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“Why didn’t you go back to your parents after Serena left? Why start from scratch, Stefan?”
Thunder dawned in his gaze. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
“We’re talking about what made us who we are today.” Kneeling in front of him, she clasped his cheeks when he would have moved away. “We’re talking about you and me, no one else.”
Tension seethed in his shoulders but Clio held on to him. “Serena walked away from me because I was nothing without my parents’ fortune. She made me question my very belief in myself. I was determined to prove her wrong, determined to make the fortune she wanted all on my own. Pride and shame, bella, I was drowning in them so much that I hurt my parents for so many years.”
The flash of pain that wreathed his features pierced through her. That it could still affect him so much...
“After all these years, do you not still realize it is her loss, Stefan? To walk away from you because your parents disowned you, to leave a man like you behind...”
God, he had loved that undeserving woman so much, with all of his heart. To have a man like Stefan love her unconditionally like that... Clio couldn’t imagine what it could even be like. The very thought had such a mesmeric, compelling quality to it that her entire being resonated with it.
She kissed his mouth, heat and tenderness and affection and a hundred other things rushing out of her on a wave she couldn’t curtail. “That woman was a first-class moron, if I may say so.”
A smile curved his mouth. “Wow... Are you sure you don’t need to wash out your mouth?”
“Oh, don’t encourage me, Bianco. It could get a lot dirtier, believe me. The reason I liked Aunt Grace so much was because she had no problem cursing in front of kids either.”
“I can’t wait, bella.”
Clio laughed against his mouth, a river of joy flooding her.
As if it was as natural as drawing breath, he captured her mouth with his. Molten heat uncoiled in every nerve, every muscle. It was as if her body knew what he could give, and craved it.
Tongues dueling, lips scraping against teeth, in a matter of seconds, they were both breathing hard.
Somehow, Clio had climbed into his lap and was straddling his erection. With a moan, she moved, the crease of her sex rubbing against his, sending erotic tingles through her lower belly.
Cursing, Stefan locked her hips before she could do it again. Color bled into his cheekbones, his nostrils flaring. “As much as I would love nothing but to be inside your wet heat, bella, I want to hear your story more.”
Sighing dramatically, Clio smiled. “Oh, to be denied sex for a story... Your libido and prowess has been overestimated by the media, Bianco.”
He bit her lower lip as punishment and a hundred nerves jangled within Clio. “The sooner you tell me, the sooner you can have me, Mrs. Bianco.” His grin was so natural, so filled with that openness he had possessed so long ago that her breath caught in her throat. “Any way you want.”
“Fine. But don’t forget your promise.”
It was the first time he had actually smiled after a conversation about Serena and the poison she had spewed in his life. For that smile, she could give up all the money in the world.
Clio hugged the fact to herself like a proud accomplishment.
“What about the money your aunt Grace bequeathed you, bella?”
Knowing that his mood was going to worsen, Clio slipped off him and got to her feet. “I met Jackson a few years later. Until then I put Aunt Grace’s money in a CD that I couldn’t break for five years. It had matured a year after I met him. And he talked me into investing it in his hedge fund company.”
The room went from warm to ice-cold in a matter of seconds.
Uncoiling his huge frame from the bed, Stefan reached her. “And?”
“I have known it for a while at the back of my mind from the bits and pieces I have heard him mutter about over the last year. And I have seen proof of it now. He lost most of the investors’ money.”
“That’s a risk you take with hedge funds, bella.” Pulling her to him, he wrapped his arms around her. “I’m so sorry you lost the money she gave you, Clio. I’m sorry he deceived you in so many ways.”
Clio went into his embrace as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. And the fact that he had done something nonsexual and intimate without reservation, it blunted the shock of realizing another level to Jackson’s deception.
That something her aunt had given her out of love was now lost to her hurt more than the fact that she was basically penniless. Again.
