The Illegitimate King by Olivia Gates

She had to surface from under his spell…

“Now that we’ve got the dinner you’ve been harping on for years out of the way, I hope we can discuss something important.” As Clarissa spoke, Ferruccio’s eyes drained of the warmth that had ignited them for the past hours. She braced herself against the urge to soften her tone. “So…go ahead. Negotiate. I can’t wait to hear your ‘terms.’ They should be entertaining.”

After the shock passed, rage crashed over Ferruccio. How had she blindsided him again? He could swear she’d taken off her mask and shown him her true self. Now she’d thrown his invitations in his face, taunted him. It didn’t matter that he would be king. He remained a bastard in her eyes.

She had no idea who she was dealing with, how out of her depth she was. It was time to make her regret her snobbery.

“You want to negotiate, Princess? By all means. I have only one term for agreeing to take the crown. That I take you with it.”

Friday Night Mistress by Jan Colley

Jordan Lake would be the ultimate takeover.

“Does it bother you,” he asked roughly, “this secret of ours? This thing between us?”

Jordan was past reason. She wanted much more of “this thing” between them and she wanted it now.

With an effort almost too much to bear, she forced her mouth to open, to speak. “I know the score, Nick,” she told him tightly. “I’m playing the game.”

Sex.

Simple. Sensational. Secret.

Available in June 2010from Mills & Boon® Desire™

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The Illegitimate King

by

Olivia Gates
Friday Night Mistress

by

Jan Colley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Illegitimate King

by

Olivia Gates

Dear Reader,

As I wrote the last words in The Illegitimate King, the book that wraps up THE CASTALDINI CROWN trilogy, I found myself sighing in pleasure and regret. To have come to the satisfying end of a family saga that has been all I thought about for five months made me feel at once elated and wistful. I’ve fallen in love with each of my magnificent heroes. It was as wonderful to have known them as it was hard to leave them behind.

Then I remembered that I can always open the books and revisit them and that I can and will create more one-woman men who are everything a woman might dream of. Men who are powerful in character and passion as well as in sensitivity, who are towers of strength and tenderness at once.

The Illegitimate King’s hero, Ferruccio Selvaggio, aka the Savage Iron Man, is such a man, but he surprised even me as I wrote his story. He was bent on revenge, but the side of him that longed for love and family overwhelmed his harsh intentions at every turn. I loved him that tiny bit more for having triumphed over unimaginable horrors and hardships to become the incredible man who would become Castaldini’s king and the one man his heroine, Clarissa, could love.

I hope that reading their story will give you as much pleasure as writing it gave me.

I would love to hear from you at oliviagates@gmail.com. You can also visit me on the web 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.

At the end of this trilogy, I again dedicate it to the two ladies who made it possible for me to write it.

My phenomenal editor, Natashya Wilson.

And Melissa Jeglinski, a wonderful lady and Desire’s former senior editor.

Thanks, ladies. It’s been a fantastic ride.

Prologue

Six years ago

“So gods do walk the earth!”

Clarissa D’Agostino frowned at her friend’s breathless exclamation as she dabbed at the stain on the décolleté of her lavender chiffon gown.

She cursed herself for biting into that overripe plum. Way to go, making a fool of herself when she was supposed to be Castaldini’s princess, all grown up and fit for court appearances at last. It seemed that four years in the States and graduating at the top of her class from Harvard Business School hadn’t done a thing to improve her ability to handle public appearances.

She grimaced at the visible stain. “What are you going on about?”

“I’m all about that…god over there!”

Clarissa swung around. Not to search out the proclaimed deity, but to check her best friend for signs of intoxication.

She found Luci fanning herself. “And I thought his profile was hard-hitting. His full-frontal assault is devastating.”

Clarissa gaped at her. Luciana Montgomery, whose feminist outlook and American side dominated her Castaldinian roots, was the last woman she knew who’d drool over a man. She’d never seen Luci react like this to anyone—not in the States, where they’d gone to college together and where hunks had regularly pursued the vivacious redhead, and not in Castaldini, which was crawling with gorgeous men. The only men Luci had ever even said were drool-worthy were Clarissa’s brothers and a few of her cousins. And she hadn’t reacted this way to any of them. It was weird, seeing her tongue almost lolling out.

The weirdness took a turn into the absurd when Luci grabbed her arm and squeaked in excitement, “He’s looking our way!”

“I could have sworn you had only one glass of champagne, Luci.” Clarissa turned to investigate the phenomenon who had made the most poised twenty-two-year-old woman she knew flutter like a giddy schoolgirl. “I’ll have to see if someone’s spiking the…”

The words backed up in her throat.

There were so many men in the ballroom whom Clarissa didn’t recognize. She’d been away for so long and had never been active in court life, and she was the one member of the king’s family who everyone almost forgot existed, just the way she wanted them to. But there could be only one man who warranted Luci’s overreaction.

There was only one man who Clarissa could see.

He wasn’t a god. He surpassed all depictions of gods she’d ever seen, with all the perfections worshippers’ imaginations had lavished on them. No one could have imagined him. She certainly hadn’t. She could barely believe he was real.

He was. And he was looking their way. Her way.

Her heart plunged into the pit of her stomach. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Existence converged onto one thing. His eyes. Stormy skies illuminated by lightning, all their focus and power targeting her. But what started tremors arcing through her was what she saw in them; a reflection of her own state, stunned free fall into the awareness that crackled between them.

Suddenly he blinked, turned his face away. Through the fugue encompassing her, she realized why he had severed their connection. Her father.

King Benedetto had appeared beside the man, a wide smile—one she couldn’t remember seeing since she was a small child—spreading across his lips.

The man gazed at her father as if he didn’t recognize him. Her father spoke, the man listened. She found herself moving, unaware of anything or anyone, just needing to be closer, to find out what had just happened. Suddenly the man turned back, snared her again in the bull’s eye of his focus.

She stopped. Moving. Breathing. Her heart quivered inside her to a standstill. Shock splashed through her like ice water.

It was unmistakable, what she saw in his eyes now. Coldness. Hostility. Which meant one thing. She’d been wrong. It hadn’t been a blast of attraction she’d seen in his eyes, felt radiating from him. That had all been on her side.

Before she could recoil from the rush of mortification and letdown, he turned and walked away from her father.

She stood there, feeling as if a knife had been thrust between her ribs, heard Luci’s voice as if it were seeping in from another realm.

“Lord, what was that?”

Clarissa couldn’t produce a thought, let alone an answer.

“That was the Savage Iron Man.”

Clarissa swung around unsteadily toward the purring voice.

Stella. She’d been making Clarissa’s skin crawl ever since they were children. Thankfully, they were only third cousins, so she’d seen as little of Stella as possible. She would have liked to see far less. None.

Stella’s words made as much sense now.

It was Luci who summed up Clarissa’s thoughts: “Huh?”

“Ferruccio Selvaggio, shipping magnate extraordinaire, who, at thirty-two, is one of the richest men in the world. He’s like a wrecking ball, rising so high so young, over the smashed remains of anyone who’s dared stand in his way. Hence the nickname, which also happens to be the meaning of his aptly given names.”

“That’s according to you, of course.” Luci smirked.

“That’s according to common knowledge. He’s a terror. But judging by our king’s enthusiasm, it seems he’s willing to overlook that fact—along with the other fact, that Ferruccio is a bastard, literally—if he’ll only invest heavily enough in Castaldini.”

“My, Stella, I hope nobody thinks you’re the example of what royal blood does for a person,” Luci said. “It would be so unfair if you gave us all a reputation for being stuck-up bitches.”

Stella pouted. The perfect beauty was always putting on an act, oozing class and subtle sexuality, showing her true self only to other women, knowing men would think them jealous harpies if they criticized her. “Being a mongrel yourself, Luciana, you don’t have to worry about that. But then, that makes you the perfect merchandise he’s here to shop for. You have enough diluted blue blood that you might fit the bill in his bid to buy legitimacy. With what he has to offer in return, I say go for it.”

As Luci continued to argue with Stella, Clarissa turned and walked away. Stella’s vile words were like acid poured over the rawness of that incendiary moment. It didn’t matter that it had all been in her mind. The damage was real.

She’d moved a good way through the crowd when something made her turn around.

He was heading toward where she’d been standing. Coming back for her? Had she been wrong about that second look? She began walking back.

Her feet gathered momentum as he zeroed in on Luciana and Stella. Would he ask them about her?

Then she was close enough to see the glazed look entering the women’s eyes at being under his immediate influence, to hear the rumble of his deep voice, the predatory flirtation in it.

Something shriveled inside her, like a paper curling up as flames ate it to ashes. Her feet changed course again, quickened, until she was almost running as she exited the ballroom to the verandah. She breathed hard, snatching air into constricted lungs.

Stop it. You fool.

She’d imagined it all. The attraction and the antipathy. He’d been looking at Luciana all along. Or perhaps he looked at every woman the way she’d thought he’d looked at her.

Get ahold of yourself.

She slipped into the shadows, trying to do just that, to suppress tears she’d long thought had run dry.

She was a lousy excuse for a princess, but her father had asked her to take an active role in the court and in the kingdom, at his side, in her mother’s place. It had been the first thing he’d asked of her in…ever. She was damned if she’d run out on him. Again.

She straightened her aching back, started to move—and walked into a wall of hot, hard muscle and maleness. Him.

She stumbled back, started to apologize, to sidestep him, air shearing into her lungs, chaos invading her synapses.

He blocked her escape route. He didn’t touch her—he didn’t need to. His very presence reached out and snared her in an inescapable embrace. And that was before her gaze streaked up to his, to find him looking down at her with that trance-inducing intensity.

The effect was the same as it had been during that first flash flood of recognition.

Her consciousness wavered. The world swirled around her as his eyes ate her up. Then his lips moved and she heard his voice, unobscured by the din of background chatter and music. Rich and fathomless, sweeping over her like a binding spell.

“I’m leaving. And you’re not enjoying this reception any more than I am. Come with me.”

She stared up at him. No one should be endowed with all that. He was too…everything. He towered about ten inches above her five foot eight, his physique that of an Olympian, his face that of an avenging angel, planes and hollows and slashes of power and perfection, a being of bronze and gold and steel, who took her breath away and held it just out of reach.

Dangerous. And if he could do this to her with a look, he was beyond that. Lethal. But that wasn’t just a look in his eyes. That was…unadulterated coveting. Pure possession.

It was what she’d imagined she’d seen before. But she hadn’t imagined the cold way he’d looked at her afterward, or the way he’d gone straight to the other women who’d caught his eye.

What was he playing at? He must expect all women to lose their mental faculties at the sight of him, and fall to their knees at his approach. And after he’d conquered Luci and that scorpion Stella—who couldn’t have been immune to him—he’d come after her. Why?

He took a tight step closer, practically vibrating with something vast and overwhelming. She could have sworn it was hunger, barely checked. And it would be unleashed at the slightest provocation—a gasp, a tremor.

She was incapable of any physical reaction, caught in stasis, waiting for his next words to reanimate her.

Suddenly, the spectacular wings of his eyebrows drew together. “You’re uncertain whether you can trust me? Don’t you know that you can?”

He was talking as if they knew each other. She would have found it the most natural thing in the world if this encounter had taken place immediately after that first glance. She had felt as if she’d known him, then.

When she remained staring up at him, mute, he exhaled. “I thought we didn’t need formalities, that we could revel in this…” he made an eloquent gesture, from his heart to hers “…connection, without outside interference. Maybe I’m asking too much.” He exhaled again. “Let’s go inside. We’ll find your father on the way out. He can vouch for me.”

He knew who she was.

That was why he was out here rather than with the women who’d interested him for real. He wasn’t here for her. He was here for Princess Clarissa D’Agostino, the king’s daughter. Just like every other man who’d ever found out she was royalty.

Stella had said he wanted to add some blue-blooded legitimacy to his image. She might or might not be right. But Clarissa knew one thing. He didn’t want her. And why should he?

Nobody had ever wanted her.

The hurt and humiliation finally forced an answer from her spastic lips. “That won’t be necessary, Signore Selvaggio.”

The heat and assurance in his gaze wavered. “You know me?”

“I know of you. Ferruccio Selvaggio, shipping magnate and potential investor in Castaldini.”

His lips tugged, not into a smile, tension entering his gaze. “Right now I’m only the man who wants the pleasure of your company for the rest of the evening. Join me for dinner.”

Not a request. A demand. One she would have stumbled over herself to accept if he hadn’t bypassed her for her glamorous friend and relative, only to pursue her when he realized she better served whatever purpose he had in mind.

She tilted her face, as princesses were supposed to do to end unsavory situations, striving to project detached authority and nonnegotiable dismissal, for the first time managing to implement the teachings of two dozen etiquette instructors who’d begged to be relieved of the impossible duty of teaching her to act her part. “Thank you for the invitation, Signore Selvaggio. But my…situation doesn’t allow me to…be with you. I’m sure you’ll find someone else who can.”

His whole body tensed and his nostrils flared as if he had braced himself against the force of a resounding slap. He understood. She wasn’t talking about her situation tonight. She was giving him a taste of his own medicine. If he wanted her for who she was in society, she was letting him know she didn’t want him for the same reason.

Heat seeped from his eyes, something almost scary flooding to fill the vacuum it left behind.

He finally shrugged. “Pity. But there may come a time when your…situation might not leave you any option but to…be with me.” With a nod of his awesome head, he pivoted, took a couple of relaxed steps away before he tossed a glance over his daunting shoulder. Then he murmured softly, menacingly, “Until then.”

Chapter One

The present

Finally.

The word reverberated in Ferruccio Selvaggio’s head, spread in his blood along with the thick, bitter ooze of grim satisfaction.

He’d finally gotten Clarissa D’Agostino where he wanted her.

A supplicant coming to beg his favor. In—he flicked a glance at his Rolex—twenty minutes’ time.

She couldn’t be here soon enough. He’d been waiting too long for this moment. Six years. That was how long she’d evaded him. Snubbed him. The princess who thought his hardwon wealth and power not enough to raise him to the status of the men she deigned to mix with, men born with the right lineage. The blue blood who thought a bastard, no matter how rich and influential, not worthy of civility.

But despite all her haughty disdain, he had Princess High-and-Mighty coming to do his bidding. And if everything went according to plan—and he now possessed all the leverage to make sure it did—he’d have her doing his bidding far longer and in far more ways than she thought.

He’d have her, period.

He’d been fantasizing about having her ever since that first night he’d seen her. That first glance.

It had been his first time in the royal court. He’d been uncertain of his reception, of his reaction to being there. Most of the people there had been D’Agostinos. His so-called family.

But he didn’t share their name. His parents hadn’t had him the acceptable way, hadn’t given the name to him. Others had given him the surname he used now. He’d been called by it so many times, it had stuck. So he’d made it legal.

The evidence that he was a D’Agostino had been presented to him long ago. At the time, he’d demanded public recognition. His parents had been willing to give him anything but that. He’d told them what to do with their love and offers of support. He’d survived so far without them. He’d make it on his own, make it to the top, the same way.

Finally he’d reached a height of success from which he thought it time to satisfy his curiosity. He wanted to see what it was like, the place that should have been his home. What they were like, the people who should have been his family. If he’d been missing anything. If he could make up for it if he had been; if he could grow the roots he’d never had.

He’d entered the king’s court unannounced. By then, he’d had enough clout that he could walk in anywhere in the world and be welcomed. And the court had welcomed him. To this day, he remembered none of those who’d done so. Besides his meeting with the king, he remembered nothing before and nothing after he’d seen her across the teeming space.

She’d been wiping at something on the neckline of that ethereal violet dress. In profile, her face had been a study of concentration and consternation. He’d felt everything inside him prime, rev into awareness.

Stunned, not knowing what that upsurge meant, he’d needed to look her in the face, in the eyes. Then she’d turned, fulfilled his need. And something he’d always scoffed at had ripped through him. A bolt of attraction. More, of recognition. Of the one woman who translated his every fantasy into glorious reality.

Physically, she’d been the amalgam of all the endowments he’d never thought could be gathered in one being. Hair the color of Castaldini’s beaches, streaked with rays of its sun, permeated by tones of the rich soil of its mountains. A body at once willowy and womanly, unconscious femininity screaming in its every line and curve. A face that embodied all his tastes and demands.

But it had been her eyes—which really had turned out to be violet, when he thought he’d imagined the color from that distance—and what he’d seen in them, that had snared him.

To think he’d thought they’d shown a reflection of his awareness, his discovery. He thought he’d seen more, too, a quality that had snapped the trap shut: Vulnerability.

Right. Clarissa D’Agostino was as vulnerable as an iceberg to the Titanic.

He still seethed to remember how he’d sought her, bared his need to have more of her, revealed his moronic belief in the existence of a connection between them that had transcended time and logic. He still burned at the memory of the moment he’d gotten what he deserved for such idiocy, when she’d stared at him as if he’d lost his mind, then told him to go find someone in a lesser…situation—who’d deem him good enough to…be with.

She’d told him that dozens of times since then. With every rejection of the invitations he’d never ceased to issue. Making them had become the masochistic lash he used every time he found his will to go on flagging, using the anger and frustration to keep on rising, keep on acquiring everything in his path. As he couldn’t acquire her.

But now he finally would. One way or another.

He’d teach her a lesson. Many lessons. He’d take her down a few dozen pegs, and he’d revel in every one.

He braced his arms against the balustrade, cast his gaze into the distance. The sun’s gold was starting to deepen as the star quickened its descent toward the endless expanse of liquid turquoise and emerald that was the southern Castaldinian Sea.

Another rush of bitter anticipation tumbled and sprayed through his system like the waves did on the shore. He wasn’t here only for the spectacular vista the tower of his mansion afforded him. This was also the best vantage point from which to view the winding road over which she’d be brought to him…

Everything seemed to dim as the last three words replayed in his mind like a distorted old recording.

Brought to him. Not coming to him of her free will, unable to wait to see him, as she had in too many dreams to count.

What would he have felt if she’d been rushing here with hunger in her eyes, with longing on her lips?

If only…

His lips compressed as he tore his eyes away from the road and blindly roamed the view he could no longer see.

No. No if onlys. She’d made her choice that first night. Had reinforced it countless times throughout six interminable years.

Even if she changed her mind now, for whatever reason, it would be too late. Now only one thing mattered. That she had no choice. That there was no way she could reject him again. And he intended to savor every second of her downfall, starting—he snapped another look at his Rolex—ten minutes from now.

He pushed away from the balustrade, swung around.

Time to put the finishing touches to his plan.

“Until then.”

The words, spoken like a pledge, a prophecy, in the lethal tone of a dangerous man, reverberated inside Clarissa’s head. They had done so for six years now.

Twenty-four hours ago, she’d found out that “then” had arrived. Ferruccio Selvaggio had her cornered.

She exhaled and gazed through sunglasses and rioting hair at the vista rushing by as the limo zoomed over the road that snaked parallel to the shore.

She knew the sun was turning flame orange and speeding on an intercept course with the sea, that the horizon would be changing into a thousand hues and the waters would be starting their transformation from aquamarine to royal blue.

She saw none of it. Her vision was turned inward, where there was nothing but gray chaos.

Calm down. Breathe.

She carefully drew in a stream of the fresh sea air that buffeted her face. Then again. And again.

And nothing. Taking one breath at a time wouldn’t restore any measure of calm. It hadn’t since yesterday. Since her father had made her cut short her first official mission to the States to give her the news. The shock of her life.

She thought she’d known the limit of her father’s desperation to find himself a crown prince after his stroke. He’d proven her wrong.

The crown of Castaldini was by law not passed from father to son, but rather earned by merit. With the approval of the royal council, the current king would choose his successor from the royal D’Agonstino family—a man of impeccable reputation, sturdy health and no vices, solid lineage, a leader with character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.

She’d been the only one who hadn’t been stunned when he’d announced his first candidate. Leandro, the prince whom eight years ago her father had declared renegade, stripped of his nationality and exiled. She’d thought Leandro the wisest choice of any candidate for the crown. It had been time to forget grievances and think of Castaldini’s best interests. But when her father had wrestled the Council into making the offer, Leandro had done the unthinkable. He’d turned the power and responsibility down.

And her father had dropped another bomb. He had another even more impossible candidate. Her oldest brother, Durante. And in an undreamed of precedent in Castaldinian history, he’d gotten the Council to amend the most fundamental part of the kingdom’s constitution to make his son eligible for the crown.

She’d never been so excited. She’d always thought how unfairly absolute the laws of succession were, that while they protected Castaldini from unsuitable heirs, in Durante’s case they were depriving it from having its best king ever. But the Council had voted, and the impossible had become possible.

Then Durante had come back with his bride-to-be, and Clarissa had even dared to hope that he and her father would work out their rift. Everything had looked like it would have a perfect happy ending for her family and for Castaldini.

Again the impossible had happened. They had sorted out their rift, but Durante had turned down the succession.

She’d tried to speak to him, but he hadn’t been available for discussion as he’d prepared for his wedding and disappeared with his bride on an extended honeymoon. Clarissa had gone to the States, her father assuring her that he was working on securing the next candidate, the one he believed most suited to the job despite there being an even more insurmountable barrier to overcome to make the Council agree.

She hadn’t been able to imagine who could possibly be better than Leandro or Durante. Then the king made her cut her mission short to drop the biggest bomb of all.

He’d gotten the Council to make an even more incredible amendment, allowing the king to extend another offer of the crown of Castaldini.

To Ferruccio Selvaggio.

She still didn’t know how she hadn’t collapsed in a heap of shock and confusion upon hearing that.

From what she’d heard in the media about Ferruccio, he was a man with no origins. All that was known about his parentage was that he’d been given up for adoption in Napoli when he was born.

But he’d never been adopted. By the time he was a difficult six-year-old, he’d been placed in a foster home, the first of a dozen, until he ran away from the last one at age thirteen. He’d chosen to live the harshest of lives on the streets of Italian coastal cities and in Sicily and Sardinia rather than return to the system. Over the next two decades, he educated himself extensively and worked his way up to the highest echelons imaginable.

When his status had solidified, he’d come to Castaldini. Since then, he’d been a recurring figure in her father’s court, and a constant one in her dreams and nightmares. Worse, his businesses in the kingdom now comprised almost one quarter of the national income.

When she’d told her father that that didn’t make him king material, that Castaldini couldn’t just waive the laws that had made it unique in the world for eight hundred years to have a king who only answered the financial criterion of the ancient laws of succession who wasn’t a D’Agostino or even a Castaldinian, her father had dropped the biggest bomb yet.

Ferruccio was a D’Agostino.

The king had been entrusted with this fact before Ferruccio had first come to Castaldini. He’d told a select few, among them Durante and Paolo, her brothers; but knowing the delicate dynamics involved, he’d chosen not to divulge Ferruccio’s parents’ names so that the house he belonged to wouldn’t suffer the repercussions of exhuming buried secrets.

After his stroke, he’d given the Council his word as proof of the fact. They’d argued that illegitimacy was by far the worst breach of the ancient laws that he’d asked them to commit in his quest to find the next king. They couldn’t accept a bastard contender for the crown. But the king had made a solid case for Ferruccio otherwise.

Ferruccio was everything the king must be, he said, even more so than his first two choices. He was even more radically self-made, as his rise had been against what should have been insurmountable odds. He was a leader by nature, his shipping empire the largest in the world and his political powers farreaching. At last the Council succumbed and made the offer.

Contrary to Durante and Leandro, Ferruccio had been instantly amenable to discussing that offer. But he’d refused to give a word of either consent or refusal. Before he would give either, he had terms to negotiate.

He would negotiate with only one Council member. Her.

Clarissa closed her eyes again on another eruption of fury.

How dare that arrogant jerk!

Castaldini was not only acknowledging him, it was offering him the incalculable honor and privilege of becoming its future king, and he had terms? What more did he want? A binding contract adding the island to his real estate acquisitions?

Not that that was too far-fetched. Among her shocking discoveries, she found out that he’d long ago purchased a huge chunk of Castaldinian soil. Three hundred square miles of the six thousand that made up the island. It didn’t matter that this was the south eastern area that was said to be unreclaimable for being too mountainous, it was still five percent of the whole damn kingdom.

And why negotiate with her? She was the most junior Council member. Wasn’t really even that, yet. She’d been made a member the day before she embarked on her trip to the States, a training mission that had been cut short, too.

But she knew why.

Now that Ferruccio was in a position of unprecedented power, he wanted to lord it over the D’Agostinos, the royal family, maybe over the whole nation he felt had spurned him. He wanted to lord it over her, too, the only female, she believed, who hadn’t fallen flat on her face at his approach, quaked at his every glance, melted when he beckoned.

Well, she had…But he didn’t know that. She hadn’t let him know, and she thanked God for that daily. She hated to think what would have happened if she hadn’t been forewarned of his true nature and intentions and had succumbed to the dictates of her desires that first time he’d expressed interest.

His ruthless reputation proclaimed him to be an overendowed, overprivileged, overeverything boor who believed people’s—especially women’s—only use was to throw themselves at his feet, follow his orders and satisfy his appetites before being discarded. He’d lost no sleep over her rejection, as evidenced by the constant stream of interchangeable hotties who’d been flitting in and out of his bed ever since.

Not that he’d taken no for answer. Her dismissal seemed to have roused the conqueror in him, and he’d continued to approach her despite her consistent refusals.

After she dared to decline his first invitation, she’d seen him everywhere she went during the week he spent on Castaldini. She hadn’t been able to breathe until he left. Then he’d come back within a month to issue another invitation and had continued to do so whenever he returned, and even more when he hadn’t. He kept asking her to hop over to Milan, Monaco or Madrid, to join him for a meal, Hong Kong or Tokyo or Rio De Janeiro to join him for the weekend, among a party or alone.

She turned him down every time, with one excuse or another, struggling to observe formal politeness and neutrality, since he was such an important man to her father and Castaldini.

But he’d left her that first night with the augury that there would come a time when she’d have no option but to do his bidding.

That time was finally here.

She wondered how he’d justified his demand to her father. He must have said something convincing, or her father wouldn’t have been so matter-of-fact about it.

So he’d finally have his laugh. That had to be his objective. If there’d been a shadow of a doubt that he’d been pursuing her to freshen his image with a coat of legitimacy, it had evaporated. He was a D’Agostino, would be proclaimed the future king of Castaldini. There was no higher status or recognition he could aspire to.

The limo slowed down, and with it her streaking thoughts.

That only made her anger gain momentum again. She’d been fuming since he’d sent his aides to summon her. She’d grudgingly let them escort her to his jet. She hadn’t found him onboard as she’d expected, had been stunned to find the jet taking off, whisking her away to his private part of the island without so much as an explanation or request for her token agreement.

And here she was. Approaching the only man-made construction and landscaping she’d seen in the last twenty minutes since the jet had landed at what was clearly a private airport.

There were no fences anywhere. The limo passed through a gate made by an opening in a row of towering cypress trees.

As they cruised down the driveway she realized the estate must cover hundreds of acres and the mansion at its middle must be over thirty thousand square feet. It sprawled in many levels, crouching over the highest point in the landscape, surrounded by manicured, mature gardens that on one side gave way to a mile-deep, golden beach, on another to the terrain where the road ended, and on the remaining sides to densely verdant groves ripe with fruit.

It felt like she was forging deeper into a tranquil paradise as they passed acres of oranges and tangerines, the fresh, tangy scent filling her.

The moment they stopped at the beginning of a stone path, she disembarked, more than usual unable to bear the pomp of ceremony.

Her chauffeur hurried to lead her on the path flanked by magnificent palms and a plethora of other Mediterranean flora to the entrance of the mansion. Her eyes wandered over its neo-Gothic stone facade as they neared. It looked as if it had been built centuries ago and transported through time the moment the last touch had been applied. The most characteristic features were the arched motif to all its windows, passageways and doors and the central tower.

She squinted up at the elaborate coat of arms that decorated the tower’s top. She wondered what it was, if it had any significance, or if it was just something that had appealed to him. It did bear resemblance to the D’Agostino family’s crest. Had he meant it that way, to express his affiliation, yet not wanted it to be the same, as he considered himself an outsider?

Her futile conjectures came to an end when the chauffeur opened the huge, arched antique oak door for her. She preceded him inside, but rather than following her, he closed the door behind her. She heard his steps receding quickly. Her lips tightened.

He’d delivered his master’s package and ran away as if he were being pursued by some malevolent force. It seemed everyone who must populate this place, who took care of all the immaculateness she’d seen, had the same orders. She hadn’t seen a soul so far.

She waited for Ferruccio to appear, her heart thudding. She’d never been totally alone with him. Even that first night when he’d followed her out to the seclusion of the verandah, masses of people had been within reach. She made sure he never found her alone from then on. Here in his domain where he ruled supreme, she felt cut off from the world. As she was sure he’d meant her to be. Another wave of resentment crashed over her.

And the worst part? She couldn’t act on her antipathy. More than ever she had to observe the dictates of diplomacy. Her position on the Council demanded that she strip her demeanor of any personal reaction, save only what would serve her mission.

But with every second that he didn’t appear, he was transforming that task from difficult to impossible.

Her hearing sharpened until every heartbeat was amplified to thunder in her ears. But she didn’thear approaching footsteps. There was only the distant drone of the waves and the tranquility of the internal courtyard in which she stood. It was at least two thousand square feet, paved in lava stones, lit with the impending sunset’s red-gold beams, which filtered from arched and round windows inset in the walls just below its domed ceiling.

He wasn’t coming. Not yet, at least. He must be letting her stew. She exhaled, moved. Might as well take a look around.

She strolled to the end of the courtyard, opened doors, her surprise rising as she found an olive press and wine-processing rooms. She wouldn’t have thought he’d go to the trouble of making his own oil and wines.

Mulling over this discovery, she headed to the other side of the courtyard where a corridor of arched columns ended in five stone steps. These led down to an arrangement of expansive sitting rooms with a unique take on Roman décor, in a combination of stucco and stone walls, and strewn with luxurious couches and low tables.

She wondered if he entertained a lot, if one of his many unspecified-destination invitations had been to come join him here. She wondered how she would have reacted to this place if she’d come here ignorant of the truth of his intentions, breathless with anticipation, ready to be swept away by the spell of his domain, to sink into its sensory decadence.

Shaking her head at the pointlessness of her musings, at the stupidity of letting them depress her with what ifs, she crossed into an amazing dining room with a round bronze table and a circular stone platform for chairs, with pillow seating.

This section had a medieval feel, with wall torches and large white cushions abounding in every corner. The floors were layered in old Sicilian pottery tiles, the designs flowing into variations as she progressed through the rest of the ground floor. Huge stone fireplaces sprouted in strategic spots, though subtle evidence of state-of-the-art electric heating was also present.

But what really amazed her was some of the most ingeniously placed and painted trompe-l’oeil she’d ever seen in the walls and ceilings. The murals’ optical illusions were almost indistinguishable from the three-dimensional imagery they depicted in depth and realism. They felt like portals into alternate realities.

She stopped in front of one, a tableau of a pigeon on a ferforgé windowsill, the glass behind it reflecting it and a distant sea and sky. It looked so real she almost thought the glass was there, did reflect that vista, that she could pet the gleaming feathers of the bird, that it would take flight if she tried.

Ferruccio must have spent untold millions here, from acquiring the land, to equipping it with a private airport and silksmooth roads, to building that incredible edifice that must be maintained year-round so he’d find it in perfect condition whenever he hopped over, maybe a few days each season.

It was clear to her why he brought her here, and why he hadn’t appeared yet. He was flaunting his wealth and power, giving her time for every detail to sink in, make its mark.

He’d picked the last woman on earth to be awed by affluence.

She lived in a palace, and she’d come to associate the grandeur that had surrounded her since birth with the anxiety and despair that had tainted her turbulent childhood. In fact, she’d been almost relieved that the opulence had long faded, with her father barely maintaining the parts of the palace that were national monuments. She sure wasn’t about to swoon over pretentious extravagance.

But she grudgingly had to hand it to Ferruccio. This place wasn’t pretentious. Or extravagant. It was a masterpiece of architecture and attention to detail but every article and line of design spoke of taste and discernment, everything so simple and unobtrusive it amalgamated into a retreat that promised enjoyment and ease to both mind and body.

Suddenly, ever fiber of her mind and body seemed to become a compass needle, obeying the magnetism that mushroomed at her back. She spun around.

And there he was. The man who’d ruled her every thought since the night she’d laid eyes on him, who’d manipulated her reactions and emotions with the slightest tug here, nudge there, just because he could.

He was standing at the mezzanine level gallery that overlooked the courtyard she’d wandered back to, looking down on her like a Roman deity would on a supplicant coming to beg his mercy.

She thought he’d stand there until she begged for real, for him to just come down and get this over with. Then, without a word, his eyes maintaining their lock on hers, he started moving toward the stone stairs. He descended soundlessly, effortlessly, his long legs turning the movement of taking each wide step into a performance of predatory grace.

Then he was striding toward her, his every step like an expanding shock wave, rattling her bones with reaction.

Was it possible that he had become more vigorous, more virile, that every time she saw him she’d find new things to marvel at, that his effect on her would keep intensifying? She’d thought him magnificent in the formal outfits she always saw him in. But in faded jeans and a partially unbuttoned denim shirt, he was…unfair.

She looked up at him, praying that her inner turmoil wouldn’t be translated into an outward manifestation that he could read and exploit.

He stopped a breath away, took the rest of her breath away as his gaze sliced through her like a steel blade. Then his lips spread in the first smile he’d ever trained on her.

“Principessa Clarissa,” he murmured, low and lethal, “It’s such a delight to see your…situation has finally allowed you to…be with me.”

Chapter Two

He remembered. What she’d said that first night.

Of course he did. And he was throwing it back in her face.

She bet the injury to his pride had been the prod that had kept him issuing those invitations, intent on breaking her resistance so that he could avenge what he must have considered a colossal insult—so that he’d keep his perfect score.

And he’d kept it. He’d made her bow to his will. She should have known he would. He’d gotten where he had by being inexorable.

She’d known that, yet thought there’d be no way he could prevail in this. She couldn’t have imagined the developments that had led her here.

But even without them, she now believed he would have won eventually. Hadn’t she studied his methods at length, both on her own and where they were taught in business school—to demonstrate the ultimate model of long-term, unrelenting, undetectable planning?

Even if she’d been dead wrong about her safety from his octopoid reach, she’d been spot on about another thing: He was gloating. And there was not a thing she could do about it.

Not only that, but she had to be on her best behavior, answer with something unrelated, divert the dialogue away from personal hostilities. In short, she couldn’t rise to his bait.

Then she opened her mouth. “What can I say? Life takes such…regrettable twists and turns. And downward spirals.”

She almost groaned out loud. What was she saying? And in that long-suffering, condescending tone, too? He’d take it as provocation. And he’d be right. It was.

Sure enough, his lips tugged wider, the cool smile heating, the assessing, dispassionate eyes sparking. “Indeed. But I don’t know about regrettable. I’m quite the fan of roller coasters.”

She should keep her mouth shut, hope he’d take the conversation to safer areas. Even if he didn’t and kept poking at her, she should nod and agree. Let him have his victory, let him rub her nose in it, shove its bitterness down her throat. She’d bet that was the “negotiations” he wanted to conduct—an extended session of having her here on his “terms,” in a position where she couldn’t say no or walk away. She should let him have his fill, get it over with.

Then she opened her mouth, and it seemed someone willful and inflammatory had hijacked her voice, which taunted in its husky tones, “You would be. It has taken a twisting, turning spiral upward with you. Apparently with no drop in sight.”

His lips twitched as he pretended to suppress his mockery. “I should hope not. Can you imagine a fall from such heights?”

Dio, he was giving her more rope. She duly took it and secured it around her neck. Then she kicked the bucket. “Oh, how I can.”

His mouth lost the fight with the sobriety he’d been forcing on it and spread wide, almost blinding her with a flash of white teeth and brutal charisma. “I see you’ve given it some serious thought. Seems you enjoyed the detailed visualization of such an event.”

She gave up trying to rein in her responses, gave in, admitted her acrimony. “Enjoyment would be a mild term if such an event came to pass. It would be—how did you put it—such a delight.”

She heard the fervent venom in her voice, knew he’d heard it, too. Everything stilled as he stared at her, probably unable to believe that anyone dared talk to him that way, princess or not.

Then suddenly, he threw his head back and guffawed.

It was her turn to stare, feeling as if one move now would snap the last tatters of tension holding her up.

She’d never seen him laugh. She hadn’t known he was capable of such a human indulgence. She should have known he’d do it like he did everything else. Overridingly.

The sight and sound of his unbearably male amusement hit her between her eyes and forked a downward path through her heart and gut to lodge in her loins. The semiarousal that burned inside her just because he existed roared higher. Along with the blaze of her anger.

He was goading her into even more catastrophic antagonism, into giving him enough incriminating evidence to report back to her father and the Council that their newest addition was a disgrace to the body of power she represented and should be banned from public service forever.

And she didn’t give a damn. Not anymore. He’d won. Six years of dangling himself before her, of pricking and prodding her periodically until she was inflamed and perpetually on the verge of an explosion, had taken their toll. She thought she’d been far from the breaking point. She was clearly way past it.

Ferruccio still chuckled, rich, dark reverberations from deep in his chest, annihilating what remained of her restraint. “Wouldn’t your conscience prick you if you felt ‘such a delight’ in my downfall? Now that you know I’m a newfound family member?”

Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me.”

He hooted on another surge of amusement. “Si. There she is. I always knew that beneath all that impassive decorum you had the temper of a lioness. I kept wondering what could rile you enough to get you to unsheath your claws and slash away.”

She harumphed, disgusted at her pathetic excuse for self-control, at his ability to peel it away. “Congratulations. You’ve succeeded in finding out. I hope you’re enjoying your success.”

“I’ve never enjoyed anything more. Ever.”

“‘Never’ got the point across. Don’t be redundant.”

He laughed again. “What a cruel cousin you are.”

“A very distant cousin.”

His eyes seemed to turn to molten steel. “Si. In every way.”

He was referring to her keeping him at an arm’s to a continent’s length all those years. As if he’d really cared.

“But you’re not distant now, at least not in one sense.” He took a step closer, his thigh almost touching her hip. She stumbled backward two steps. He lowered his gaze for a moment—as if debating closing the gap again—before raising his eyes. This time he almost did knock her off her feet. And that was before he added, deeply, smoothly, “See how easy it turned out to be?”

“What did? Being flown in to you like a package? One that you had dropped on your doorstep, to be left untended and unacknowledged until you stirred from your beauty sleep and puttered down to reluctantly receive it? Yeah, that sure didn’t involve any effort on my part.”

“You think there was any reluctance involved in my…receiving you? After I’ve gone to the trouble of insulting all the senior Council members by refusing to negotiate with anyone but you?”

“That’s my proof that you welcomed my arrival? Try another one, Signore Selvaggio. The only insult you hurled was at me. The others must be thinking you asked for me because I’m the only Council member who’s a young woman, the demographic where you reign supreme, and you think me the pushover who’ll promise you rights to every Castaldinian citizen’s immortal soul in return for your acceptance.”

He snorted. “Now those are rights that might be worth my while to investigate acquiring.” Before she gave in to the urge to smack him, he added, “But if anyone thinks you a pushover, they need to be declared mentally incompetent. Whatever else you think of me, you know my mental faculties aren’t among my dodgy areas.”

She huffed. “Then they’ll think something even worse. That you’re exploiting the situation for a personal purpose, which must again have something to do with my being a woman, devaluating my position within the Council even more.”

As the word “position” left her mouth, his gaze traveled down her body. Her throat closed at what she saw there, in her own mind’s eye. His gaze finally burned a path back up to her eyes, the hewn planes of his face simmering as they had that first night. When she thought she’d imagined it. She wasn’t imagining it now.

“Your…position is quite safe, I assure you. You should know by now that no matter what the textbooks they stuffed your mind with in business school said, in the real world, the personal factor is what ends up making or breaking business deals. If the Council thinks I’m being personal about you being a woman, they’ll think it only natural, even logical. After all, what kind of a businessman would I be if I didn’t maximize on my opportunities? If I didn’t use my stones to hit as many birds as possible?”

“I should have known you wouldn’t even bother to deny it.”

He gave her an enigmatic look. “I’m not admitting it, either. So it’s all open to interpretation. And here’s a third one: That I asked for you because I want to talk to someone close to my own age, rather than with men my absentee father’s age or older.”

Her chest suddenly felt as if it had caved in. It was that distress again, the one thing that had always stopped her from despising him completely. The knowledge that he’d grown up without a father, or any parents at all.

How many times had she imagined him as a young boy desperately in need of the firm and loving guidance and protection of a father figure, and knowing he’d never have that? How many times had she woken up with tears in her eyes imagining the fear and loneliness he must have suffered until he’d grown that impenetrable shell of capability and ruthlessness that had seen him through his meteoric rise? How hard had she struggled to separate her empathy with the tormented child he’d been from her antipathy toward the man he’d become?

When she made no answer, his lips twisted. “Here’s a fourth one. That you’re the easiest Council member on my eyes…on all my senses.”

She was glad to hook onto something to drag her out of her turmoil. “Now that I can buy. Considering the alternatives.”

His eyebrows rose in astonishment. She could swear it was genuine. “You think the I’d only pick you when the alternatives are sour-faced older men and their feminine counterparts?”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from blurting out that she didn’t think it, she knew it. Hadn’t he just said what amounted to that? Even if he hadn’t, she knew that when there’d been more glamorous options, she hadn’t featured as one at all. She’d made sure of that.

Pathetic wretch that she was, she’d sought Luci’s version of what had happened that night, hoping she’d misinterpreted what she’d witnessed. Luci had only confirmed her worst suspicions.

Ferruccio had come on hot and heavy, expressed interest in both Luci and Stella. At the same time. Luci had said he’d been so overpowering that she’d found herself wondering whether she could share a man, and with the dreaded Stella, of all women, too. She’d said she thought Stella herself had been tempted. That was, for the fleeting moments before he suddenly moved on without a look back.

Throughout the years, Clarissa had seen him acting as if he’d never said a word in private to either woman, let alone propositioned them so outrageously. That had reaffirmed her belief that he went through life making sure all women were his for the taking, but not actually taking up with anyone whose connections might cause him trouble. Her only lure had been that she was the king’s daughter, and later on that she was the only woman who’d told him no. And if she thought she’d seen something in his eyes every time he caught her gaze—something that told her what he’d do with her if he ever got her alone—she reminded herself of the facts, concluded that she’d been superimposing her fantasies on his expression. As she must be now.

“No more contentiousness, Principessa? Hmm, I think I know why.” His gaze dropped to her lips, clung, until she felt his mouth was there, drawing hard on her flesh until it swelled, ached, until she ached for him to do it for real. “You’re…hungry.”

Alarm erupted, followed by a flood of mortification. He knew. Or was he guessing, based on universal female response to him?

Before she could say anything, he took her elbow in a phantom grip. “Come. Let me feed you, get you back in fighting form.”

Food. He’d meant hungry for food.

She was so relieved she let him guide her without a word.

She lost all sense of direction as he led her through his mansion, until they reached another huge oak door. She followed him through it, her every movement feeling controlled by his will.

Minutes later, they came to an elevated, open-air deck overlooking a stunning, symmetrical landscaped scene. Its centerpiece was a gigantic rectangular pool with a semicircular protrusion at its near end, glittering pure aquamarine in the declining sun. Its lava stone and mosaic periphery segued at its far end into a cleared passage between olive groves that continued until it melted into the vegetation-covered mountain in the distance. To the left, the groves gave way to dunes of pure gold, leading down to the serpentine shore and the azure and emerald waters.

She stopped, paralyzed by the magnificence of the sight.

She’d been raised on this island, but she never knew it still had such pristine natural places. The contrast with such lavish human design was breathtaking. But it was the seclusion that intensified that otherworldly feel. She’d never been anywhere so totally devoid of people. It felt as if they were the only man and woman on Earth.

The side of her face felt as if it were burning. She tore her eyes away from the scene, blinked up at him. She found him brooding down at her, his eyes heavy with so much emotion she didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand.

He reached out a hand as if he was going to cup her cheek. At the last moment, he swept a lock of her long hair from her flaming face, tucked it with extreme care behind her ear. “You like?”

She swallowed, her heart spiraling in a nosedive like a shot-down plane. “I’m alive, am I not? I have to like.”

His lips twitched. His eyes didn’t change expression, seemed bent on liquefying her. Then he reached for her hand.

She felt as if he’d electrocuted her as he strode ahead, had her almost running behind him. She gurgled something about his legs being longer than hers. He turned as he slowed down, his smile riddling her vision in spots of blindness.

He had them circumventing the pool before taking one of the passageways that ran parallel to the groves and ended up at the edge of the beach. He suddenly stopped.

She rocked on her heels as he dropped to his haunches. Before she could process his action, he took her hands, placed them on his shoulders. She gaped as he lifted her right foot off the ground. Breath deserted her as he so slowly, so gently slid off her high-heeled sandal strap. The sandal fell off her suddenly stinging foot into his hand. Her toes curled, a gasp tearing from her. He looked up, noted her distress. Then he closed his hand over her foot, raised it, his lips parting, filling with sensuality.

He was going to…to…She couldn’t let him or she’d…she’d…

She lost her balance, forced him to let her regain her footing. She leaned heavily on his shoulders so she wouldn’t keel over him, electricity roaring from where her fingertips clutched their daunting power to zap incapacitation throughout her nervous system. He pressed her hands harder to his shoulders before repeating the de-sandaling ritual on her other foot.

When she was sure she would faint, he let her foot down, rose, bent and took his own sneakers off, placed them at the sand’s edge with her sandals and spread his arm, inviting her to walk on.

She stumbled forward a few steps before she gasped, stopped.

The feeling of the powdered gold beneath her feet, its warmth and complex texture, its gritty softness, its resilient malleability heightened her sensory tumult.

He turned her toward him, his gaze solicitous. “Did you step on something? Are you hurt?”

Before she could answer he swooped down again, inspected one foot then the other, feeling for injuries or foreign bodies.

An uproar swept through her at his action, at the sight of his eyebrows drawn and his head bent in such concentration, the severely trimmed raven luxury of his mane gleaming copper in the sun as his perfectly formed fingers traced over her soles.

She was about to cry out that she was fine, when he heaved up to his feet, and in the same movement swept her up in his arms.

She went limp with shock.

He’d never touched her before. She hadn’t even let him shake her hand. She thought she knew how dangerous it would be to have any physical contact with him. She’d known nothing. Feeling his flesh pressed on hers, his heat and scent invading her senses…it was too much.

She choked out, “Put me down—I’m OK.”

He frowned. “Then why did you jerk to a stop like that? Why did you look so…distressed?”

“I was just…surprised. I—I’ve never felt anything like this.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve never felt sand beneath your feet?”

She gulped, shook her head. “I…no.”

“You’ve lived most of your life on a Mediterranean island legendary for its sea and shores. How is it possible you never ran barefoot on the beach? Never swam in the sea?”

“I…uh…just didn’t. The sea hasn’t been part of my life.”

“How was it even avoidable? Going to the beach is part of most people’s childhoods, especially in seaside countries.”

Her discomfort rose with every word. She wanted this conversation, and what it made her think of, what it could reveal, to be over. “I’m not ‘most people.’”

“You mean because you’re royal? That doesn’t make sense. Durante and Paolo have both told me they spent much of their childhoods soaking in the sea and baking in the sun. And on Castaldini, royals aren’t pursued and encroached on as they are in other countries. Even if you had been, your father could have provided a private beach for your use.”

“I—I sunburn easily. I spent most of my childhood inside the palace. I’m almost always indoors, even now.”

His gaze sluiced over her like silky, warm water, lingering on each inch of visible skin, making her want to moan with the pleasure of his visual caress. “Your skin is the finest and softest that I’ve ever seen. Or touched.” His lids grew heavier as he smoothed the expanse of skin where her jacket and the form-fitting top beneath it had ridden up at her back. She stiffened with the blow of sensation. He gathered her more securely to him. “But it isn’t the type prone to sunburning. In fact, I think you’d tan spectacularly.”

His compliment went straight to her every hunger and vulnerability. Confusion over his motivation gave way to intense pleasure and self-consciousness. “I probably got badly burned once, when I was too young to remember. That and an over-protective mother kept me indoors from then on.”

He gave her a long look, eloquent with disbelief. Out loud he said, “And you just agreed? You didn’t want to rebel, seek all the freedoms and pleasures the sea has to offer? Doesn’t sound like the Clarissa D’Agostino I know.”

“Uh…you have a very rosy picture of the life of a princess.”

“You mean I can’t appreciate the impositions you had, and still have to put up with, as part and parcel of your status?” She braced herself for the frustration his next words would provoke. Everyone, especially men, had always said they understood how it had been for her, had tried to…console her for being such a poor, oppressed royal girl. His next words sent her preconceptions scattering. “No, I can’t. I can only imagine some of them. But, since I never thought running on the beach and swimming in the sea were among the things you had to forgo, I must have imagined quite wrong. Even if I didn’t, only you can speak of your experience.”

She blinked back hot tears. He had understood. Something she’d never thought she’d ever feel toward him spread its balmy coolness inside her chest: thankfulness.

She bit her lip, nodded. “Whatever the reason, I never developed any fascination for the sea.”

“You’re fascinated now.”

She tore her gaze away from his all-knowing one, cast it wide.

He was right. She’d never felt this thrill at witnessing what had always been there since she’d been born. She felt she was experiencing it all with new senses. With a few word of soulsearing insight, he’d made her realize the deprivation she’d suffered, of something so rich with pleasures, so available to anyone. Just being so close to him, his hands hugging her behind her knees and back, her palm still resting over his heart feeling it pumping steadily, as if he hadn’t covered half a mile of beach with her in his arms, had made her…Dio, she was still in his arms!

She couldn’t take one more second of this. She began to wriggle to free herself and he suddenly stopped, whispered, “Watch.”

She jerked toward the point his eyes were fixed on. They were at the top of a dune where the shore extended to her vision’s limit. She held her breath, felt him holding his as the red sun seemed to accelerate toward the darkening azure waters. Then they touched, seemed to melt into one another, and he exhaled, molded her closer, as if to echo the celestial embrace.

A long moment passed as they shared the evocative display of sheer beauty, before she at last insisted he put her down.

He tightened his hold. “You’re sure you’re not uncomfortable walking barefoot on the sand?”

“It really was just a shock how good it felt.”

A strange watchfulness descended on his face. Then he slowly released her, his eyes clinging to her face as if he wanted to record her reaction, memorize every nuance passing through her.

For the first time, she didn’t want to hide her responses from him. She felt he had a right to witness them, in return for this gift he’d given her.

She moaned in pleasure as she again felt the sand flow between her toes, tickling her skin and massaging her soles.

The feeling was incredible, energizing. She gave in to it, to the unadulterated freedom and vitality it imbued her with.

She whooped, giggled, ran.

With every bound on the magical medium she’d lived her life looking at and never seeing, never experiencing, a burst of speed poured into her limbs. She heard his deep chuckles pursuing her. Unfettered laughter escaped her in response. And if a voice told her she must have plummeted into a parallel universe, to be running on a beach with Ferruccio Selvaggio chasing after her, it was silenced as soon as it spoke up. So what, if it felt this good?

Then she cleared another dune and saw it by the gently frothing waves. A huge circle of torch-topped, polished brass poles with a table set for two in its middle.

She turned to him in excitement, then sped ahead, the setup’s details coming into focus. A lavender silk tablecloth draped the table, undulated like something alive in the gentle breeze. Gleaming black plates contrasted with its dreamy hue, while glittering silver utensils and crystal glasses added flashes of splendor. A buffet was set to the side.

She arrived at the table, swung around and grinned at him as he caught up with her, her breathing and heartbeat accelerating under the effect of his approach rather than from exertion.

His breathing was a bit quicker, but even, easy, his eyes gleaming silver with exhilaration. “Not only do you run like a lioness in that constrictive skirt, but you beat me, too. How fast would you be in something suitable?”

More heat rushed to her head, her cheeks. “It isn’t that constrictive. And you weren’t trying to outrun me.”

He huffed a chuckle. “I gave it a good shot, believe me. I’m pretty fast. But you’re much faster.”

Her grin widened with pleasure at the ease with which he admitted she’d beaten him, his obvious enjoyment of the fact even. “I’ll tell you my secret so you won’t feel bad about it. I held my university’s record in the indoor pentathlon for three consecutive years, and the regional one for two of those.”

He looked genuinely impressed. Even though she got the feeling he already knew that. “And it’s clear you’ve kept in shape ever since.” His eyes again detailed how much said “shape” pleased them. “And now you’ll add outdoor events to your repertoire. Including swimming in the sea. With me.” She opened her mouth, closed it, the images his words had playing in her mind’s eye turning her mute. Suddenly his smile’s wattage spiked. “I bet you’ve crossed from hungry to starving after the unexpected exercise.”

He tugged her to the buffet, exposed hot and cold serving plates, piled her plate with mouthwatering delicacies. She didn’t protest. After going without more than a cup of tea since seeing her father yesterday, she was famished.

What followed was something she’d only dreamed of.

Even in fantasy, it had never been so easy, so natural. So unbelievable. They ate and exchanged anecdotes about their lives, opinions about almost everything, agreed, teased, laughed, and she found herself with the man she’d seen that first time—the one she’d felt connected to. Before everything had crashed around her ears and remained there in ruins for the past six years.

Now it was as if the years hadn’t passed in tension and avoidance, as if this was the natural progression of that moment she’d thought so enchanted. And it did feel enchanted, yet more real than anything she’d ever experienced. He felt real. His real self, not the persona he projected when he moved through the ultra-formal settings where she’d made sure they always met with the buffer of her family around. Now that he was away from it all, he showed her sides of him she hadn’t suspected existed, every glimpse enthralling her, embroiling her in the exhilaration of tangling with his wickedness and wit.

Sunset had morphed into the most breathtaking twilight she’d ever witnessed. The impossibly clear, totally unpolluted skies became a sweeping canvas of hues jeweled by strokes and patterns of clouds that had seemed to materialize just to reflect and prism the lingering light into ephemeral paintings that stunned the senses. Then it all gradually faded under the dominion of darkness until moonless, star-blazing night had taken over. She was dazzled by the spell of the ambiance, but more so by her companion.

He’d just served her fresh watermelon, grown on the land everyone had given up as irreclaimable, among many vital crops of which she’d seen oranges, tangerines, olives and grapes. As he sat down she commented on that before resuming her comments on one of his latest takeovers, and he leaned back in his chair, grinning.

“I always let my opponents fight me until they’re exhausted, all the while showing them how sweet surrender would be. Then, when I judge they’ve had enough, I move in, and at that point they’re ecstatic for me to take over.”

Air escaped her lungs in a rush. She couldn’t draw it back.

That could describe what he’d been doing to her.

It could, because it did.

Dio, what a fool she was. She should have known, when it had all felt too good to be true, when he’d started lavishing praise and understanding on her.

He had done so to make her putty in his hands. And he’d succeeded. He’d made her forget what he was, the danger he posed to her, the reason she was here. He hadn’t just overcome her antipathy and turned its tide into acceptance and eagerness, he’d negated reason and memory, silenced every caution. And he’d done it imperceptibly.

She had to surface from under his spell, run for her emotional and psychological survival. She had to get back on track, do what she’d come here to do. Quit playing the game by his rules, according to his agenda. Whatever that was.

Disillusionment became venom as it exited her lips. “That’s interesting, how you get your conquests to become your willing thralls. Thanks for sharing that insider tidbit. Especially as it gives me the opening to get to the point of this…charming evening. Now that we’ve gotten the dinner you’ve been harping on for years out of the way, I hope you’re satisfied and we can finally get down to discussing something important.” His eyes drained of the warmth that had ignited them for the past hours. She braced against the moronic urge to soften her tone, to see his eyes fill with that fake intimacy again. “So…go ahead. Negotiate. I can’t wait to hear your ‘terms’. They should be…entertaining.”

Ferruccio almost flinched. He felt as if she’d kicked him in the gut. And she had. Figuratively speaking.

After the first shock passed, rage crashed over him.

How had this happened? He’d set out to lull her, to overcome her resistance. Where had it all taken such a sharp detour, so that he’d been the one who’d been lulled, who hadn’t seen this coming?

For the past hours he’d forgotten his harsh intentions. He’d gradually drowned in the pleasure of her nearness as she’d shown him a persona that combined the vulnerability he’d thought he’d seen that first night with a steel shield of will and wit, wrapped around a core of fun and warmth and passion.

And it had just been another of her masks.

How had she blindsided him again? He could still swear she’d finally taken off all her masks and shown him her true self. Which her own words now told him was premium self-delusion.

She’d taunted him with the memory of his rejected invitations, intimating she’d considered them the undignified and unimportant pursuit of an unacceptable suitor, and that this evening was her way of giving him what he’d been “harping” on, to humor him, because of the situation she’d been forced into. And would he now stop behaving irrationally?

Her sarcasm sent the beast inside him clawing out of his gut. Disappointment spilled from there to burn his insides.

She hadn’t been enjoying herself, had been leading him on to equalize the balance of power so that she wouldn’t be the beggar here. She was trying to set a record that, no matter what upper hand he held now, between them, he’d get nothing but the condescension he deserved. It was clear it didn’t matter that he was a D’Agostino. He remained a bastard in her eyes.

She really had no idea who she was dealing with, how out of her depth she was. He might be cultured and suave on the surface, but he was a street fighter at heart. Playing against odds she couldn’t begin to imagine in her wildest nightmares, to win at any cost was what he did. And it was time to do so.

It was time to make her regret her snobbery.

His bared his teeth in a smile he knew would chill her bones as it had so many, from politicians to tycoons to mafia dons. “You want to negotiate, Principessa? By all means. And since you’re so enthusiastic to hear my terms, here they are. Or here it is. I have one term for taking the succession. That I take you with it.”

Chapter Three

“You’re insane.”

Ferruccio leaned back in his chair, stuck his hands in his pockets and indolently surveyed Clarissa, savoring her shock and indignation as she choked on his declaration.

“Am I, now? Hmm. Literally all the financial world disagrees with your verdict.”

“That’s because you’re so intelligent that you manage to hide your insanity. And it’s possible to be a financial genius and a raving lunatic all at once.”

He feigned boredom even as he cursed himself for letting her barbs prick him. “Maybe. But you’ve heard my term, Clarissa. And it should answer all your questions about why I asked for you, why I summoned you here. To pay you the courtesy of demanding it directly from you, rather than from your father and his Council.”

Her mouth opened on a silent O. The lust that had been eating through him like slow acid all those years poured through his system in seething torrents. Imaginings of what devouring those dimpled lips would be like had ratcheted to a new dimension after watching them do so many things he’d never seen them do before—thin, curl, purse, tremble, quirk, spread in smiles and laughter, get bitten by those pearls she had for teeth, licked by that tantalizing-in-every-way tongue…

As for that vital body of hers, which had grown progressively more voluptuous as he’d burned for her from afar, he now knew how limited his fantasies of possessing it had been. Now that it had filled his arms, pressed against his flesh, trembled in his hold, buzzed with what he knew, against all her condescension and disdain, had been as unbridled a hunger as his own, he knew. Possessing it would be beyond anything he’d experienced or dreamed about.

Which meant one thing. Pulverizing her resistance had just turned from a resolution to a necessity.

At last, she seethed, “You think they would have even considered your crazy demand? What do you think this is, the Middle Ages?”

He reached out and calmly poured himself a glass of pomegranate juice, quirked an eyebrow at her over the rim after the first sip. “This juice shares so much with you. The richness of the complex flavors that make it up, the sour sweetness.”

Her hands fisted on the table. “Spare me the false praise.”

“I won’t spare you anything.” He watched his multifaceted threat invade her sculpted cheeks with a peach hue that burned bright, even in the dimness of the flickering firelight, made him struggle not to storm up and go devour it and her. “You really think I’d make such a demand if I had any doubt I’d obtain it? You claim to have studied my methods, Clarissa. Didn’t your extensive studies and all those postgraduate degrees reveal that I don’t make a move if I’m not one hundred percent certain of its success?”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip to control the tremor that took hold of it. His own twitched with a surge of intoxication. What could he say? It was such a delight to see her with her composure shattered, with anger, dread and arousal tearing at her.

Just as he thought she’d realized she was outclassed and overpowered, those uncanny eyes seemed to pulse purple with each flare of the flames. “My studies and degrees also revealed another thing, Signore Selvaggio. That sooner or later, even impervious, unstoppable business gods miscalculate. As you did this time. Big time. I’m not some commodity Castaldini can bestow on you as a side benefit. And I sure as hell am not volunteering myself as an incentive to sweeten the deal.”

So. She wasn’t cowed yet. Bene. In fact, it was great that she wasn’t. He would have been seriously disappointed if he’d won that easily. He hated easy victory. And when it came to her, after all the years of frustration she’d put him through, he wanted—no, needed—her surrender to be a struggle. That way, the pleasure of her capitulation, when it came, would be all the more intense.

He was going to revel in this. Big time, like she’d said.

Time to play hardball.

The exhilaration of taking the skirmish to the next level danced on his lips. “Let me share a fact of life, Principessa. One from real life, not the sterilized, rarefied version it seems you’ve lived for all of yours. I don’t need the crown. It’s the crown that needs me. Desperately. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you have no option but to abide by my terms and demands, to do everything I tell you to.” He knew he had that serene look on his face that lions had on theirs as they took down their kill. He savored stressing his point. “Everything.”

Clarissa’s heart stopped for what must be the hundredth time today.

After a couple of dropped beats, it burst into another stumbling gallop that pushed no blood to her head, that left her feeling she was teetering on the verge of oblivion.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t have said all he’d said. This was insane.

And he was watching her with the same coldness with which he’d once looked at her across the ballroom on that first night. Which made it all crazier. Why was he even demanding this, her, if that was what he really felt toward her?

She struggled to keep hysteria from tingeing her voice and features. “I said that should be entertaining. And it is. You think you’re irreplaceable, don’t you? Well, you’re not. My father is just going through his list of candidates. In case you didn’t know already, you—in spite of your belief in your own indispensability—didn’t rank first there. You merely happened to be third.”

He took another sip of his juice, savored it slowly, made her imagine what he no doubt meant her to, those lips on her every secret, savoring her, before he murmured languidly, “Third and last.”

“You really have an inflated sense of your own importance, don’t you? Figures. Too many billions can do that to a man.”

“When they’re not inherited, and have been gained through legal venues, it’s safe to say they do indicate indisputable personal value.”

“Legal? Are you absolutely certain about that?” The look he gave her sent shivers of alarm, almost fear, zigzagging through her. She’d crossed a line.

She didn’t give an ant’s leg. Just as he didn’t, about her or how she felt. “May you live happily ever after with your indisputable personal value, Signore Selvaggio. We’ll find someone else. Someone who won’t play cheap games when he’s offered something as incalculable as the honor and privilege of the crown of Castaldini.”

The danger in his eyes switched off, but the benevolence in the smile he bestowed on her was far worse. She felt her blood freezing in her arteries. “Good luck with that.”

She stilled, the ice spreading. “What do you mean? And quit being cryptic. If you have something to say, then say it.”

He gave a lazy shrug. “I don’t have anything more to say. You know the rest, even though you’re pretending not to. Contrary to what you accused me of, and unlike you, I don’t play games.”

“What are you talking about? What’s that ‘rest’ I’m supposed to know?” she snapped.

His gaze sharpened, the steel luminosity of his irises flaring and subsiding with the flames of the torches until it seemed that the shifting shadows and golden lights they cast over his face would expose some supernatural entity that his magnificent body housed—one who examined her with brooding, malignant amusement.

Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed—a harsh, ugly sound so unlike his laughter during the past hours. Despite everything, this confirmation of the loss of the illusion of harmony and affinity they’d shared sent regret skewering through her.

“Dio santo, sei serio. You’re serious. You know nothing. They left you in the dark, the old jackals. That explains everything. Why you think you can be your usual scathing self with me. They didn’t warn that you they can’t afford for you to alienate their last option. How remiss of them.”

“That isn’t true. It can’t be. Someone else w—”

He cut her trembling protest short “—would bring about the end of Castaldini as we know it. No other man of Castaldinian origins or with the prerequisite D’Agostino blood—whether obtained on the right side of the sheets or not—possesses enough power to drive away the kingdom’s external enemies and to defuse the internal conflicts. But I have my own empire, to which I owe my allegiance. On the other hand, even you can work out that I don’t owe Castaldini or its people any measure of that. So don’t play the honor and privilege card with me. I’m not in any way duty or honor bound to take on the responsibility of safeguarding Castaldini’s crown and future. If I’m to accept doing your kingdom that ‘incalculable’ favor, I demand an ‘incentive to sweeten the deal,’ as you put it. And you’re it.”

She stared at him, at the face of his serene cruelty, his absolute certainty, the tremors she’d been struggling to hold back breaking free, starting to rattle her bones.

He went on as if he was auguring something as trivial as a soccer game’s outcome. “If you refuse, you can go back to your precious father and Council with my refusal, and let them pick someone else from the inadequate choices they’ve already rejected for the best of reasons, and let Castaldini go to hell.”

He couldn’t be lying about all this, could he? But maybe he didn’t consider it lying, just maneuvering her by any means necessary to corner her. He was a master manipulator, after all.

And he wasn’t even finished. He went on, and she discovered he’d saved the worst for last. “And when Castaldini is in ruins, maybe becomes some second-rate, exploited annex to one of the surrounding nations panting to drain its riches into their resource-poor, overpopulated, debt-ridden bellies, I’ll still come after you. And I will have you. The crown will be lost, but you’ll be mine in the end, Clarissa.”

She was panting by the time he finished. Quaking. Then it all blurted out of her, all the indignation and distress he’d so expertly inflamed beyond the danger zone. “You’re the one who can get lost, or can go to hell, Ferruccio Selvaggio—or D’Agostino, or whatever your name is. Be sure to take your toxic conceit and cruelty with you. Castaldini will survive without your oh-so-vital intervention, and you’re not coming near me…”

Her tirade choked off into panting silence. It wasn’t because he’d made any threatening move. It was his very tranquility, as he leaned forward, placed his glass on the table then heaved up to his feet, that made her every cell scream with alarm. Each movement was the measured advance of a predator with all the time in the world to pounce on his prey. Then he did.

He stopped by her, leaned down, took her hand and pulled her out of her chair and onto her feet.

“Wh-what are you doing?” she sputtered.

“What I should have done years ago.”

He gave her a firm tug, slammed her against his body. Before she could draw another breath, one of his hands slipped into the hair at her nape, twisted there, immobilizing her head, tilting her face upward, the other trailing a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it—the beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer, its cunning savagery having assured his survival in hell, conquering of it, before being unleashed on this realm. The beast was hungry—and she was the meal it craved.

Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with the first unchecked emotions he’d let her see there, he lowered his head.

She felt as if she were in the path of a comet, that she’d disintegrate at impact. At the last moment before his lips took hers, she averted her face in an act of pure survival.

His lips landed on her cheek, at the corner of her mouth, with a chain reaction of insistent, escalating voracity. The feel of his lips on her flesh, the gust of his breath filling her with his scent and virility, left her suffering a widespread synaptic disruption. It was as bad as being a few feet from ground zero. Then he took his destruction to another level.

The hand on her lower back pressed her into him. Before she could deal with the blow of sensations at feeling his arousal against her belly, he relinquished his hold on her head, combed his fingers through her hair, over and over, sending pleasure cascading from every hair root, before that hand caressed her back, on its way to delving beneath her jacket and top.

She moaned a sound she’d never before produced, as the hard heat of his fingers splayed against her back, a part of her she’d never thought sensitive. Every inch of skin he imprinted felt moments away from the spontaneous generation of fire. She jerked away to escape, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.

His other hand yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks through her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped as she experienced weightlessness for the first time, then gasped louder as he ground the steel of his erection against her melting core. Something scalding rumbled from his depths as he tugged at one thigh, opened her around his hips for better access, splaying her for his thrusts. The hand at her back plastered her heaving chest against his, then he started rubbing against her. Her breasts swelled until they felt they’d burst, until the abrasion of her clothes, his shirt and the power it housed turned her nipples into pinpoints of agony.

She writhed in his hold, whimpered as he ravaged her neck in suckles that would leave their mark, that sent pleasure hurtling through her blood with each savage pull.

All existence converged on him, became him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth, as he tested her flesh and responses, tasted them, took over her will. She was no longer herself, but a mass of needs wrapped around him, open to him, his to exploit and plunder. There was nothing more to hear but his voracious growls and her distressed moans, their thundering blood and strident breathing as he raised her and slid her down his body in leisurely excursions, had her riding his erection through their clothing. Her top had somehow been peeled up and he dipped his head and took her nipples, one after the other, through her bra in massaging nips, sending ecstasy corkscrewing through her.

Her fingers buzzed as if they’d turned to live wires, and only digging them into his flesh could ground the excess charge. Her moans became a drone interrupted by sharp intakes of breath. The flowing throb between her legs escalated into pounding, needing something, anything, everything, to assuage it. When it tipped from discomfort into pain, she cried out his name, begged, she didn’t know for what. He shuddered beneath her as he snapped his head up, crashed his lips on her wideopen mouth in a hot, moist vice, and thrust deep.

She plunged into his taste, rode rapids of delight as his tongue invaded her, taught hers to rub and duel and drink deeper of the fount of endless sensation, as his lips and teeth mastered her, gave her and took her and finished her.

This was nothing like the slow seduction she’d fantasized about. This was an invasion, a ravaging, and it catapulted her into a frenzy of need, an inferno of hunger. She wanted…wanted him to never stop, to do anything and everything to her, to take more, all.

She’d dreaded him and dreamed of him for too damned long. In her dreams, he’d always told her how much he wanted her, couldn’t wait for her, but still lavished care and tenderness on her, in the only way she’d thought she could feel pleasure. Now he’d given her this. Overwhelming, no preliminaries, no boundaries, just raw need, unbridled ecstasy. Light years better, hotter than what she’d tormented herself with all these years, the insipid fantasies she’d thought the height of eroticism. She should have known he’d pulverize her expectations, as he took her and soared far beyond anything she could have imagined.

And if not for the debate that had finally pushed him to override her resistance, to no longer give her a choice…

Something cold and ugly seeped through her delirium. A memory. A realization. How this had started. As a measure to end that debate.

He’d gauged perfectly, as he always did, that this was the way to decimate her resistance, to take her over, mind and body.

And he’d been right. She’d succumbed to the hunger she’d been struggling against during all those years she spent escaping him.

He’d made her forget again why she had, how angry she’d been. At him, for pulling her strings when he didn’t see her as a human being, just an asset, and at herself for knowing that and still yearning for him.

But her resistance was about far more than refusing to be another notch on his mile-long bedpost. It wasn’t about pride. It was about bone-deep terror. She knew where surrender to him would lead. To a repetition of her parents’ dismal pattern.

She’d grown up witnessing what misery could be wrought when involvement in a relationship was one-sided. Her mother’s unrequited emotions toward her father had destroyed her mind, had led her—as Clarissa and her siblings believed—to end her life.

Not that she blamed her father. He’d done what he had to rule a kingdom. It had been her mother who’d been unable to understand the nature of their political marriage or accept it, who’d wanted to turn it into a love match and had only managed to drive her distant husband further away. Ferruccio was everything her father was—including whatever had driven her mother to destruction—a thousand times over.

The memory of her mother’s life scared her enough to douse the insanity.

She started struggling in his arms, as if fighting for her life.

He stiffened for a long moment, unable to make up his mind whether her struggle was an attempt to get closer or away.

He finally grunted something and tore his lips away from hers, put her down.

Panting, every muscle spasming with the slow poison of the need he’d infected her with—a need that would eat through her if it went unappeased—she stumbled away, searching desperately for her equilibrium.

For a few seconds, the flames blazing on the poles surrounding her made her feel like an animal trapped within a circle of fire. As her mind rebooted, she realized how apt that fear was. She might not be physically trapped or in danger, but she was in every other way.

And her trapper—her hunter—was closing in on her again.

She squeezed her eyes shut, bit down on her lip, hard, to stop herself from turning around and throwing herself into his arms and letting him finish what he’d started.

His hands descended on her shoulders, pulled her back against him. She couldn’t even tremble, could only lean back limply, exposing her neck for him to nuzzle. He took this as consent, again cupping her breast, her sex, rocking her against his arousal as he suckled her earlobe, whispered in her ear, “I didn’t intend to go this far. But I touched you, and you responded and…”

She pushed out of his arms. This time he let her go at once. She finished rearranging her clothes, gave him a sullen look. “Sure, it’s my fault, because I ‘responded.’”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her eyes to the huge bulge in his pants. Her insides clenched. She swallowed. Dio, she was literally drooling over him.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying I’m not proud that I set out to kiss you and almost ended up taking you. I never lose control like that, never surrender to the heat of the moment.”

“No? Excuse me if I don’t believe that, what with you being oversexed and overendowed, as well as overeverything else.”

He looked incredulous. “You think I would have gotten where I am today if my libido had any say in my actions and decisions?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you? I’d say libido is the only thing that has a say in your decisions where women are concerned.”

“Then you don’t know much about men. Real ones, anyway. A man steered by his libido ‘where women are concerned’ is an immature dolt who ends up destroying what he achieves by making the wrong decisions at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.”

“I happen to agree. So you’re saying I made you lose your legendary control? Good one. Especially since you don’t want me at all. This is just a hostile takeover for you.”

He gave her a sweeping, lustful glance, huffed a short laugh. “You clearly have no concept of what hostile is. Or an inkling about what I’m like when I am. And if you think almost taking you standing up and becoming rock-hard whenever I so much as think of you isn’t wanting you, I wonder if you even know the basics of the male sexual response.”

“You’re just aroused by the game you’ve been playing. You know, the one where you get to enforce your will on the only woman, it seems, who has ever said no to you.”

A merciless gleam entered his eyes as his lips curled. “Your resistance always did infuriate me, when I sensed your answering desire. And now that I’ve felt how incendiary that desire is, and how it sets me on fire, if I wanted you to the factor of a thousand before, I now want you to that of a million. But even if it did get out of control, this explosive episode proved one thing. When I take you, Clarissa, it will be because you’re begging me to.”

She glared at him, hating him more for being so right about the magnitude of her desire. She had to vanquish it if she wanted to survive. “I wonder what level your arrogance can reach before you overdose on it. That would be a well-deserved end, not to mention an effective and fair solution to this mess. And before you gloat some more about how much I want you, that doesn’t mean I’ll act on it. I want to eat chocolate fudge day and night, but you won’t see me giving in to the temptation any time in this life.”

“But bingeing on me won’t make you fat and sick. Giving in to the temptation of falling into my arms and bed will provide rigorous workouts that will keep you in perfect shape and health, and the calorie-free pleasure I’ll saturate you with will make you realize you’ve been starving, make you wonder how you’ve lived so long with such deprivation.”

She felt as if the whole world had become a tiny room, with its walls closing in on her. He was just too much, too powerful. Unstoppable. And when he turned coaxing, seductive, he was devastating. She couldn’t resist him. And she had to.

There was only one way she could think of to stop him. Make him angry.

“Why don’t you just drop the act? You only want me because I’m the king’s daughter. That has always been my attraction, hasn’t it? You’ve acquired everything else—God only knows how—but now the world has gone so crazy, you can become Castaldini’s future king—and you still want to acquire me as the most suitable accessory to your impending royal status.”

Ferruccio felt his heart turn to stone inside his chest.

He’d long believed she looked down on him because of the circumstances of his birth.

But not only had she now intimated that she believed he’d attained his wealth and power through criminal methods and that she still cringed at the idea of giving in to the desire that seethed like a bound beast between them, not only had she just confirmed his worst suspicions why, but she’d revealed that the situation was worse than he’d thought.

She thought he’d been pursuing her to acquire her lineage by association, still wanted it even now, to paint himself with her legitimacy. She didn’t just think him a lowborn bastard but a sleazy social climber.

And she called him arrogant.

If he thought he’d enjoy punishing her for her arrogance before, he would now outright relish it. In every way imaginable.

He looked at her. Silky hair billowed around her shoulders like a caramel gold shroud of mystery in the night breeze. That body he’d almost lost his mind over was tense. He felt it emitting that tractor beam of attraction that had always drawn him inexorably. He’d always thought it had been the real her inside the body that had so attracted him. But no matter what he’d felt during the past few hours—that his belief had been more than validated—he’d been wrong.

Yet, he could still feel that body reverberating with the unassuaged need he’d sent storming through her. That he relished. If not as much as he did seeing that face of pure temptation pinched with worry. She must be wondering if she’d just made an irreversible mistake by baring her true opinion of him so blatantly.

She had no idea how right she was.

“As interesting as your opinions of my intentions are…” he gave her a smile that had had grown men sweating “…this…meeting is over, Clarissa. Now run along and go throw yourself in your father’s loving arms and sob to him over your ordeal at the hands of the conceited, cruel man he threw you to like a human sacrifice. Let him soothe you and tell you exactly why you have to come back to me and beg me to take you.”

Chapter Four

Clarissa went back to her father.

She was delivered back to him, more precisely. Just as Ferruccio had had her picked up like a package, he’d had her dropped back like one. His men had been implacable about carrying out his orders to the letter. He’d said to take her back to the king, and no matter how much she frothed with rage, they took her back to his very door. She’d barely managed to stop them from taking her to his bedside and have him sign a receipt for her.

She entered her father’s apartments, shaking with chagrin, with the ever-expanding shock waves from every second she’d spent with Ferruccio, desperately hoping that everything he had told her had not been because he’d been certain of every word he’d said and of his damned hundred percent success rate.

She closed the door behind her, leaned on it and closed her eyes.

Finally. Some alone time. She needed to inject some semblance of calm and control into her thoughts, and hopefully in her expression and words, before entering her father’s bedroom.

“Rissa, mia cara figlia, where have you been all night?”

She almost jumped out of her skin. Her father, who was so rarely out of bed these days, materialized at the passageway by the door she’d entered through.

Her frayed nerves snapped. “As if you don’t know.”

Pain stabbed dead center in her chest at her father’s grimace of hurt surprise. She cursed Ferruccio with a new fervor. She’d never dreamed the day would come when she’d snap at her father like that. What made it even worse was that what once would have been a mere blink and tightening of lips had become a grotesque, one-sided distortion with the aftereffect of his stroke.

Her heart broke all over again at seeing the evidence of her once all-powerful father’s incapacitation. For her to be the reason behind even a moment of his pain was unbearable.

Her heart thudded as she watched him drag his weakened leg, leaning heavily on his walking stick as he limped to the first chair in his reception area and collapsed heavily onto it.

He sat for a moment, not meeting her eyes, recovering from the few steps’ effort, his breathing erratic. Then he finally rasped, “I knew only that you were meeting with Ferruccio earlier today.”

“The meeting took longer than expected.” She struggled not to let anger and bitterness taint her tone. She shouldn’t let Ferruccio’s words poison her against her father. She needed to hear how things stood from him before she made up her mind who to blame. “Do you know why he asked for me to be the one to negotiate with him?”

Her father exhaled. “If you’ve learned anything about Ferruccio, Rissa, you must know he never declares his reasons to anyone. But I had theories.”

She tensed. “And those were?”

“He’s…interested in you. He always has been.”

All tension drained out of her as if with a punch to the gut. “And yet you sent me to him.”

“Why are you so angry, Rissa?” Alarm suddenly entered her father’s steel-blue eyes. “Did he…upset you?”

“That would be the understatement of the year.”

Alarm was swept aside on a tide of fury. For a moment, Clarissa could see once again the formidable man and king who’d ruled for forty years, who’d made Castaldini a piece of heaven on earth for almost thirty of those. “What did he do? Tell me.”

As if she would. She waved it away. “What’s important here is that you knew he wasn’t interested in my professional acumen. Why did you send me to him when you knew he had a personal agenda?”

“Why would you be so against that?” Typical. He never answered questions, always volleyed one back. “I never understood why you were so…reticent with him. I thought it might be a good time to settle this. He’ll become my crown prince and your future king. And I wasn’t against the possibility of him becoming even more.”

As in her groom. Her skull suddenly felt too small for her brain. “So you thought the opportunity to indulge in some matchmaking had presented itself?”

“What father doesn’t take every opportunity to try to see to his daughter’s happiness?”

“And you thought Ferruccio, of all people, was the way to mine?”

“Who else could be, but someone like him?”

“There’s no one like him.”

“My point precisely.”

“Dio, Padre…” The lament of how deluded his belief was recoiled in her chest as a terrible suspicion descended on her.

What if this was some side effect of his illness? He’d told her he’d been forgetting things, had been unable to focus. What if this skewed thought he’d formed of Ferruccio as her Prince Charming was a delusion he was suffering from? Brought on by his brush with mortality, his current condition? What if he was scared to die and leave her alone, and he’d latched onto Ferruccio as guardian-angel material based on his power and affluence? Maybe fueled by Ferruccio’s expression of interest in her? Or maybe he’d gotten wind of Ferruccio’s pursuit of her and built this imaginary scenario around it?

If that was the case, she should let it go. How could she possibly berate him for wanting the best for her, blame him for trying to see to it the best way he thought he could?

It didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was the real catastrophe Ferruccio had so coldly informed her was in progress.

She inhaled. “Is it true? Is Castaldini in danger?”

Her father blinked. “Ferruccio told you that?”

“Please tell me he was at least exaggerating.”

“I don’t know what he told you.” He averted his gaze as he said that. And she knew that every word Ferruccio had told her was true. “But maybe it’s time for me to tell you the truth.”

“Maybe? Dio Santo, why did you even think you should hide it from me at all? Padre, I’m a grown-up, PhD-holding professional, I’ve been elected a Council member by the people. How could you possibly keep something of this magnitude from me? How did you even manage it, when it seems everyone else knows?”

His lips twisted. His condition leant the grimace even more irony. “I may not be the king I once was, but my word still carries some weight. I demanded that no one tell you.”

She’d start tearing her hair out any second now. “Why?”

“Because no matter how much you’ve grown, how strong you’ve become, you’re still my little girl, Rissa. Because all of Castaldini’s troubles are my fault, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell you how big a mess your father has made of everything. I hoped I could fix it, and never have to admit it to you and see disillusion or disappointment in your eyes.”

Her tears gushed. She threw herself at his feet and hugged him around his waist with all her strength, sobs tearing out of her as she burrowed her face in his chest the way she had countless times during her tumultuous childhood, when he’d been the impenetrable fortress she’d taken refuge in. “You’ll never see either in my eyes, Padre. You’ll always be my hero.”

He tried to hug her back, managing to apply real pressure only with his healthy arm, the other one barely capable of smoothing her hair a couple of times before the tremors of weakness made him drop it to his side.

They remained like that, locked in the cocoon of their souldeep connection, the king kissing the top of her head and crooning to her the soothing endearments and the unconditional love that had once been the sole thing that had made her safe enough to sleep, brave enough to live.

Then he began to talk. “It began about ten years ago. I started to lose my perspective in external affairs, to slack off in internal ones. I made many enemies within Castaldini, making it easy for outside enemies to find openings through which to infiltrate our land, take a foothold. I am guilty of glossing over too much, hiding it from all but the highest ranks of Council members. Then I had my stroke. To the world, to the people of Castaldini, the only serious thing seemed to be the market crash, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of problems. I know what you’ll say, that Leandro and Durante are dealing with the financial situation, that things seem stable now.

“But it’s the calm before the storm. With Leandro and Durante regents only, with me still the king, a crisis is inevitable. Without a formidable crown prince and future king, it’s a matter of time before the internal decay weakens the kingdom, until it collapses under the pressures applied by the nations vying to assimilate our resources to feed their expanding needs. Only Leandro and Durante have enough power to stop that temporarily, but they both declined the crown. For the best of reasons, I admit. In their positions now, they’d stave off many immediate dangers, but only a king can have the long-term influence to do it permanently. Ferruccio is the only one left who has the power needed, both financially and politically, to maintain Castaldini’s sovereignty.”

Clarissa lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, waiting for the wave to crash.

Next second, like clockwork, it did.

She shook with it, the fury that had been wreaking havoc on her since she’d left her father’s apartments last night.

She hadn’t slept a wink, had risen from her bed as dawn stretched its first fingers across the sky and paced her room for hours. It was 10:00 a.m. now, and she felt exhausted, beaten.

Castaldini was in clear and present danger.

When she’d realized in how much danger the kingdom was in, she’d raved and ranted that her father should draft either Leandro or Durante to the duty, that they weren’t entitled to refuse when stakes were that catastrophic. But he’d told her why either Leandro or Durante would still end Castaldini as they knew it—Leandro by his incompatible political views, and Durante by bringing an end to the very law around which Castaldini had been built.

She’d struggled to enumerate the measures that could be installed so that either man’s reign wouldn’t do the predicted damage, but her father had countered every one with an undeniable projection of how it would fail. He’d told her that, before she’d become part of it, the Council had discussed everything in dozens of raging closed sessions, until they had admitted there was no other way out. Did she think anything less could have made them reach the decision to make the offer to Ferruccio?

So this was it. It was down to Ferruccio. It was up to him to save Castaldini. He was, in every way, the only one who could.

And that bastard—and the epithet had absolutely nothing to do with his birth, but with his character, his behavior—cared nothing about it. He cared only about getting his way. He wanted his “incentive.” Her.

She’d once thought him a god. He lived up to the belief in many ways. He now did in the most maddening way of all. To save king and country, she had to offer herself at the altar of the vicious deity he’d turned out to be.

She twisted around in bed, reached across to her nightstand, picked up her cell phone.

Time to discuss the terms of her sacrifice.

She pushed the buttons. The private number he said only a handful were privileged enough to have. She’d never called it before. She’d memorized it the first time he’d given it to her, with the second invitation she refused. She was in no position to refuse him…anything…anymore. As he’d said she would be.

The line clicked open before the first ring ended.

He’d been waiting for her. Figured.

She waited for him to speak. To gloat. But there was only a protracted moment of absolute silence on the other end.

He was waiting for her to initiate the second and final round.

Good luck with that, as he’d said. She was holding her breath as she did to get rid of hiccups. She had this ridiculous conviction that if she held it long enough, she’d get rid of this whole nightmare. Yeah, right. By passing out, maybe.

At last he breathed, the sound of his inhalation, then slow exhalation pooling warm moistness at the juncture of her legs. And that was before he murmured darkly, intimately, “Clarissa.”

She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and almost coughed out the air that would have ruptured her lungs if she’d held it in another second. Just get it over with.

She drew in a hasty breath then blurted it out along with the question that had been eating at her. “What did you mean by ‘taking’ me with the crown? You want to marry me, right?”

A bark of cruelly masculine laughter ricocheted inside her skull. “Marry you? Without a long, hard test drive?”

She shut her eyes. How did he do it? How did every word he uttered blind her with arousal even as it also did with anger?

“So you want to have an affair first?” she seethed.

A shorter laugh revved through the ether to buzz through her every bone. “It might be an affair only. You might dissatisfy me, and it would end there.”

She counted to ten. “If you’ll be satisfied with an affair, considering the situation, as you’ve so…kindly said, I have no option but to accept. But I need to set parameters up-front.”

He tsked. “Parameters? How businesslike of you. Highly in-appropriate, when you’re discussing the plunge into sensual decadence I had planned.”

She jerked onto her back, tremors coalescing into one violent shudder before she went still and tense all over. “Had? Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”

He let her reach screaming pitch before he said, “I have.”

She almost felt her components scatter apart with the sudden loss of the tension that had been holding her together. The cacophony of emotion that rushed to fill the void was a deafening mixture.

Relief yelled loudest. Thankfulness mumbled its grudging concession. But to her disbelieving chagrin, it was disappointment that somehow made its whimpers heard over everything else.

It seemed he’d paused, knowing that these reactions would prey on her. His next words made that clear—made them all redundant. “I’ve changed my mind about what you deserve.”

She gritted her teeth. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that for six years, you must remember with crystal clarity, I’ve given you the courtesy of being the pursued. But I’ve decided that you’ve forfeited your right to such consideration.”

“And in your infinite wisdom, what did you decide I deserve?”

“That you must get down from your high tower and do all the running from now on. After all, you’re a record-holding champion at it.”

“If that means you’ll be running ahead, there’s nothing I’d love more than to run after you until you drop.”

She knew his smile turned to its most wicked. The illicit excitement that thrummed through her told her so. “No danger of that. I’m not as fast as you are, but my stamina is legendary.”

And the terrible thing was that she knew he was stating facts. He wasn’t a self-deceiving braggart like so many men she’d heard making such pompous claims. He was a man who knew his worth, his powers, and made no pretense at false modesty. A man who’d survived and triumphed over obstacles and dangers, over horrors she couldn’t begin to imagine. He also had the most glamorous women in the world fighting for a place on his one-night-stand waiting list. She’d bet he had stamina by the freight-load.

She harumphed. “So you’ll employ that Herculean stamina to stay one step ahead as I play ‘pursuer’ this time around. Any rules to this game I should be aware of? Any points to be scored? Any ultimate goal? Or is this going to be a wild swine chase?”

His chuckles rose at her insult. He loved it when she played rough, didn’t he? Who knew he had a masochistic streak. But then, it made sense. A steady diet of simpering obedience and syrupy adulation must make him sick to his stomach. What better than the corrosive sourness of her irreverence to equalize the queasiness?

If that was the case, he’d be happy to know she had verbal abuse by the truckload to pour over his arrogant head.

Meanwhile, he poured the black magic of his amusement directly into her brain. “As long as you keep the wild part of that chase going, this…swine will let you get as creative as you like about the rules. Points are scored at my discretion, of course. As for the ultimate goal, it’s changing my mind. You see, I’m no longer convinced you’re a…good enough incentive. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to convince me otherwise.”

“Any tips about how I’m supposed to achieve mission impossible?” She injected as much poison as she could into the sweetness of her tone.

His voice deepened. “If you succeed in making me spontaneously combust, that would be a good start.”

“And a fitting end.”

He hooted with laughter. She shuddered, pressed her thighs together, trying to ameliorate the throbbing ache deep between them. “Go ahead, give me your best shot.”

“I’d rather do my worst. Pity you’re dozens of miles away.”

“Are you alone?”

His sudden question aborted the flow of her venom, yanked sexual awareness to the forefront. “Y-yes…”

“Where?”

“I-in my bedroom.”

“Describe it for me.”

She tossed a frantic look around. “Uh…it’s big. Huge.”

“Details, woman.”

“You’ve been inside the palace. You know the dimensions and the general style of an average room here.”

“Your bedroom isn’t an average room. And I haven’t been…inside it. Yet.”

She latched on the first part of his statement, skirted the provocative part like she would a land mine. “Actually, it’s way below average.”

“Explain.” She cursed herself for getting into that, fell silent. He growled, “Bene. Be prepared for an inspection visit.”

“I thought I was supposed to pursue you now.”

“My visit will be in pursuit of answers, not your delectable body.”

“My room is a mess, okay?” she blurted out.

“You’re untidy?” She heard his surprise, then his disbelief. “Even if you are, you have a dozen ladies-in-waiting cleaning up after you.”

“I’m not a paragon of personal organization,” she hissed. “But if you think I’m allowed to be ‘untidy,’ just because I’m a princess, maybe you haven’t met Antonia, my bambinàia.”

“I have. A formidable woman. Is she still your nanny?”

“I call her nanny, but don’t you think I’ve outgrown the need for one? She’s my so-called lady-in-waiting now, but she’s more like a mother to me. And not only hasn’t her job description as my nanny ever included picking up after me, but her method of turning little girls into princesses was something close to what the U.S. Special Forces use in training Navy SEALs.”

Silence expanded after her words died away. Then he inhaled. “So you haven’t been pampered and coddled, mia bella unica?”

She swallowed past the sudden barbed tightness in her throat.

That kindness. When she’d thought it an impossibility. It was probably her imagination. Maybe a glitch in the line.

But she hadn’t imagined him calling her his unique beauty. “Your view of my life isn’t just rosy, it’s fluorescent fuchsia.”

She expected him to laugh his hardest this time. And again, he did the last thing she expected him to do.

His tone became a gentle stroke, smoothing her frayed nerves, soothing her rawness. “I stand corrected. But your parents have a lot to answer for. You were born for pampering and coddling.”

She almost snorted. “No, thank you. I’m glad they didn’t agree with you. I would have grown up a thoughtless, useless brat.”

“Pampering and coddling don’t have to mean spoiling. Used right, by firm, loving parents, they can be fortifying, nurturing, stabilizing. There’s nothing better to contribute to the development of a balanced character and the maintenance of a healthy psyche.”

She almost blurted out And what would you know about that?

She burrowed back into the mattress with relief that the words hadn’t exited her lips. He would have taken them in the worst way possible, and she would have felt even worse.

She meant only to marvel at his insight into something he hadn’t experienced. But then again, she shouldn’t wonder. His uncanny knowledge of the mechanisms that made humans tick was behind his almost frightening success.

He was going on. “But your parents decided it the best course of action to be tough on you, so instead of a thoughtless, useless brat, you’ve grown up a merciless, shameless siren.”

After another silent beat, she sat up. “Hello? Are you taking another call? Shall I wait on the line until you finish talking to whomever it is you just called all those far-fetched things?”

“You see? Shameless.” Before she could answer, he went on. “But since you’re not untidy, why is your room a mess?”

Dio, the man forgot nothing, couldn’t be distracted. Figured.

She gave in. “Because it hasn’t seen a coat of paint in over fifteen years. Name any sign you can imagine of long neglect in such an old building, and it’s here. Distintegrating wood paneling, leaking ceiling and peeling paint, just to mention the surface stuff.”

An edge entered his voice. “The rest of the palace is in good condition. How is it possible your living quarters haven’t been given priority in maintenance and renovations?”

“My living quarters aren’t part of the national monument area of the palace.”

“You’re the princess of Castaldini.” He sounded indignant.

“You should see the king’s quarters.”

The silence lengthened beyond her ability to bear it this time. Especially when she could almost hear that warp-speed mind of his streaking to conclusions. It was another thing to prove how much Castaldini needed him.

At last he inhaled. Then, after a long pause, slowly exhaled. The nuances of the sounds didn’t transmit male awareness and triumph this time, but contemplation, deliberation, and if she could possibly believe it, thoughtfulness, consideration. It seemed her sensory capacity had converged on her sense of hearing. She was picking up more through his breathing and tones than from his words. And whether she was picking up right or wrong, it moved her, messed up her insides. Then—of course—he made it far worse.

“What are you wearing, Clarissa?”

His whisper, the total unexpectedness of the question, made her heart skip over a few beats like a little girl would over squares in hopscotch. She wet her aching, parched lips. “Clothes.”

“Really? Whatever happened to fig leaves?” Her lips twitched. How did he engage her sense of humor, when she wanted to murder him? “What do you sleep in?”

“What do people sleep in? But I’m no longer in my pajamas.”

“You’re not ‘people.’ And if I become the future king of Castaldini, I’ll issue a royal decree prohibiting you from wearing pajamas. A body like yours shouldn’t be encased in anything but drapes of chiffon, wraps of tulle, veils of gauze. Or just jewelry.”

“Sure. Just the things to attend Council meetings in,” she scoffed. “Fig leaves would be preferable.”

“You haven’t answered my question again, Clarissa.”

She sighed. “In the interest of preventing an inspection visit—I’m wearing another nondescript skirt suit.”

“Nothing you put on your body remains nondescript. After last night, skirt suits have entered the realm of highly erotic garments. Following the same rationalization, pajamas on you are probably the height of sexiness.” If he thought she had anything to say to that, he could think again. She was busy dealing with the impending heart attack he’d so casually caused. But he didn’t wait for her commentary. “What are you wearing beneath the jacket? Is your top buttoned, or pulled on, like the one you had on yesterday?”

“I don’t see—”

“It’s I who wants to see. In my mind’s eye. Now, do as I tell you. Take off your jacket. Slowly.”

His whispers, hypnotic, incendiary, were dragging her down into an endless well of mindlessness, incinerating rules and logic and memory. She still struggled. “Ferruccio, I don’t think—”

“Don’t think. Do it. This is where you start convincing me again. The jacket, Clarissa. Off.”

She took the phone away from her ear, stared at it, wondering if it had turned into a device that was whispering delusions. She put it back on, gritted, “It’s off.”

His whisper grew hotter, darker. “Liar.”

“How do you know if I’m lying or not?” She struggled not to pant. “Do you have my room bugged? Am I on camera now?”

“I can tell from your tone, from your breathing. From every cell in my body that’s telling me you’re still covered in layers of clothes. And you haven’t answered me. Buttons or pulled-on?”

“B-buttons…” she stammered.

“Leave the jacket on then. For now. Unbutton your blouse for me, Clarissa. Start at the top.” This time her hands trembled to obey him, as if powered by his will, his impatience. “Stop at the button just below your breasts.” She did. “Turn your phone to speaker mode. I want both your hands free.” She did that, too. “Now cross your hands inside your blouse, bellissima. Knead your breasts, then flick your nails over your nipples through your bra.” She fell back on the bed again, did as he instructed. “They’re hard now. Aching. Begging for my fingers, my lips and tongue and teeth.” And they were. How they were. “Do you remember the pressure I applied when I nipped them? Pinch them as hard.” She did, gasped, arched off the bed. “Again.” And again she did it, and every time he prodded her.

Fire raged through her. Her brain was sizzling, her chest, her eyes steaming, the heat in her gut converging to pour between her thighs, the pounding there beating to the frantic rhythm of her heart. She felt as if he’d taken over her body, was using her own hands as extensions of his lust, as if he was the one doing these things to her again. As he was. Whoever said the mind was the most powerful sex organ had been right. And he’d taken over hers.

“Pull your skirt up, touch your buttocks as I did, squeeze them.” She obeyed, unable to suppress her whimpers anymore. “It’s me doing it, pulling you against my erection, grinding into you. Spread your legs, Clarissa, let me have better access, open yourself and take more of me.”

She opened herself, could swear she felt him bearing down on her, the throbbing where he said he was, but wasn’t, becoming erratic with her heart’s short-circuiting rhythm.

“Now, do what you wanted me to do—what I would have done if you didn’t stop me. Cup yourself, Clarissa, tight. You’re burning now.” She was. And she couldn’t bear it. “Slip your hand inside your panties, spread your lips open. Now slide your fingers through your flowing nectar.” She did, keened, trembling on the edge now. His voice thickened, became harsh as gravel. “You’re melting, empty, losing your mind, unable to breathe with the hunger. I can see you, Clarissa, quaking on the edge of release. I can scent your need. I can feel your heart stampeding, your body tautening, your core demanding me.”

He stopped, drew in a shuddering breath.

Her lips trembled on a smile. He was as affected as she was, as distressed. His breath, when it rushed out, felt as if it filled her, the stimulus that almost tipped her over. She waited, needing it to be his words that did.

“But this stops here, mia magnifica. Anything more, you’ll have to come get it.”

Everything stilled, froze. The world. Her body. Her heart.

“I’m flying back to Castaldini as we speak.” His voice was crisp and distant all of a sudden, all intensity and intimacy evaporated. “I had to tend to some business, but I’ll be back in my mansion within the hour. You’ve gone a long way toward convincing me. I expect you to continue your…persuasion, then.”

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