Consequence Of His Revenge

Why did he find the idea of her being injured so disturbing? Everything about this woman put him on uneven ground. He hated it. There was already a large dose of humiliation attached to her father’s betrayal. He’d been soaked in grief over losing his grandfather, but guilt, as well. The old man had loved him. Indulged him. And Dante had failed so very badly, even contributing to his grandfather’s death with his mistake.

An acrid lump of self-blame still burned black and hot within him. He had had to take that smoldering coal in hand, shape and harden it with an implacable grip, and pull himself into the future upon it.

Since then, nothing happened without his will or permission. He was ruled by sound judgment, not his libido or his temper. Certainly not his personal desires. Yet anger had got the better of him yesterday. She had. And emotion was threatening to take him over again today, especially when she muttered, “No. You shouldn’t have.”

The utter gall of her was mind-blowing.

She clattered the cookie sheet and spatula into the sink. Her ponytail was coming loose, allowing strands of rich mink and subtle caramel with tiny streaks of ash to fall around her face. It gave her a delicate air that he had to consciously remind himself was a mirage. That vestige of grief in her expression might be real, but the flicker of helplessness was not. Fagans landed on their feet.

“Look,” he said, more on edge than he liked. “Helping my grandmother was a nice gesture, but I’m not giving you back that job, if that’s what you were after.”

She lifted her head. “It was a coincidence!” She dropped some cookies into a brown paper bag and offered it to him. “Here. Tell her I’m glad she’s feeling better.” Her hand tremored.

He ignored the offering. “She wants you to come for dinner.”

“I have plans.” A blatant lie. She set the bag on the counter between them.

“I’m not letting you hold this over me. Or skirt around me. Put on a dress and let’s get it over with.”

“I’ve packed all my dresses.”

“Is that your way of asking me to buy you a new one?” He had played that game a lot and couldn’t decide if it grated that she was trying it. Under the right circumstances, he enjoyed spoiling a woman. Cami’s heart-shaped ass in a narrow skirt with a slit that showed off her legs—

“No,” she said flatly, yanking him back from a fantasy that shouldn’t even be happening. A pang of something seemed to torture her brow. Insulted? Please.

“What do you want, then? Because clearly you’re holding out for something.” He had to remember that.

“And you’re clearly paranoid. Actually, you know what I want?” Her hand slapped the edge of the sink. “I want you to admit you’ve been receiving my payments.”

“What payments?”

“Are you that rich you don’t even notice?” She shoved out of the kitchen and whisked by him to the rickety looking desk, then pulled up short as she started to open a drawer. She slammed it shut again. “I forgot. It’s not here. His name is, like, Bernardo something. It’s Italian.”

“What is?”

“The letter! The one that proves I’ve been paying you back.” She frowned with distraction, biting at her bottom lip in a way that drew his thoughts to doing the same. “My brother has the file, though. He took it last fall.”

“Convenient.”

“God, you’re arrogant.”

He shrugged, having heard that before. Recovering his belief in himself had been the hardest part of all. His ego had taken a direct hit after misjudging her father. He’d questioned himself, his instincts and his intelligence, which almost crippled him as he faced the Herculean task of recovery. In the end, he had no choice but to trust his gut above anyone else and get on with the work. He would have been dead in the water otherwise.

He refused to go back to self-doubts. He faced everything head-on and dealt with it as expediently as possible. “Let’s get past the games. I know you have a hidden agenda. Speak frankly.”

“I don’t! I’m exactly what I look like. I applied for a job for which I am fully qualified. You came along with your sword of retaliation and cut me off at the knees. Then I was nice to a little old lady who happens to be your grandmother. Now I have to move and get back on my feet. Again.”

Her hand flung out with exasperation as she spoke. She smelled like the cinnamon and vanilla she’d been baking with, sweet and homespun. All smoke and mirrors.

“How was I supposed to know you would buy the Tabor when I interviewed six months ago? I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you. You’re the one out to get me.” She managed to sound quite persecuted.

He shook his head, amazed. “You look like you’re telling the truth, but so did your father. It’s quite a family talent, I have to say.” Then, because he was so damned tempted to reach out and touch her, he neutralized that secret weapon of hers. He gave her luscious figure a scathing once-over and said, “Of course, he didn’t work the additional diversions you employ.”

Her jaw dropped open with affront, but her gaze took a skitter around the room. She blushed, seeming disconcerted. Caught out, even. “I’m not—You showed up here unannounced! As if I’d throw myself at you.”

“No?” He was needling her, determined to maintain the upper hand, but that tiny word seemed to flick a switch.

She flung back her hair to glare at him. “You’re the last man on earth I’d want anything to do with!”

She faltered as she said it and tried to give him a scathing once-over, but her lashes quivered. He could tell by the way they moved that her gaze traversed his torso and down to the muscles in his abdomen. His stomach tightened with the rest of him. In those charged seconds, he grew so hot, his clothes should have incinerated off his body.

When she brought her gaze back in a flash of defiance, there was a glow of speculation in their depths. The light shifted, or, more accurately, the fog of animosity in her eyes dissolved into a mist of desire.

The air shimmered, hot and oppressive between them. All an act, he reminded himself, but, What the hell. He ought to get something.

* * *

“If you want to talk about compensation, I’m listening.” He suddenly seemed really close. His voice was like whiskey-soaked velvet.

“What?” She took a step back, reeling from the way her body was betraying her. She was trying to rebuff him, but everything about him overwhelmed her senses.

She came up against the wall and he flattened his hands on either side of her head, not touching her, but caging her. She set her hands on his chest, alarmed then intrigued by the layers of heat and strength that pressed into her fingertips. He was pure vitality, enticing her hands to splay and move in a small stroke of curiosity that quickly edged toward greed.

How did he disarm her so quickly? How had they even wound up like this? She could feel his sharp nipples stabbing into the heels of her palms and it pleased her. Excited her. She wanted to run her hands over his chest and onto his lower back, exploring everywhere.

She had to quell a whimper of helplessness. This desire was terrifying and exhilarating at once. Deadly, yet impossible to ignore.

His pupils swallowed all the color in his eyes, drawing her into the darkest unknown.

“What are you offering?” His arousal was so tangible in his voice, it felt like a caress from her shoulder down her chest. A sweep of bumps rose on her skin and her breasts grew heavy and swollen.

“Cold?” The corners of his mouth deepened and she couldn’t read his eyes.

This was bizarre and damning, yet compelling. She felt as though a drug had been released in her system that made her languid and euphoric. She didn’t move away. Couldn’t. Her breaths moved unevenly, and she could swear she felt the brush of his erection against her.

His muscles were like iron. Rather than shoving him away, she dug her fingers into flesh that had no give, exploring against her own willpower. How could the inherent strength in him, that wasn’t even being exerted against her, make her so weak?

He was doing something to her, though. It was a force that gripped her without effort. He wasn’t even touching her. She was the one touching him, yet she couldn’t escape. Couldn’t make her body push him away. She stood there and watched his face draw closer, filling her vision. She waited, lips parting, mind blank, until his mouth touched hers. Hot.

Why she held still for his kiss, she didn’t know. It was beyond stupid, yet she let it happen, wanting to know something she couldn’t even define. She tensed, maybe expecting punishment. Cruelty, even. He wasn’t a kind man. She already knew that.

He was cruel as he kissed her, but in a way she couldn’t have anticipated. He used gentleness to tease her lips into opening wide, then slowly worked their mouths into a firmer fit, angling and sinking closer, waiting until she was moving her mouth against his before he settled in to fully plunder.

A deep quiver rang through her. Recognition. As though she’d been waiting all her life for this. Her body gave a small shudder and sighed in relief. This one.

That should have scared the hell out of her, but she was so entranced by the sense of discovery, by the flood of heat and need, she let the kiss continue. She let it draw out, going on and on while she sank deeper and deeper into sweet pleasure.

She had never progressed much further than a kiss. Had never wanted to. Not like this. This kiss was beyond anything she’d ever known. It was right. It picked up all the pieces of herself she’d left scattered and broken and fit them together again, making her feel whole and alive. Omnipotent.

Worldly and womanly and exalted.

Her fingers moved, testing the firmness of his pecs, then slid in a blatant caress across the flex of his muscles, squeezing and shaping, tracing the ridges of his ribs and flowing to the hollow of his spine.

He growled and dropped his hands to her waist, stroked her hips in a sweeping circle of his big hands, then he cruised his palms up to cup her breasts, thumbs raking across her nipples. The twin sensation was so sharp and electric, she bucked.

He settled the weight of his hips against hers, pinning her to the wall, forcing her to take that continued gentle torture of her nipples. Heat plunged into her loins, and there was no denying what she felt there. She was screamingly aware of the stiffness of his arousal against her. His thighs were hard and hot, pressing hers to open so her mound was firmly in contact with that hard, hard shape. She throbbed under the pressure of him against her so intimately. When had she ever wanted something so earthy and base? Never. Not before this moment and this man who kissed her to the point she stopped thinking.

His thumbs circled and teased with an expertise that made her wriggle, the acute stimulation lifting her hips into his. More. That’s all she could think as she kept kissing him, suffocating, but unwilling to stop. Keep doing that. I want more.

The way they were consuming each other was blatant and more primal than anything she’d ever known. Her arms lifted to circle behind his neck, arching her breasts into his relentless hands. He pinched her nipples and she whimpered at the pleasure-pain, legs growing weak and pliant under the pressure of his. She stroked her fingers through his hair, luxuriating in the feel of the short, crispy strands, before drawing his head down to increase the pressure of his kiss to the point of near pain. It wasn’t enough. It could never be enough.

His tongue thrust in and her hips ground against his, seeking the most acute sensations she could find. Nothing had ever made her act so animalistic. That’s why she’d never gone all the way. She’d never been compelled to by her own body, but oh, the way he was massaging her breasts was driving her crazy. She was so aroused, she actually mewled with loss when he lifted his head and dragged his hands down to her hips.

He watched her as he held her still for the blatant, deliberate thrust of his hard sex against hers. The flush on his face was barbaric, dark and satisfied as she gasped and met his erotic movement with a wanton, inviting rock of her own. A moan escaped her lips as she climbed ever higher on the steps of arousal toward the precipice of bliss.

Her hands clenched in his shirt and she pressed her head into the wall, giving up her lower half to his, inhibition gone. She had to bite her lip against groaning even louder as he rubbed against the bundle of nerves that was barely protected by the thin fabric of her yoga shorts. Her eyes fluttered closed and she held her breath, quivering with tension, so close—

With a hiss, his hands hardened on her hip bones before he thrust her back into the wall, releasing her to step away.

Stunned, she scrambled for purchase on the empty wall, panting as she fought to remain standing. Her body screamed for his, making this rejection the height of cruelty.

His cheek ticked, but he didn’t look nearly as shattered as she felt. He was aroused, but held a cynical gleam in his eye that cut her to the bone.

“We’ll finish talking about that later. Get dressed. Comb your hair. We’re running late.”

“What?” Her knees threatened to buckle.

If she thought he sounded strained, or as though he balanced on a razor’s edge of his own, the impression evaporated as he smiled, merciless and self-assured. The peaks and valleys in his face stood out in sharp relief, light and dark. Beautiful and indifferent.

“Since the compensation you’re offering comes with such a high rate of interest—” the corner of his mouth curled at his own pun “—I’ll give you a chance to make your case. But my grandmother is expecting us.” He glanced at the gold watch on his wrist, the face black and numberless, with only two needle arms. “We need to leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You want to finish talking now?” His withering inflection told her they wouldn’t be using their mouths for words.

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