Olivia Gates – The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress: The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress (страница 10)
After a couple of dropped beats, it burst into another stumbling gallop that pushed no blood to her head, that left her feeling she was teetering on the verge of oblivion.
This wasn’t happening. This
And he was watching her with the same coldness with which he’d once looked at her across the ballroom on that first night. Which made it all crazier. Why was he even demanding this, her, if that was what he really felt toward her?
She struggled to keep hysteria from tingeing her voice and features. “I said that should be entertaining. And it is. You think you’re irreplaceable, don’t you? Well, you’re not. My father is just going through his list of candidates. In case you didn’t know already, you—in spite of your belief in your own indispensability—didn’t rank first there. You merely happened to be third.”
He took another sip of his juice, savored it slowly, made her imagine what he no doubt meant her to, those lips on her every secret, savoring
“You really have an inflated sense of your own importance, don’t you? Figures. Too many billions can do that to a man.”
“When they’re not inherited, and have been gained through legal venues, it’s safe to say they do indicate indisputable personal value.”
“Legal? Are you absolutely certain about that?” The look he gave her sent shivers of alarm, almost fear, zigzagging through her. She’d crossed a line.
She didn’t give an ant’s leg. Just as he didn’t, about her or how she felt. “May you live happily ever after with your indisputable personal value, Signore Selvaggio. We’ll find someone else. Someone who won’t play cheap games when he’s offered something as incalculable as the honor and privilege of the crown of Castaldini.”
The danger in his eyes switched off, but the benevolence in the smile he bestowed on her was far worse. She felt her blood freezing in her arteries. “Good luck with that.”
She stilled, the ice spreading. “What do you mean? And quit being cryptic. If you have something to say, then say it.”
He gave a lazy shrug. “I don’t have anything more to say. You know the rest, even though you’re pretending not to. Contrary to what you accused me of, and unlike you, I don’t play games.”
“What are you
His gaze sharpened, the steel luminosity of his irises flaring and subsiding with the flames of the torches until it seemed that the shifting shadows and golden lights they cast over his face would expose some supernatural entity that his magnificent body housed—one who examined her with brooding, malignant amusement.
Suddenly he threw his head back and laughed—a harsh, ugly sound so unlike his laughter during the past hours. Despite everything, this confirmation of the loss of the illusion of harmony and affinity they’d shared sent regret skewering through her.
“That isn’t true. It can’t be. Someone else w—”
He cut her trembling protest short “—would bring about the end of Castaldini as we know it. No other man of Castaldinian origins or with the prerequisite D’Agostino blood—whether obtained on the right side of the sheets or not—possesses enough power to drive away the kingdom’s external enemies and to defuse the internal conflicts. But I have my own empire, to which I owe my allegiance. On the other hand, even you can work out that I don’t owe Castaldini or its people any measure of that. So don’t play the honor and privilege card with me. I’m not in any way duty or honor bound to take on the responsibility of safeguarding Castaldini’s crown and future. If I’m to accept doing your kingdom that ‘incalculable’ favor, I demand an ‘incentive to sweeten the deal,’ as you put it. And you’re it.”
She stared at him, at the face of his serene cruelty, his absolute certainty, the tremors she’d been struggling to hold back breaking free, starting to rattle her bones.
He went on as if he was auguring something as trivial as a soccer game’s outcome. “If you refuse, you can go back to your precious father and Council with my refusal, and let them pick someone else from the inadequate choices they’ve already rejected for the best of reasons, and let Castaldini go to hell.”
He couldn’t be lying about all this, could he? But maybe he didn’t consider it lying, just maneuvering her by any means necessary to corner her. He was a master manipulator, after all.
And he wasn’t even finished. He went on, and she discovered he’d saved the worst for last. “And when Castaldini is in ruins, maybe becomes some second-rate, exploited annex to one of the surrounding nations panting to drain its riches into their resource-poor, overpopulated, debt-ridden bellies, I’ll still come after you. And I will have you. The crown will be lost, but you’ll be mine in the end, Clarissa.”
She was panting by the time he finished. Quaking. Then it all blurted out of her, all the indignation and distress he’d so expertly inflamed beyond the danger zone. “You’re the one who can get lost, or can go to hell, Ferruccio Selvaggio—or D’Agostino, or whatever your name is. Be sure to take your toxic conceit and cruelty with you. Castaldini will survive without your oh-so-vital intervention, and you’re not coming near me…”
Her tirade choked off into panting silence. It wasn’t because he’d made any threatening move. It was his very tranquility, as he leaned forward, placed his glass on the table then heaved up to his feet, that made her every cell scream with alarm. Each movement was the measured advance of a predator with all the time in the world to pounce on his prey. Then he did.
He stopped by her, leaned down, took her hand and pulled her out of her chair and onto her feet.
“Wh-what are you doing?” she sputtered.
“What I should have done years ago.”
He gave her a firm tug, slammed her against his body. Before she could draw another breath, one of his hands slipped into the hair at her nape, twisted there, immobilizing her head, tilting her face upward, the other trailing a heavy path of possession down to her buttocks. Then, as he held her prisoner, exerting no force but that of his will, he let her see it—the beast he kept hidden under the civilized veneer, its cunning savagery having assured his survival in hell, conquering of it, before being unleashed on this realm. The beast was hungry—and she was the meal it craved.
Holding her stunned gaze, his own crackling with the first unchecked emotions he’d let her see there, he lowered his head.
She felt as if she were in the path of a comet, that she’d disintegrate at impact. At the last moment before his lips took hers, she averted her face in an act of pure survival.
His lips landed on her cheek, at the corner of her mouth, with a chain reaction of insistent, escalating voracity. The feel of his lips on her flesh, the gust of his breath filling her with his scent and virility, left her suffering a widespread synaptic disruption. It was as bad as being a few feet from ground zero. Then he took his destruction to another level.
The hand on her lower back pressed her into him. Before she could deal with the blow of sensations at feeling his arousal against her belly, he relinquished his hold on her head, combed his fingers through her hair, over and over, sending pleasure cascading from every hair root, before that hand caressed her back, on its way to delving beneath her jacket and top.
She moaned a sound she’d never before produced, as the hard heat of his fingers splayed against her back, a part of her she’d never thought sensitive. Every inch of skin he imprinted felt moments away from the spontaneous generation of fire. She jerked away to escape, then pressed back for more. And he took his onslaught to the next level.
His other hand yanked up her skirt, cupped her buttocks through her panties and hauled her up against him. She gasped as she experienced weightlessness for the first time, then gasped louder as he ground the steel of his erection against her melting core. Something scalding rumbled from his depths as he tugged at one thigh, opened her around his hips for better access, splaying her for his thrusts. The hand at her back plastered her heaving chest against his, then he started rubbing against her. Her breasts swelled until they felt they’d burst, until the abrasion of her clothes, his shirt and the power it housed turned her nipples into pinpoints of agony.
She writhed in his hold, whimpered as he ravaged her neck in suckles that would leave their mark, that sent pleasure hurtling through her blood with each savage pull.
All existence converged on him, became him, his body and breath, his hands and mouth, as he tested her flesh and responses, tasted them, took over her will. She was no longer herself, but a mass of needs wrapped around him, open to him, his to exploit and plunder. There was nothing more to hear but his voracious growls and her distressed moans, their thundering blood and strident breathing as he raised her and slid her down his body in leisurely excursions, had her riding his erection through their clothing. Her top had somehow been peeled up and he dipped his head and took her nipples, one after the other, through her bra in massaging nips, sending ecstasy corkscrewing through her.