The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress

She had to surface from under his spell, run for her emotional and psychological survival. She had to get back on track, do what she’d come here to do. Quit playing the game by his rules, according to his agenda. Whatever that was.

Disillusionment became venom as it exited her lips. “That’s interesting, how you get your conquests to become your willing thralls. Thanks for sharing that insider tidbit. Especially as it gives me the opening to get to the point of this…charming evening. Now that we’ve gotten the dinner you’ve been harping on for years out of the way, I hope you’re satisfied and we can finally get down to discussing something important.” His eyes drained of the warmth that had ignited them for the past hours. She braced against the moronic urge to soften her tone, to see his eyes fill with that fake intimacy again. “So…go ahead. Negotiate. I can’t wait to hear your ‘terms’. They should be…entertaining.”

Ferruccio almost flinched. He felt as if she’d kicked him in the gut. And she had. Figuratively speaking.

After the first shock passed, rage crashed over him.

How had this happened? He’d set out to lull her, to overcome her resistance. Where had it all taken such a sharp detour, so that he’d been the one who’d been lulled, who hadn’t seen this coming?

For the past hours he’d forgotten his harsh intentions. He’d gradually drowned in the pleasure of her nearness as she’d shown him a persona that combined the vulnerability he’d thought he’d seen that first night with a steel shield of will and wit, wrapped around a core of fun and warmth and passion.

And it had just been another of her masks.

How had she blindsided him again? He could still swear she’d finally taken off all her masks and shown him her true self. Which her own words now told him was premium self-delusion.

She’d taunted him with the memory of his rejected invitations, intimating she’d considered them the undignified and unimportant pursuit of an unacceptable suitor, and that this evening was her way of giving him what he’d been “harping” on, to humor him, because of the situation she’d been forced into. And would he now stop behaving irrationally?

Her sarcasm sent the beast inside him clawing out of his gut. Disappointment spilled from there to burn his insides.

She hadn’t been enjoying herself, had been leading him on to equalize the balance of power so that she wouldn’t be the beggar here. She was trying to set a record that, no matter what upper hand he held now, between them, he’d get nothing but the condescension he deserved. It was clear it didn’t matter that he was a D’Agostino. He remained a bastard in her eyes.

She really had no idea who she was dealing with, how out of her depth she was. He might be cultured and suave on the surface, but he was a street fighter at heart. Playing against odds she couldn’t begin to imagine in her wildest nightmares, to win at any cost was what he did. And it was time to do so.

It was time to make her regret her snobbery.

His bared his teeth in a smile he knew would chill her bones as it had so many, from politicians to tycoons to mafia dons. “You want to negotiate, Principessa? By all means. And since you’re so enthusiastic to hear my terms, here they are. Or here it is. I have one term for taking the succession. That I take you with it.”

Chapter Three

“You’re insane.”

Ferruccio leaned back in his chair, stuck his hands in his pockets and indolently surveyed Clarissa, savoring her shock and indignation as she choked on his declaration.

“Am I, now? Hmm. Literally all the financial world disagrees with your verdict.”

“That’s because you’re so intelligent that you manage to hide your insanity. And it’s possible to be a financial genius and a raving lunatic all at once.”

He feigned boredom even as he cursed himself for letting her barbs prick him. “Maybe. But you’ve heard my term, Clarissa. And it should answer all your questions about why I asked for you, why I summoned you here. To pay you the courtesy of demanding it directly from you, rather than from your father and his Council.”

Her mouth opened on a silent O. The lust that had been eating through him like slow acid all those years poured through his system in seething torrents. Imaginings of what devouring those dimpled lips would be like had ratcheted to a new dimension after watching them do so many things he’d never seen them do before—thin, curl, purse, tremble, quirk, spread in smiles and laughter, get bitten by those pearls she had for teeth, licked by that tantalizing-in-every-way tongue…

As for that vital body of hers, which had grown progressively more voluptuous as he’d burned for her from afar, he now knew how limited his fantasies of possessing it had been. Now that it had filled his arms, pressed against his flesh, trembled in his hold, buzzed with what he knew, against all her condescension and disdain, had been as unbridled a hunger as his own, he knew. Possessing it would be beyond anything he’d experienced or dreamed about.

Which meant one thing. Pulverizing her resistance had just turned from a resolution to a necessity.

At last, she seethed, “You think they would have even considered your crazy demand? What do you think this is, the Middle Ages?”

He reached out and calmly poured himself a glass of pomegranate juice, quirked an eyebrow at her over the rim after the first sip. “This juice shares so much with you. The richness of the complex flavors that make it up, the sour sweetness.”

Her hands fisted on the table. “Spare me the false praise.”

“I won’t spare you anything.” He watched his multifaceted threat invade her sculpted cheeks with a peach hue that burned bright, even in the dimness of the flickering firelight, made him struggle not to storm up and go devour it and her. “You really think I’d make such a demand if I had any doubt I’d obtain it? You claim to have studied my methods, Clarissa. Didn’t your extensive studies and all those postgraduate degrees reveal that I don’t make a move if I’m not one hundred percent certain of its success?”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip to control the tremor that took hold of it. His own twitched with a surge of intoxication. What could he say? It was such a delight to see her with her composure shattered, with anger, dread and arousal tearing at her.

Just as he thought she’d realized she was outclassed and overpowered, those uncanny eyes seemed to pulse purple with each flare of the flames. “My studies and degrees also revealed another thing, Signore Selvaggio. That sooner or later, even impervious, unstoppable business gods miscalculate. As you did this time. Big time. I’m not some commodity Castaldini can bestow on you as a side benefit. And I sure as hell am not volunteering myself as an incentive to sweeten the deal.”

So. She wasn’t cowed yet. Bene. In fact, it was great that she wasn’t. He would have been seriously disappointed if he’d won that easily. He hated easy victory. And when it came to her, after all the years of frustration she’d put him through, he wanted—no, needed—her surrender to be a struggle. That way, the pleasure of her capitulation, when it came, would be all the more intense.

He was going to revel in this. Big time, like she’d said.

Time to play hardball.

The exhilaration of taking the skirmish to the next level danced on his lips. “Let me share a fact of life, Principessa. One from real life, not the sterilized, rarefied version it seems you’ve lived for all of yours. I don’t need the crown. It’s the crown that needs me. Desperately. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you have no option but to abide by my terms and demands, to do everything I tell you to.” He knew he had that serene look on his face that lions had on theirs as they took down their kill. He savored stressing his point. “Everything.”

Clarissa’s heart stopped for what must be the hundredth time today.

After a couple of dropped beats, it burst into another stumbling gallop that pushed no blood to her head, that left her feeling she was teetering on the verge of oblivion.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t have said all he’d said. This was insane.

And he was watching her with the same coldness with which he’d once looked at her across the ballroom on that first night. Which made it all crazier. Why was he even demanding this, her, if that was what he really felt toward her?

She struggled to keep hysteria from tingeing her voice and features. “I said that should be entertaining. And it is. You think you’re irreplaceable, don’t you? Well, you’re not. My father is just going through his list of candidates. In case you didn’t know already, you—in spite of your belief in your own indispensability—didn’t rank first there. You merely happened to be third.”

He took another sip of his juice, savored it slowly, made her imagine what he no doubt meant her to, those lips on her every secret, savoring her, before he murmured languidly, “Third and last.”

“You really have an inflated sense of your own importance, don’t you? Figures. Too many billions can do that to a man.”

“When they’re not inherited, and have been gained through legal venues, it’s safe to say they do indicate indisputable personal value.”

“Legal? Are you absolutely certain about that?” The look he gave her sent shivers of alarm, almost fear, zigzagging through her. She’d crossed a line.

She didn’t give an ant’s leg. Just as he didn’t, about her or how she felt. “May you live happily ever after with your indisputable personal value, Signore Selvaggio. We’ll find someone else. Someone who won’t play cheap games when he’s offered something as incalculable as the honor and privilege of the crown of Castaldini.”

The danger in his eyes switched off, but the benevolence in the smile he bestowed on her was far worse. She felt her blood freezing in her arteries. “Good luck with that.”

She stilled, the ice spreading. “What do you mean? And quit being cryptic. If you have something to say, then say it.”

He gave a lazy shrug. “I don’t have anything more to say. You know the rest, even though you’re pretending not to. Contrary to what you accused me of, and unlike you, I don’t play games.”

“What are you talking about? What’s that ‘rest’ I’m supposed to know?” she snapped.

His gaze sharpened, the steel luminosity of his irises flaring and subsiding with the flames of the torches until it seemed that the shifting shadows and golden lights they cast over his face would expose some supernatural entity that his magnificent body housed—one who examined her with brooding, malignant amusement.

Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed—a harsh, ugly sound so unlike his laughter during the past hours. Despite everything, this confirmation of the loss of the illusion of harmony and affinity they’d shared sent regret skewering through her.

“Dio santo, sei serio. You’re serious. You know nothing. They left you in the dark, the old jackals. That explains everything. Why you think you can be your usual scathing self with me. They didn’t warn that you they can’t afford for you to alienate their last option. How remiss of them.”

“That isn’t true. It can’t be. Someone else w—”

He cut her trembling protest short “—would bring about the end of Castaldini as we know it. No other man of Castaldinian origins or with the prerequisite D’Agostino blood—whether obtained on the right side of the sheets or not—possesses enough power to drive away the kingdom’s external enemies and to defuse the internal conflicts. But I have my own empire, to which I owe my allegiance. On the other hand, even you can work out that I don’t owe Castaldini or its people any measure of that. So don’t play the honor and privilege card with me. I’m not in any way duty or honor bound to take on the responsibility of safeguarding Castaldini’s crown and future. If I’m to accept doing your kingdom that ‘incalculable’ favor, I demand an ‘incentive to sweeten the deal,’ as you put it. And you’re it.”

She stared at him, at the face of his serene cruelty, his absolute certainty, the tremors she’d been struggling to hold back breaking free, starting to rattle her bones.

He went on as if he was auguring something as trivial as a soccer game’s outcome. “If you refuse, you can go back to your precious father and Council with my refusal, and let them pick someone else from the inadequate choices they’ve already rejected for the best of reasons, and let Castaldini go to hell.”

He couldn’t be lying about all this, could he? But maybe he didn’t consider it lying, just maneuvering her by any means necessary to corner her. He was a master manipulator, after all.

And he wasn’t even finished. He went on, and she discovered he’d saved the worst for last. “And when Castaldini is in ruins, maybe becomes some second-rate, exploited annex to one of the surrounding nations panting to drain its riches into their resource-poor, overpopulated, debt-ridden bellies, I’ll still come after you. And I will have you. The crown will be lost, but you’ll be mine in the end, Clarissa.”

She was panting by the time he finished. Quaking. Then it all blurted out of her, all the indignation and distress he’d so expertly inflamed beyond the danger zone. “You’re the one who can get lost, or can go to hell, Ferruccio Selvaggio—or D’Agostino, or whatever your name is. Be sure to take your toxic conceit and cruelty with you. Castaldini will survive without your oh-so-vital intervention, and you’re not coming near me…”

Her tirade choked off into panting silence. It wasn’t because he’d made any threatening move. It was his very tranquility, as he leaned forward, placed his glass on the table then heaved up to his feet, that made her every cell scream with alarm. Each movement was the measured advance of a predator with all the time in the world to pounce on his prey. Then he did.

He stopped by her, leaned down, took her hand and pulled her out of her chair and onto her feet.

“Wh-what are you doing?” she sputtered.

“What I should have done years ago.”

He gave her a firm tug, slammed her against his body. Before she could draw another breath, one of his hands slipped into the hair at her nape, twisted there, immobilizing her head, tilting her face upward, the other trailing a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it—the beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer, its cunning savagery having assured his survival in hell, conquering of it, before being unleashed on this realm. The beast was hungry—and she was the meal it craved.

Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with the first unchecked emotions he’d let her see there, he lowered his head.

She felt as if she were in the path of a comet, that she’d disintegrate at impact. At the last moment before his lips took hers, she averted her face in an act of pure survival.

His lips landed on her cheek, at the corner of her mouth, with a chain reaction of insistent, escalating voracity. The feel of his lips on her flesh, the gust of his breath filling her with his scent and virility, left her suffering a widespread synaptic disruption. It was as bad as being a few feet from ground zero. Then he took his destruction to another level.

The hand on her lower back pressed her into him. Before she could deal with the blow of sensations at feeling his arousal against her belly, he relinquished his hold on her head, combed his fingers through her hair, over and over, sending pleasure cascading from every hair root, before that hand caressed her back, on its way to delving beneath her jacket and top.

She moaned a sound she’d never before produced, as the hard heat of his fingers splayed against her back, a part of her she’d never thought sensitive. Every inch of skin he imprinted felt moments away from the spontaneous generation of fire. She jerked away to escape, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.

His other hand yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks through her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped as she experienced weightlessness for the first time, then gasped louder as he ground the steel of his erection against her melting core. Something scalding rumbled from his depths as he tugged at one thigh, opened her around his hips for better access, splaying her for his thrusts. The hand at her back plastered her heaving chest against his, then he started rubbing against her. Her breasts swelled until they felt they’d burst, until the abrasion of her clothes, his shirt and the power it housed turned her nipples into pinpoints of agony.

She writhed in his hold, whimpered as he ravaged her neck in suckles that would leave their mark, that sent pleasure hurtling through her blood with each savage pull.

All existence converged on him, became him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth, as he tested her flesh and responses, tasted them, took over her will. She was no longer herself, but a mass of needs wrapped around him, open to him, his to exploit and plunder. There was nothing more to hear but his voracious growls and her distressed moans, their thundering blood and strident breathing as he raised her and slid her down his body in leisurely excursions, had her riding his erection through their clothing. Her top had somehow been peeled up and he dipped his head and took her nipples, one after the other, through her bra in massaging nips, sending ecstasy corkscrewing through her.

Her fingers buzzed as if they’d turned to live wires, and only digging them into his flesh could ground the excess charge. Her moans became a drone interrupted by sharp intakes of breath. The flowing throb between her legs escalated into pounding, needing something, anything, everything, to assuage it. When it tipped from discomfort into pain, she cried out his name, begged, she didn’t know for what. He shuddered beneath her as he snapped his head up, crashed his lips on her wideopen mouth in a hot, moist vice, and thrust deep.

She plunged into his taste, rode rapids of delight as his tongue invaded her, taught hers to rub and duel and drink deeper of the fount of endless sensation, as his lips and teeth mastered her, gave her and took her and finished her.

This was nothing like the slow seduction she’d fantasized about. This was an invasion, a ravaging, and it catapulted her into a frenzy of need, an inferno of hunger. She wanted…wanted him to never stop, to do anything and everything to her, to take more, all.

She’d dreaded him and dreamed of him for too damned long. In her dreams, he’d always told her how much he wanted her, couldn’t wait for her, but still lavished care and tenderness on her, in the only way she’d thought she could feel pleasure. Now he’d given her this. Overwhelming, no preliminaries, no boundaries, just raw need, unbridled ecstasy. Light years better, hotter than what she’d tormented herself with all these years, the insipid fantasies she’d thought the height of eroticism. She should have known he’d pulverize her expectations, as he took her and soared far beyond anything she could have imagined.

And if not for the debate that had finally pushed him to override her resistance, to no longer give her a choice…

Something cold and ugly seeped through her delirium. A memory. A realization. How this had started. As a measure to end that debate.

He’d gauged perfectly, as he always did, that this was the way to decimate her resistance, to take her over, mind and body.

And he’d been right. She’d succumbed to the hunger she’d been struggling against during all those years she spent escaping him.

He’d made her forget again why she had, how angry she’d been. At him, for pulling her strings when he didn’t see her as a human being, just an asset, and at herself for knowing that and still yearning for him.

But her resistance was about far more than refusing to be another notch on his mile-long bedpost. It wasn’t about pride. It was about bone-deep terror. She knew where surrender to him would lead. To a repetition of her parents’ dismal pattern.

She’d grown up witnessing what misery could be wrought when involvement in a relationship was one-sided. Her mother’s unrequited emotions toward her father had destroyed her mind, had led her—as Clarissa and her siblings believed—to end her life.

Not that she blamed her father. He’d done what he had to rule a kingdom. It had been her mother who’d been unable to understand the nature of their political marriage or accept it, who’d wanted to turn it into a love match and had only managed to drive her distant husband further away. Ferruccio was everything her father was—including whatever had driven her mother to destruction—a thousand times over.

The memory of her mother’s life scared her enough to douse the insanity.

She started struggling in his arms, as if fighting for her life.

He stiffened for a long moment, unable to make up his mind whether her struggle was an attempt to get closer or away.

He finally grunted something and tore his lips away from hers, put her down.

Panting, every muscle spasming with the slow poison of the need he’d infected her with—a need that would eat through her if it went unappeased—she stumbled away, searching desperately for her equilibrium.

For a few seconds, the flames blazing on the poles surrounding her made her feel like an animal trapped within a circle of fire. As her mind rebooted, she realized how apt that fear was. She might not be physically trapped or in danger, but she was in every other way.

And her trapper—her hunter—was closing in on her again.

She squeezed her eyes shut, bit down on her lip, hard, to stop herself from turning around and throwing herself into his arms and letting him finish what he’d started.

His hands descended on her shoulders, pulled her back against him. She couldn’t even tremble, could only lean back limply, exposing her neck for him to nuzzle. He took this as consent, again cupping her breast, her sex, rocking her against his arousal as he suckled her earlobe, whispered in her ear, “I didn’t intend to go this far. But I touched you, and you responded and…”

She pushed out of his arms. This time he let her go at once. She finished rearranging her clothes, gave him a sullen look. “Sure, it’s my fault, because I ‘responded.’”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her eyes to the huge bulge in his pants. Her insides clenched. She swallowed. Dio, she was literally drooling over him.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying I’m not proud that I set out to kiss you and almost ended up taking you. I never lose control like that, never surrender to the heat of the moment.”

“No? Excuse me if I don’t believe that, what with you being oversexed and overendowed, as well as overeverything else.”

He looked incredulous. “You think I would have gotten where I am today if my libido had any say in my actions and decisions?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you? I’d say libido is the only thing that has a say in your decisions where women are concerned.”

“Then you don’t know much about men. Real ones, anyway. A man steered by his libido ‘where women are concerned’ is an immature dolt who ends up destroying what he achieves by making the wrong decisions at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.”

“I happen to agree. So you’re saying I made you lose your legendary control? Good one. Especially since you don’t want me at all. This is just a hostile takeover for you.”

He gave her a sweeping, lustful glance, huffed a short laugh. “You clearly have no concept of what hostile is. Or an inkling about what I’m like when I am. And if you think almost taking you standing up and becoming rock-hard whenever I so much as think of you isn’t wanting you, I wonder if you even know the basics of the male sexual response.”