Olivero's Outrageous Proposal

He felt the same, she could tell. There was the undeniable evidence of the hard swell of arousal pressed into the bowl of her pelvis, the faint groan that escaped from between their joined lips before he brought his mouth down harder, stronger, crushing her lips back against her teeth.

‘Dario...’

Somehow she choked it out, not wanting to lose the pressure of his mouth on hers. He tasted wonderful, and the moment that his tongue slid over her lips, tracing the seam where they joined, had her sagging against him, losing her breath, losing all sense of where she was.

Would the lift never reach its destination? She wanted to be there—somewhere, as Dario had said, they could be alone together, private, intimate. Yet at the same time she didn’t want this moment to end. She wanted to go on and on for ever in this warmth and closeness.

But even as the thought crossed her mind the compartment jolted slightly, came to a halt, throwing her off balance and right into Dario’s arms as the doors slid open again.

‘We’re here.’

Somehow he managed to ease his keys from his pocket and unlock the door while still holding her close, never easing his grip on her arm, her waist.

In spite of the darkness it was obvious that the room was huge, no light illuminating it other than the reflection of the buildings and the streetlamps far below. The faint gleam of the heavy swell of the river was like a silver ribbon, and over to the left the ethereal spider web of a blue circle that looked impossibly delicate to be the London Eye.

She barely had time to adjust to the change in light or look round any more before Dario had tossed his jacket away to the side, heedless of whether it landed on a nearby chair or not, and reached for her again.

‘Come here,’ he muttered, his voice rough, his accent thickening on the words. ‘I’ve been waiting—wanting to do this ever since the moment I saw you.’

His hands were clamped around her shoulders, rough and bruising, but Alyse neither fully registered it nor truly cared. All that mattered was the passion of that beautifully cruel mouth on her lips, on her skin, the pressure of the hard frame of his chest crushing her breasts. The heat of him surrounded her, flooding her body along with the burn of her own arousal until she was astonished that the pair of them didn’t go up in flames.

‘I—I—yes...’

It was all she could manage, all she could snatch in, in the moment he allowed her to breathe before his mouth took hers again. His hands closed over her arms as he swung her round, half walking, half carrying her towards the shadowy shape of a huge dark sofa. Her shoes slipped from her feet as he lifted her up, left behind on the soft carpet as his right hand reached round to the back of her neck, finding the zip at the neckline of her dress, swiftly and expertly tugging it down. The release from even the slight constriction of her clothing was like a rush of release to her feelings. Inside the delicate lace of her bra, her breasts stung, pressing against the soft silk, seeming to demand the attention of those strong, rough-palmed hands, and she moaned her encouragement as he stroked his powerful fingers down her body, making her writhe upwards to meet his touch, wanting it stronger, harder. Wanting more.

Then she was lying on her back on the settee, the soft buttery leather cool against the skin that his hands had exposed. And Dario was coming down on top of her, the heavy heat of his skin, the weight of his frame crushing her back into the cushions. One long, finely trousered leg pushed between hers, easing them apart so that she could feel the swollen heat of him pressing against her, crushing into her pelvis, coming so close to the throbbing core of her femininity where the bite of primal need fought against the restriction of their clothing.

‘Dario...’

She was reaching for his hands, wanting them on her, wanting to place them where she needed his touch most. She was trying to draw them down to her yearning flesh, but at the same time she wanted to reach for him, hungry for the heat of his skin, the taste of him hard upon her mouth.

‘I want—I wa...’

But her scrambled words were halted, all train of thought shattered by a sudden violent sound. Someone was at the door, banging hard and slamming a fist against the wood until it seemed that it might actually shatter under its force.

‘What?’

Braced hard against the leather settee, Dario froze, his whole body stiffening, his dark head coming up, slightly cocked towards the door, listening intently.

‘Who?’ Alyse whispered, but he stilled her with a glance, laying one finger across her mouth to silence her. And now, although the scent of his skin was so very close, when all she had to do was to open her mouth and take him in, taste the intensely personal flavour of him as she had wanted just moments before, it was suddenly the last thing she could do. The last thing she dared to do until she knew who had intruded on their seclusion, blasting their way into the heated intimacy they had created and threatening to destroy it totally.

‘Olivero!’ Another bang at the door clashed with the darkly furious use of Dario’s name. ‘Open this door, damn you! Open it now!’

A slight gleam in the moonlight showed how Dario’s eyes slanted once, briefly, towards where Alyse’s head rested against the leather-covered arm of the sofa, then swung back again in the direction of the door.

‘Open this door, you bastard! I know you’re in there—and Alyse with you too.’

‘No!’

The word escaped Alyse in a panic as she recognised the sound, even though distorted through the wood. She knew just who was on the other side of that door, and the fury in his tone reminded her uncomfortably of his threatening warning earlier that day.

‘Olivero, you coward, come out and face me...’

‘Dario—no!’

Alyse’s cry was drowned by another slam of a heavy fist against the wood, and as she reached for him Dario was already levering himself up and off her, that last insult clearly too much for him to take.

Not troubling to rake a hand through his disordered hair or even to smooth down his rumpled clothing, he was striding towards the door, twisting the handle with a violent movement and yanking it open ferociously.

‘Well?’

The momentary silence that greeted his appearance, the angry demand of his single word, made Alyse’s skin crawl, a cold slimy trail of apprehension sliding down her spine. From where she lay she could see the door, and the man who stood on the other side of it. She had been right, as she knew she’d had to be. The red-gold hair, clashing painfully with a furious scarlet face, the blazing blue eyes were unmistakable. The furious intruder was Marcus Kavanaugh.

But what was he doing here? And how?

He had seen them leave the hotel, had watched them drive off together. She had seen him staring after them when she had looked back through the rain. But how had he known just where to find them? He wouldn’t have had time to catch a cab and trail them to Dario’s apartment, so how had he known to come straight here and to catch them...?

‘Alyse...’

Marcus had turned his attention to her now and, with a small sound of horrified embarrassment, she scrambled up from her place on the settee, forcing herself to her feet. She might have wanted him to get the message—but not like this.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I would have thought that was obvious.’

Marcus’s spluttering blaze of fury was bad enough, but the edge of laughter in Dario’s retort was far worse, setting her teeth on edge and bringing home to her just how dreadful this must all look. She had been sprawled on the settee, her hair tumbling down around her face and shoulders, her legs wide apart, and her clothes...

Cheeks flaming, she tugged her skirt down, struggled to pull her dress up around her shoulders once again, desperate to restore her appearance to a degree of order. Her hands shook so badly that she couldn’t reach the zip to pull it up and when she tried to draw Dario’s attention to the fact, telegraphing wildly with her eyes and her brows that she needed help, his only response was a blank-eyed stare. Either he didn’t understand or...

Her heart quailed inside her, her stomach turning over in sudden nausea. Was it possible that Dario knew only too well what was troubling her but had no intention of making any move to help her? It certainly looked that way. He had barely spared her a glance; instead, all his attention was focused on his raging adversary.

‘I— This isn’t what you think, Marcus...’

She stumbled over the words, lost them completely when she saw the way that Dario turned, casting a darkly contemptuous look in her direction as if he could barely believe that she had actually said such a stupid thing. Listening to herself as the idiotic comment hung in the air between them, she couldn’t believe it either. There was only one possible interpretation of the scene in front of Marcus, and that was the right one. It had also been the one she had wanted him to have, but that had been before this dark fury had erupted around her—and before Dario had seemed to turn away from her.

‘And what the hell else would I think it might be?’ Marcus spat at her now, making her flinch from the poisonous venom of his tone. ‘Unless you’re trying to claim that he forced you?’

‘I— He... No—I’m not claiming that...’

How could she do any such thing, even to save herself from this hellish embarrassment? She just wished that Dario would say something—anything—to break the tension that stretched tight between the three of them. But after that one demonic touch of humour, the coldly blazing scorn he had turned on her just moments before, he had now frozen where he stood, arms crossed over his broad chest, dark brows drawn together, a silent, watchful observer of the scene in front of him.

‘Not that I’d put it past him,’ Marcus stunned her by declaring now. ‘A man with his reputation.’

‘Rep...reputation?’ Alyse managed, stunned to learn that Marcus seemed to know something about Dario—more, in fact, than she did herself. ‘What...?’

But Marcus wasn’t listening, intent instead on turning the venom he had directed at her previously onto Dario himself.

‘Dragged up in the gutter by a mother who was anyone’s for the price of—’

It was only the tiniest movement. Just a tensing of Dario’s long body, a curl of his fists, a hint of a step forward. But that, when combined with the black thundercloud of his frown, the way his sensual mouth was clamped hard and tight into a thin line, was enough of a warning to have Marcus biting off the last of his insulting sentence and clearly backing down. He obviously didn’t think that it was safe to risk baiting Dario any further, however much he might want to.

And the other man’s reaction turned Alyse’s legs to water at the memory of the way that this had been just what she had planned as part of her original scheme in the first place. It had all seemed so exciting, so brilliant—so possible when she had come up with the idea as a way of getting rid of Marcus’s unwanted attentions. Give him the impression that she was involved with another man, that she was seeing someone else—maybe even sleeping with someone else—and then surely he would back off and leave her in peace?

But now, finding herself in exactly the situation she had anticipated, with Marcus at the door, having found her and Dario in a decidedly compromising situation—far more compromising than she had ever planned—things were not at all as she had foreseen. For one thing, Marcus, though looking disgusted and furious, didn’t seem to have the intention of turning round and walking away, as he had in her mind when she’d imagined this happening.

And Dario...

She risked a glance at the tall, dark, glowering man to her left, and immediately wished she hadn’t. He wasn’t actually snarling but he might as well have been and she could practically see his hackles rising in hostile threat to the intruder into his territory. The sparks that seemed to flash between the two men made her feel like some tasty but already wounded prey that was the subject of a face to face confrontation between two powerful and equally ravenous lions.

Giving up on trying to fasten her dress, she folded her arms tightly around her waist, as much to hold herself together as to keep the blue silk from falling into a pool on the carpet at her feet.

‘No matter what my reputation,’ Dario drawled now, making Alyse start because she was so used to him being silent, ‘it seems that Alyse doesn’t give a damn about it, mi caro fratello.’

My—what? Alyse shook her head faintly, unable to believe she had heard right. The stress must be getting to her so that she was imagining things. He couldn’t have said...

But, whatever he had said, it had been deliberately provocative. And it had the desired effect, enraging Marcus so that his whole face went white with fury, pulling taut over his bones.

‘Marcus...’ she tried, desperate to have this appalling stalemate broken, to avoid what she was now starting to fear might actually bring these two to blows. There was something here between these two that was evil. Something she didn’t understand but if she could just avoid an actual fight...

‘Look, I’m sorry if this has upset you, but really you know I never said...’

He wasn’t listening, all his attention focused on Dario’s hard, set face. But, even as she watched, Alyse was stunned to see the faint flicker of a smile on the Italian’s sensual lips. A smile that was there and gone again in a moment and had nothing warm about it at all.

‘I could kill you...’

Marcus’s threat, directed at Dario’s impassive face, was a low, savage mutter, one that sent a horrified shiver slithering down Alyse’s spine. In a panic she stepped forward, her hand coming out as she forgot about holding her dress up and could only think about stopping him.

‘Marcus, I tried to tell you that I couldn’t see any future for us, so I thought—’

‘Thought you’d teach me a lesson?’

‘No—I...’

But her voice had no strength, no conviction. Wasn’t that really what she had wanted to do? To convince him that she was not for him? That she wasn’t at all interested in the proposal he had pushed at her so unexpectedly and had kept pushing for days.

‘You thought you’d rub my face in it,’ he snarled, the look he turned on her scraping over her body like the burn of acid.

It was only now, when that hateful look paused and lingered deliberately, that Alyse became aware of the betraying damp, darkened patches directly over her breasts where Dario’s hot mouth had sought out the sensitive peaks that had strained against her bra. The realisation dried her throat in a moment.

‘No...’ she tried but, even though her lips moved, no sound managed to come out. And when she glanced uncertainly at Dario, the darkness and focus of his eyes told her that he had something else on his mind other than belief in her declaration.

From a shadowy corner of her thoughts came an uncomfortable memory of the time in the car when she had looked back and seen Marcus staring after them. She’d been careless enough to smile just briefly. And Dario had caught it. Could he think this was what she had wanted?

‘Well, you couldn’t have made a better job of it than this, you bitch.’ Marcus was continuing his rant. ‘You must have known if there was one thing that would guarantee I’d want nothing more to do with you—something that would turn my stomach—it was the sight of you getting down and dirty with my bastard brother.’

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