Why was he hesitating? Why wasn’t Dante taking her up on the offer? She’d just flung herself at his feet, but he didn’t seem interested.
Good! Rose’s prim inner self insisted. Sex with Dante Formosa was a fast road to disaster. Yes, it might be all her erotic dreams come true, but while dreams could be dismissed, reality had a habit of sticking around.
That said, the sexual heat radiating from him was incredible. He was like a wild creature that needed to feed. She could feel his heat embracing her, yet he still made no move. “I know you want to help me,” she pressed. “You care about injustice as much as I do—”
Dante’s hand sliced through the air, silencing her. “You know nothing about me.” Lifting his head, he stared down with all the arrogance of centuries of breeding from his father’s side, and warrior-like command from his mother’s people.
Which was just the cue she’d been waiting for, Rose realized. “Your father wouldn’t stand by and see this happen—”
Dante moved so quickly, she would have fallen if he hadn’t taken her in s
uch a firm grip. “Are you suggesting I’m a coward?”
“No. This is a call to action,” she fired back. “Your father fell in love and followed his heart, in spite of the risks involved. Your mother did the same, inviting ridicule and cruelty. You fight injustice across the world, and yet you’d have me believe you can turn your back on an old man?” She flared a look of fury into his face. “I don’t believe it.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking,” Dante countered, his face within a hairsbreadth of hers. “I can’t just drop everything and fly to Ireland. You can’t even tell me what’s happening over there.”
“I’ve just got a really bad feeling,” Rose admitted.
“So I’m supposed to act on the evidence of your sixth sense?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Dante argued firmly. “I need a lot more than that.”
“And I’ll give it to you,” she said, softening beneath the cruel grip of his hands.
“You have only one currency to bargain with.”
“Don’t you think I know that?”
~~o0o~~
She was breathless with tension, and magnificent as she blazed a look of determination into his eyes. She would do anything to save her father, and he admired that. It was Rose who fired him, not the fact that she was offering herself to him.
“Please, Dante…”
“Don’t beg. I don’t want to hear you beg.”
“Then do as I ask,” she insisted.
He raised a brow. Her eyes were luminous in the darkness. Her appeal was fresh on her lips. Was she attempting to seduce him? The novelty of the situation stirred him. Removing his hands from her body, he waited to see what she’d do next.
“Will you help me?” she asked him quietly, staring up into his eyes.
Were they still talking about the problems in Ireland?
“What do you want me to do?” he murmured, holding her darkening stare in his.
“Take what’s freely offered and give me what I ask in return,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “That depends on what you’re offering.” Rose wouldn’t be the first woman who had asked a favor and paid him with her body, but she would be the first who was offering to do so on behalf of someone else.
“I want the same thing you do,” she said.
“You don’t know what I want.”
“I can feel it.” A lift of her brow and a confident smile hovering around her mouth said she could. “No sixth sense involved,” she assured him.