Chapter Eight #3
“The internet is a font of information,” she told him, frowning slightly.
“With a great many illustrations. I knew that you’d attend the wedding.
I read up on you, too. It was all part of my plan.
I knew that my father was going to try to marry me off and I decided that I wanted to choose my own destiny. ”
“So perhaps more choices have been made than are immediately apparent,” Pau said quietly.
He could see that she remembered that conversation, too. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I did this. I created a package and I presented it to you, but I knew exactly where it would lead. That being, exactly where I wanted it to go.”
And he could see that she meant this. With every part of herself, she meant it.
Pau could see that she was bracing herself for his reaction. A reaction she clearly expected to be volcanic.
He studied her for a long moment.
“I understand you may have to sit with this a while,” she said, and he could see that she was being brave. She was holding herself so still. She was ready for him to explode—the way, he supposed, her father always had.
But he was certainly no Umberto Tavian.
“Leontina,” he said, quietly, “I do not have to sit with this. I do not have to search my soul to find ways that I might feel taken advantage of.”
He moved then, shrugging out of his shirt and kicking off his trousers. Then he crawled onto the bed and made his way toward her like some kind of great predator in the wild.
And he had the pleasure of watching her eyes go wide.
“Do you have any idea just how many women tried their wiles on me at that wedding?” he asked her.
He could see she hadn’t considered that. She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I stopped counting,” Pau told her. “I’m a very particular man, Leontina. And I don’t do a single thing that I don’t want to do. If I hadn’t wanted you, there is no power on this earth that would have compelled me to take you to my bed. You do understand that, do you not?”
“I seduced you,” she said again.
“My sweet girl, you did, but not in the way you mean.” He didn’t understand what was happening to him.
It was as if he’d been taken over by…something.
Some force outside himself, or perhaps those pressure points inside him had altered their shape.
He couldn’t name it, but it was as if the very bones of his chest had changed.
As if they were holding his heart differently.
He could not account for it, but he couldn’t deny it, either.
“It was my intention all along to seduce you, but I imagined it would be a necessary chore, nothing more. Surely you must realize by now, you are many things, but certainly no chore.”
“A chore,” she echoed. Then she laughed that marvelous laugh of hers that made his precarious chest ache. “Were we seducing each other, then?”
He thought that laugh would have done the trick on its own.
But he was closer now, and so he kept crawling until she was lying on her back. He came down beside her and half over her, so he could smooth a hand over her face and hold her cheek in his palm.
“I think we must have been seducing each other that night,” he agreed. And then, so close to her, he smiled, and no matter that it felt strange on his face. “I could have put you out of your agony some time ago, I’m afraid. Because I knew you were trying to seduce me. It suited me.”
She blinked. He wondered if she would take this badly—but instead, she smiled. “In that case, I have nothing to apologize for,” she said, letting that smile work its magic all over him.
“Nothing at all,” he agreed.
He remembered, so clearly, the notion he’d had that he would fuck the truth out of her, but this was different. It was more like he’d exposed the truth between them instead, and it was beautiful.
Their mouths met, and held. Everything seemed to come from those smiles they shared. Everything seemed bright and warm, like sunshine even though it was night.
His hands worshipped her. Her mouth astounded him. He smoothed his hand down that sweet silken gown, and didn’t bother to tug it out of his way.
He found her wet and ready beneath her gown, without the hindrance of panties, and he sighed a little as he played with her silken folds and all that heat she generated.
His cock was hard, so hard that he should have ached with need, and perhaps he did—but that, too, seemed a part of the golden sweetness of this.
Pau pulled her on top of him and lowered her slowly—very slowly—onto the head of his cock, then let her settle herself as she would until he was lodged deep inside. He slid his hands to the crease at the tops of her thighs and groaned out his appreciation as she began to rock herself against him.
Because he was mesmerized by her. Bewitched.
Besotted, something whispered inside him.
She moved on him like a dream. Like light. Like some kind of goddess, come to earth for reasons opaque and glorious and bright.
Leontina braced her hands on his abdomen as her hips moved slicker, faster. Together, they came closer and closer to that grand shimmering that he could feel already, waiting just there, beckoning them on.
Her hair fell around them like a curtain. He had a feeling of wholeness then, rushing through him and making him feel more grounded. More here. And more, he hadn’t realized until now how very isolated he had always felt. Giaco had changed that, sure.
But now there was Leontina, and she’d blown it all up.
He couldn’t imagine how he could ever do without her.
And when the crisis came, it was a wash of light. Golden, beautiful, sweeping them both up and washing them away, changing them forever.
Pau was certain that his heart had burst free of his own chest, and was hers now. Lost to him forever.
Something he might have found alarming if she wasn’t so beautiful, smiling at him as if she was the only sun that mattered, lighting up the whole world.
And then she settled down against him with her mouth in his ear, panting and limp, and whispered three impossible words.
“I love you,” Leontina said.
And ruined everything.