Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream 1)

I didn’t respond, but then, I didn’t have to.

Sarah had been there through all of it, silently waiting in the wings to comfort me after all the bigger players on the board made their moves. It never occurred to her to stand up for her children. It stopped occurring to us a long time ago to ask.

In addition, she had her own vendettas and prejudices against the Constantines. Against Caroline, the woman who broke her husband before she ever got a chance at loving him.

“How old are they?”

“Seventeen and seven.”

I thought of Brando convulsing on the floor of the kitchen, of his smiles when I taught him to fight like Iron Man in the ring, of the sound of his voice endlessly babbling to Ezra or Walcott or Henrik, whoever would listen. He was as bright and green as lime juice squeezed straight from the fruit. It was impossible not to be drawn in by his candor and charm.

Then Bianca, so much older in age and soul, those big blue eyes filled with history I wanted to unearth like an archeologist. I wanted to pillage her for treasure, use her for my schemes and other, darker desires that seemed to surge further with shocking regularity.

My hand twitched where it lay on my thigh, remembering the sharp impact of the bamboo cane against the sweet, lush curve of her kilt-covered ass. The sweet schoolgirl bent over for me. It was a provocative image, but too generic. I hadn’t imagined when I ordered her to bend over for me that I would be like wet steel beneath my trousers as her pain blossomed into pleasure, her tears so pretty, her cries like music.

“You’re old enough to be their father.” Sarah’s voice interrupted my salacious memories. “The teenager, Bianca, isn’t it? She’s pretty?”

I shot her an unamused glance. “Not all of us fancy jailbait, Mother.”

She laughed at me, her tragic eyes flashing with mirth. In a way, they reminded me of Bianca’s. Unwittingly, I wondered if Bianca would end up like her one day, tragic enough to drown her sorrows in a bottle and her regrets in a pill-induced fog. A shiver of dread dripped down my spine like ice water.

“They shouldn’t make gardeners so cute,” she said coyly.

“And pool boys?”

Her eyes sparkled as she shrugged. “The odd instructor too. Those yogis are so limber.”

I shook my head at her, but it felt good to make her laugh. I didn’t usually evoke that response in people, and she didn’t usually give it.

“Are you attracted to her?” she asked, because she thought being my mother meant having the right to invade my privacy.

For the most part, I let her.

Her possessiveness was unhealthy, but it was all I had.

Still, I didn’t tell her about the way my body responded to Bianca. About how the sight of her tears when I wrenched off her locket made my dick hard. How my blood burned when she took up her verbal foil and sparred with me. How I’d almost tossed her into the pond and fucked her among the waterlilies after taking that bamboo switch to her ass. She wasn’t afraid of me, which was rare, but even more unique was the glimpse I caught sometimes in that bright blue gaze that suggested she might want me to hurt her. After last night, I was sure that she did.

The idea was dangerously arousing.

All that unblemished golden flesh under my punishing grip, those too-ripe-for-a-girl curves slapped and bitten until they were marked as mine if only for one night.

Oh yes, I was attracted to her. The scent of her alone made me want to trace the source to that fluttering pulse in her neck, always beating madly around me. It was half the reason I loved to aggravate her.

She was so pretty when she was angry.

And I learned last night, she was even prettier when she cried.

It was growing increasingly impossible not to imagine wedging myself into that snug virgin cunt just to see her cry as I forced her to take all of me.

I may have slept with her mother, but the sex was nothing but a transaction, my attraction to her hardly serviceable.

It should have disgusted me, maybe, to think of fucking her daughter.

A better man wouldn’t have dreamt of it.

But I was not a good man and I didn’t want to be.

“Are you going to tell me not to get involved?” I asked drily. “Now is a little late to start acting maternal.”

She pursed her lips at me for the barb, but otherwise only shrugged, stirring her olives in the glass with one manicured finger. “You’re already involved in her life. Fucking her might be the cherry on top of the humiliation cake. There’s nothing Caroline hates more than fraternization between our houses. Though, even I shudder to think what Ice Bitch might do to her if she got the chance.” She cocked her head at me. “Which begs the question, what happens afterward?”