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I was going to have a great deal of fun winning this game—and then mining the sexual chemistry we so clearly shared. If she was anywhere near as hot in bed as she was at the table, this was liable to be a very entertaining night.
‘You’re extremely arrogant, Mr Allegri,’ she said, but I caught the catch of breath in her throat as she said it. ‘Perhaps you should concentrate on the game, instead of my fictitious attraction to your charms.’
‘I happen to be very good at multi-tasking,’ I replied as I placed the pack on the table, suddenly less interested in dealing the cards than I was in dealing with her. ‘I can play and read your responses at the same time—which is how I know it’s me you want, not Alexi.’
‘What responses?’ she said, her chest rising and falling again in an erratic rhythm. ‘I don’t have any response to you, whatever your ego might be telling you.’
I decided not to argue the point. I simply let my gaze drift down to her nipples and watched them swell against the satin. I could only imagine how desperate she must be now for relief. The peaks begging for the sharp strong tug of my lips. Some women were extremely sensitive there; I would hazard a guess she was one of them from the way the flush she’d kept at bay for three hours spread across her collarbone under my examination.
‘How about we test that theory,’ I said, ‘and take a recreational break?’
She stiffened, but the blush was out of control now. And all the more arresting for it.
She didn’t respond so I added, ‘We’ve been playing for three hours—and I’m starving.’ I let the implication hang in the air that it wasn’t just food I was hungry for—while enjoying her attempts to stifle the now livid blush rioting across those pale cheeks.
I saw her debate my request, unsure whether to take the bait or not. If she knew anything about me at all—and I would hazard a guess she had done more than her fair share of research on my habits from her play so far—she would know I frequently played for twenty-four hours straight without the need for sustenance. I didn’t get hungry during a match, all my focus on the turn of the cards. But right now I was distracted, so why not run with it? After all, that delectable flash of temper and heat in her eyes was even more challenging than her play.
I wondered exactly how bold she really was.
Would she play it safe and decline my offer? Keep her cards close to her chest and continue to deny the chemistry making both our bloods boil? Or would she take the risk of exposing her own hunger, to get the upper hand in the game of cat and mouse we were now playing?
I was hoping it would be the latter, but had I overestimated her daring?
I thought I probably had when she looked away and I saw her throat move as she swallowed.
But then, to my surprise, she turned back to me and those mesmerising emerald eyes sparked with defiance—and a steely determination.
‘I’d love a supper break,’ she said, the tiny quiver in her voice contradicted by the thrust of her nipples and the flagrant colour still flaring on her cheeks. ‘But only because I’m hungry and I need all my energy to concentrate on beating you.’
‘Touché, bella.’ I chuckled, enjoying her audacious threat, and the sparkle of green fire. I picked up my cell-phone and texted Joe to get a meal up here pronto. She hadn’t just taken the bait; she’d swallowed it whole then spat it back out again.
Why that should make me relish bedding her even more than beating her was probably a little perverse—as a rule I never slept with an opponent, however tempted—mixing poker with sexual pleasure could get complicated fast... But, right now, my goal was a simple one. Stoke the hunger between us until she gave up all her secrets.
Then I could make quick work of defeating her at the table—and we could both reap the rewards.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u84c86fd4-a7fe-5ee5-8d89-053c48de2407)
HAD I COMPLETELY lost my ever-loving mind?
Why had I agreed to stop play and share a meal with Dante Allegri? It was stupid and reckless to the point of being extremely dangerous—especially if you factored in the pheromones rioting through my body every time he so much as glanced at me.
But I didn’t realise how dangerous my situation was until I was sitting opposite him at a table in the adjoining salon, set with sparkling crystal, fine china and antique silverware. His devilishly handsome face—illuminated by the flicker of candlelight—looked more savage than suave as the prickles of sensation all over my skin refused to subside.
It was as if my body had a death wish.
He lifted my plate to serve me from the banquet displayed on a sideboard which had been brought up from the casino kitchens by a troop of waiters who, to my dismay, had disappeared again almost immediately.
‘What’s your pleasure, Miss Spencer?’ The formal address sounded ridiculous, given the way I could feel his voice caressing my skin as he spoke my name in that husky, amused tone.
Wake up, Edie. This isn’t real...he’s not interested in you... He’s a practised seducer trying to use his industrial-strength sex appeal to weaken all your defences.
I shouted the mantra in my head as I fought the strange sensation—a mesmerising mix of lethargy and fizzing urgency—which had taken over my body and drawn me into this perilous position.
I should have resisted the urge to challenge him, to provoke him and to accept the gauntlet he’d thrown down, but I was here now and I couldn’t back down so I’d just have to play out this hand to the best of my abilities. Maybe I’d had some vague notion of playing him at his own game but, as the intimacy drew in around me and my ribs contracted around my thundering heartbeat, I realised the recklessness of that knee-jerk decision. I had no experience at all of men, especially not rich, powerful, sexually magnetic men who exuded the kind of confidence and charisma Dante Allegri did without even trying. I might as well have been a mouse, trying to impress a lion.
I breathed in the delicious aroma of the food as I concentrated on choosing a selection but, as my mouth watered and my stomach grumbled, I’d never felt less like eating.
I picked a few dishes from the lavish array of French cuisine—which I noted was plentiful enough to have fed me and my sister for a week—only to find myself entranced by the play of his strong capable hands as he ladled the fragrant samples of delicately spiced fish and lightly steamed vegetables, the rich gratin and colourful salads onto a gold-rimmed fine china plate.
He had wide callused palms and long fingers and blunt, carefully clipped nails. His skin looked darkly tanned against the pristine white cotton of his shirt. He’d lost the tuxedo jacket several hours ago but before serving me he had rolled up his shirt sleeves, giving me a disturbing view of the corded muscles in his forearms, the sprinkle of dark hair, as he placed my plate on the table.
He proceeded to serve himself a large helping, then sat down opposite me. He lifted a bottle of wine out of the ice bucket set next to the table and uncorked it in a few efficient strokes, then tipped the bottle towards my glass.
‘Some wine? I assure you this white goes well with Argento’s skate au beurre noir.’
Drinking probably wasn’t a good idea, but with my heart battering my chest at approximately five hundred beats per second I had to do something to slow it down, so I nodded.
He poured me a shallow glass, not enough to get me drunk, I realised with relief, but as he served himself I noticed the bottle’s label. A Mouton Rothschild Blanc from the turn of the new century. I took a generous gulp to hide my surprise, letting the fresh, delightfully fruity taste moisten my dry mouth.
I wondered why he hadn’t boasted about the wine, which I knew sold for thousands of euros a bottle, because one of the many things we had been forced to do after my mother died, to pay off her debts, was auction everything in her wine cellar.
‘Buon appetito,’ he said, nodding to my plate before picking up his own cutlery.
I scooped up a mouthful of buttery fish and creamy potatoes, but I could barely taste it as I swallowed. He was still watching me. Assessing my weaknesses, I was sure, with that focused, intensely blue gaze as he devoured his own food.
‘Where are you from, Miss Spencer?’ he asked finally. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his wine glass to those sensual lips.
I watched him swallow and took another sip from my own glass as I gave up trying to eat the food and attempted to come up with a convincing answer.
Unfortunately I hadn’t prepared for this eventuality, having convinced myself Allegri wouldn’t even be in the house tonight.
‘A small town north of Chantilly. Lamorlaye,’ I said, mentioning a town close enough to Belle Rivière that I would know the details, just in case he knew the area too.
‘You’re French?’ His eyes narrowed as his brows rose up his forehead. ‘And yet you speak English without an accent.’
‘I’m half-French, half-British,’ I clarified, my heartbeat stuttering under that inquisitive gaze. I knew it was always best to keep as close to the truth as possible, because then it was harder to get caught out in a lie, but I didn’t want to give him information that might make it possible to track me down after I won tonight’s game... If I won tonight’s game.
The jolt of panic had me taking another sip of my wine to calm the nerves that were jiggling around in my stomach with Argento’s skate.
‘I live most of the year in Knightsbridge,’ I said, plucking the most expensive area of London I could think of out of thin air. ‘But the city is so stifling at this time of year,’ I continued, lying through my teeth now to put him off the scent. I needed to sound urbane and cosmopolitan and a little bored to keep up the pretence that I was a rich heiress amusing herself for the summer. ‘So I prefer to stay at my parents’ estate in Lamorlaye from May to September... The social scene in Chantilly is so much more exclusive and refined than Paris, and our chateau has a pool and a tennis court and a cinema so I can keep in shape and entertain myself when I’m not socialising or making flying visits to Monaco, or Cannes, or Biarritz.’
‘You don’t work?’ He sounded both suspicious and unimpressed.
I slipped my hands off the table and rested them in my lap, rubbing the calluses on my palms I’d been hiding all evening. The last thing I wanted him to know about was the night-time cleaning jobs I’d taken on in the last year—along with the accountancy work I’d been doing for local businesses ever since my mother died four years ago. If he knew how desperate I was to win this game, it would only make me easier prey.
‘Work’s so overrated, don’t you think?’ I said. ‘And anyway, I’d hate to be tied down like that. I’m a free spirit, Mr Allegri. I much prefer the danger of riding my luck at the roulette table or the excitement of calculating my odds during a game of Texas Hold ’Em than shackling myself to a boring nine-to-five job,’ I continued, the lies floating out of my mouth like confetti at a high society wedding—the sort I’d only ever seen in magazines or on the Internet.
His frown lowered and for a split second I thought I’d overdone the rich airhead act. He had to know I wasn’t an idiot from the way I’d played so far. But then the crease in his brow eased and a cynical, knowing smile curved those wide sensual lips. But while my panic at being caught in a lie downgraded, what I saw flicker across his face for a split second had my heart bouncing back into my throat.
Disappointment.
When he spoke again, his voice rich with condescension, I was convinced I must have imagined it. Surely, like all the rich men I’d ever met, he preferred his women pretty and vacuous—the way my mother had always taken great pains to appear when trying to attract a new ‘protector’.
‘From the way you play poker,’ he said, faint praise evident in every syllable, ‘I’d say your time has been very well spent.’
Picking up my glass, I toasted him with unsteady hands. ‘Touché,’ I whispered, repeating the provocative phrase he’d uttered earlier, in an attempt to sound more confident and provocative.
He toasted me too and knocked back the last of his wine. But when his gaze fixed on my face again, while it still prickled over my skin, ablaze with an intense, focused desire that still disturbed me on so many levels, something crucial had been lost—his regard for me as a worthy opponent and an intelligent woman. He was looking at me now as an object of desire and contempt, not as an equal. The way all my mother’s ‘protectors’ had always looked at her.
Anxiety and inadequacy twisted in my stomach, wrestling with the confusion and longing that was already there. I tried to dismiss the feeling of regret that he despised me now.
It was stupid to care what he thought. I wasn’t here to impress him. I was here to win this game by whatever means necessary. And who was he to judge me anyway? A man who had made his fortune by ruthlessly exploiting the addictions of poor, deluded fools like my brother-in-law until they forgot about everything that mattered. And betrayed everyone who loved them.
I pushed the contempt I felt for myself and this necessary charade onto him. If I looked at it that way, Dante Allegri was as much to blame for my family’s disastrous circumstances as Jason was. Maybe more so, because Jason had always been weak and easily led, unlike Allegri, who must have come out of his mother’s womb with a well-developed sense of entitlement and a complete lack of compassion and empathy or how would he ever have been able to achieve what he had?
Unfortunately my growing sense of grievance against Allegri did nothing to temper the huge surge of adrenaline when he wiped his mouth with his napkin, threw it on the table and then stood and held out his hand.
‘Come with me, Miss Spencer. I have something you might enjoy seeing before we resume our play.’
He towered over me. He was a tall man, at least six foot three, and I was only a sliver over five foot four but, with his shirt sleeves rolled up and standing over me, it wasn’t just his height that was intimidating. This close, I could see how toned and powerful his body was beneath the tailored shirt and trousers. All lean muscles and coiled strength, he looked like a bareknuckle fighter who would be completely merciless in his pursuit of the win.
The enormity of what I was trying to achieve—beating Allegri at his own game in his own casino—hit me with staggering force but, instead of my flight instinct kicking in, as it probably should have done, the surge of adrenaline, and the rising tide of anger, at all my family had suffered as a result of this man’s cold-blooded business practices, had my fight instinct kicking in instead.
Whatever happened now, I would do everything and anything to beat this man.
I took the hand he offered and forced what I hoped was a seductive, confident smile onto my lips. ‘That sounds intriguing,’ I said, pleased when my voice barely quivered.
But when he folded my arm under his, tugging me close to his side—until all I could feel was the bunch and flex of his strong body next to mine and all I could smell was the clean scent of cedar soap and the devastating scent of him—my fight instinct blurred into something volatile and dangerous.
He escorted me to the mullioned window which looked out over the bay and let go of my arm, to step behind me.
‘Over there,’ he said as he pointed into the inky blackness over my shoulder.
‘What am I looking at?’ Was he about to show me his yacht? I wondered. I wanted to believe he was vain and conceited, even though all I’d seen so far was passion and purpose—and an arrogance that he had clearly earned.
But just as I became far too aware of the masculine scent surrounding me, and the warmth of his body against the bare skin of my back, a red glow burst over the edge of the horizon, grabbing all my attention.
I gasped, shocked by the flagrant beauty of the natural light show as it spread and shimmered across the night sky, turning from red to pink to orange and myriad shades in between.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I whispered.
I’d never seen the Northern Lights before. I didn’t even know you could see them in Monaco, believing them to be a phenomenon of the Arctic Circle. My heart leapt into my throat. How had he known they would occur at this very moment? It was almost as if he’d conjured them especially for me.
I struggled to dismiss the foolish romantic thought, recognising it for what it was, a notion borne out of an overpowering physical response that I had not prepared for. But then he rested a hand on my hip and the gentle brush of his palm spread the fire in my belly through my body with the same intensity as the conflagration on the horizon.
I stood all but cocooned in his arms. I knew I should step away from him, the deep drawing sensation in my abdomen far too compelling. But the huff of breath against my ear, the intoxicating scent of soap and man, the strength of his restraint as he tensed behind me had the last of my caution flying out of the window.
We stood there together for several minutes, watching the show—and the drawing sensation in my stomach heated and spread. The mass of contradictions he stirred within me became harder and harder to explain. Why did he excite me so much? How could I enjoy standing so close to him when I knew how dangerous he was?
I shifted and turned as the lights began to fade.
His face was lit by the dying embers of the Aurora Borealis and a passion so fierce and all-consuming it terrified me. But it exhilarated me more.
It wasn’t terror I felt when he brought his hand up to cup my cheek then drew his thumb down my neck in a slow glide, to settle against the rampaging pulse on my collarbone. It was longing.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Edie,’ he murmured, using my Christian name—and the only real name I’d given him—for the first time. ‘Unless you want to share my bed once the game is over.’
It was supposed to be a warning, but to my dazed mind and the pheromones hurtling through my body it sounded more like a promise.
A promise I didn’t want to refuse.
I lifted shaking palms to his stubble-roughened cheeks. He clenched his jaw and tried to pull back, but I refused to let go.
Just this once, I wanted to go with my instincts and to hell with the consequences.
‘Damn it,’ he swore softly, but then he dragged me into his arms.
Joy burst through me—so inappropriate and yet so intoxicating—at the realisation I had snapped his cast-iron control.
He captured my lips with his. The kiss was firm and forceful, and demanding. Heat swooped into my sex and swelled in my breasts, shimmering through my body like the lights in the fiery night sky. My nipples tightened into hard aching points against the unyielding wall of his chest. My thighs trembled as his hands grasped my buttocks and drew me tight against him so I could feel the full measure of what I’d done to him. The thick outline of his erection ground against my belly.
The size and hardness shocked me, but it thrilled me more.
He wanted me as much as I wanted him. This seduction was real. We were equals.
His tongue thrust deep into my mouth in a relentless rhythm, devouring me. I opened my mouth wider, met his tongue thrust for thrust, the hunger consuming me.
But as the kiss continued, the sensations bombarding me became too strong, too overwhelming. What was happening to me? He was destroying my resistance and every ounce of my will. Why did I yearn to surrender to him?
I stopped massaging his scalp and gripped the silky waves of his hair in shaking fingers to tug his head back.
He grunted but let me go so abruptly I stumbled.
My survival instinct finally kicked in—several minutes too late—and I scrambled back, scared that I would throw myself back into that maelstrom of needs and desires if he made any attempt to kiss me again.
But he made no move towards me, his ragged breathing as tortured as my own. He swore, a guttural murmur of Italian street slang that I didn’t understand, then swung away and stalked towards the window. The horizon was dark again, the dance of iridescent colours gone.
He thrust his fingers through his hair, then shoved his hands into his pockets. His broad shoulders rose and fell as he heaved out a breath, his big body silhouetted by the sprinkle of lights from the bay.
At last he turned back to me but, with his hair mussed and his movements far from smooth, he was nothing like the man who had faced me across the poker table and then the dinner table. No longer confident and controlled, and indomitable—instead he seemed wild, or barely tame, like a trapped tiger prowling the bars of its cage.
I touched trembling fingers to my lips, the soreness both devastating and invigorating. This new side to him should have scared me more but as he walked back towards me, still struggling to get a grip on the desire which continued to reverberate through my own body, I felt a giddy sense of kinship.
Was he as disturbed by the ferocity of that kiss, and how quickly it had raged out of control, as I was?
‘Forgive me,’ he growled when he reached me. ‘That got out of hand a lot faster than I intended.’
The apology sounded gruff but sincere. And gave me an answer I didn’t know how to handle. Dante Allegri, the ruthless unprincipled womaniser, was a lot easier to hate than the man before me, who seemed almost as troubled by that kiss as I was.
