Chapter Six #4
“Why do you have to be like this?” She shot her arms straight at her sides, fists tight, chest brimming with frustration, eyes hot. “I can’t help being attracted to you, Rocco. It’s cruel to make fun of me for it.” So unfair.
His expression altered, the teasing expression falling away so gravity could take its place.
“Do you really believe I’m not suffering in the same way, bella? All I think about is London.”
“Because you didn’t get what you wanted?”
“Yes,” he agreed tersely. “I wanted an affair with you. One long enough to burn out this fire that insists on smoldering between us.”
Her heart seesawed in her chest, wavering between wanting to believe he felt the way she did and knowing she shouldn’t. Believing he didn’t want her was much safer than believing he did.
“But I don’t pressure women into bed.”
“London messed with my head,” she blurted, brow flexing in old anguish. “I no longer trust myself to know why someone is coming on to me. That’s why I agreed to marry Axel. I knew he didn’t really care about me, but at least he was up front about what he was hoping to gain from our engagement.”
“You know what I want to gain from this,” he said tightly. “We don’t have to have sex for me to get it. If we become lovers, it will be because that’s what we want. No other reason.”
If they became lovers? Would they?
She found herself searching his eyes, watching them narrow, his expression growing angular. Intent. Hungry.
“Is that something you would like?” he asked.
She yanked her gaze away and hugged herself, unable to lie even though the truth was terrifying.
“I know you think I’m ready to sleep with anyone who buys me a glass of wine, but I’m not,” she choked out.
“I don’t think that,” he said evenly. “I think you and I have exceptional chemistry and we’re losing the battle of fighting it.”
She drew in a sharp breath, alarmed, but also…excited?
“But here is my driver telling me he’s waiting to take us to the theater.
” He touched where a muted ping had just sounded in his jacket pocket.
“Come.” He took her long coat from the closet and held it for her.
“There is a very conceited part of me that can’t wait to be seen with such a gorgeous woman. ”
She moved to stand with her back to him, but that only allowed their gazes to clash in the mirror. He read her skepticism.
“Mirabella,” he admonished. “You will have to get used to my praising your beauty. In the same way you can’t help feeling attracted, I can’t help noticing how lovely you are and remarking on it.” He gathered her hair from beneath her collar, making her shiver when his fingertips grazed her nape.
“You just said you wouldn’t pressure me into bed,” she reminded his reflection.
A very slow, masculine smile tilted his mouth. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t seduce you into it.”
Her stomach flared with apprehension.
While her blood fizzed with intrigue.
“Let’s go.” He held open the door. “Before I decide to keep you here.”
If Mira had thought being in public would hit the pause button on Rocco’s threat, she was sorely mistaken.
He took full advantage of every excuse to touch her, holding her hand to help her in and out of the car, then anchoring his arm around her for photographs. After the film, he splayed his palm on her lower back while they congratulated actors and directors.
They had to run another gauntlet of photographers when they left, but Rocco said, “You’ll like the restaurant. It’s very private.”
He was right. The atmosphere was intimate and low-key. They were seated at a love seat behind a small table that allowed them to watch the quartet tucked behind the postage-stamp of a dance floor.
“Did you like the film?” Rocco asked once their wine had been poured.
“Not as much as the opera, but yes. Thank you for yesterday, by the way. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed live performances. I think the last time I saw anything was a play when I was still living in London.”
“Oh?” He loosened his bow tie and reached his arm behind her on the love seat, legs kicking out with relaxation. “Why so long?”
“Axel and I only went to things we had to attend. Work functions. Galas.”
“I despised him for making you walk away from me in London.” Rocco’s mouth twisted with animosity.
“Once you were engaged to him, I would have gladly taken him out behind the nearest dumpster. I honestly didn’t think my opinion of him could be lower, but he didn’t even take you on a decent date?
” He snorted with disgust and sipped his wine.
“Don’t be like that.”
“Do you still have feelings for him?” His hooded gaze sharpened. “Why are you defending him?”
“Because I don’t hate him. He was always nice to me. Or respectful, at least. The engagement forced us into proximity and we made it work by keeping it businesslike and not getting personal. But…” She tilted her red wine so it caught the candlelight, glowing like a ruby.
“But?”
She wasn’t sure if she liked this side-by-side arrangement.
It made it too easy to share confidences.
If she’d been facing him head-on, she would feel confronted and would guard herself more carefully.
Sitting next to him like this allowed her to feel the warmth of his body and smell his aftershave, and they had to lean close to hear each other.
That made it feel safe to reveal unhappy truths.
“I felt like a paper doll,” she admitted.
“Pin on a dress, go where I’m put. I knew our marriage wouldn’t last any longer than it had to.
I thought there would be a trade-off in the long run, but now, I feel robbed of that time we were stuck with each other.
We both do. That’s why I’m defending him.
He didn’t do this to me. Otto did it to us. ”
“Yet you didn’t partner with Axel against Otto.”
“No,” she agreed circumspectly. “I’m in the way of the chess moves Axel has open to him. He would have discouraged me from pulling my assets. He still wants the company and doesn’t want it devalued by the time he gets it.”
“Have you spoken to him?”
“Not yet.”
“I would prefer you keep it that way.” He touched the earring he’d given her, stirring her hair against her nape enough to make her shiver. “In fact, I’d prefer we quit talking about him altogether, but I do have one more question.”
“I’m not going to tell you what his chess move is. Not unless he actually tries to do it.” She tried to meet his gaze with a look of resolve, but she was very outgunned.
His jacket was open, exposing more of his white shirt and the powerful chest beneath. She could feel his pant leg brushing hers where the ribbons of her skirt had parted to leave it bare.
“I don’t care what Axel does to Otto or Vorstoben.
I want you to go back to what you said about keeping things businesslike, not personal.
” His gaze followed the finger he dropped to trace the edge of the ribbon that formed the strap of her dress.
She felt goose bumps rise behind the tickling touch he drew on her upper arm.
“Am I to understand that means you weren’t sleeping with him? ”
“I’m not sure why that’s any business of yours,” she said stiffly, burying her pursed lips against the rim of her wineglass. Then, for reasons she couldn’t explain, she admitted, “But, no. I wasn’t.”
Should she tell him she’d never slept with anyone?
She could hardly move. Her vision was trying to divine the future in the glow within her wineglass while her scalp tingled and all the polarity in her body seemed to orient itself to him.
Anticipation held her in a type of stasis, awaiting his mouth on her ear, her cheek.
“You’re driving me out of my mind in this dress.
” He looked down as he carefully smoothed one ribbon of her skirt along the top of her thigh, causing the dangling tails of silk to shift and caress her legs.
“Would you like to hear all the fantasies I have for it? How do you feel about light bondage?”
She choked on her wine and almost spilled it down the gown in question. Rocco was forced to sit back as she set aside her glass and pressed her napkin to her mouth.
The server took advantage of their break in canoodling to deliver their first course, explaining it was something-something with a something sauce.
“Are you going to behave?” she asked Rocco as the server walked away and Rocco’s hand came back to her leg, tangling itself in the ribbons.
“No. I’m going to break his arm if he interrupts us again,” he murmured against her ear.
“So romantic,” she said facetiously, then gave in to the urge to touch him. She let her fingertips settle against the side of his throat while she drank in the faded tang of his aftershave and studied his mouth. His teeth flashed in the briefest of wicked smiles.
“You can take the dog off the streets, but you cannot take the streets out of the dog.” His tone was light and self-deprecating.
She didn’t laugh. A pang hit her. Not pity.
Something deeper. Empathy. He had lost his parents and was alone in the world.
They were more alike than perhaps either of them realized.
Even though she had always had ample funds at her disposal, she had suffered other types of deprivation and she sensed a similar ache of emptiness in him. She responded to it.
“Will you kiss me?” she asked with a throb in her chest.
There was a vibration in his throat beneath her fingertips, as though he growled too low to be heard over the music. His head dipped and angled. His mouth scraped hers once, twice, just enough to part her lips before he settled in for a long, slow, thorough kiss.
Her thoughts turned to one word: Yes. For three long years, she’d been waiting to feel like this again, as though the very force of life imbued her, filling her with glittering pleasure and wanton heat.
His hand slid to grip her inner thigh and squeezed, making her abdomen contract and her sex pulse with wet need. Touch me. Take me.
She let her arm slide across his shoulders and arched into him. The texture of his tuxedo jacket was rough wherever it touched her bare skin, but that turned her on. She tilted her mouth up to his in complete surrender.
He took all she offered, lips smooth and firm and bruising. He was so hungry she felt devoured, but he was slaking a hunger that had gnawed at her for so long, she had thought it would consume her.
Slowly he drew back, catching at her mouth several times as though he couldn’t resist one more taste. One more.
“You’re shaking,” he said, arm firmly around her shoulders, holding their upper bodies angled toward each other while his hand was still pinned between her clamped thighs. “Afraid?”
“No. Yes. A little,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know what I am.”
“Good. I like the way you look right now.” His heavy-lidded gaze caressed her face while his voice was all iron and resolve, fully in possession of himself and her. “You finally look the way I feel. I’m going to keep you in this state while we eat and dance and kiss…”
His mouth barely touched hers again, but she felt the tip of his tongue sweep the tender flesh of her inner lip. It might as well have been in a far more intimate place, considering the flood of heat that pooled there.
His arm eased and he drew his hand from her leg.
She was instantly cold. Bereft. Utterly at a loss.
“I don’t think I can eat.”
“Take your time.” He lightly rubbed the backs of his fingers against her upper arm. “Make me wait. Tease me back.”
She had never once in her life imagined she could tease anyone. Not sexually. Not with her dearth of experience, but she set her hand on his steely thigh, letting him feel her fingernails as she leaned in and said something she was confident any heterosexual man would love to hear.
“I’m not wearing a bra.”
“I am very aware, bella.” The weight of his gaze slid to her chest, heavy as a hand. “I look forward to pulling that dress down so I can suck your nipples.”
Her abdomen contracted in a fresh punch of erotic anticipation. She faltered and sat back, realizing he was far better at this than she was.
In an absent move, she touched her fingertip to the sauce on the plate, distrusting its bright green color. The flavor was salt, rosemary and tangy lime, not unpleasant at all.
She realized Rocco was watching her. The ferocity that had come alive in her lately rallied, refusing to let him win this round without at least taking her own shots.
“I think about London a lot,” she told him with a challenging tilt of her chin, keeping her finger near her tongue. “I pretend my hand is yours.”
The angles in his face grew more pronounced. His nostrils flared.
There was the man she remembered from that day, the one who had given her more pleasure in one brief encounter than she’d ever found anywhere else. His eyelids grew heavy. His dark brown gaze gleamed with lust.
Her bones turned to sand. Each breath she took scraped sensually within her. Her body was softening, melting and beginning to ache.
“The next time I have you across my lap, I’m going to be buried so deep inside you, neither of us will be able to breathe,” he promised.
She believed him.