The Prodigal Prince's Seduction (Castaldini Crown 2)

She walked away then. He knew she wasn’t going to stop.

He had to get her back anyway he could. He called after her.

“You wanted me to write a book baring the details of my life and journey to success, the workings of my mind and methods. I’m interested.”

She whirled around, a magnificent lioness with a mane of fire, her eyes iridescent with ire. “Oh, no, you’re not.”

Lust corkscrewed in his loins. He savored the twisting ache, cocked his head. “You’ve changed your mind about your offer?”

Her eyes narrowed at him. “You know I haven’t.”

“How do I know that when you didn’t bring it up again?”

“I didn’t bring it up at all. First you wouldn’t hear of business, then you wouldn’t hear anything I had to say.”

“I want to hear everything you have to say now.”

“Sei serio? You’re serious? This isn’t just pretext for…for…”

“For taking you to bed? No. Although I am suffering permanent damage here as we speak, because I haven’t taken you to bed and kept you there for the last ten days, because I’m standing in the middle of smog-infested, ground-level downtown New York instead of lying inside you in a bed eighty floors up in serenity and seclusion, I am interested in hearing about your book offer.”

Suspicion flared higher in her eyes. “And why are you?”

“Because I believe that anything you propose will have a lot to recommend it. I didn’t say I’d accept, though.”

She pursed her lips. “Fair enough. I want you to accept only if I convince you, not because you want me in your bed. In fact, I won’t sign a thing if that’s your motive. Contrary to ‘common knowledge,’ I don’t barter my body for business deals.”

“I don’t either.” She narrowed her eyes. He held out his hand, inviting, placating, coaxing, barely holding back the need to reestablish the connection, to drag her into his arms. “I owe you one hour of the exclusive use of my ear. Then, if you wish, you can have the exclusive use of the rest of my body.”

Chapter Eight

Gabrielle looked up at Durante from his kitchen table.

He was handing her a hot chocolate he’d prepared himself.

She took the very masculine, clean-cut, but clearly expensive and possibly specially made fine China mug from him. He brought his own and sat across from her, dominating his stainless steel and obsidian marble spaceship of a kitchen.

This was surreal. To be in his kitchen of all places, with him waiting on her. In fact, she didn’t know if she’d actually walked back to his building, crossed the extensive foyer littered with still-gaping denizens, entered his private elevator and ended up in his floor-wide penthouse, or if he’d levitated her there.

She wouldn’t put it past him. Those reports hadn’t exaggerated his influence at all.

He leaned across the table, enveloped her hand in his—the one that had slapped him—smoothed his thumb over her knuckles, before turning it over and doing the same to her palm.

“Can you please stop that?”

“Why? You like it. From your breathing, I’d say too much. Is that the problem?”

“I didn’t come here with slapping you in mind, Durante…”

“But you saw me and emotion overwhelmed your judgment?”

“Quite the reverse actually. I held myself back at the last moment.” She told him what she’d done in her dream.

He bellowed with laughter. “So I owe it to your self-mastery that I’m not now undergoing rhinoplasty and a jaw reset.” He wiped tears of hilarity with one hand, the other taking hers to his lips. He planted tiny kisses on knuckle after another, zapping her with enough voltage to power a block. “Ah, Gabriella mia, grazie a Dio you held back, or these works of divine art would be bruised and swollen now. But let me assure you, your slap almost achieved one of your wishes. My jaw may never resume its former position.”

“If the way you’re using your mouth is any indication, I’d say I made it extra efficient.”

He lunged across the table. Before she even blinked, he twisted hair at her nape, tilted up her face and claimed her lips in a compulsive kiss. He inhaled as he took and took of her until she felt he’d drawn her essence inside him. The warm, moist firmness of his lips, the way they plucked at hers, massaged, kneaded, shot tremors from her lips to her core. Then he exhaled and thrust deep, flooding her with his taste and scent.

Each kiss he gave her was new, different, giving her more and more. It was as if, through every press and glide and thrust, he was fathoming her preferences, many she didn’t know herself, deciphering the code of her responses, the combination to unlock the pleasure her body had the potential to feel and never had.

She’d become addicted from the first exposure, had felt hollow knowing she’d never have more.

She did now. Could have far more if she dared. Again.

His rejection still reverberated in her marrow.

She recoiled from the echo of anguish just as he released her, sat down heavily in his chair, threw his head back and closed his eyes, veins standing out in his corded neck.

He let out a slow, ragged breath and opened his eyes. Streaks of brilliant blue radiation seemed to sweep over her and through her with unbridled carnality. “In the interest of self-preservation, let’s drink our concoction and discuss your offer.” He sat forward, linked his hands. “So, what makes your offer different? You advertized your certainty that I couldn’t refuse it.”

She blinked. “I only said that to Gerald Whittacker as he wanted to champion my request but wanted to make sure I was on to something that wouldn’t be a waste of your time. I didn’t think he’d relay it to you.”

“How do you know Gerald?”

She set her teeth. “How do you think?”

He sighed. “I admit, I thought…the worst. At first.” She bristled, and his eyes gentled. “Now I’m just curious, not suspicious.”

She searched his face. There was no trace of the distrust and condemnation that had destroyed her the day he’d walked away.

Something inside her broke down in relieved sobs.

She bit her lip on the surge of moronic elation. “He used to be Dad’s golf instructor before my dad’s condition worsened, and before Gerald made his fortune. I earned myself a soft spot in his heart by running my own heart out retrieving balls for him.”

He closed his eyes, tipped his head and smiled, as if he were watching something funny and endearing across his lids. When he opened his eyes, they were filled with something far more dangerous than passion, suspicion or anger. Tenderness.