Challenging Dante (A Bride for a Billionaire 4)

She was lying in bed around midnight reading an absorbing research paper on non-equilibrium dynamics and random matrices when her door opened, breaking her concentration. Closing the door, Dante strode towards her, his tall well-built physique bare but for a towel rather negligently looped round his lean hips. The very sight of him shook her up, her tummy flipping at the explosive effect of him in the flesh. He looked absolutely gorgeous. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

‘I warned you that I didn’t do one-night stands,’ he quipped, dropping the towel without an ounce of self-consciousness and sliding into bed beside her. He glanced at the article and raised a brow. ‘Light reading?’

‘One of my favourite fields,’ she admitted.

‘A doctorate in advanced maths,’ Dante recounted. ‘You could have an incredible career in a bank.’

‘I’m not particularly interested in quantitative finance or statistics,’ Topsy told him, settling back against the pillows and striving to seem relaxed even though every nerve ending was jumping at his arrival. ‘I think I’d like to go into theoretical research. I want to take my time about choosing where I work.’

Dante pressed his sensual mouth against the remarkably sensitive slope between her neck and shoulder and she shivered violently. ‘You can’t,’ she told him baldly.

Luxuriant black lashes lifted enquiringly on emerald-green eyes and her heart lurched.

Topsy turned to face him, her cheeks hot as fire. ‘I can’t...I’m...um...sore,’ she confessed grudgingly. ‘Seems there is a drawback to being a virgin. I’m off the menu for now.’

‘I shouldn’t have been so very greedy this afternoon, gioia mia.’ Dante sighed.

Topsy rubbed her cheek over a broad bare shoulder smooth as golden satin, a small hand travelling across his pectoral muscles and wandering south, feeling whipcord muscles flex and tense every step of the way. ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t do other things,’ she told him with a hunger she couldn’t hide, couldn’t suppress, and simply couldn’t deny.

He expelled his breath when she found him hot, hard and ready for her attentions. She loved touching him, literally could not bear to take her hands from him while she watched him respond to her every tentative caress, his inky lashes dropping lower over smouldering, wildly appreciative eyes.

‘I might be a bit clumsy at this,’ she warned him in advance.

‘I’m all yours,’ Dante breathed hoarsely, fingers gliding slowly through the silken fall of her hair where it lay across his thigh. ‘Experiment all you like...’

And she did, revelling in the reactions he couldn’t hide, triumphant only when he finally let go of his iron-clad self-control and shuddered and groaned his pleasure. Yet inexplicably it felt even better when afterwards he wrapped his arms round her and, even though he put out too much heat for comfort and took up too much room in her bed, she resisted the idea of waking him and sending him back to his own bedroom and could not understand why she wasn’t being more sensible.

* * *

Over the breakfast table the next morning she studied his bold bronzed profile, remembering how she had made him feel, how he had made her feel, wondering when the infatuation would start to burn out and let her return to normal. She didn’t like the out-of-control sensation he gave her. She liked to know exactly where she was going and what she was doing at all times.

After breakfast, Dante drove Topsy to a coffee morning for his mother’s favourite charity, which was being held in a local town. It had been Sofia Leonetti’s repeated experience of miscarriage that had first persuaded her to set up a local support group for fellow sufferers and the organisation had eventually become a charity. Topsy left Dante being fussed over by several middle-aged women and plied with coffee and cakes while she sped off to deliver the short speech Sofia had written for her. The older woman had already personally informed the committee members that she was standing down as chairwoman with immediate effect but Topsy gathered that Dante hadn’t known because he studied her with frowning eyes when she referred to his mother’s resignation.

‘So, when are you planning to tell me what’s really going on with my mother?’ Dante enquired, tucking her back into his car.

Topsy directed a strained glance at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t play games with me,’ Dante advised impatiently. ‘My mother’s not herself. Stepping down from the charity she struggled to build up is not normal behaviour for her. There’s something badly wrong.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Topsy said woodenly, knowing it was not her place to reveal what Sofia preferred to keep secret while hoping that the older woman would decide to come clean soon.

‘You’re a lousy liar. I have sufficient respect for Vittore to assume that he wouldn’t be walking around whistling if my mother were seriously ill,’ Dante told her, strong jaw line hardening. ‘For that reason alone I’ve kept quiet but I expect more from you.’

Topsy paled at that unexpected admission. ‘Vittore and Sofia have private affairs about which I know nothing,’ she pointed out uncomfortably.

‘But you’re remarkably cosy with them both. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that fact, gioia mia. And you may work for my mother but I expect your first loyalty to be to me.’

Topsy turned stunned eyes to his lean, hard-boned face. ‘You can’t be serious.’

Dante examined his expectations and realised to his surprise that he was deadly serious. His mother might pay her salary but Dante demanded one hundred per cent loyalty from Topsy when it came to anything that he considered to be important to him. He expected to be put first, he acknowledged, possibly he even took it for granted because women had always been so eager to please him, but he saw nothing wrong with his outlook.

‘You’re not being fair.’

‘And you’re not being honest or realistic,’ Dante condemned without hesitation. ‘Reverse our positions and ask yourself how you would feel if I was lying to you about your family. You know more than you’re willing to admit.’

‘We’re having our first row,’ Topsy commented stiffly.

‘No, we’re not,’ Dante parried, skimming a forefinger down over her thigh in a teasing gesture. As he smoothly demonstrated his complete sexual power over her, a chill of apprehension assailed Topsy because he made her feel vulnerable. ‘When I lose my temper you’ll know about it.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Dante gave Topsy a wonderful surprise by keeping his promise to arrange a tour of the Uffizi art gallery for her. He had secured tickets for a private viewing. Sofia surveyed Topsy’s glowing face, her mouth tightening as her gaze briefly skimmed to her son’s nonchalant expression. ‘It’ll be a very dressy occasion, Topsy. Those champagne viewings always are.’

Having piled her hair up on top of her head, Topsy dug a sleek black cocktail frock from her wardrobe and clasped her diamond necklace round her throat. Feet encased in fashionable and perilously high heels, she walked downstairs to join Dante.

‘Between the hairstyle and the shoes, you’ve gained about a foot in height, cara mia,’ Dante commented, the very epitome of designer elegance in a well-cut dinner jacket and narrow black trousers. Superbly elegant, he looked, as always, stunning.

‘You suit diamonds,’ he added, noting how the white-fire sparkle of the jewels seemed to reflect the brightness of her dark eyes.

Topsy involuntarily touched the diamonds at her throat. ‘An eighteenth birthday present.’

‘Kusnirovich?’ Dante surmised.

‘Yes.’

‘Obviously you’ve known him a long time,’ Dante commented, oddly irritated by the realisation and resisting an even stranger urge to tell her to take the necklace off. ‘It looks like a very generous gift.’

Topsy simply nodded agreement, not wanting to say anything e

lse and encourage more questions. Naturally he was curious about her friendship with Mikhail, who only socialised in the most exclusive circles, and while she didn’t want to reveal the truth about her wealthy and powerful relatives neither did she want to lie to Dante.

The gilded event at the Uffizi was a true art lovers’ dream. Beautifully dressed people sipping champagne strolled at their leisure through the rooms of magnificent artworks. There was no noise, no queues, no crush to struggle through and this time around she could even appreciate the splendid ornate interior of the building itself.

When she paused rapt before Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch, Dante remarked that she seemed to know exactly what she wanted to view.

‘This is one of my sister’s favourite paintings. She used to be an art restorer in a museum and, when I was growing up, she took me to all sorts of places to see wonderful pieces of art,’ Topsy confided. ‘She wanted to be sure that I got a really well-rounded education and she didn’t quite trust my boarding school.’

‘You attended boarding school?’

Topsy sent him an amused look as she paused in front of Caravaggio’s Bacchus. ‘I was a gifted child and, obviously, I was a scholarship girl. Kat could never have afforded the fees.’

‘How gifted were you?’ Dante prompted.