THE TASTE OF Alisha’s mouth—so potently sweet, so addictively warm—clung to Dante’s lips even a fortnight later. Through meetings with the Japanese team over negotiating a multibillion-dollar contract supplying steel spread over ten years, through board meetings that he and Ali attended together to present a united front to Nitin and the rest of the board members, through endless evenings when Dante caught her in the sitting room of his flat before she disappeared into the darkroom on the lower floor.
She’d been so dainty, so fragile, trembling like a leaf when he’d clasped his arm around her waist, when he’d pressed his palm into her slender back to pull her closer…but her passion had been voracious, honest, a force of its own.
He’d just meant to touch his lips to hers in a quick press. He’d meant to keep it platonic.
But thinking Alisha would behave when she could wreak mischief on the whole situation, when she could use the moment to challenge him, to pay him back for surprising her with the press, had been his first mistake.
Imagining that the attraction between them would wither away if he continued to ignore it, his second.
Just as Dante had predicted, the media and the world exploded at the shots he’d had his PR team release.
The Kiss, as it was being referred to by the entire world, had taken the media by storm.
Except the kiss hadn’t turned out to be the perfectly set up shot he’d planned. No, it was a minute-long clip that had gone viral already on a million websites, as one of the most candidly romantic shots.
Especially because he looked ravenously hungry for her, because in his adult life, he’d never once lost himself in a woman like that. Ali had gotten what she wanted. The whole world believed she’d brought him to his knees.
Dante couldn’t even blame the press for sensationalizing the story. The defiant tilt of Ali’s chin as she pressed herself to his body brazenly, the hunger and passion in that moment… His lower body tightened every time he watched it—like a teenager watching his first porn video.
One glance at the clip and he had an erection.
Dios mio, it consumed him night and day. It came to him when he saw her lithe body in those skimpy clothes she paraded around in in the flat. It came to him when they were forced into physical intimacy at any public outing they had to attend as a couple.
It came to him when he simply looked at her mouth.
His entire adult life, he’d thrived on control in every aspect of his life and that meant his libido too. The women he’d chosen to take to his bed—he’d never let lust drive those choices. His affairs—even the short-term ones—hadn’t involved wanting one woman so badly.
They had been more of a quest for release.
Wanting Alisha of course fell into none of the principles he lived by. If it had been just a physical attraction to her—if it was a matter of an itch needing to be scratched because of their history, because, in his entire life, Alisha was the one woman who never seemed to be cowed by him, who challenged his control, who with delicious defiance came toe-to-toe with him—it would have been different.
If she had continued to tease and torment him, if she had used the knowledge of his desire for her as some kind of weapon—damn it, it almost seemed like he half expected and half wanted her to do it—then it would have been another matter altogether.
No, the equally ferocious depth of her desire for him had been a one-off.
In a strange role reversal, she seemed to be the one conducting herself perfectly, a charming socialite wife, a smart charity hostess in the public eye and a polite, courteous stranger under his roof.
The charity was growing from strength to strength now that she had thrown herself into it. She had used the news of their engagement to raise its profile, make connections. Her photography she still held pretty close to her chest. He was getting more and more curious about it, he’d even told her he wouldn’t comment on or mock something that was simply a hobby, but she refused to let him see even a single portrait.
An empty attraction to a woman he didn’t quite admire or even like was an easy matter. But the more days that passed by, the more he saw a different side to Alisha.
The way she’d thrown herself into it over the past couple of weeks was eye-opening.
He’d even dropped in one afternoon, with a valid reason in hand—more papers to sign confirming that she was releasing the voting shares to him—at the office space she’d rented. Alisha had been deep in conversation with the new accounts manager she’d hired, looking at a presentation he knew she’d slaved over for the last week about expansion plans she wanted to take up in the next two years with the new infusion of cash—a dream that her mother, Shanti, had put on hold after she’d left Neel.
He’d found himself smiling when he dropped by in the middle of the day sometimes and found her at the piano, playing old Hindi melodies that he’d heard Neel play many years ago. And when she wasn’t working on the charity, she escaped into her darkroom. He’d been tempted, more than once, to ask her if she was hiding from him. From them.
But asking her meant acknowledging what they were both trying to deny. It meant asking himself a question he didn’t want to probe within himself.
Restlessness plaguing him, he walked to the portrait that hung on the wall in his office. He and Neel had been interviewed for a Business Week article and had posed for the picture.
He looked at the man who’d given him the chance to make something of himself. The man who’d taken him at his word, the man who’d seen and nurtured his work ethic and not the dark shadow of his father’s crime. Neel had given him a chance at a second life, a better life, a new path.
Alisha was Neel’s daughter.
And so Alisha would always be forbidden to Dante, especially for the sort of relationships he had with women.
He had easily bartered for her voting shares because those shares would be used to drive the best interests of the company, but kissing her, touching her, thinking these thoughts of her…
There was a spike in his heartbeat when his phone rang and Alisha’s face lit up the screen. He let it go to voice mail.
Two minutes later, a series of pings came through. An almost juvenile thrill went through him at the thought of those waiting texts.
Spending tonight @ MM
He frowned. MM meant Matta Mansion. The house where she’d refused to stay just a few weeks ago.
The next text was a series of emojis with cake and wine bottles and champagne glasses.
FYI Getting drunk. Won’t return tonight. Don’t freak out. Send Marco tmrw morn. Good night, Dante.
And then a kiss emoji.
He smiled, her irreverence coming through in her texts.
But he didn’t know whether it was simply an FYI as she claimed, or a red herring to hide what she was really up to. He hadn’t missed the fact that she’d been unusually subdued yesterday night too.
He noticed the missed calls from his mother. She called him only a few times a year.
Hurriedly, he looked at the date. He left the office, even as reams of paperwork awaited him, without second thought.
He couldn’t leave her alone, tonight of all nights.
* * *
With its white marble facade and once beautifully maintained grounds, Matta Mansion greeted Dante like an old friend. Dios mio, he shouldn’t have let the house fall into such a state of neglect.
Even though Shanti had already been gone for years with Ali in tow, he knew Neel had kept it in great condition with the hope that she’d come back to him.
Dante had moved out after Vikram had died in that crash and Ali had left London. Neel had treated him as another son, but it hadn’t felt right to be there without them.
A lot of good things had happened in his life here. He’d found solid ground to stand upon, belief in himself after his life crashed and burned, all thanks to Neel’s generosity.
But Alisha… For the first time since she had walked into the mansion—a thirteen-year-old girl with a haunting ache in her eyes and a defiant distrust of her father, her brother and himself—he saw it from her point of view.
How scared and lost she must have been. How, lost in his own grief, every action Neel had taken regarding her had been neglectful and alienating and sometimes downright cruel.
Neel had never hugged his daughter. He’d never reassured her that he wanted her in his life. And when she’d started acting out, he’d cut communications, he’d had Dante implement his decisions for Alisha.
Dante had been blind to it all.
His wife, Shanti’s, death had hit his mentor hard. Dante had never pried into why she’d walked out on Neel with her daughter in tow. He had automatically assumed that it had been somehow Shanti’s fault.
God, even then, he’d been a distrusting cynic.
You three had each other. Who did I have?
They were there for me when I was lost and alone.
Those words haunted Dante as he slid his Mercedes through the electronic gates and into the courtyard.
She had no good memories of this place. And yet, she was here tonight.
For once, Dante wanted to be what Alisha needed. He wanted to care for her.
What he felt in his chest didn’t feel like some misguided sense of loyalty. The knot of anticipation as he walked in through the foyer and took the stairs up the winding staircase didn’t feel like responsibility.
The thrill that coursed through his blood, the swift punch of desire tightening every muscle as he opened the door to her old bedroom and found Alisha on the floor, leaning against her white princess bed, her head bowed, her knees pulled up to her chest, didn’t feel like pity for a girl he should have tried to understand better back then.
She’d turned on the lamp on the side table next to her and the soft pink walls created a glow around her leaving the rest dark. A bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses lay in front of her. In her hand was a framed photograph of her mother, more on the floor.
Of Neel with Dante and Vikram.
Of Neel with her, both of them stiff and unbending.
Of Dante and her, at one of the parties that Neel had insisted on throwing.
She looked so painfully alone that a wave of tenderness swept through him. But even that couldn’t arrest the swift rush of desire.
A pale pink spaghetti strap top and shorts, her usual attire, bared her shoulders. In the glow of the lamp, contrasted by the surrounding darkness, her skin, silky and smooth, beckoned his touch. Her hair rippled every time she took a long breath.
Unwilling to disturb her, he looked around the room he hadn’t entered in years.
A room of her own, built with a domed ceiling and fairy lights, handcrafted furniture custom ordered for her, couture clothes and jewelry, antiques, priceless Indian pieces acquired at royal auctions, modern, light pieces that Shanti herself had favored—Neel had given Ali everything a princess would expect.
But not what she’d so desperately needed.
Affection. Understanding. Love.
Suddenly, in this room she’d perceived as a cage, Dante saw Ali for who she truly was.
The glimpses of vulnerability beneath the brazen facade, the reason she was slaving to save her mother’s charity, the very reason she’d accepted his proposal… Ali lived and breathed emotion as much as he scorned and avoided it.
But even that didn’t send him running.
She looked up at him, and her eyes grew wide. The long line of her throat was bare, the pulse jumping rapidly. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see—”
“If I was dragging your good name through mud and dirt, emboldened by my father’s Scotch? Throwing a wild party with a lot of naked people gyrating on the floor?”
Once those taunting words would have riled him no end. Now, all he saw was the vulnerability she hid under the affected defiance. He removed his jacket, draped it on the bed and joined her on the floor.
She stared at his feet and then up, her gaze touching every inch of his body. Cristo, had she any idea what she was doing to him?
“You remembered to take off your shoes and socks?”
Something mundane. To fill the silence. “Of course. This was my home for years.”
“I…want to be alone. Now that you have confirmed that I won’t cause any bad PR, you can leave.”
He undid his cuffs and rested his hands on his knees. Her eyes followed his every move, her disbelief and something else coloring the silence. “I thought I should join the celebration. How many did we celebrate together?”
“Seven, eight?” Her fingers were tightly furled in her lap. She crisscrossed her legs, giving him a view of her toned thighs. Feeling like a Peeping Tom, he looked away. “I hated each and every one of them, just so you know. That first year, I thought at least for my birthday, he would be mine, just mine. Instead he forced me to share it with you.”
“Neel held me up as an ideal, demanded that you treat me like the demigod I am and so you hated me on principle.”
She made a sound that was half snort and half laugh.
He liked that sound. He liked when she was her flippant, brazen self.
The moment made the thick mass of her hair hit his neck and his shoulders. The side of her grazed him and he tightened every muscle in his body to minimize the contact. He tensed against the pleasure barreling through him.
Still, he didn’t leave.
“It wasn’t all just on principle, Dante. You…you made it—”
He took her hand and squeezed, guilt sitting on his chest like an anvil. He’d been the recipient of a self-indulgent parent’s neglect and yet he hadn’t seen the same in her plight. “I’m sorry for not seeing how alienated and alone you felt in your own home, thanks to me.”
The stillness that came over her was like a seismic shift. Except she didn’t explode. He saw the sheen of tears in her eyes and turned away. She wouldn’t want him to see her like that.
A strange, unbidden, unwanted sentimentality swirled through him tonight and he didn’t want to feed it any more fuel. Seeing Ali in pain, he was sure, would qualify as fuel.
“I… It wasn’t all you,” she whispered. “You just made an easy target. I despised you because you were so close to him and I took every chance I could to show you. And him.”
“Your father was a man with a great vision. But he wasn’t perfect. I’ve been blind to that.”
Another stretch of silence.
“I’m sorry I was so horrible to you. That I burned your Armani suit with those Diwali sparklers, and for shredding important contracts.”
“What about the terror you unleashed on my girlfriend? Melissa? Melody?”
“Meredith,” she corrected with a smirk. “She deserved it. She was horribly snooty.” When he looked at her, she turned her face away. “I had the most humongous crush on you, which is really twisted given how much I hated you.”
“I’m not sure if I guessed that or not. You were…hard to understand.”
Her shoulders shook as she laughed and buried her face in her hands.
“Pour me a glass, si?”
Her fingers trembled as she lifted the decanter and poured him a drink. He took the tumbler from her hands before it slipped to the carpet and turned so that he could better see her.
Her skin glowed golden, the thin bridge of her nose flaring. Her mouth…just the sight of her lips sent desire crashing through him. When had want become need?
He raised his glass. “Happy birthday, Ali. What are you, eighteen now?”
“I’m twenty-six,” she said, bumping him with her shoulder. “You, on the other hand, are what, a hundred and twenty?” When he didn’t answer, she clinked her glass against his. “Happy birthday, Dante.”
He took a sip of the Scotch.
They stayed like that for he didn’t know how long. That current of awareness still pervaded the air, but there was also something else. A comfortable silence. All that shared history finally untangled enough to realize that there was a bond between them.
A new beginning, maybe. A fragile connection.
Something he hadn’t known weighed on his chest for so long seemed to lift. She was her papa’s legacy even if she desperately denied it. And she’d always been his responsibility, even before he’d made her take his name.
* * *
The Scotch was both fiery and smooth as it went down her throat and settled into a warm fire in Ali’s veins. It seemed to open up her senses even more, as if the awareness of Dante sitting next to her, his thighs grazing hers slightly, the masculine scent of him—sweat and cologne and him an irresistible combination—wasn’t enough.
The last thing she’d expected when she’d texted him was to see him here. All day she’d been in a melancholy mood that she hadn’t been able to shake. The charity gala her team was putting together to raise more funds or even the meeting with an agent she desperately wanted to sign—nothing could hold her interest. In the end, she’d called in sick to both, and drifted from place to place all over London, ending up at a quaint coffee shop she used to visit when she’d shared a flat nearby with two girls.
She liked to think of it as her grounding year.
She’d moved away from Matta Mansion, walked away from her father and Vicky and Dante. It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done but also the most liberating.
But even the coffee shop that was like a warm, old friend hadn’t been able to chase away the blues.
She was lonely.
She’d been lonely for a long time now, ever since her mother’s death. The last few years had been better. She’d surrounded herself with friends who cared about her. She’d filled her days with meaningful charity work wherever she lived, in those lulls between her photography stints, but being back in London was unsettling.
No, it wasn’t London.
It wasn’t even this house that her father had built for her mother when they’d been newly married, where painful memories dwelled.
No, this ache in her chest, this constant thrum under her skin, was because of the man next to her. But she couldn’t take a step toward him, she couldn’t bear it if he rejected her, even if this time she wanted to be with him for all the right reasons. She wanted to be with him as a woman who understood herself and her desires and her own shortcomings.
She liked him. A lot.
She liked her father’s protégé who was ten years older than she was and knew all her flaws and vulnerabilities.
She liked the man she’d had a crush on for years.
She liked the man she was married to. If it weren’t so tragic, it would be comic.
Her thoughts swirled, her senses stirred. It was exhausting to feel like this all the time. She couldn’t—
“Are you going to tell me what brought you here tonight?”
She whirled the glass in her hand, watching light reflect and refract through the golden liquid. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes, Alisha. When I ask you a question, usually it’s because I want to know the answer.”
“I don’t… I was feeling melancholy. So I took the bus around most of London today, just…reminiscing. I ended up at this coffee shop I used to go to with friends after I left…to live on my own. I ran into my ex there.”
He didn’t move or even bat an eyelid. But she sensed the stillness that came over him as surely as if a cold frost had blown into the room. “Jai?”
He didn’t remember his own girlfriend’s name but he remembered Jai? “Yes.”
“Ah…you’re pining over him.” Was there an edge to those words that she could detect beneath the control?
“It was a shock to see him, yes. But out of all the decisions I made then, Jai was… He was a good influence on me. He made me see that just because I didn’t do that apprenticeship didn’t mean I had to give up photography. When he saw me today, he gave me a quick hug, all open smiles. Talked about his start-up, congratulated me on my news—”
“Your news? Did that agent sign you on? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Putting her glass away, Ali stood up, scooted onto the bed and leaned against the headboard. Dante stood up in a lithe move, a tic in his tight jaw as he looked at her.
“What? I’m getting a crick in my neck turning to see your face and my bottom is falling asleep on the floor.” She patted the place next to her on the bed and smiled, faking a brazenness she didn’t feel. “I won’t bite, Dante.”
He said nothing. Just stared at her for a few more seconds, then sat down near her feet.
“I haven’t heard from the agent. I actually haven’t sent him my portfolio yet.”
“Why not? You’ve been in your darkroom for hours and hours this week.” He took her hand in his. “You are scared of being rejected.”
She shrugged. Yes, she was. “No one’s ever seen my work.”
“And you’ll never know where you stand unless you send it.” He looked at her hand in his, his voice husky, his head bent down. Her fingers itched to sink into his hair. “What was Jai congratulating you about then?”
“Our wedding. He was congratulating me on…” She compulsively turned the ring on her finger. “This.” Jai had been genuinely happy for her, that she’d finally achieved her heart’s desire, he’d said.
When she’d looked at him blankly, he had smiled understandingly.
You think I didn’t know? I liked you, Ali, really. But even for the few months we were together you had too much baggage. Too much… You were fixated on him. On Dante. He was all you talked about. His personal life, his relationship with your father, his relationship with you. It was clear that Dante would always be the primary man in your life. You were half in love with him, as much as you continuously claimed that you hated him.
She’d always wondered why Jai had ended their relationship. But she’d moved on easily. She’d wanted to travel, she’d wanted to focus on photography. Today, his answer had shaken her.
She’d been fixated on Dante back then, yes, but that wasn’t love. What the hell did she know about love anyway?
For the rest of the day, Jai’s words had haunted her. Now she saw it.
The melancholy that had gripped her, it was an ache to be with Dante.
To spend time with him in comfortable silence like now, or trading snappy comebacks, to discuss stoicism and pop culture—three guesses who was into which—to laugh with him, to understand what drove that razor-sharp mind and fueled that ambition, to touch him, to have the freedom to run her hand over his cheek whenever she wanted, to sink her fingers into his thick hair, to press her mouth to his in a quick kiss every time he got that brooding look in his eyes…
To be just a woman with him. A woman he liked and respected and wanted. Their lives were intricately twined now, for the first time seeing each other clearly and her feelings consumed her.
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “You were right. I…I think I’ll move back here. There’s just more room here and once the novelty of our announcement dies down, it’s not like the media can see if we’re spending our nights together in one room. I mean, in the same house. We both work insane hours anyway.”
In the dim light of the lamp, his scowl was downright ferocious. “What?”
“As big as your flat is, it’s…like living in each other’s pockets. This way, we’ll have more freedom, more…space.”
“More space to do what, precisely? See your ex again? Should we expect him to come knocking on the door any moment now? Is that why you wanted me to leave?”
She jumped off the bed, fury burning away that achy longing. “That’s unfair. The last thing I’d do is have a secret affair while the whole world is crowing about our wedding as the most romantic thing in the decade. Not that you deserve my…fidelity. I just can’t do this anymore.”
She turned to leave the room, to leave his unfair comments to himself, but he grabbed her arm.
Ali ended up against him, his legs straddling her hips, her hands on his chest. He rubbed her back gently, his breath feathering over her forehead. The scent of him made her skin tight. The incredible warmth of his body made hers hum.
She wanted to stay like that the entire night. An entire lifetime.
His hands were gentle as he clasped her cheek, a slumbering warmth in his eyes. “If it’s the agent, I’ll make some calls. If it’s the charity that worries you, don’t. And if it’s the media scrutiny that’s bothering you, it will die down soon.
“You’re…you’re so much his daughter, Alisha. Driven and grounded. I was wrong to think you were a spoiled princess. Whatever the problem is, I’ll fix it. I owe it to Neel to do right by you.”
Just like that, he tramped all over Ali’s budding feelings. She didn’t want his loyalty or his sympathy because she was her father’s daughter. She wanted him to see her. Alisha. “It’s you.” The words tumbled out of her mouth. “You make this all strange and wrong and hard. I feel like I signed away more than those blasted voting shares.”
Shock filled his eyes. Slowly he pulled his hand away. “I would never harm you, Ali.”
She nodded. He didn’t get it. He would never get it. Ambition and goals and reputations, those things he understood. Matters of the heart were a different matter.
She was terrified that slowly, irrevocably Dante was stealing hers. And if she didn’t stop it, if she didn’t steel herself against him, if she was foolish enough to offer it to him, he would crush it into a thousand pieces.
Still, she asked. “Are you happy to pretend that kiss didn’t change anything between us?”
After a long time, he blinked slowly, tension pulling at his mouth. “Yes.”
She fisted her hands. “I don’t have your self-control, nor do I want to suppress every little thing I feel when I genuinely like you. I can’t live with you and pretend as if I don’t want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.”
She pressed her mouth to his, every breath in her bracing for him to push her away. His lips were soft and firm. Scooting closer on her knees, hands on his shoulders, she tasted the skin just under his ear, felt the shudder that moved through his hard body.
He tasted like heat, like heaven, like homecoming.
When he gripped her hands to push her away, she trailed her tongue up to his jaw, alternating with nips and bites until she reached the sexy hollow of his throat. She pressed her tongue against that hollow, feeling his pulse inside her. Feeling the power of his body inside her. “Tell me the truth just once. Tell me you don’t want me and I’ll do whatever you ask. I’ll never talk about this again.”
Without waiting for an answer, she nipped his skin, hard, long, with her teeth. He growled, a drawn-out erotic sound. The tips of her breasts grazed his chest and she let his hard body take even more of her weight. Tipsy, drunk, delirious, she felt a buzz at his harsh breaths. She pushed her hand down his broad chest, over the hard ridge of his abdomen to his belt and below. His breath was like the bellows of a forge in her ears.
Her hand found the waistband of his trousers and then the zipper. Belly clenching, she traced the hard ridge pressing up beneath the fabric. Up and down, just with one finger, until he grew harder and longer beneath her touch. Nerves tight, she covered him with her palm. His shaft twitched against her hand, making her mouth dry.
God, an incredibly unbearable erotic rush filled her very veins. He was that hard for her. She could have died and gone to heaven, just for that.
He gripped her wrist like a tight manacle, stilling her. But he didn’t push her away. And Ali pushed her advantage.
Sinking her fingers into his hair, straddling his hard thighs, she pressed shamelessly closer. Their mingled groans rent the air as his hardness pressed against her sex at just the right spot.
Rough hands tugged her by her hair and then he was kissing her with a ferocious hunger that matched her own. Teeth banged as he plunged his tongue inside her mouth and dueled with hers. His tongue thrust and withdrew from her mouth, making her sex clench. Whorls of sensation built in her lower belly. The kiss whipped her senses into a frenzy.
Mouth open, he left damp patches on her throat. His lips soothed while his teeth bit, and soon Ali was sobbing for more. She pulled his hands from her hips to her breasts, the tips aching for his touch. “Please, Dante…more.”
She didn’t care that she was begging. That she was raw and vulnerable and all the things she’d promised herself she wouldn’t be with him. But whatever madness had her in its grip seemed to hold him too.
Still holding her gaze, he brought his mouth down to her neck, to the upper curve of her breasts. “Pull your T-shirt up.”
Fingers trembling, Ali did it. He traced the seam of the white lace with his tongue, a dark fire in his eyes. Transfixed, Ali watched as his rough mouth found the peak jutting up lewdly against the thin silk fabric.
His fingers were so unbearably gentle when he pulled the lace cup down. Her breast popped out, jutted up by the tight wire of her bra, the peak tight and begging for his attention.
Breath hung in her throat as he closed those sinuous lips around it. She jerked her hips against his when he pressed his tongue against her nipple and grazed his teeth over its surface.
She moaned, and twisted her hips in mindless abandon when he sucked her nipple and the curve of her breast into his mouth. The pulls of his mouth, the thrust of his hips, the press of him against her core…sensation upon sensation built in her lower belly. She was moaning, she was panting. He used his teeth against the plump tip and Ali felt like she was lifting out of her body.
She thrust against him, shameless in her pursuit for release, her thighs in a death grip around his hips, her fingers holding his mouth to her chest, her heart beating like a fluttering bird against its cage.
Relentless waves of pleasure beat down over her, drenching her sex in wetness. Her throat felt hoarse from all the screaming. She hid her face in his shoulder, a strange joy fluttering through her veins.
A torrent of curses ripped from Dante, puncturing the deafening silence around them with a contained violence. He dislodged her onto the bed.
He ran a hand through his hair, standing against the door, his chest heaving, a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. His hair was sticking out at all angles because she’d pulled and tugged at it to her heart’s content while he’d made her body sing.
“Cristo, this is your childhood bedroom, in his house!”
The aftershocks of her orgasm unfurled through her pelvis even as tears filled her eyes.
No, damn it, she wasn’t going to cry. She’d wanted what had happened, she wanted a lot more. But neither was she going to enter into a cycle of self-pity. She wasn’t going to beg him to give this thing between them a chance.
She’d shown him, told him what she wanted. Now, it was up to him. She had far too much self-respect to beg a man to act on what he clearly felt for her.
Ali pulled herself up on the bed.
His head jerked up at that moment, the shadow of his hunger for her still in his eyes.
Dark color slashed his razor-sharp cheekbones as that hot gaze drifted down to her breasts. Her nipples were swollen and tight from his fingers, from his mouth. His evening shadow had left a mark on the upper slopes.
Chin tilted, Ali faced him. Her insides were a gooey, painful knot, while her hands shook. Holding his gaze, she hooked her bra together and pulled the straps into place, adjusting the cups at the front. It was a push-up bra, designed to create cleavage.
And still, he stared. She looked around for her T-shirt and pulled it on. Then she raked her hands through her hair, hair he’d tangled by pulling it while he plundered her mouth.
There wasn’t a part of her body on which he hadn’t left an impression. Just the memory of his erection rocking into her was enough to send a sweet ache between her legs.
“Ali—”
“It happened. I’m not sorry it did. With all the pheromones running wild in my system right now, I think it’s impossible to regret that.” She held his gaze, for the first time since she’d seen him as a thirteen-year-old, hiding nothing from him. “It was the most amazing experience of my life with a man I like, I respect and I want. Don’t cheapen it, don’t tell me why it’s wrong. Don’t take this away from me.”
He walked toward her with each of her words. Ali flinched when he clasped her cheek reverently, when he rubbed his thumb over her lower lip. “Do you know, that’s the first time in a long while that I’ve forgotten what I stand for? Seeing you come apart like that…” Naked desire filled his eyes. “I’ve never lost my mind like that. I’ve never wanted a woman so much that it’s messing with my work, never. The passion in your kiss, the honest desire in your eyes, the sounds you make when you climax…they will haunt me for the rest of my life. For all my fortune, you’re the one thing I can’t afford.”
Ali braced herself, like a leaf in a cool autumn wind. Whatever emotion she’d spied in his eyes drained away, leaving that cool, unflappable mask. “You and me, this can’t go anywhere. I don’t do relationships and doing this with you, when I know I can’t give you anything else…that will just make me the kind of man I spent my whole life trying not to be.”
“What kind of a man would that be? A man who feels emotion, a man who clearly cares for those around him, a man capable of far more than he lets himself give?” Ali demanded. Her own strength surprised her. But then, Dante had always been capable of pushing her.
His eyes flared, something almost like fear in them. God, she was being delusional. What could a man like Dante fear?
“I deserve at least an explanation after that orgasm you gave me.”
This time it wasn’t fear, but self-disgust. “If I take you tonight, just because I want you, because you want me, knowing that all I can give you is a cheap, torrid affair under the guise of this marriage, it’s a betrayal of all the trust your dad gave me.”
“Papa has nothing to do with this.”
“Neel will always have everything to do with me and you, Ali,” he shouted the words at her. Self-disgust painted his features harsh. “If I screw you against the wall, here in his house, it makes me the same selfish bastard as my father was.”
“Jesus, Dante, your father fleeced thousands of euros from innocents. How can you say you’re the same?”
“I’ll be the same because you’re innocent and I’ll have given in to my basest desires. And all I’ll do is take what you give and then discard you when I tire of you. What I want from you—the only thing I want from you—are those voting shares. And you’ve already given them to me.”
The cruel finality of his words pierced Ali like nothing else she’d ever experienced. How could it hurt so much when it was what she’d expected?
When she didn’t really know what she wanted from him?
It felt like giving up but she nodded anyway. Survival instinct took over.
She stiffened when he took her hands in his and pulled her into his arms. The tenderness of his embrace stole her breath. Earlier, it had been the way he’d played her body, made her mindless, and now this side of him…
Who knew there was so much depth to the hard man he showed the world? Who knew that even his rejection would only make her like him even more?
She felt his mouth at her temple, the long breath he drew in her hair, the slight vibrations that seemed to shake his shoulders. Her arms went around his waist loosely, for he was the safest place she’d found in a long time. “I understand why you want to leave the flat. But for now, for tonight, will you please come home with me, Alisha? I can’t… It would eat me up to leave you here. Do this for me. Por favor, bella mia.”
Ali laughed into his neck, even as her tears seeped out and soaked into his skin. Raw vulnerability cloaked her and still, it seemed what had happened, what he said couldn’t happen, couldn’t puncture the bond that had formed between them.
“What?”
Tilting her head back, she looked at him. Stared into his eyes. Her chest ached at the concern she saw in them. How had she ever thought him uncaring? “I didn’t think you knew that word.”
He smiled back at her, lines at his eyes, teeth flashing. “I know it.” His gaze swept over her face, as if he couldn’t help himself. “I just didn’t think there would come a day when I would say it to you.”
Still smiling, Alisha withdrew from his hold. Shying her gaze away, she packed up her things into her tote bag. “Just for that, I’ll make sure you say it again and again to me. In fact, I’ll make sure, somehow, I make you beg, Dante.”
She walked out of her teenage bedroom without looking back, feeling as if she’d grown a thousand years in just one evening, wishing Vikram was here to hug her, wishing Papa was here to hold her in her confusion, wishing she weren’t falling for Dante.
Wishing, once again, in the very same house like she’d done all those years ago, that she could change Dante’s mind, that she was enough, wishing he cared about her more than he did.