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“One night, Julienne.”
“You say that as if you imagine I might have started making a hope chest.” She tossed her head with that same defiance and a streak of temper, too. “I assure you, Mr. Cassara, this is a sexual invitation. That’s all.”
“One night,” he said again.
“I heard you the first time.”
“It bears repeating,cara. I would hate for there to be any...confusion.”
And he watched as another streak of temper made her toffee-colored eyes darken.
“How patronizing.” And she scowled at him as if he wasn’t caging her against the wall. “I’m the one who propositioned you, in case you’re the one who’s confused. Twice, now. Perhaps that’s what bears repeating.”
“The only word I wish you to repeat is my name,” he told her, low and dark, and leaned in then to get the scent of her in his nose. Sweet and hot at once. His pulse thickened, beating hard into his sex. “No more of thisMr. Cassarawhen we are naked.Cristiano, please. Shout it, sob it, scream it. All are acceptable. And all bear endless repeating, as I think you’ll find soon enough.”
And he was so close he could see her delicate shiver.
“How sure you seem that you won’t be the one crying out my name.” Julienne smirked at him. She actually daredsmirkat him. “Particularly when we have yet to establish if there’s the slightest bit of chemistry between us. Perhaps there will be nothing here but apologetic grimaces and embarrassment.”
“My mistake,” Cristiano said.
He didn’t argue the point.
He moved closer and took her mouth with his.
No finesse. No gentility or politeness. Simple, potent greed.
He took what he wanted, a bold mating of lips and tongues. He tasted her, he took her, providing a comprehensive example of precisely the kind of demands he meant.
He didn’t go easy on her at all.
And she met him, his Julienne. She pushed herself off the wall, twined herself around him, and the fire of it roared through him. The gut punch, hot and mad, slammed into him. It made him question the limits of his own control, when he prided himself on never, ever losing his grip—
When he pulled away, his own breath was hard to catch. Her eyes had gone dark and wide, and Cristiano wanted nothing on this earth but to bury himself inside her, again and again.
Assuming he lived through the single night he would allow her.
The single night he would allowhimself.
And as he fought to find his control again, he wondered, for the first time in his life, if one night would be enough.
A sentiment that should have sent him reeling. Running for the hills, but her taste was in his mouth. Sweet and salt, all woman, and he thought it entirely possible that she might be the undoing of him, after all.
The mad part of it was, he couldn’t seem to care.
“One night,” he said again, rougher this time. Because he was talking to himself. “That’s all I have to offer.”
“All you have to offer me? Or all you have to offer, in general?”
He didn’t know how she knew to ask him that.
But the grief was always in him, the shame his constant shadow, and he told himself that was what made him reach over and run his thumb over her full, tempting lower lip. He wanted to sink his teeth into her. He wanted to breathe her in, then get his mouth where she was sweetest.
“Does it matter?”
He watched her chest rise, then fall. He could see her nipples, tight and hard beneath the silk blouse she wore. He caught the faintest hint of her arousal and his mouth watered.
“One night,” she agreed. Almost solemnly. But then she smiled. “But I hope you don’t have performance anxiety. It would be depressing if you failed somehow to live up to all this hype.”
