Chapter One #3
‘See, I don’t think that you hate me,’ he said circling back round to his earlier question, his tongue sweeping out for barely a second before his teeth plunged into his bottom lip, as he looked at her in a very dominant and utterly unbusinesslike way.
No. This? Here? Right now? He was pure alpha male. A predator stalking its prey.
And she was the prey.
He shrugged off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, before coming around from behind the large ornate table that had once been used by her grandfather.
He came to stand in front of her as he unhooked his cufflinks and pocketed them, before rolling back the sleeves of his shirt, something she found inexplicably fascinating.
He leaned back against the desk, arms folded across his chest—pulling the shirt tight across his chest and biceps beneath the matching grey waistcoat—his gaze running up and down the length of her body insolently, carelessly, heating every single place it touched.
And he knew it too.
Micha took his time, and his fill. Oh, he was aware how crass it was, but at this point he realised that he had very little to lose.
For years, he’d behaved himself. He’d done as Gio wanted, confined himself to the little box that Gio Gallo had put him in, safely away from the proximity of his favourite female grandchild.
The gender qualifier wasn’t important to him, but it had been to Gio.
Gio, who had all but been near maniacal about who his business empire went to after his death.
Gio had been obsessed with it going to a male of the family—but Antonio wasn’t a Gallo by blood, his adoption by Alessina apparently not enough to satisfy the old man.
But a marriage between Antonio and Maria—an adopted grandchild and a female grandchild?
—that had seemed just about enough in Gio Gallo’s mind.
And Micha? Oh, he’d been used as the stick to beat or threaten the Gallos with for years and Gio’s death had not changed that. Micha would inherit the entire company, lock, stock and barrel, if Antonio and Maria didn’t marry.
No one, not even the two people he’d once considered friends, more even, had ever once thought that he might actually be good at what he did here.
That he might actually have added to the wealth of the Gallos—heaven forbid, that he might actually even deserve it.
But then…not even Gio Gallo had truly thought that of Micha.
‘I do hate you,’ she ground out from between perfect white teeth, bared at him in a silent growl. ‘And this? This is the last time you’ll ever see me,’ she announced with a flourish.
He smirked, unable to help himself.
‘What’s so funny?’ she demanded, furious that her threat hadn’t been met with trembling knees and chattering teeth.
She must have forgotten that he was built differently than the simpering, pathetic members of the Gallo clan on whom her ire would have worked.
‘You. Threatening me.’
‘It’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’
‘Mmm,’ he said, closing the distance between them in just a few short strides.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, backing up, startled when her legs hit the back of the chair behind her.
‘Whatever I want,’ he replied, unable to take his gaze from her.
His eyes searched, scored, imprinted every single moment of her onto his soul.
The way that the silk of her shirt shivered when she breathed, the superbly fitting palazzo trousers, pressing against skin and curves he’d never once forgotten.
Oh, they’d not done much as teenagers, no matter what Gio Gallo had thought. No matter what anyone had thought. Heavy petting, the Americans might have called it. But it hadn’t mattered. He’d know her in one hundred years. Blind, deaf and unable to speak, he’d know her.
But she’d never really known him, had she?
‘Stop it,’ she said, trying to back up again.
‘Why?’ he asked, cocking his head to one side. ‘What are you going to do? Fire me?’ he taunted.
He pressed closer to her, knowing that he was invading her space, obsessively hunting the flush that started from the sliver of skin he could see in the V of her shirt and crept up her throat.
The pulse that flickered at the base of her jaw.
The tremble to her lips she tried to stop by pinning one beneath her teeth.
‘Maria,’ he warned.
‘Yes?’
‘That is not helping.’ His voice was a growl.
She clenched her teeth together.
‘You can’t do this,’ she said, putting her hands on him. His heart thundered at the press of her palm over it, and he finally gave in to the need that was coursing through his veins. The one he had spent years hiding, denying, destroying.
He’d been fooled into thinking he had it under control. But he was wrong. So wrong.
Maria looked up at him with huge dark brown eyes, her hair cascading in tumbled curls down her back, her lips parted as if on a gasp.
‘Then stop me,’ he commanded.
He waited.
He waited for the hands on his chest to push him away in disgust, the way he’d imagined her doing time and time and time again in the deepest, darkest dreams of half-formed memories and damaged desires.
He waited for her to turn her head to the side, to snub him as she so often did in public, their hostilities as much a spectator sport for the families as not.
He waited for her to hiss and spit and curse his name, to damn him to hell and back.
But she didn’t. She did none of those things. Instead, she seemed as enthralled to this madness as he was. Her gaze, licking at him like flames that would devour. Hot, harsh, demanding.
‘Stop me,’ he half begged, himself no longer sure whether this was madness or mistake.
Her lush lips parted, but nothing came out.
He’d given her warning. She was certainly bold enough to refuse him if she wanted.
He claimed her mouth, already half open beneath his, no timid greeting of soft gentle touches.
This was a clash, powerful, brash, possessive and demanding, consuming to the point of insanity.
It was like coming home and leaving home all at once.
Something earthily familiar and completely unknowable.
Déjà vu and jamais vu, together at the same time.
They both pulled back, shocked, confused, glaring accusations at each other, breaths heaving, lips tingling.
‘You—’
Micha cut her off before she could ruin it and claimed her once more. His hands thrust into her hair, shaping her head with his fingers, and she groaned her pleasure into his mouth and sank against his chest in wanton abandonment.
Dio mio.