The Prodigal Prince's Seduction (Castaldini Crown 2)

She dragged his face back down to hers, whimpering at his momentary withdrawal. It had been only a moment since the lips claiming his had formed the name that had sent reality crashing into him. It had taken only a moment to plunge him from the heights of delight to the depths of disillusion.

His whole being in revolt, he tried to pull back, but she wouldn’t let him. She tightened her vise around his body, his will, her ragged whispers of desire impaling his brain, causing another geyser of response to erupt inside him.

So what if she wasn’t the unique woman for whom he’d broken all his rules, was instead a siren who came with a warning ignored at the price of defamation and destruction? It should change nothing. His body was reaching critical mass, demanding hers. And she was offering…everything. He should drag her inside, throw her to the ground and take it all. Then walk away.

Disillusionment bellowed its bitterness over the flames of desire. It wasn’t powerful enough to douse them. Only agony might be.

It tore him apart to think of it all reduced to…this. Rutting. Sexual release. He wanted the unprecedented passion, the sublime emotions along with the all-consuming lust.

But those had all been an illusion. She was everything he abhorred and despised. Nothing like what she’d projected so seamlessly all night. How had she done it? How had she misled his senses to this extent? How had she imbued herself with a vibe that had been so attuned to his? How had she been able to assume a nature so alien to her own? To project characteristics she couldn’t begin to understand, let alone have?

The answer to all that was obvious. She was a chameleon. A black widow. A cold-blooded predator.

“Durante, te voglio bene assai…”

Her words echoed the ones he’d sung—sung—to her. They ripped into him, made him go rigid with the spike of arousal.

For a suspended moment, he let her overwhelm his reason, let himself surrender to the need to forget caution, to deny his realizations. But the very loss of the control finally hurt enough to ignite the deep freeze of rage.

He was just another quarry to her. One she’d gambled she could capture if she got close enough. And he wouldn’t let her win. Not even if he was dying to let her. Especially because he was.

He tore her arms off his body, feeling as if they’d taken off strips of his own skin.

Still oblivious to his awakening, she cupped his face, her own etched with her coup de grâce, an expression that would have brought him to his knees if he hadn’t realized the truth. Total trust, full surrender. Temptation thundered through him.

He staggered away in self-disgust.

This time when he recoiled, he broke free from the prison of her thighs, dropped her back on her own feet. She stumbled, crashed back against the door.

Panic flashed in her eyes. His heart stampeded. Had his involuntary force frightened her, brought back memories of when another man had used his superior strength to hurt her?

Dio, what was he thinking? This was an act. Her sob story about the husband who’d abused her—the husband she’d used and destroyed instead—had been a string of masterfully composed lies.

Sure enough, the panic was turning to an uncanny emulation of pained confusion, then dread. “Durante…what’s wrong?”

Everything, he wanted to roar. You, the woman, the treasure I thought I found, doesn’t exist.

He glared at her, everything he wanted to yell frothing inside him. His body quaked as if on the verge of explosion.

Then, after a long moment filled with labored-breathing, without another word or glance, he turned on his heel and walked away.

He wouldn’t look back. Ever again. The dream was over.

Gabrielle stood plastered to her door, watching Durante walk away.

She couldn’t breathe. Something sharp and burning had lodged in her gut, twisting her to shreds, coagulating into a mass of pain.

A wave of darkness swamped her.

She stumbled around, pressed her clammy face to her door, fumbled inside her purse. Key. Get inside. Damned if she would faint out here. She’d given the tabloids enough fodder for a decade. This would see her to her grave.

Then she was inside. Alone. As she should have remained, as she would from now on. She’d never let anyone close again, never…

All her nerves seemed to snap. She went down in a heap on the ground, her dress swirling around her like a suffocating vortex.

She tore at it. Couldn’t bear the oppression. Had to breathe.

It took forever. Then she was in her panties, staggering up and to her bedroom. She fell onto her bed, folded into a ball of anguish. Her body was still throbbing, demanding him…Stop it.

Misery engulfed her, wrung her, first with dry heaves, then with tears so violent she thought she might dissolve, dissipate.

She’d thought she’d braced herself for the worst when she’d sought him out, preparing for anything from cold dismissal to ireful rejection. But how could she have predicted the events that had dominoed since she’d laid eyes on him, knocking sense and good intentions out of reach until she’d found herself wrapped around him, unaware and uncaring if the world was watching, begging for him to possess her, all but offering him carte blanche with her life?

She’d been certain of what he felt. She’d thought they’d shared something that transcended time and explanations, something real on the most fundamental level.

It had all been an illusion. He’d lied when he’d said he didn’t care about labels. He must have been trying to stimulate his glutted senses by leading on yet another desperate female to see how far she’d go, how much of herself she’d offer.

She’d offered him everything. Her pain and shame and trust. She’d left herself wide open, and the blow had crushed her.

In her mind, the feverish moments played again, filled with the cherishment and pleasure his every word and touch had bestowed. Then he’d demanded her name and she’d given it, delighted to complete his knowledge of her, unable to wait to hear it on his lips in all the ways he’d promised.

More images and sensations rose until she felt she was drowning in black ink. Durante, his body losing its gentle ferocity, stiffening, withdrawing, pushing her away.

For one moment, panic had flashed, fear that he, too, got his kicks abusing women. Worse, that something was wrong with her, like Ed had told her, something that drove otherwise normal men to abuse her.

The fear had passed as soon as it had flared. Not Durante. She wouldn’t let Ed’s vicious psychological sabotage fester again, not for a second. The only one who had something wrong with him was Ed.