knew he was stating facts. He wasn’t a self-deceiving braggart like so many men she’d heard making such pompous claims. He was a man who knew his worth, his powers, and made no pretense at false modesty. A man who’d survived and triumphed over obstacles and dangers, over horrors she couldn’t begin to imagine. He also had the most glamorous women in the world fighting for a place on his one-night-stand waiting list. She’d bet he had stamina by the freight-load.
She harumphed. “So you’ll employ that Herculean stamina to stay one step ahead as I play ‘pursuer’ this time around. Any rules to this game I should be aware of? Any points to be scored? Any ultimate goal? Or is this going to be a wild swine chase?”
His chuckles rose at her insult. He loved it when she played rough, didn’t he? Who knew he had a masochistic streak. But then, it made sense. A steady diet of simpering obedience and syrupy adulation must make him sick to his stomach. What better than the corrosive sourness of her irreverence to equalize the queasiness?
If that was the case, he’d be happy to know she had verbal abuse by the truckload to pour over his arrogant head.
Meanwhile, he poured the black magic of his amusement directly into her brain. “As long as you keep the wild part of that chase going, this…swine will let you get as creative as you like about the rules. Points are scored at my discretion, of course. As for the ultimate goal, it’s changing my mind. You see, I’m no longer convinced you’re a…good enough incentive. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to convince me otherwise.”
“Any tips about how I’m supposed to achieve mission impossible?” She injected as much poison as she could into the sweetness of her tone.
His voice deepened. “If you succeed in making me spontaneously combust, that would be a good start.”
“And a fitting end.”
He hooted with laughter. She shuddered, pressed her thighs together, trying to ameliorate the throbbing ache deep between them. “Go ahead, give me your best shot.”
“I’d rather do my worst. Pity you’re dozens of miles away.”
“Are you alone?”
His sudden question aborted the flow of her venom, yanked sexual awareness to the forefront. “Y-yes…”
“Where?”
