Bound By Their Nine-Month Scandal

She kept trying to place his voice, certain she would remember if she’d heard him before.

“I don’t even know what I want except not to let this moment pass without...”

“Seizing it?” he suggested.

“Stealing it,” she said wryly, finding the idea deeply seductive. It was the best of both worlds. She could briefly shed mousy, dutiful Pia Montero without giving her up for good. It was safe.

“Strangers in the night.” He held out a hand as if inviting her to dance.

Her hand went into his even though the music was a distant drone without a discernible tempo.

He was too compelling to resist, though. It wasn’t the outfit, either. She understood that some animals were innately dominant. He was one of them and he ought to send her scurrying, but she was too fascinated. She was utterly riveted by him and her reaction to his air of supremacy.

She distantly noted that she would have to tell her mother to find her a good-natured beta male so she wouldn’t be so completely overwhelmed by the simple act of being held in a man’s arms.

This was biology, she told herself through the fog of her deepening attraction. She was reacting to a chemistry that didn’t come from a mix of beakers, but from the scent of pheromones off skin. Receptive male meets receptive female. The pseudoerotic nature of their disguised identities and their clandestine meeting on an unlit rooftop exaggerated the excitement.

But even as her head tried to explain it and dismiss it, her body grew pliant and her feet shifted closer into his sphere. She wasn’t acting like herself, but she would never have an encounter like this again, when she could be someone else, free of commitment and the constraints of being Pia Montero. When her physical appearance and other shackles of identity were so absent she was nothing but the energy of pure, universal womanhood.

And he was all man.

“I want to kiss you,” he said in a voice that rumbled deep in his chest.

Her pulse skipped. It was only a kiss. She wanted to feel his mouth, to experience him. “I want that, too.”

“Come here.”

It was magnetic attraction rather than his arms that pulled her as she followed him into the shadow of the chimney. She couldn’t discern his features at all as he slipped his mask up, knocking his hat away.

His arms encircled her and his mouth brushed against her cheek, seeking and finding hers.

An electric current jolted through her at first contact, leaving her tense and waiting when he drew back slightly, his breath catching the way hers had.

She wasn’t great at kissing. It was yet another of those human interactions that had eluded her, but as his mouth returned, she discovered she liked it. His lips settled firmly across hers, flooding her with incredible heat, smooth and unhurried. As if they had all the time in the world for stolen kisses.

Her hand found his stubbled cheek and she enjoyed the abrasion against her palm as much as the lazy play of his mouth against hers. He teased her like that a few times, deepening the kiss with incremental degrees until she was parting her lips to catch his, wanting more. Her tongue darted out on instinct, practically begging for more.

With a growl in his throat, he settled into a hot kiss of intense passion, something she recognized with a fresh jolt of surprise and excitement. Then she lost the ability to consider what was happening to her as his strong arms pulled her into a world of pure sensual pleasure. The strength and safety of his embrace was all that held her together as she shuddered under an onslaught of pleasure so intense a helpless noise throbbed in her throat.

“Stop?” he whispered against her lips.

“Never. This is...” Overwhelming. Glorious. Essential.

She touched the back of his head, brought him back into the kiss and tried to give him the same sort of pleasure she was receiving. She offered all of herself, completely open to whatever he needed. She had never experienced anything so extraordinary.

He made another noise, this one more unfettered, as though he was slipping loose of whatever sort of control he held himself under—which perversely thrilled her. His hands stroked firmly through the layers of her velvet jacket and full skirt, molding her form, lighting a fire under her skin, sending a heavy ache into her loins.

“I’ve never felt like this,” she told him in a rasp of need, burrowing her hands beneath his cloak, into the heat beneath his vest. She had never been so forward, seeking so compulsively to touch a man, to take in his textures and musculature.

He swore. “Me, either.” His hand cupped the back of her neck and his breath pooled hotly against her throat. “But this can’t happen.” He scraped his teeth against her nape, making her nipples pinch into sharp sensitivity. “I can’t start something. I was never here.”

“Neither was I,” she said with a choke of rusty laughter. “Keep going.”

Her greedy hands went down to his butt. She had never done such a thing, never realized that the hard flex of his glutes could offer such a thrill as she squeezed.

He did the same to her, his strength pulling her so close she felt the shape of his erection through his trousers and the velvet of her dress, hard against her belly. Her brain distantly processed his arousal as potentially alarming, but her body fairly melted under a hot flush of desire.

“Yes. Like that,” she said in an agonized whisper. She had never been more thrilled by anything in her life.

He muttered something about wrong time and place, but he pressed her beneath him onto the lounger, his cloak falling heavily around them. He kissed across her bare collarbone, whiskers abrading her skin. When his hand sought beneath her, she arched so he could lower her zipper and loosen her bodice.

She was braless and he groaned with gratitude as he cupped her naked breast and lightly scoured her skin with his stubbled cheek before he closed his mouth over her nipple.

Desire was such a knifing ache in her that she swallowed a cry and arched again, unable to get close enough. She struggled against the confines of her skirt, ground herself against the ridge of his erection, yearning for the pressure of him there. Between. Where she was damp, her pulse throbbing like a signal.

“This is insane.” He lifted his head, looming like a gothic shadow over her, dangerous and fierce—but she wasn’t terrified at all.

“It’s a memory,” she murmured. “A good one.”

His breath cascaded across her cheek in a rasp of disbelief. Agreement. He caught her earlobe in his teeth, sending delicious shivers through her whole body.

When he lifted himself again to drag her skirt upward, she bent her knee to help, embracing the chilly air against her naked thigh, excited by the fabric of his trousers as he settled between her legs.

“I don’t have anything.”

“A condom?” She hadn’t thought of that. This was the point when they ought to stop. She knew that.

“Are you on anything? I don’t have any health issues.”

She wasn’t, but she had thrown supplies in her clutch this evening, thinking her cycle was due and didn’t it always arrive at the least convenient time.

“I’m okay. It’s fine.” She didn’t want to stop. There would never be another moment like this one. She needed him more than she needed air.

His hand cupped her cheek. “Thank you.” It was the growl of an animal loosed from a cage and threatening to consume her. His busy mouth went across her jaw and down her throat and back to her breast while she ran her hands over and over the layers of clothing across his back.

When he stroked his broad hand up her thigh, she got her hands beneath his clothing, too; found the hot, smooth skin of his waist and the hollow of his spine. She would have tried to work her hand around to open his belt, but his thumb slid inward to graze over the silk between her legs.

She gasped and went very still.

“No?” He froze.

“Yes.” She could barely speak, the yearning in her grew so sharp.

“Mmm...” He did it again and caught her light cries with his kiss, making love to her mouth with his tongue as he teased and caressed and his thumb found its way beneath silk to stroke into slippery heat.

She shuddered as she kissed him back, flagrant and uninhibited, playing her tongue against his, her hands roaming everywhere she could reach. She was trying to convey how much pleasure he was giving her. Trying to reciprocate it.

“You’re gorgeous,” he told her as he lifted himself just enough to unbuckle and release his fly.

“You can’t see me.” She searched the dark, trying to make out the shadowed features so close to her own, but there was only the black cutout of his silhouette against the blanket of stars above them.

“I see you.” His eyes glittered despite the lack of light, making it seem as though he saw all the way into her soul. “Sensual. Curious. Pensive. And courageous enough to steal what you want.” He kissed her with a smile on his lips.

“I’m not courageous at all—Oh.”

He slid her panties to the side and settled his hot, hard, naked flesh against hers.

She throbbed with anticipation. Ached. She knew he was about to ruin her for whatever husband lay in her future, not because he would take her virginity, but because no man would ever make her feel this way again. Elemental and beautiful. Free.

“I see power.” She let her fingers move through the short, silky strands of his hair, petting this dangerous wolf who could devour her, but held her in thrall instead. “Self-discipline and patience and intelligence.”

“I’m none of those things. Not right now.” His voice skimmed across her cheek while the crown of him, fierce and hot and hard searched against her damp, untried folds.

“You’re perfect,” she insisted.

The party was a distant soundtrack, her self-control long thrown away.

She had no regrets as she felt the press of him, the pinch and sting of his shape forging into her. She didn’t even care if she orgasmed. She was thrilled enough by this—the act of finding a lover who pleased her. Of choosing him and by extension choosing herself. It was selfishness in the extreme and a moment of physical connection that would always be hers—something she would reach for to soothe the bleak isolation that would continue to be her constant companion through the rest of her life.

He nibbled at her jaw as he rocked his hips, settling himself fully inside her. “You feel incredible.”

“You, too,” she murmured, dazed by the intensity of lying with him this way. Clothed and joined, his weight crushing her lower half while his arms cradled her. His scent was a drug, his lips tender and teasing.

On instinct, she sought his mouth, perhaps looking for reassurance, but it turned passionate quickly. It was such a remarkable, glorious feeling to kiss like this while their bodies were locked. She wished they were naked. He was so gloriously, beautifully wonderful.

With a growl, he shifted, braced on an elbow as he withdrew and returned in a slow, testing stroke.

The friction caused an acute stab of pleasure that left ripples of shivery sensations in its wake. She gasped and dug her fingernails into his shoulders, astonished.

He chuckled softly. Roughly.

“That was something, wasn’t it? Perhaps we’re being spared by the gods. If I had met you any other time, I would chain you to my bed forever,” he threatened.

If only...

He moved again, making all of her sing. She clutched at him, trying to make sense of the sensations overtaking her, but it was far too engulfing. She found it impossible to think, only feel. There was a sting and heat and a kind of tension she had never experienced. She wanted to absorb herself into his skin, but there were so many barriers. All she could do was hang on as he cast off restraint and moved with more purpose. Their breaths grew more jagged, each stroke making her fight cries of increasing pleasure.

She didn’t know how to communicate to him how dazzling and wonderful this was except to allow animal instinct to overtake her. She licked his throat and offered her hips for the driving force of his. She stroked her hands beneath his shirt against his lower back, encouraging his rough possession while she brazenly sucked at his bottom lip.

And just when she thought she couldn’t rise one more degree of arousal, couldn’t take one more second of this onslaught of sensation, nature took over again and her climax swept her up into the heavens above them.

He stiffened, tightened his grip on her and stopped breathing exactly as she did. Then he shuddered and ragged cries sounded against her neck while she opened her mouth in a silent scream, all of her world shattering around her, leaving her destroyed, never to be the same again.

Angelo touched a kiss to the top of her spine as he finished zipping her dress.

She let her hair fall and adjusted her mask as she turned to offer her mouth to his.

He took a final, lingering taste of her, trying to memorize the exact plump shape of her lips with the sweep of his tongue. When he drew back, he searched through the faint light cast by the party on the far side of the house, aware that he would spend the rest of his life looking for this pointed chin, that wide mouth and elegant forehead framed by this fall of dark hair.

Against his better judgment, he almost asked for her name, but she spoke first.

“We should get back.” There was a creak of misery in her voice. She caught at his hand and pressed his knuckles to the hot pulse in her throat. “Thank you.”

“Thank you.”

It was an impossible situation. He wasn’t supposed to be here. And much as he was enthralled by her sexually, he didn’t know if he could trust her. It was best to leave this as a torrid, dream-like encounter.

“I’ll go first and distract the guards. They won’t be alarmed I’ve been up here.”

“Because you’re a woman?” Females could be treacherous. His grandmother had been one of the cruelest. But the guards might be tempted to frisk him if they caught him leaving a private area. He appreciated her giving him a clear path of escape.

“Until we meet again,” he said as he adjusted his mask and hat.

“In another life,” she said with a melancholy pang in her voice, turning away to begin her descent.

With one ear cocked for voices or a return of her footsteps, he moved into the corner of the patio. He flicked on his cell phone for light and noted that, aside from a thorough cleaning of the moss that took root every winter, the new owners had left the bricks exactly as he remembered them. He only had to move a planter of dormant flowers to expose the familiar, hexagonal brick beneath. He pried it up with the blade of his pocketknife and shone a light in to check for vermin or prevent a nasty spider bite.

The space was dry and empty—except for the tobacco tin. He drew it out and opened it long enough to see the glitter of jewels and the head of a small plastic wolf—one of his own treasures tucked away so his brothers wouldn’t steal it, melt it, or otherwise use it to torment him.

In the distance, the music stopped. A male voice said something about costume judging.

With a well-practiced move, Angelo smoothly set the brick back into place. He slid the tin into the pocket of his cloak as he straightened.

Moments later, as he slipped down the stairs and past the sign that read Family Only, his brain quit replaying the most exquisite lovemaking of his life and made the connection.

The guards wouldn’t be alarmed at her presence in a private area because she was family.

He swallowed an imprecation and waited to look at his phone until he had melted past the party perimeter and hiked through the orange grove to his car. It took two swipes to bring up a photo of the new owner of the estate, Rico Montero. Another swipe and there was Rico’s sister, Pia.

Angelo knew that pillowy bottom lip. Intimately. He knew how her vanilla skin tasted. The silk of her hair against his brow still tickled him with sensual memory.

His lover wasn’t a cast-off mistress of a playboy or a daughter of a businessman trying to elevate her circumstances. Her forlorn, It’s a memory. A good one had made him think she lived some sort of deprived existence, but how rough could her life be?

He knew women could be in an abusive situation without it being apparent to the world, but Pia held a lot of aces. She earned dividends from the family corporation run by her brothers, lived in a small but elegant house in a very exclusive neighborhood. Her social media page was covered in photos of exotic landscapes.

She came from a family exactly like Angelo’s father and brothers—titled and entitled. Angelo already knew the Montero brothers’ scandalous affairs with vulnerable women, a PA and a housemaid, had been papered over with quickie marriages, the Duque’s political career and the family’s positions of power and wealth left unscathed.

As for Pia, her fine-boned features were even more patrician and elegant without the mask. She was photographed at the occasional gala, her smiles unapproachable, her poses as deliberately nonchalant as a fashion model showing off a runway gown.

That lissome figure had been delightfully supple. He experienced a latent pulse of heat recalling the feel of her writhing beneath him, but she wasn’t his type. He preferred bubbly, outgoing women with real jobs. Ones whose motives and interest in him were crystal clear. He had learned the hard way that his wealth made him a target for the decidedly mercenary members of either sex.

He threw his phone onto the passenger seat and pulled away, disgusted with himself for giving in to impulse with someone so wrong.

It wasn’t the snobbery of an upstart toward the bastion of old money or the petulance of being shut out of that privileged life and therefore wanting to tear it down. His contempt went far deeper. Someone must have known what had gone on in that cottage on the Gomez estate all those years ago, but they had chosen to ignore it. They had continued associating with monsters, enabling Angelo’s father and brothers to enjoy a level of status they had no right to. His father should have been jailed and, when the old baron died, Angelo should have received a portion of his estate.

Despite being fourteen and away at boarding school, still grieving his mother’s suicide, Angelo had been abandoned and turned onto the street. Angelo was convinced his brothers had deliberately burned down his mother’s cottage, both for the insurance money and to prevent him returning to live there.

Angelo had scrambled to survive and if his brothers had left him to make his new life, he might have left them to living their old one. Instead, when they realized a cache of jewelry was missing, they had come after Angelo, accusing him and his mother of theft.

Given the way Angelo had been living, his brothers had believed him when he’d said he didn’t have anything but the shirt on his back, but they had been convinced he knew where the jewelry was hidden.

As he proved tonight, Angelo had had a very good idea where his mother had buried the treasure, but no amount of being knocked around or intimidated had got that secret out of him. Instead, he had bit his split lip and resolved to destroy them, no matter how long it took.

Angelo could have come forward as the baron’s bastard anytime in the last decade and a half, demanding his share of their father’s estate through legal channels. Aside from having no desire to acknowledge that half of his DNA, it would have been expensive. Until the last few years, he hadn’t been able to afford that sort of fight. It also would have turned his mother’s anguish into nothing more than sordid muckraking in the press. He couldn’t do that to her memory.

Besides, he had perversely enjoyed his brothers’ fruitless search. If they had ever managed to unearth the jewels, he would have staked his claim. It was, after all, compensation his mother had taken with the knowledge she would never be left anything by Angelo’s father beyond the use of a run-down cottage.

As far as Angelo was concerned, this tin of jewelry was his inheritance, fair and square.

He might have let his brothers go to their graves thinking the fortune well and truly lost if the masquerade ball hadn’t presented such a perfect opportunity to collect it. If they hadn’t sold the estate in such an underhanded deal and put his mother up for auction as if they were philanthropists for doing so...

They made him sick.

As he reached the field where his helicopter waited and climbed aboard with the weight of the tin in the pocket of his cloak, he considered when and how he would reveal to them that he did indeed possess what his mother had taken.

He wanted them in the weakest possible position, fully on the ropes, when he dealt this blow. Currently, they were still living off the proceeds of selling the estate to Rico Montero. Those funds would run out quickly, given Darius’s gambling habits and Tomas’s recent divorce. When they began to look hungry, Angelo would tip his hand.

It would drive them crazy. They would want to stake a claim, but doing so would force them to admit their family connection. They would have to admit how Angelo had come to exist and how his mother had got her hands on these diamonds and pearls.

Angelo would enjoy seeing them twist and turn against each other when that happened.

Like every nearly perfect caper, however, there was one witness who could blow the whole thing apart. Pia Montero.

She could place Angelo on the estate this evening.

If she discovered who he was.

CHAPTER THREE

Six weeks later...

“WOULD YOU EXCUSE me a moment?” Pia said to her mother and Sebastián.

She didn’t wait for her mother’s permission or even glance to read what was likely an expression of disapproval. Her mother probably thought she was giving in to nerves, but Pia didn’t care. She rose abruptly from the table and hurried to the toilet, where she lost every bite of the lunch she’d just eaten.

What on earth?

She wrung out a cloth and dabbed the perspiration from her wan face, shocked at the violence of her sudden illness. She’d been feeling odd all week, thinking she might be coming down with something, but she wasn’t running a fever. She wouldn’t dare accuse her mother’s chef of anything less than using the freshest ingredients.

That left one obvious explanation before she went down the road of blood panels for exotic diseases.

But it was impossible. Her cycle had arrived the day after the masquerade ball. That ought to mean she wasn’t pregnant. However, she realized with another roll of her tender stomach, she hadn’t had a period since.

She couldn’t be pregnant. Couldn’t. Her mother’s top tier, preferred choice for Pia’s husband was in the dining room right now.

Think, she commanded her rattled brain, but she was too shaken and confused to even recall the dates and count the weeks properly.

She would put off reacting until she’d had it confirmed, she resolved. And she would take a test immediately.

She fought her composure back into place and returned to the dining room, but didn’t retake her seat.

“I’m very sorry, Mother. I’m not feeling well and have to go home. May I call you later in the week to try this again, Sebastián?”

“Let me drive you home.” He rose and set aside his napkin.

“I wouldn’t want to impose. Mother’s driver collected me. I’ll have him run me back.”

“Not at all. Thank you for lunch, La Reina. I look forward to seeing you again soon.”

Pia’s mother offered a meaningless smile and tilted her cheek for his air-kiss, but her glance toward Pia warned that a lecture would be forthcoming.