Kitabı oku: «The Prodigal Prince's Seduction / The Heir's Scandalous Affair»

The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction by Olivia Gates
He shouldn’t have been so smug.

He should have known that she’d had more cards to play. And she’d played them. Played him. And how.

She was the woman he’d spent the most revitalising, enthralling time of his life with. The woman who’d made him forget exhaustion and every preconception about himself and what he could feel.

She whimpered at his sudden withdrawal. It had only been moments since their lips had met, before he’d learned her real name and plunged from the heights of delight to the depths of disillusion.

So what if she wasn’t the woman he’d thought her to be? It should change nothing. His body was reaching critical mass. And she was offering…everything. He should drag her inside, throw her to the ground and take it all. Then walk away.

The Heir’s Scandalous Affair by Jennifer Lewis
“I came to New Orleans to find my late husband’s son, his heir” Samantha explained. “His name is Louis Dulac.”

“I’m Louis DuLac,” said the handsome mystery man with whom she’d just shared a night of incredible passion. His features grew hard and he gazed at her through narrowed eyes.

Sam’s knees almost gave out. If he hadn’t been holding her wrist she might have plunged backwards down the stairs.

“But you can’t be.” The words fell from her lips, dazed and barely coherent. “It’s impossible.”

“Come in,” he said. This time, it was a command rather than an invitation. He still held a firm grip on her wrist.

She felt herself struggling for breath. He tugged her towards him. “You’re my late husband’s…oh no.” She tried to free herself.

He pulled her closer. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Available in May 2010
from Mills & Boon® Desire™

Millionaire in Command by Catherine Mann

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The Bride Hunter by Ann Major

Mini-series—Irresistible

Tall, Dark…Westmoreland! by Brenda Jackson

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The Moretti Seduction by Katherine Garbera

The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction by Olivia Gates

&

The Heir’s Scandalous Affair by Jennifer Lewis

The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction

by

Olivia Gates
The Heir’s Scandalous Affair

by

Jennifer Lewis

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction

by

Olivia Gates

Dear Reader,

Being a romance author has got to be one of the best jobs there is. For in what other job can one experience the rush of falling in love over and over again?

And it happened again in the second instalment of THE CASTALDINI CROWN trilogy, where I fell in love with my hero, Prince Durante D’Agostino. Each hero I write is another fantastic specimen of manhood and humanity, but Prince Durante has characteristics that surprised even me as I wrote his story. Contrary to all the über alpha males I’ve written about, he was so open to the notion of falling in love, so wholehearted about it. He was like that massive source of romanticism and sensuality that had gone unplumbed until he laid eyes on Gabrielle Williamson and it all came pouring out.

I mean, who could resist a hero who wants to savour the torment of not touching the woman who has him on fire until he gets to know more of the “real” her, who serenades her, who actually offers the other cheek, and who eventually gives up everything to atone for the sin of not trusting her, for hurting her?

I was certainly not immune, and I hope no reader will be, either.

I hope Durante and Gabrielle’s story gives you as much pleasure as it gave me while writing it.

I would love to hear your thoughts at oliviagates@ oliviagates.com.

Also please visit me at www.oliviagates.com.

Thank you for reading.

Olivia Gates

Olivia Gates has always pursued creative passions—painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career: writing.

She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.

When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. Visit Olivia at www.oliviagates.com.

To my husband. To my daughter.

Both of you, my one and only. More and more, I wouldn’t be doing all this without you. Thank you for being who you are.

One

“I want one hour with you.”

Prince Durante D’Agostino froze at the foyer’s threshold.

That voice. Coming out of nowhere. So low he shouldn’t have heard it over the live jazz music blaring its infectious energy from the ballroom where the charity function was in full swing.

He heard nothing but its softness. As if faders had been hit, boosting it, dousing every other sound. More. As if it had been generated inside his head, a caress of a thought, making all else recede from his awareness. An awareness that bristled with responses so tactile that every hair on his body rose as if he were caught in a field of static electricity.

He frowned. What was all this, over hearing a woman’s voice? Over yet another blatant invitation?

A scowl seized his face as he swung around to the offending entity. And everything receded farther. Disappeared. He felt as if his blood stopped in his arteries even as everything else hurtled through him. Heat, sensations. Urges.

Eyes. From the shadows behind the foyer’s door, they trans-fixed him. Pieces of heaven. Staring up at him from a face that was what the offspring of an angel and a siren must look like.

Then the impossible creature spoke again. “One hour. I’ll pay one hundred grand for it.”

His eyes dragged away from the clear skies of hers to the lips spilling that offer. Dimpled, dewy and flushed as if she’d been sucking on bloodred cherries. They were still again, slightly parted. But he could see them as they’d wrapped around each syllable of her spell, could imagine them nibbling and suckling their way down his body…

He shifted, stunned to feel himself hardening, zero to one hundred in two seconds.

Aroused? Here? From just a look and a few words?

He expanded his chest in an effort to draw in more oxygen, to drive blood to his head instead of his loins. He managed only to suck in her scent—clean, with a tinge of jasmine and a deluge of pheromones. Every cell in his body twitched, revved.

Then she stepped out of the shadows and he forgot any intentions or delusions of subduing his body.

This might not be happening anyway. He might still be in the back of his limo, dreaming this apparition as he dozed off on the way to the charity event he was sponsoring. Thirty-six sleepless hours must have taken their toll on his nervous system. It would explain her, the epitome of his every far-fetched fantasy. From hair the shade of fire he’d once seen in a painting and wondered if it truly existed in nature, a waterfall of silk his fingers itched to twist through, to a complexion of such clear olive that it offset the vividness of her hair and the lightness of her eyes, to features sculpted and aligned in such an unusual way that they screamed character and whispered sensuality, to curves and swells in the abundance and the distribution to answer his every specification.

But she was no figment of his overworked mind. She was real.

What was unreal was her effect on him. Women had been throwing themselves at him since he’d turned seventeen, and even then he hadn’t operated on hormones. Then had come this woman.

She’d aroused everything in him just by breathing those words, by being near. Now, by just looking at him, she had his imagination flooding with images and sounds and sensations and scents, of drenched silk sheets and hot velvet limbs, of cries rising in the dark along with the aromas of arousal and satisfaction.

Was this it? The overtures of the breakdown Eduardo and Jade claimed he was teetering on? Was this surreal reaction the first crack before a chasm tore his psyche wide open? Not that he cared. If this was a breakdown, maybe it was exactly what he needed.

“I have a check right here.” She fumbled inside her evening purse. “Make it out to the charity or cause of your choice.”

He watched her supple hands, with those neat, short, unadorned fingernails, found himself imagining grabbing them, sucking each finger until she was begging for his lips and teeth and tongue elsewhere…everywhere.

He took a step toward her, maybe not to translate fantasy into action, but to feel her—any part of her—against him, to confirm that she—and what she evoked in him—was real.

She stumbled back. He surged forward to stop her, only to become trapped in the swarm of people who’d materialized between them.

Maledizione. He hadn’t even heard them approach. Now there was nothing but the cacophony of their intrusion, the encroachment of their self-interest.

“Prince Durante! You’re finally here!”

“Prince Durante, this way.”

“You must come this way first, Prince Durante.”

“I have someone who’s dying to meet you.”

“Me, too, and you’ll definitely want to meet him first.”

He was suddenly sorry that he’d left his bodyguards outside. He fought the urge to signal them to disperse the throng who’d so rudely fractured the pristine intensity that had cocooned him with her. But they might rush to deal with the situation with inappropriate force. They’d been jumpy ever since Jeremiah Langley had stabbed him a month ago.

Apart from bellowing for everyone to get the hell away from him, he had no recourse but to let them sweep him along, watch her recede as she remained standing where she’d first intercepted him in that evening gown that could have been spun from the hues and radiance of her eyes. The last thing he saw of her before the ballroom doors closed was her arm falling to her side, the check held limply in her hand.

He buzzed his head bodyguard, muttered an order to keep track of her if she left. He couldn’t risk losing her.

Only then did he start playing the evening’s sponsor, burning to wrap everything up so he could do what he really wanted to do. The first thing in years that he couldn’t wait to do. Seek her out, give her whatever she wanted and experience that eagerness and exhilaration she’d inspired in him, something he hadn’t felt in…ever.

Gabrielle Williamson’s eyes clung to one thing among the ebbing wave of people. The man they’d swept along, the one who towered above them all.

So that was Prince Durante D’Agostino.

She’d thought she knew what he looked like from endless photos in newspapers and magazines, including her own publications. She’d known nothing. Every photo had downgraded him to the man who deserved every letter of his reputation as the world’s most notorious, eligible and panted-after royalty.

In reality he was a…a god.

And she’d approached him—okay, ambushed him more like—with her pathetic offer. A hundred grand felt ridiculous now. But what would an hour with a god rate?

The ballroom door closed, severing the mesmerism of those azure twin stars he had for eyes.

A tremor hit her. A second hit harder. Then a deluge broke out, until she was shaking like a rag in a storm.

What was wrong with her? She was the one who was supposed to surprise him into agreeing to give her that hour. To make a solid pitch before he asked questions. Especially about who she was. She’d wanted to eliminate—or at least postpone—the prejudice her name had already elicited from him. She’d wanted a fair hearing.

But seeing him in the flesh, even from the back, had almost blanked her mind. Then he’d turned, and everything had vanished.

She’d forgotten where she was, what she was supposed to say, could only stare at him. She’d moved only when the tractor beam of his will had forced her forward for his inspection. And boy, had he inspected. She’d felt…inspected down to her cellular level.

Then, those people had charged him, saved her from doing that rag-in-the-storm impression in his presence. They’d also taken him away before he’d said yes. And he’d been about to. Or she could have been imagining that, along with his surreal impact on her.

Imagining shimagining. She was a thirty-year-old divorcée who hadn’t had fantasies even as a young girl. Being the only child of parents whose marriage had sunk daily into the dark realities of bankruptcy and depression hadn’t been conducive to flights of fancy.

That was part of the convoluted journey that had brought her here today, on a mission to save her own company from bankruptcy, while repaying the man who’d supported her family during those desperate years. King Benedetto of Castaldini—Prince Durante’s father.

After her father went bankrupt, the king, a friend and former business associate, had convinced him to move his family closer, to Sardinia, so that the king could be of more help. And he had more than helped, had continued to do so after her father’s death six years later. He’d supported her and her mother and financed her education until she’d graduated from journalism school.

She’d since insisted on repaying her family’s debts with interest. But while she’d needed to settle the financial debt, she’d always cling to the emotional one.

It had been because of that bond, along with what had been solid financial advice at the time, that she’d invested heavily in stocks and assets in Castaldini. It was partly why Le Roi Enterprises, her publishing company, was in trouble now. The kingdom had been hit by a steep recession after the king’s stroke six months ago.

His condition had been hushed up until his recovery hadn’t conformed to his doctors’ optimism. His grim prognosis had leaked out, and Castaldini’s stock market had crashed like a meteor.

He’d called her a couple of weeks ago, requesting a video meeting. He’d said he had a solution to all her problems. She remembered that call…

She’d waited for the meeting to start, contemplating how to turn down his offer of more help. It was one thing to settle her father’s debts and see to their household upkeep, but another to float a company with multinational subsidiaries. She didn’t think he could afford anything of this magnitude now. And she couldn’t be so deeply indebted again, even to him. She’d been so driven to repay her family’s debt that she’d done something as crazy as marry Ed. But…could she afford to turn down help, when hundreds of people depended on her for their jobs?

Then a stranger came onto the screen. It was several dropped heartbeats before she realized it was the king. The incredibly fit and virile seventy-four-year-old man she’d last seen seven months ago at her mother’s funeral had metamorphosed into an emaciated, hundred-year-old version of himself.

Tears surged behind her eyes, at seeing him like that, at the acrid thankfulness that her mother’s illness had been quick and merciless so that she hadn’t suffered his fate, hadn’t lasted long enough to see her beauty almost mummified.

“It’s good to see you, figlia mia.”

The wan rasp that used to be the surest baritone forced a tear to escape her control. She wiped it away, pretending to sweep her hair back. “I-it’s good to see you, too, King Benedetto.”

His smile was resigned, conciliatory. “No need to tiptoe around me, Gaby. I know that seeing me must be a shock for you. But I had to speak to you face-to-face as I ask you this incalculable favor.”

He was asking, not offering, a favor? She didn’t see how that could solve her problems, but the very idea of being of service to him infused her with energy and purpose.

“Anything, King Benedetto. Ask me anything.”

“You once wanted to approach Durante with a book offer.”

She frowned, nodded. She’d asked him how best to approach his elusive son with an offer for a motivational biography, when the enigmatic media-magnet had turned down every offer to publish anything about his life. The king had told her to forget it.

That had been before her mother’s death and she’d since forgotten about it, along with every plan she’d had, lacking the drive to pursue anything new that required focus and determination. Her grief was dulling to a pervasive, crippling coldness, and there was nothing and no one to ameliorate it.

She’d made no friends since she’d returned to New York, seemed to have made only enemies. She had colleagues and employees, was on good terms with most, but she hadn’t forged a real closeness to any of them. Her uncles and their families lived states or continents away and she’d never been close to them anyway. From the men who hunted her for the fortune they thought she’d inherited and the one she’d acquired, to the disaster of her marriage, to the disappointment of her attempts to wash away its ugliness in other men’s arms, to the women who treated her like a succubus who’d drain their men of life, it felt as if she’d lost one bond to the world after another. Her mother’s death had cracked the last link. Why bother? was the one thought left echoing inside her.

Only the employees who’d lose their jobs and the causes she’d be unable to contribute to if she threw in the towel had kept her going, just enough to keep her head above water.

“I feel responsible for your company’s problems.”

The king’s rasp dragged her back to the moment. She blinked.

“Please, don’t, King Benedetto. It’s not your fault.”

She bit her lip on much more. Her company’s decline had started with the discovery of her mother’s terminal illness, and its slow death had begun when a part of her had died with her mother, a part she didn’t know how to resuscitate, didn’t feel like trying. Castaldini’s recession had just been the last straw.

But she could see how he’d think that, because she wasn’t alone in her decline. Many smaller corporations heavily invested in Castaldinian stock were floundering. Even though the new regent, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, had stepped in and floated the economy, the original hit had been bad. She’d heard that Leandro would work his way down to companies at the level of hers, but doubted her company could last until he did. And then, even with his power and financial clout, as regent only, he didn’t promise the market the long-term stability a king would. Advisors had urged her not to await rescue, said Leando might even let lesser interests go under to stabilize the big picture.

The king went on. “Durante could revive your company, either with a bestseller or in other ways if he so wished.”

That was what her advisors had said. That only a guaranteed bestseller or a merger with any major player would buoy her company. Prince Durante would have answered both criteria. But previously, the king had said Durante wasn’t an option. Which meant…“So he’d be amenable to an offer now?”

“I’m not saying he would be.”

That stymied her. “Then what has changed?”

“Your situation. And mine.”

She didn’t understand what her situation had to do with his, only that he thought a positive result might be obtained now. She should jump at the opening. Yet she wanted to do nothing but say goodbye and sit staring into space. It seemed that her lethargy wasn’t about to let her challenge-tackling abilities escape its somnolent grip. She sighed. “I’ll give it some more thought—”

“I’m asking you to do it, Gaby.” The king interrupted her. “And I don’t just want you to sign a contract with him. I want you to insist on being his editor or ghostwriter or however you get such books written. I want you to work as closely as possible with him so that you can convince him to come back to Castaldini.” Gabrielle adjusted the screen, as if that would help his words make sense. He elaborated, ending her confusion. “He left five years ago, saying he’ll never return as long as I live. And he’s kept his promise. He didn’t even call when I had my stroke.”

Something trickled through the clotted mass of indifference inside her. Emotions. Surprise, indignation…anger.

What kind of monster would do that to his father, and a great man like King Benedetto, too? And to think Durante had been the one she’d admired most among all Castaldinian princes, his self-made success intriguing her far more because it didn’t have the crown as its goal. As the king’s son, Durante was the one prince who was ineligible for the crown. And then, success didn’t describe what he’d achieved. He’d become one of the world’s richest, most powerful men, starting with investment banking, then branching into just about everything, garnering a worldwide reputation for being unstoppable, as well as inaccessible. But it was one thing to reject intimacy as evidenced by his misanthrope/heartbreaker reputation, another to reject the man who was his father and king.

“Why all this…antipathy?” she asked.

“Durante blames me for terrible things, things I haven’t been able to prove I wasn’t responsible for.” Okay. So it was more complicated than she could imagine. She really couldn’t form an opinion here. She shouldn’t. It had nothing to do with her. And she wanted it to stay that way. “But it doesn’t matter what he believes. He must come back, Gaby. It’s not only that I need my son—Castaldini needs his power and influence.”

Scratch the no-opinion status. No matter Durante’s reasons, he was a callous creep if he not only didn’t care about his father’s incapacitation but also about Castaldini’s troubles. And she was supposed to make him care?

She asked that, and the king nodded. “I know you can. You’ll come in with a fresh slate and views, with legitimate business offers and concerns. But give me your word that you’ll never tell him of our connection. That would make him send you straight to hell. And none of us can afford that. The situation is grave, and I must be clear. I want you to do anything to make him come back.”

His words had echoed long after their goodbyes. What he’d meant by anything was so glaringly clear, it was blinding. Seduction.

She was resigned to her femme fatale reputation. But it hurt that even the king thought seduction was one of her weapons, her only one, even. Still, she excused him. He was old and sick and desperate to resolve his problems, to secure his kingdom’s future.

And then, what he’d proposed was a worthy cause. If she succeeded—seduction certainly not on the menu of maneuvers she’d use—everyone would come out a winner. The king would have his son back—a reconciliation that was bound to make said son happier, too—Castaldini would get a heavy-hitter to help its regent pull its fat out of the fire, and she’d stabilize her company.

But the damned prince hadn’t even acknowledged her messages. She could think of only one reason. His initial background check on anyone who approached him must have accessed the usual slander. Seemed he’d thought such unsubstantiated filth enough to condemn her.

Furious, she’d called in a favor with one of his insiders and gotten his schedule for the next week. Besides being impossible to get hold of, he was also known for badgering the privileged into doing more for the world. This function was one of his traps where he wrung what he could get out of them for his favorite causes. She’d intended to intercept him, make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. At least, that had been the plan.

So far, all she’d done was stammer three sentences and got nothing out of him but that disconcerting stare.

She needed results, but she had to restart her own volition first. Or at least the autopilot that had steered her for months now.

One or the other must have kicked in, because she moved at last.

She leaned on the door as she opened it. The exuberance of jazz and the forced gaiety in the overcrowded ballroom slammed into her. But what almost knocked her off her feet was the power of his gaze. He’d been watching for her, as if certain she’d follow him.

Not that she could. Those people who had the same idea as her—of ambushing him here—left her no chink to get through.

He left her no air to breathe as his gaze drilled into her across the ballroom. She began to think it might not be a bad thing after all if she didn’t get a chance to talk to him alone.

She was a seasoned businesswoman who’d been through a battlefield of a marriage and divorce, who’d before and since been pursued by men, had thought she’d seen and tried all kinds, to her crushing dissatisfaction. But Prince D’Agostino fell far outside what she’d thought to be her inclusive experience. To lump him under “man” with those she’d had experience with was as accurate as lumping a top-of-the-food-chain predator with a jellyfish. Something very sure of itself told her she shouldn’t get closer. For any reason.

She should leave. Now.

She had to pry her gaze—her will—from his first.

Somehow she did, was at the door when a rough velvet whisper hit her between the shoulder blades. “Don’t run off yet.”

Logic said that omnidirectional/internal sound effect was the surround system’s doing. But there was no logic here. There was only the influence the voice exercised, the reactions it ignited. The certainty that it was talking to her.

She swayed around, found him on the dais in front of the mic, his gaze still cast on her like a stasis field.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for paying the ten-grand admission fee. But because you’re getting…restless, I’ll fast-forward to prying some real contributions out of you. You have the auction list, but in light of a certain…development, I have made some changes. Now the first item on auction is…myself.”

Two

If Prince Durante D’Agostino had announced he was Superman and launched into the air to circle overhead, there wouldn’t have been a more drastic reaction to his announcement.

Not that it would have shocked her. He did look like some superhuman being as he dominated the scene just by standing there, the rugged nobleness of his features and his leonine forehead accentuated by the swept-back mane of raven satin, the jacket of his sculpted designer charcoal suit casually pushed back by the hand resting on his hip, his white shirt stretching across his torso, detailing the daunting power beneath. He looked like a modern god swathed in the trappings of the times that equalized other men but that didn’t begin to contain the influence he exuded, to disguise his in-his-own-league nature.

His gaze panned the ballroom yet somehow managed not to release hers. That alone kept her heart practically dropping to the polished Carrara marble floor. But what restarted her tremors was what she saw in those eyes—an intensity untouched by the cynical amusement with which he watched the mayhem he’d kicked up.

“Before you get too excited,” he finally said. “I’m not auctioning off all of me, just my ear. Considering how in demand it is, with so many of you attempting to talk it off, I’m offering one hour of its exclusive use.” His lips tugged into what had to be the most arrhythmia-inducing weapon ever deployed on susceptible females. And it had her in its crosshairs. “I already have an opening bid. One hundred grand.”

Now she knew how mamma mia had been coined. It had to have been a woman who’d first exclaimed it, as a brutally gorgeous male plucked her strings.

And she did feel like a marionette, compelled to obey his every tug, any reluctance or misgiving evaporating in the excitement his mischief sent through her. She walked back under the pull of his challenge.

When she stopped at the fringe of the bidding crowd, he put his lips to the mic, implanted hot, wild images and sensations straight inside her, pitched his voice an octave lower. “Do I hear one hundred ten?”

Over three-dozen people, mostly women, raised their hands. She’d beaten them all in speed of response.

His lips spread in satisfaction, his pose grew more languid, a conqueror certain of his victory, indulgent in his triumph. “Thank you. Do I hear one hundred twenty?”

Her hand was up in the air before she could will it to be there. Seemed he’d jumpstarted her competitiveness. More. He’d sparked the first sign of life in her since she’d witnessed her mother’s being extinguished.

He kept raising the bid, and her competition dwindled. Soon suspense was fast reaching the point of overload.

When a dozen hands still shot up in the air when he reached the four hundred fifty grand mark, her stamina snapped and recoiled like an overextended string.

She blurted out, “I bid one million.”

A hush fell. Everyone turned to gape at her.

He straightened, his eyes losing all lightness, singeing hers through the charge that filled the space between them. “Now that’s a nice round figure. Anyone willing to top that? No? Fine, then. I have one million from the lady in blue. Going once, going twice—”

“I bid ten million.”

Durante saw shock seize his mystery woman’s face before he registered the words that had caused it. Only then did he drag his eyes and senses from her and search out the new speaker.

His every muscle tensed. How had he gotten past security? How had Durante not noticed him before?

His security had messed up. As for him, all his faculties had been converged on her, everything else skimming his consciousness without leaving an imprint.

And there was the now-gaunt, wild-eyed Jeremiah Langley. Staring at him like a drowning man would at a lifeboat. A month ago he’d looked at Durante as if at his own killer, before attempting to stab him. Durante couldn’t imagine how Langley had ended up blaming him—and not the investments he’d made against his advice—for his bankruptcy, but he’d hushed everything up, not wishing to add criminal charges to the distraught man’s troubles. He’d also postponed announcing Langley’s bankruptcy until he sold shares that would leave the man with minimal debt. But he’d made it clear to Langley, and to his security—he didn’t want to see the man again. Not in this lifetime.

No one knew how things stood between them, or that Jeremiah didn’t have the ten million he’d bid for Durante’s leniency. He couldn’t call Langley on it without outing him. Langley had cornered him into accepting his so-called bid as the winning one.

And that was his worst crime.

She had already accepted defeat. This time, she was walking away. He might not have more of her. Not tonight. Unacceptable.

He would have more of her. And if he had his way, as he always did, he would have all of her.

Gabrielle felt all animation drain from her system.

The moment her bid had burst from her incontinent mouth, she’d launched into feverish calculations to determine how she could part with that much cash in one lump sum in her current situation. Then that ten-million-dollar sledgehammer had fallen, pulverizing both worry and hope.

So that was it. She’d bid and lost. And he was no longer looking at her. Ten million dollars would distract even him.

So what was that tightening behind her ribs? Disappointment?

How stupid was that? This scheme wouldn’t have worked anyway. She didn’t know how she or King Benedetto could have thought it might. All her moronic endeavor would achieve was to give the scandal sheets fuel for the coming decade. She had to leave before the paparazzi he’d banned from the event got wind of this and ambushed her. Leave. Now. And don’t look back.

She managed that, but still felt as if she were wading through quicksand. His gaze had latched on to her again, robbed her of dominion over her own body. Desperation to get away kicked in.

In minutes she was in the parking lot, running to her car.

She remote-opened her door, was reaching for its handle when a boom cracked the silence of the night.

“Stay.”

She dropped her keys. Her purse. Probably a few months’ to a couple of years’ life expectancy, too.

She slumped against the warm metal and glass as if pressed there by the presence closing in on her. She heard nothing but the blood thundering in her head. The presence expanded at her back, pinning her to her support, squeezing her heart.

She fumbled for the door handle. She’d managed to open the door when that voice hit her again, a quiet rumble this time.

“Stay.”

She clenched her eyes shut, pitched forward, her nerveless weight closing the door with a muffled thud. That one word.

An invocation. Deeper and darker than the moonless night.

She turned around, leaning on the car. And there he was.

The good news was that he kept a dozen feet between them. The bad news was that it made no difference. And why should it? He’d been dozens of feet away in that ballroom and had still overwhelmed her.

“Stay?” Where was her voice? She’d addressed him before in a breathless whisper. This time it was a husky rasp. Both were nothing like her usual crisp tones. “What am I? Your poodle? What’s next? Roll over? Beg…?” She winced, stopped. Where were her brakes?

“How about ‘stop,’” he drawled. “Before you inflame my already-raging imagination beyond control.”

His voice wasn’t the same as what had flowed from the sound system earlier. It was so much more layered and modulated and hard-hitting, the prominent r’s of his accent far more intoxicating. Hearing it without distortion delayed her comprehension of his words. Then it hit her and she almost went up in a puff of mortification.

She couldn’t believe she’d said something so provocative, just begging for misinterpretation. He’d never believe she hadn’t meant anything beyond sarcasm.

But wonder of wonders, his eyes weren’t stained with that knowing derision she was used to from men. His emitted only pure excitement. “Would ‘stop’ be less open to unfavorable interpretation? How about ‘don’t leave’?”

His voice sluiced another rush of heat over her. She quivered. “Still orders, both of them.”

He tilted his head. Light ignited the azure depths of his eyes and carved dimples in his sculpted cheeks. “At least they don’t have canine connotations, if my idiomatic English serves.”

And she did something she’d thought was beyond her, now and forever. She giggled. Giggled.

His eyes widened as if she’d electrified him. He retaliated with something far more debilitating than electricity. He chuckled.

She struggled not to melt into the ground. “You’re pleading less-than-perfect English skills to explain the inappropriateness of barking ‘stay’ at me across the parking lot like that?”

“Barking? Still going with the dog motif, eh?”

“You did bark,” she mumbled in embarrassment. “You frightened me out of my skin. I think it’s still pooled on the ground.”

His eyes swept down her body, until she felt it was her dress that lay at her feet. “From where I’m standing, your skin is still enveloping you like a glove and, propriety notwithstanding, you can see what the sight does to me.”

More heat splashed through her as she fixed her gaze on his so it wouldn’t stray to “see” anything. “See? Perfect English skills.”

“I’m sure my English tutor would love to hear that the ulcer he swore I gave him has ultimately been validated.”

“You gave your teacher hell? You’re pulling my leg.”

“Again, do watch what you say to me, or I might succumb and tell you exactly how and where I want to pull both your legs.”

Images slammed into her. Vivid, tangible. Those large, perfectly formed hands dragging her by the thighs, opening her around his bulk as he bore down on her…

“I’ve changed my verdict,” she choked. “Your English skills are not perfect. They’re horrible. Evil. Sietto un uomo cattivo.”

Suddenly the sounds of the night were amplified in the stillness that echoed between them. Whoever had said one could drown in another’s eyes must have been describing Prince Durante’s endless azure seas and the submersion of their focus.

Just as she felt her lungs using up the last tendril of oxygen, he exhaled. “Mia bella misteriosa…parlate italiano?”

She realized she’d said he was a wicked man in Italian. It had once come to her as unconsciously as English did. She used to talk and think in an inextricable mix, a habit that had faded since she’d returned to the States. This was the first time in many years that she’d reverted to the second-nature practice. It felt as if a missing part of her had clicked back into place.

Then more registered. He’d called her his mysterious beauty, asked if she spoke Italian.

“I lived in Sardinia and Italy from age five until I returned to the States to enter college at seventeen.”

These revelations were way beyond the simple yes his question warranted. But he made her want to do unknown things. Flirt, tease. Confide. It had to be the premium royal testosterone overexposure.

After a long moment when he looked at her as if at a gem with a thousand facets, he breathed, “Dio Santo, what are you?”

“What…? Uh, yeah, I haven’t exactly introduced myself yet.”

“No, you haven’t. Exactly or otherwise.”

“Umm…yeah, there’s sort of a reason I haven’t. You see, I’m—”

“You are mia bella misteriosa, who’s done what no woman has ever done—offered money to spend time with me.”

“Now that I find impossible to believe. I bet women offer anything and everything for time with you. I bet most wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t even one-on-one.”

“You think so? Because of who I am?” Her gaze wavered with uncertainty. He elaborated. “Rich and royal?”

Her laugh morphed into a snort that would have made a sailor proud. “Are you kidding? Or are you fishing? Women would throw themselves at you if you were a penniless nobody.”

His eyes flared. “Coming from anybody else, I’d think that a worthless exaggeration, but from you, I know it’s how you see me. For it’s how I see you, too. As for the one-on-one basis, that is the only way I would accept to have time with you.”

A moan of stimulation stumbled over her croak of embarrassment.

Hell, the man was reducing her to a pubescent state. But he was doing something even worse.

He was obliterating the distance between them.

Mesmerized, she took in the control and power that permeated his every move, the breadth of shoulders and chest that owed nothing to padding, the sparseness of waist and hips, the hardness of thighs rippling beneath exquisite fabric as he prowled toward her, a majestic creature by birthright and by merit. Now this was a man to make her revise her stance on swearing off men forever, a pledge she’d made happily years ago.

Which was a crazy thing to think.

Crazier would be to act on such insanity.

She stood there waiting for him to reach her with the same fatalism she’d watch a collision in progress, could think only that no man had ever looked at her like this. As if she was something incredibly unexpected, and unexpectedly incredible. The wonder in his eyes drowned out the urgent voices that yelled that his damage potential would far surpass the devastation caused by any such collision.

Every step closer to his mystery woman solidified into fact what Durante had sensed from the first moment he saw her.

This was new. Surprising and stimulating. When he’d been certain nothing and no one would ever surprise or stimulate him. She did both, and far more, with every breath.

Her effect on him was so unprecedented that he’d done the unprecedented. He’d delegated running the rest of the charity function to his deputy. And he’d sent his bodyguards away, forbade them to follow him. He wanted to be alone with her at any price.

Her face tilted up as he approached. Beams from the nearest streetlight embraced it in a swathe of highlights and shadows. Her tresses billowed in the night breeze like undulating flames.

Contradictory compulsions wrenched at each other inside him. The need to capture, conquer, and the urge to savor, slow down.

The second impulse won out, forced his feet to stop before they took him all the way pressing her against her car.

He was close enough to reach out and run his fingers through that blazing cascade of hair. He didn’t. Somehow. He drew deep of her scent instead, let it permeate him, before he let it escape on a grudging exhalation. “So…you bid one million dollars for an hour with me.”

Her shoulders jerked on a dejected shrug. “Yeah. And for the record, I would have doubled the winning bid if I could have.”

He inhaled sharply. “You think I’m worth that much?”

“I think you’re worth every dollar of your billions.”

He bit into his lip. It was either that or drag her to him and bite into hers. As he would. Just not yet. What flowed between them deserved the reward of leisure and thoroughness. But holding back was a punishment, too. One her every word made harder to take. He was used to flattery, could sense falseness and self-interest even in trace quantities. He detected only sincerity from her. Alien urges swamped him, to punch the air, to thump his chest.

He shoved his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t find their way around her. “I do have more hours available apart from the one that other bidder won, you know?”

“Oh. Oh. You mean…?”

The surge of hope on her face made him fist his hands in his pockets, emphasizing his—problem. It was either that or snatch them out and pounce on her. “I mean, if you’re still interested, I’ll take that million-dollar check.”

“If?” She coughed. Her eyes tore from his, slammed around, the dazed excitement in them tingling through him on a path that connected his fingertips to his scalp, his loins to his toes. Her gaze settled at her feet. “There it is.” She dropped down in a crouch, pooling her flowing taffeta skirt on the ground, making her look like a gigantic flower as she retrieved the matching evening bag. She jerked back up, not lingering to look up at him from that position, to milk it for all the sensual promise it could yield.

She didn’t need any of that. She needed only to breathe—to be—to exercise maximum effect on him. But it pleased him beyond measure that she didn’t operate that way.

She fumbled with her bag, produced her checkbook. He watched as she scribbled furiously with even, beautiful print. Then she tore out the check, extended it to him. “Fill in the beneficiary.”

He took it, folded and placed it in his outer pocket before he reached into his inner one, produced his own checkbook and pen.

In a minute he tore a check out, handed it to her. “I’m bidding two million. Add to that whatever amount you see fit, fill in the total and make it out to whomever you like.”

Her movement to take the check felt like a reflex. She didn’t look at it, remained gaping at him. “What’s this for?”

“The two million is my bid for the time we’ve had together so far. The amount you’ll specify is for the rest of the evening.”

“The whole evening?”

“And the night.”

“The night?”

Durante’s lips twitched. Her squeaks would have amused him if they weren’t pouring fuel on his inflamed senses. She really hadn’t thought it a possibility he’d offer this. “If you wish it.”

Her blush intensified until she seemed to smolder in the night. And he saw it in his mind’s eye in high-definition clarity, himself carrying her to the nearest flat surface to ravish her for that hour she’d bid on, before sweeping her away from the world to do so again for several nights on end.

It was all so surreal he felt he was dreaming it. Yet it was so real it abraded him with its intensity and immediacy. He’d never experienced such a state of distressed arousal. And for him to be in this condition just by looking, imagining…Unbelievable.

At last she spluttered, “Uh…isn’t this a bit…you know…?”

He inclined his head. “Too fast? Too soon? You think so?”

A moan-giggle escaped her, another blow to his restraint. “If you think I can think right now, think again.”

“Exactly. This isn’t about thinking. This is about feeling. About knowing. I know what you make me feel. You made me feel it from the first moment. I wanted more than an hour with you. I want this night, bellissima, and as many more as you’ll give me.”

“That’s assuming you’ll want more nights after the first…” Her face scrunched into a wince. “Okay, excuse me as I give swallowing my tongue a serious shot.”

“With me around to do it? What a waste that would be. And why would you even want to try?”

“Because it sounded as if I was agreeing to share this night with you and was trying to make sure it wouldn’t be the one and only.”

Every word out of her mouth…He pressed the heel of his palm to his breastbone, as if that would quell the itching behind it. “And you didn’t mean that?”

“God, no, I-I…” She threw both hands over her face, before looking up at him, helplessness and accusation filling her expression. “It’s your fault. Exposure to you is turning my gray matter into day-old milkshake.”

A laugh tore out of him, drove his head back with the force of its unexpectedness and power. “Turnabout is fair play. Although you turn mine into the boiling version.” He reduced the distance between them another step, testing his stamina, thrilling to the torture of balancing on the edge of loss of control. “And I will want more nights. As many as I can have. I hope you won’t hold back to observe an ‘appropriate’ period before indulging in intimacy. I want nothing more than to end this night with you in my arms, in my bed.”

She melted back against her car. “And I want nothing more than to end this night in both.”

Gabrielle watched Durante’s eyes flare at her admission, knew he’d reach for her. She had to say the rest now. Now.

“But I can’t.”

The flare subsided, ice putting out the blue-hot flames.

Something twisted beneath her ribs. She couldn’t bear to see disappointment replacing exhilaration in his eyes.

She hurtled on. “Believe it or not, I did approach you with business and only business in mind.”

Relief swamped her when his eyes simmered again. “I believe you. But it ceased to be business the moment you laid eyes on me.”

She didn’t even think of denying the fact. “Yes.” She still had to qualify it. “But I can’t afford to let it be that way—”

He cut across her unsteady words. “You can’t afford to let it be any other way. Business will be taken care of in due time. But I’m not postponing this for anything else’s sake.”

“But what is this?”

“Something unknown to either of us, something unprecedented. And you know it as well as I do.”

Gabrielle stared at him. He kept stunning her. But what most amazed her was that she picked up no malice from him, that malignant triumph most men transmitted when women made the mistake of not only falling for them, but admitting it, too.

Not him. She felt he was above pettiness and double standards. This was also no line that he gave every desirable woman he met. In fact, his ruthlessness likely originated from his never instigating the pursuit. He was renowned for his detachment.

There was nothing detached about him now. She just knew he was being swept along the same unstoppable current as she was.

That didn’t mean she could let herself be swept. There was far more at stake than the elapsing of “an appropriate period before indulging in intimacies.” And not only couldn’t she tell him what, but that this was happening at all made her feel she’d fallen flat on her face into someone else’s life. Men like him—and there were no men like him—didn’t appear in hers.

She looked up at him, at once pleading for him to understand her chaos and afraid he’d shimmer and disappear. “Whatever this unknown and unprecedented thing is, and no matter how I feel about it or how right it feels to feel this way, I’m still totally weirded out by the detour everything has taken. Hours ago I didn’t dream…”

“…you’d see me and the world would cease to matter.”

His confidence sent her explanations scattering. “Oh, quit making it harder for me to make sense. The world might have ceased to matter, but it didn’t cease to exist. I had this proposal memorized and now I barely remember what it was all about.”

“I barely remember why I came here tonight, too. I don’t care about anything now beyond you.”

“Maybe if you hear my proposal, you’ll change your mind.”

“I won’t. Not even if you’re coming to me with the patent for an eternal-youth or super-power serum.”

“Actually, I was thinking along opposite lines. That you’d be so opposed to my offer, you’d drop me.”

“So it’s something you think I’m liable to turn down flat? Is that why you were trying to sweeten me with the hundred grand? Is there something dark and controversial about you, mia ragazzaccia?”

The way he said “my bad girl” quickened her melting rate. “Oh, I wish. Okay, really, I don’t. I’m pretty grateful there’s nothing so…interesting about me. I’m just—”

“The woman I want to know everything about. And to that end, I want to conduct an experiment.”

She blinked. “An experiment?” She stopped. “God, I keep repeating things. I might start asking for crackers next.” His smile widened, blinding her with a flash of charisma. She groaned. “So, what’s this experiment? What are you out to prove?”

“That you were onto something great when you approached me without revealing your identity and purpose. The labels might have interfered with our impact on each other. I don’t think your name or your business will shed any light on who you really are. I want to know you. What you are, what makes you tick, what shaped you, what you want and why and how you want it. I want to revel in what we have blazing between us, to enjoy us, man to woman. For tonight.”

Another breaker of reaction shuddered through her. “Are you for real, or am I dreaming you up?”

The heat of his smile became almost unbearable. “I take it you agree to participate in my experiment.”

She shook her head. “That experiment is skewed and the results are bound to be unreliable. I know exactly who you are.”

“You only think you do. But what do you know? My statistics? My reputation, status and estimated fortune? Sterile facts mixed with conjectures and financial data. Did knowing any of the above prepare you for the effect I have on you in the flesh?”

She raised her hands begging for respite. “Okay. I admit the ‘labels’ conjured up a man who, while impressive, has nothing to do with the flesh-and-blood reality of you. In fact, I’m having a tough time connecting you at all to that man.”

“You see? If you can’t access your preconceived ideas about me, we’re on a level playing field. Say yes, bellissima.”

“Now I know why you’ve soared so high. You’re relentless.”

“That’s your expert opinion as a fellow unstoppable force?”

“Hah, I wish. Or again, not really. Okay. On one condition.”

“Anything.”

She exhaled a tremulous chuckle. “Not very businessman-like of you, all these carte-blanche concessions.”

“I’m not a businessman now. I’m just a man who knows you’re the woman to whom only carte-blanche concessions will do justice.”

“God, stop with the impossible-to-live-up-to stuff.”

“You’ve already lived up to all of it by making me feel this way, think this way. So, what’s your condition?”

“That you give me back my check.”

He didn’t hesitate, not in expression, not in action. He produced her check as the words left her lips. Delight fizzed in her blood. He hadn’t paused to ponder her intention, trusted that whatever it was, there was nothing underhanded about it.

Her hand trembled as she extended his back to him. “Here’s yours. Now I don’t owe you untold millions.”

He didn’t reach for it. “Keep it, bellissima. You wouldn’t owe me a cent. That’s for the causes of your choice.”

“Oh, I would owe you. I wanted to make a donation through you, while gaining something for myself. But if I take your check, I would be ‘donating’ your money. So, you donate what you wish and I’ll do the same and let’s take money out of the equation, start this on a real equal footing.”

He took the check. “I’ll just keep it until you wish to donate something you can’t afford. Now, shall we?”

Her heart began to race her. “Shall we…what exactly?”

“Spend the rest of the evening together. As for the night…I won’t push for anything you can’t wait to…donate.”