AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His heart twisted with another feeling he’d never suffered from. Guilt. Total honesty was the one thing he couldn’t offer her. He couldn’t come clean about his initial plot to use her to get close to the Accardi family. He doubted even her pragmatic nature could forgive that. Even if it did, he feared her spontaneity with him wouldn’t survive the revelation.
But he couldn’t bear that she thought herself his inferior, that she expected nothing but impermanence and limitations as her due.
Itching to shake her out of those beliefs, he took her by the shoulders, groaning with the pleasure of her response, of touching her again.
“I’ll say this once more and never again, Liliana. You are not only absolutely wrong in how you value yourself, but you appallingly underestimate my desire for you. I’ve never wanted anything like I want you. As for why I do, let me enlighten you. I want you because of everything you are. Every single thing about you fascinates me, elates me, inflames me. I adore your candor, and your wit leaves me with the bends. Your mind delights me and everything else about you, every gesture and breath and inch, makes me want to devour you. I’m the one who worries that once you come closer, it might be you who loses interest.”
To say she looked incredulous was as accurate as saying she was reticent. But those eyes he’d been lost without flared with renewed life with his every word. Now their blaze made him almost give up any pretense of control.
But it was she who mattered here, and he had to make her feel secure. “All this doesn’t only equalize our positions, Liliana, it makes me the supplicant. As such, I have no expectations. It’s you who’ll state your terms, set your parameters and every other thing you wish for in our intimacies.”
Growing excitement glinted in her eyes. “What if I make outrageous demands?”
“I will welcome anything.” His lips twisted as he surveyed the caring and generosity filling her expression, what he knew made up most of her being. “Though I doubt you’d ask for anything. You don’t have a selfish or greedy cell in your body.”
“I don’t know about that, but I’d never make any demands. I want you free of obligations, for they have no place between us. I want you, and if you want me, for me, I’ll be with you. Until it no longer makes you and therefore me happy.” He started to object, furious that her insecurity about him hadn’t been appeased, but she overrode him. “What I want to renegotiate is our professional situation. As my boss...”
He groaned his frustration at her evasion. “Will you please forget that? I’m no longer your boss. I gave you back full control over your work.”
“Did you do that only to please me? To remove the obstacle of the boss/employee dynamic between us?”
He shook his head. “I do want to please you, Liliana, and remove all barriers between us, but I would have found another way to do so if I didn’t believe your work held more merit than mine, given that you’re so much further ahead in your research. I only attempted to force you to relinquish it initially as a demonstration of dominance. But not only am I now giving you absolute autonomy, I’m here to turn the whole lab over to you.”
She staggered back. “Holy one-eighty, Antonio.”
He caught her closer again, needing to convince her. “That’s how you make me feel, Liliana. Like nothing I ever cared about matters anymore. Nothing but you, but us, matters to me now.”
“Even so, you don’t toss a two hundred-million-dollar lab at me to prove it. I told you I’m not partner material, and you want to make me director?”
“Even if you lack management skills, your scientific knowledge and your insight into your colleagues make you perfect for the job. I’ll provide you with support staff who’ll deal with the executive and financial issues. But in every other way, you’ll make a far better boss than I can be for this place.”
“Okay, time-out.” She held her hands in the famous gesture. “You’re clearly suffering from an extreme case of U-turn. So it’s up to me to moderate you until you level out.” He reached out to her hands, but she grabbed his instead. “Now listen, Antonio. I’m not taking this carte blanche or any other offer you come up with. And that’s final. I only wanted to reach a common ground where both my goals and your interests could be met. I wish nothing more than to realize them both in a way that’s the most beneficial for everyone.”
As he looked into her earnest eyes, it was at this moment that Antonio realized something monumental.
What he felt for her.
Exactly what his brothers described they felt for their soul mates.
Love.
Seven
Love.
The word echoed in Antonio’s mind as he stared at Liliana, who continued to detail how the common professional ground she was suggesting would work.
It had to be love. It was. This pure, limitless emotion.
But how? When he’d been in her presence only a handful of times? When he’d lived his life believing he didn’t even have a heart?
But as he looked into her eyes and saw clear to her soul, saw what had delighted and spellbound him from the first, he knew.
Time was irrelevant. And he now did
have a heart.
Liliana had planted one inside him.
