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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 introduced 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.
Every step closer to his mystery woman solidified into fact what Durante had sensed from the first moment he saw her.
This was new. Surprising and stimulating. When he’d been certain nothing and no one would ever surprise or stimulate him. She did both, and far more, with every breath.
Her effect on him was so unprecedented that he’d done the unprecedented. He’d delegated running the rest of the charity function to his deputy. And he’d sent his bodyguards away, forbade them to follow him. He wanted to be alone with her at any price.
Her face tilted up as he approached. Beams from the nearest streetlight embraced it in a swathe of highlights and shadows. Her tresses billowed in the night breeze like undulating flames.
Contradictory compulsions wrenched at each other inside him. The need to capture, conquer, and the urge to savor, slow down.
The second impulse won out, forced his feet to stop before they took him all the way pressing her against her car.
He was close enough to reach out and run his fingers through that blazing cascade of hair. He didn’t. Somehow. He drew deep of her scent instead, let it permeate him, before he let it escape on a grudging exhalation. “So…you bid one million dollars for an hour with me.”
Her shoulders jerked on a dejected shrug. “Yeah. And for the record, I would have doubled the winning bid if I could have.”
He inhaled sharply. “You think I’m worth that much?”
“I think you’re worth every dollar of your billions.”
He bit into his lip. It was either that or drag her to him and bite into hers. As he would. Just not yet. What flowed between them deserved the reward of leisure and thoroughness. But holding back was a punishment, too. One her every word made harder to take. He was used to flattery, could sense falseness and self-interest even in trace quantities. He detected only sincerity from her. Alien urges swamped him, to punch the air, to thump his chest.
He shoved his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t find their way around her. “I do have more hours available apart from the one that other bidder won, you know?”
“Oh. Oh. You mean…?”
The surge of hope on her face made him fist his hands in his pockets, emphasizing his—problem. It was either that or snatch them out and pounce on her. “I mean, if you’re still interested, I’ll take that million-dollar check.”
“If?” She coughed. Her eyes tore from his, slammed around, the dazed excitement in them tingling through him on a path that connected his fingertips to his scalp, his loins to his toes. Her gaze settled at her feet. “There it is.” She dropped down in a crouch, pooling her flowing taffeta skirt on the ground, making her look like a gigantic flower as she retrieved the matching evening bag. She jerked back up, not lingering to look up at him from that position, to milk it for all the sensual promise it could yield.
She didn’t need any of that. She needed only to breathe—to be—to exercise maximum effect on him. But it pleased him beyond measure that she didn’t operate that way.
She fumbled with her bag, produced her checkbook. He watched as she scribbled furiously with even, beautiful print. Then she tore out the check, extended it to him. “Fill in the beneficiary.”
He took it, folded and placed it in his outer pocket before he reached into his inner one, produced his own checkbook and pen.
In a minute he tore a check out, handed it to her. “I’m bidding two million. Add to that whatever amount you see fit, fill in the total and make it out to whomever you like.”
Her movement to take the check felt like a reflex. She didn’t look at it, remained gaping at him. “What’s this for?”
“The two million is my bid for the time we’ve had together so far. The amount you’ll specify is for the rest of the evening.”
“The whole evening?”
“And the night.”
“The night?”
Durante’s lips twitched. Her squeaks would have amused him if they weren’t pouring fuel on his inflamed senses. She really hadn’t thought it a possibility he’d offer this. “If you wish it.”
Her blush intensified until she seemed to smolder in the night. And he saw it in his mind’s eye in high-definition clarity, himself carrying her to the nearest flat surface to ravish her for that hour she’d bid on, before sweeping her away from the world to do so again for several nights on end.
It was all so surreal he felt he was dreaming it. Yet it was so real it abraded him with its intensity and immediacy. He’d never experienced such a state of distressed arousal. And for him to be in this condition just by looking, imagining…Unbelievable.
At last she spluttered, “Uh…isn’t this a bit…you know…?”
He inclined his head. “Too fast? Too soon? You think so?”
A moan-giggle escaped her, another blow to his restraint. “If you think I can think right now, think again.”
“Exactly. This isn’t about thinking. This is about feeling. About knowing. I know what you make me feel. You made me feel it from the first moment. I wanted more than an hour with you. I want this night, bellissima, and as many more as you’ll give me.”
“That’s assuming you’ll want more nights after the first…” Her face scrunched into a wince. “Okay, excuse me as I give swallowing my tongue a serious shot.”
“With me around to do it? What a waste that would be. And why would you even want to try?”
“Because it sounded as if I was agreeing to share this night with you and was trying to make sure it wouldn’t be the one and only.”
Every word out of her mouth…He pressed the heel of his palm to his breastbone, as if that would quell the itching behind it. “And you didn’t mean that?”
“God, no, I-I…” She threw both hands over her face, before looking up at him, helplessness and accusation filling her expression. “It’s your fault. Exposure to you is turning my gray matter into day-old milkshake.”
A laugh tore out of him, drove his head back with the force of its unexpectedness and power. “Turnabout is fair play. Although you turn mine into the boiling version.” He reduced the distance between them another step, testing his stamina, thrilling to the torture of balancing on the edge of loss of control. “And I will want more nights. As many as I can have. I hope you won’t hold back to observe an ‘appropriate’ period before indulging in intimacy. I want nothing more than to end this night with you in my arms, in my bed.”
She melted back against her car. “And I want nothing more than to end this night in both.”
Gabrielle watched Durante’s eyes flare at her admission, knew he’d reach for her. She had to say the rest now. Now.
“But I can’t.”
The flare subsided, ice putting out the blue-hot flames.
Something twisted beneath her ribs. She couldn’t bear to see disappointment replacing exhilaration in his eyes.
She hurtled on. “Believe it or not, I did approach you with business and only business in mind.”
Relief swamped her when his eyes simmered again. “I believe you. But it ceased to be business the moment you laid eyes on me.”
She didn’t even think of denying the fact. “Yes.” She still had to qualify it. “But I can’t afford to let it be that way—”
He cut across her unsteady words. “You can’t afford to let it be any other way. Business will be taken care of in due time. But I’m not postponing this for anything else’s sake.”
“But what is this?”
“Something unknown to either of us, something unprecedented. And you know it as well as I do.”
Gabrielle stared at him. He kept stunning her. But what most amazed her was that she picked up no malice from him, that malignant triumph most men transmitted when women made the mistake of not only falling for them, but admitting it, too.
Not him. She felt he was above pettiness and double standards. This was also no line that he gave every desirable woman he met. In fact, his ruthlessness likely originated from his never instigating the pursuit. He was renowned for his detachment.
There was nothing detached about him now. She just knew he was being swept along the same unstoppable current as she was.
That didn’t mean she could let herself be swept. There was far more at stake than the elapsing of “an appropriate period before indulging in intimacies.” And not only couldn’t she tell him what, but that this was happening at all made her feel she’d fallen flat on her face into someone else’s life. Men like him—and there were no men like him—didn’t appear in hers.
She looked up at him, at once pleading for him to understand her chaos and afraid he’d shimmer and disappear. “Whatever this unknown and unprecedented thing is, and no matter how I feel about it or how right it feels to feel this way, I’m still totally weirded out by the detour everything has taken. Hours ago I didn’t dream…”
“…you’d see me and the world would cease to matter.”
His confidence sent her explanations scattering. “Oh, quit making it harder for me to make sense. The world might have ceased to matter, but it didn’t cease to exist. I had this proposal memorized and now I barely remember what it was all about.”
“I barely remember why I came here tonight, too. I don’t care about anything now beyond you.”
“Maybe if you hear my proposal, you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t. Not even if you’re coming to me with the patent for an eternal-youth or super-power serum.”
“Actually, I was thinking along opposite lines. That you’d be so opposed to my offer, you’d drop me.”
“So it’s something you think I’m liable to turn down flat? Is that why you were trying to sweeten me with the hundred grand? Is there something dark and controversial about you, mia ragazzaccia?”
The way he said “my bad girl” quickened her melting rate. “Oh, I wish. Okay, really, I don’t. I’m pretty grateful there’s nothing so…interesting about me. I’m just—”
“The woman I want to know everything about. And to that end, I want to conduct an experiment.”
She blinked. “An experiment?” She stopped. “God, I keep repeating things. I might start asking for crackers next.” His smile widened, blinding her with a flash of charisma. She groaned. “So, what’s this experiment? What are you out to prove?”
