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Cristiano followed an urge he would normally have tamped down, hard, and reached across the scant inches between them. He fit his hand to the curve of her cheek, and traced his way down the delicate line of her neck to find the hollow of her throat. Then, lower, to the soft skin visible in the open neck of her silk blouse that hinted at her breasts below.
And watched in a dark delight as she flushed, bright and hot.
The precise shade of her nail polish.
“I do not do entanglements,” he told her severely. Though he was questioning himself already, as the heat in her skin shot through him, pooling in his sex. His body was tight, ready. And suddenly, it was as if he’d spent years wanting nothing more than to drive himself deep and hard inside her. “I like sex, Ms. Boucher. But I do not traffic in emotional displays.”
Her breath was choppy and her eyes were hot, but her voice was cool when she spoke. “I hope I have never given you reason to imagine that I was particularly emotional.”
“The boardroom is not the bedroom.”
“Indeed it is not. Or you would have found me distinctly indecent, long before now.”
He liked the notion of that. And suddenly there were too many images in his head of missed opportunities in the office...the kinds of images he never allowed to pollute his mind. The kinds of images he kept behind the walls of all those compartments inside him, because to lose those separations was to become too much like his father. When he wanted instead to be like his grandfather, the man who had taught him how to build partitions. And use them.
But walls were coming down all around them tonight.
“You have always struck me as a woman who likes to be in charge.” He continued to trace an absent pattern this way and that, in and around her low collar, drawing in the wild heat she generated. And far too aware of each breath she took. “But I’m afraid I am far too demanding for that.”
Julienne shivered, as if the prospect of his demands was too delicious to bear, and he thought he might actually eat her alive. Here and now. Hoist her up on the bar and indulge himself at last.
That would be a bookend, indeed.
“What sort of demands do you mean?” she asked, and her voice changed. Gone was all that coolness, lost in a husky sort of heat that he could feel like a caress, there where he hungered for her the most.
It made him think of dark rooms, deep sighs.
He shifted again, and looked around, trying his best not to surrender to that drumming thing inside him. His blood, his pulse.
His need and his hunger.
Not cut out of him, as he’d believed all this time. But waiting.
Only waiting for a woman who dared.
But despite the riot inside him and the delicious idea he’d had concerning the bar, this was not the place to indulge himself. There were too many unfriendly eyes that watched his every move, especially in the moneyed halls of Monte Carlo, where too many well-fed enemies would leap at the chance to see and exploit his weaknesses.
Or his wants.
To Cristiano’s mind, they were the same.
He took Julienne’s hand in his and then he tugged her behind him, leading her back out of the dimly lit bar and into the hotel proper. He didn’t look back at her. He didn’t need to. He could see her in the mirrors they passed, looking flushed and ready.
He felt the pulse of greed deep in his sex.
Instead of leading her out into the grand lobby that was filled with guests and tourists alike, he moved deeper into the hotel. Then branched off into one of the smaller marble halls festooned with luxury shops. He kept going until he found an alcove, tucked between a shop filled with disgracefully overpriced perfume and another stocked entirely with nonsensical shoes.
And once there, away from prying eyes if not entirely private, he backed her to the wall. Then propped himself over her there, one hand on either side of her head.
Cristiano watched, rapt, as she fought for breath.
How had he failed to trulyseeher all this time?
“Any and all demands,” he said, finally answering her question. What demands,indeed. He could write a book or two and it would only skim the surface of the things he wanted. Needed. And would demand of her. “I like things the way I like them. Is that a problem for you?”
“I’ve been taking your orders for ten years.”
He liked the way her eyes flashed. He liked that simmering defiance, right there beneath her cool exterior. He wanted to lick up all that elegance and see how she burned.
