One Reckless Decision

It had always been like this—this unquenchable thirst for him, this explosive passion whenever they’d touched. She remembered that shameful night in Toronto, the night she had held up for years as the very lowest point of her life, and realized that she had needed to think of it that way. Not because they had both been so angry, but because she had needed to demonize the sexual connection between them in order to think past it, in order to figure out who she might be without it. Because when he was near her she lost the ability to think at all.

She must have known, on some level, that to demonize it the way she had was the only way she was likely to survive the loss of it, of him, for so long.

She still did not dare think of why that was. She still shied away from the simple truth that her body knew, had always known, that moved through her, illuminating her.

Not today, she thought fiercely. It would be too much, that level of self-awareness. She could not quite do it. She would not allow it.

She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped when he moved. He came to stand beside the tub, still looking down at her, that same simmering awareness lighting up his dark gaze, making his sensual mouth move into something approaching a smile.

She found she could not tear her eyes away from him. She stopped trying.

He pulled the tight black T-shirt over his head, tossing it carelessly to the floor. Bethany let her gaze travel over his rock-hard pectoral muscles, the tantalizing indentation between them, the ridged expanse of his abdomen. She let out a small sound when he stripped off the jeans as well, kicking them out of his way so that he stood fully naked and indescribably beautiful before her.

She could only stare. He was pure, masculine perfection, lethal grace and tightly controlled strength, and she wanted to touch him and taste him all over again.

“Move over,” he ordered her with a regal tilt of his jaw in a tone that expected instant compliance. That demanded it.

She knew she should object. She knew she should set her ground rules, define her boundaries. She knew she should demand her space—she knew that she should want the space from him she ought to demand. But she did not say a word. Not now, she told herself, her own private prayer. Not today.

She sat forward so he could sink down behind her in the tub that had been built for precisely this purpose. She sighed in a contentment she opted not to question when he pulled her back against the wall of his chest, settling her between his thighs, bringing his strong, hard arms around her.

The water lapped against her breasts. She could not tell which was hotter—the steaming bath or his silk-and-steel skin against hers. His hardness pressed against the small of her back, making her core throb and ache.

When she tipped her head back against his shoulder, she saw something she could not quite define flash across his face. It made something deep inside of her shift, like a tectonic plate deep beneath the ground. Grief turned to something else, something less raw, more smooth. But before she could do more than note it he fit his mouth to hers.

Soft. Sweet. The fire raged anew.

Not today, she thought. Not today.

And then she stopped thinking altogether.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LEO could not quite put his finger on the complicated emotions that held him in such a tight grip that it bordered on the uncomfortable.

He sat in yet another tedious meeting in the suite of rooms in the castello’s west wing that he used as his corporate offices when he was in Felici. He lounged behind the massive desk that his father had bought as a match for his grand ego, and knew that he looked every inch the prince, as he ought to. He had been raised to wield his own magnificence as a weapon, and he had long done so without thought. He did not want to investigate why the mantle of it seemed so ill-fitting today. As if it was no longer his second skin, indistinguishable from his own.

The meeting should not have been tedious. There had been a time when the thrill of figuring out how best to beat a rival’s offer, or managing to pull together a deal in the eleventh hour, would have kept him high on adrenaline and triumph for days.

He had never involved himself in the kind of extreme adventures that attracted so many of his wealthy peers, because he could not risk himself or the Di Marco legacy. He had therefore contented himself instead with the drama of high finance—the greatest poker game in the world, with the highest stakes—and it had always worked.

Yet today, even that familiar thrill seemed to have lost its appeal. He knew that Bethany was somewhere in the castello—not in Canada, as she had been. Not across the planet. Not even so terribly angry with him any longer. She was somewhere close and, more than that, agreeable.

He knew that she was nearby, and that was what thrilled him—not these papers, these debates, these strategies that he found so unaccountably boring these days. He knew that he could walk out of this meeting, go to her and he could have her. It would be as easy as a look, a touch. As simple as their presence in the same room.