Chapter Eight #2
Desperately, with her last functioning brain cell she rationalised—the others were in the meeting room so surely they wouldn’t hear her from here? And with another stroke of his tongue she was too far gone to care.
‘Be loud. Come on, Mia. Let me taste you. Let me hear you again.’
Oh, my. She almost crumpled as he double fingered her and fastened his hot mouth to suck her off strong.
She bucked but he just worked harder, lashing his tongue over her.
Oh, she wanted him. This. Now. Always. They were both starving and now unleashed, there was no stopping either of them.
His stubble burned like an intimate fire against her sensitive skin, stirring her higher. She was so completely his.
‘You’re so hot, so fast for me,’ he muttered. ‘Come on me, Mia.’
His commanding growl unleashed her entirely. She tunnelled her fingers through his hair, holding on in sheer joy as he devoured her, pulling her over the precipice into velvety decadence. So quickly. She closed her eyes, convulsing as waves of pleasure washed through her.
‘Oh, Sante.’ She gasped and pressed her palm to her mouth to muffle the sobbing scream as her orgasm rocked her.
When she finally opened her eyes she saw triumph and demand glowing in his. But he shook his head as he rose and he drew her hand away from her mouth.
‘You should never silence yourself,’ he muttered roughly.
That was nice and all but there was reality to face. ‘We’re at work.’ She shivered.
This had been a mistake. A gorgeous, desperate, but definite mistake.
Work and home and life might be one and the same for him but it wasn’t for her.
There were people out there. People who could have walked in on them at any moment.
Who could have heard. People whom she wanted to respect her—not talk and whisper behind her back.
She bent her head. This was lust. Nothing but lust. And she couldn’t let herself be carried away by it.
Leaning close, he tilted her chin, forcing her to meet his fiery, intent expression. ‘We’re not done,’ he breathed. ‘You know we’re not done.’
As she could feel his hard erection pressing against her bare thigh, she’d pretty much grasped that fact, yeah. And her own arousal was building shockingly quickly again.
‘Not here,’ she whispered fiercely while she could still think. ‘I’ll sleep with you again, but not at work.’ She couldn’t stop herself capitulating, but she needed this bargain. ‘This can’t encroach here at all. Not again.’
He drew in a breath. ‘Then come to my apartment tonight.’
She shook her head. She couldn’t be seen with him. ‘Discreetly, Sante.’
‘We’re the last to leave work anyway. No one will see us. We can order in.’
So he assumed they’d dine together again as well?
Mia avoided his eyes by straightening her clothing, trying to haul together her scattered wits and regain some control over this. The fact was animal instinct had already won.
‘Okay.’
She was doing a good job here and she could keep that as a separate thing.
The fire between her and Sante was far more difficult to manage.
So she wouldn’t spend the entire night with him.
She would have what she wanted and then return to her own place.
The reality was this affair wouldn’t last the duration of her contract.
Sante was fast moving and would likely get bored—so she needed to take what she could, while she could.
And as she was leaving in a few weeks, the lapse in professional judgement wouldn’t matter.
This was a private thing between her and Sante—one they needed to burn through.
Because it was one she simply couldn’t deny.
But she was determined to do an even better job of managing the office.
She would have nothing said against her work ethic.
Ever. And as she now felt the best she had since the weekend, she could actually focus.
She sat at her desk and pulled out the raft of notes she’d made from Adele’s day.
* * *
‘You realise it’s an hour since everyone else left?’
Mia jumped, spinning her chair slightly, startled to see Sante standing just behind her.
‘What’s so absorbing?’ His attention had flicked to her screen. ‘A new software?’
‘I’m updating the onboarding manual with some of the notes Adele gave me. As she knows everything about this place, I figured it would be helpful if everyone could access her usual processes.’
‘You mean you’ve devised a way to stop the coders asking you stupid questions all the time.’
She smiled slightly. ‘It’s just an online reference as backup.’
He reached across and flicked through a couple of the files she’d created. ‘It’s simple, easy to use, pertinent information. You’re really good at this.’
‘Is that so surprising?’ Mia asked.
But his attention had dipped to her blouse. He lifted a finger, pushing to release the top button of her vee, taking her from perfectly appropriate to provocative.
‘Sante?’ she whispered.
‘Mmm?’
‘Do you think because I’ve got boobs I can’t have brains as well?’ she murmured. ‘As if it’s possible to have only one or the other?’
His gaze shot back to her face and he flushed. ‘Of course not.’
Mia giggled.
Sante gaped for a split second, then laughed. ‘I’m the one with no brain. I apologise. I got distracted.’
‘Maybe try keeping your eyes up.’
‘It’s very difficult.’
‘We’re in a work setting.’
‘Empty work setting. And it’s still difficult.’ He watched as she closed down the computer systems. ‘Why didn’t you go to university? Surely, your family has been going to Oxford or Cambridge for years?’
Mia stiffened, surprised he’d asked her something personal.
He chuckled. ‘Relax, I’m not some higher education snob. You know I don’t even have a degree.’
She didn’t know that actually. She knew very little about his past other than that he’d been on scholarship to her brother’s school for a couple of years.
‘Didn’t you go to some elite boarding school like Dario—surely that would have set you up?’
She swivelled in her seat, looking up as he leaned against her desk.
He had his sleeves rolled up and his expression was relaxed and open.
The most tempting man she’d ever seen in her life.
Desperate to stop herself launching into his arms again here at work, she answered.
There was no better way of cooling her jets than by thinking of her father.
‘My father certainly felt I should’ve been more grateful for that investment, but boarding school wasn’t for my benefit.
It was for his. I didn’t fit in. Sang too loud to make the choir.
Laughed too much to be studious enough for the advanced class…
but he didn’t want me at home much. I spent almost every holiday being taken on school trips that I was “lucky” to go on. ’
Admittedly, the extracurricular excursions had given her a bit of a travel bug.
‘You were home the summer that I visited,’ he said.
‘Because he was away for most of it.’ She watched him. ‘I didn’t like you,’ she admitted huskily. But she’d been fascinated by him.
‘No?’ His eyebrows arched. ‘I wasn’t the right kind to fit in?’
‘No, it wasn’t that. You guys didn’t even notice me,’ she elaborated slightly. ‘You were so busy with all your plans and I was alone.’
His gaze narrowed and his mouth opened and suddenly she didn’t want to talk about what had happened towards the end of that summer.
The day her father had come home unexpectedly and trampled her heart.
She’d been a stupid, lonely kid who’d once again acted on a foolish impulse.
But hopefully, Sante didn’t remember because he had been so busy with Dario.
‘Of course he wanted me to go to university.’ She redirected the conversation just in case.
‘He also wanted to dictate where I went and what I studied. He threatened to disinherit me if I didn’t go, while at the same time moaned about having to make a donation to the university to wield enough influence to ensure my acceptance. I told him to cut me off.’
‘Did he?’
She shot him a look. ‘You know he was transactional. Do what he wants and he’ll pay. But if you don’t, then he’ll withhold.’
‘Not just money, affection and attention, too?’ Sante said.
Yes. ‘Everything with him was conditional. And when I couldn’t do what he wanted, didn’t dress the way he wanted, I wasn’t the right size, I didn’t speak properly, and when I did I was too loud.
The pathetic thing is even when I tried to do as he wanted, I could never get it right.
I could never fit the mould he wanted. I tried so hard, but I’d only last a few days and revert to type—I’d laugh too loud, take another biscuit, sing too much.
I’d been free at my mother’s, maybe a little wild.
But Westwick was so cold and I don’t mean the weather.
If I partially succeeded, he’d become more strict, constantly shifting the boundaries so I would always fail.
Eventually, I realised I was never going to be what or who he wanted.
He said it himself. I was too much like my mother.
He’d never wanted me and he didn’t like me.
I was the distraction so I was eliminated.
And in the end I rebelled—deliberately became “more.” Too much.
When I was seventeen I took myself right off the rails just to provoke him into pushing me away completely. ’
Mia stopped, stunned that she’d just unloaded all that onto Sante of all people. It took less than two seconds for embarrassment to smother her.
‘See?’ she tried to joke. ‘Too much. Like that. Always.’
He was clearly stunned, too. Silent and frowning. Sante slowly drew breath but she prattled on before he could offer any awkward platitude.
‘Anyway, I’m starving,’ she lied. ‘Shall we go?’
He simply nodded.
Sante’s car was powerful and utterly comfortable, but not flashy, which made her smile. Music played the second he started the engine but he flicked it off.
‘Leave it on if you want. I love that song,’ she murmured.
It would help cover the cringy silence enveloping them.
‘Yeah,’ Sante muttered.
She glanced at him as he put it back on.
His cheeks were slightly flushed but he said nothing more.
She’d discovered his apartment was only twenty minutes from the office when she’d tried to track him down last Friday, and again she wondered why he crashed at work as often as he did given it was so close.
She bit the inside of her lip so as not to ask.
Not that nor the other billion questions flooding her mind.
Like the palazzo in Sicily, his apartment block was outwardly imposing with an impenetrable brick facade.
But once inside, Mia was hit with colour and comfort.
The place was larger than it appeared from the outside and filled with bright furnishings and lush plants, and shelves straining beneath the weight of books with no curated orderly sense.
They were piled haphazardly with no discernible cataloguing system whatsoever.
Mia grinned, certain he’d be able to find whichever tome he wanted regardless.
She was absurdly pleased that he had a sanctuary space here, too.
She studied the series of photographs forming a massive feature wall.
They were landscape shots. She recognised one taken in the grounds of the palazzo.
He clearly loved that place. But the others—an ocean view through an archway, a mist-filled forest, a waterfall—they were all beautiful.
‘No family photos?’ she murmured.
There’d been none at the palazzo, either—only those beautiful frescoes on the walls. She kept a gallery on her phone but she always travelled with a framed picture of her mother.
‘No.’
His finite response was typical closed-book Sante, but she’d offloaded earlier because he’d asked a personal question; maybe she would reciprocate and balance the scales the tiniest bit.
‘None of you, either.’ She faced him. ‘You don’t like having your photo taken?’
Sante just stared back at her. His silence was both pointed and prickly. But as he remained there—still and silent—she saw heat build in his eyes.
Right. So much for balancing the scales. They were only about a physical affair and she needed to reel in any other interest in him.
‘Not going to send me any nudes then, huh,’ she noted, covering her frustration with a little tease. ‘You realise that means you don’t get any from me, either.’
His stunned expression made her yelp with laughter.
‘Don’t want any,’ he declared, stepping forward and pulling her into his arms. ‘I’ll settle for nothing less than holding the real thing.’