Bold Beautiful Love -- A Temptation Court Contemporary Romance: Temptation Court: Passion in New York (16 page)

“You? My mother? My father?” she snarls. “Sealed off, signing more contracts that landed you in
this
very position?”

“Which would have made all of it worse, because you’d now be an accessory.” I pull in a deep breath. Drop my head and squeeze the bridge of my nose. “Above and beyond that, Ella, you are
done
with the poison of your parents—”

“
You
do not get to decide that!”

“The hell I don’t. When their bullshit affects
your
happiness and prosperity—”

“My prosperity?” She lifts it to a yell. “My prosperity, dammit, is
you.
” After another growl, swings a hand against the bedpost with an audible
smack
. “And
you
do
not
get to stand there and shatter my heart—my fucking soul!—
again
, and be Mr. Calm, Suave, and fucking Sophisticated about it!”

I take a step. She shoves against the bedpost, widening the space between us.

Shit
.

“Is that what you think?” My riposte is so steeled, I wonder how a choke chain hasn’t appeared around my neck. “Seriously? God
dam
mit, Ella—do you truly think I’m just chillin’ with ‘suave’ and ‘sophisticated’ over here? That I’ve even invited Chantal Dunne and her crew down to record everything because I’ll look so fucking
suave
saying goodbye to the woman I love for God knows how long?”

Not. Smart
.

I know it before the fresh blue blaze in her eyes. Bringing up the gossip TV reporter who outed our relationship to the world two weeks ago is close to knocking her down then booting her in the gut.

“I’m…sorry,” I mutter. “But if you think—”

“No.” Her locked teeth flash at me. “No, Cassian, you are not sorry.”

I approach her again. This time, I don’t care how quickly she scrambles back. There’s only so much space in this room. “Know what,
armeau
? Maybe you’re right.” Tightened jaw. Gaze full of triumph, as she backs against an overstuffed chair centered in front of the bay window. The furniture is positioned perfectly, with panoramic views of the sea and the sweeping cliffs of the island’s south coast. Right now, I don’t care if Atlantis itself is exposed. My concentration is consumed, solely and selfishly, on the woman now just inches away. “Yeah. Maybe you’re
exactly
right. Maybe, ultimately, I’m just a selfish prick. Maybe I have been from the start.”

She blinks rapidly. Shakes as if fighting off a shiver. “Th-that’s not what I said.”

“No. It’s what I said.” I press in on her by half a step. “What I
am
saying.”

Both her hands rise to my chest. They’re still wound into fists. We both note it. “Cassian—”

“We wouldn’t be here right now, in this exact fuck fest, if it wasn’t for me and my selfishness.” I wrap a hand around one of hers. Then the other. Make it impossible for her to uncoil her fingers, despite the twitches betraying how she wants to…

To soothe me.

Touch me.

No. I don’t get to have that right now. God
dam
mit, I should have never seized the right to have
her
.

“You haven’t thought of that, have you?” I grate. “You haven’t considered that if I wasn’t a cocky sonofabitch, so used to having and getting my way, that three days after meeting you, I walked into your parents’ villa carrying the contract that told them I meant to have you. That I’d
pay
for you, like some prize mare at auction—”

“Stop.” She wrestles harder against me. Struggles to be free—to fight me for
my
fucking honor. The woman can’t see that what little I have will soon be devoured by wolves—and that even if those last scraps are an unfair kill,
I’m
the one who supplied the original knife for the slaughter. “Stop it,” she hisses. “Or I will, Creator help me!”

“Great idea.” Fury and frustration hit the override switch at once. I release her with a vicious shove. “Yeah. Fucking awesome idea. You let your creator help you, Mishella, because right now,
I can’t
.”

She keeps her hands balled against her chest. They rise and fall with her desperate breaths. “Sure. That makes all the sense in the world. Because you did nothing to help me by breaking out of prison, only so you could make sure I get back on the damn plane—and fly to the safety you deny
yourself
?”

“Running from this
would be
denial.” I drop my hands. Fist them, battling the urge to rush back to her. To ease this brutal blow by touching her, holding her. But where’s that going to take us both in another hour—except farther down the chasm of pain and heartache? For once, my dick or my heart can’t dictate my actions. There’s too much at stake. “I’d have eight hours with you on the plane—enough time for the CIA to round up their evidence, hand it over to the FBI, then watch while I’m formally arrested as soon as we land at Teterboro.”

Blue diamonds chase each other in her gaze as the gears in her brain clearly churn. Two seconds after she looks back up, she’s a rushing fullback, curvy Arcadian style. “So we do not land at Teterboro.” Her grip is actually strong enough to seize pigskin, as she grabs up my hands again. “Cassian,
please.
Laith will take the plane anywhere we want; you know he will. We can go to Los Angeles or Miami or Kalamazoo—”

“Kalamazoo?” Dear hell. How this woman curates the shit in her gray matter is a constant surprise—and joy.

The diamonds dance now, joyous and sparkling, jolting straight to my cock despite every shitty aspect of this situation. “Have you ever been there?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Good. Me neither. So we go see Kalamazoo, then drive all over Michigan, then—”

I silence her with a kiss. It’s quick, nearly sterile, but I don’t want to let her hands go. So much for resisting the temptation of her touch. Or anything else about her. “Drive all over Michigan…in what? And stay where? And eat what while we do?” I counter gently. “The second I use a credit card or need to access money, they’ll know where I’m at,
armeau
—and they’ll have local law enforcement swooping in on me. And before you go for international options,”—because I can see
that
light already sparking across her face—“remember they are the
CIA
. They can close in on me over foreign soil with even scarier speed.”

Her mouth opens. Clamps shut again. Right before fresh wells of tears brim in her eyes—and she jumps
my
shit with a kiss too.

But the contact isn’t clinical. Or tender.

It’s a push, a punishment, almost an attack. An outpouring of her fear, needing to spill out as her fight, mixed in with the passion and fire and purpose of her love.

And I let her come. As hard, as thorough, and as brutally as she needs. Fuck, I probably even welcome it. Need it. Crave it as a surrogate for the raging frustration and helpless defeat with which I’ve struggled for the last two hours—endured, over and over again, as I’ve reviewed all the details of what information the feds can possibly have enough of to come sniffing with even a hint of charges in this mess. Knowing what they
do
have has absolutely been twisted, reinterpreted, even doctored to skew my innocence.

Knowing that right now, on this island in the middle of nowhere, I’m impotent to do a goddamn thing about it.

“Is there not…any other way?”

And in my mind sounding a hell of a lot like that—only without a husky Arcadian accent. And injected with a few more profanities. Maybe more than a few.

Either way, the woman succeeds, as usual, in scooping thoughts out of my head and right into the center of hers—but then taking them deeper. Weaving them into herself, making them part of her breath, her blood, her soul…then making me a part of them all too.

And in doing so, healing me.

Restoring me.

Completing me.

Do I do the same for her? The question tears at my gut then claws toward my throat, straining to be voiced. I swallow it down. I already know what she’d say—and even thinking of not being here for her already burns my blood like battery acid. Worse. My mind. And my soul.

Especially because I can feel her parents in the very air.

Her parents—who are not done with her by half.

They’re simply biding their damn time. Waiting for me to be out of the picture once more, before descending upon her like killer bees on a blooming rose, ready to strip out her life without care for the destruction they leave behind.

“Cassian.” Her plea cuts into me—through me—along with the desperate curl of her fingers into the front of my shirt. The contact suffuses me with enough warmth to have made the decision worth it.
All
of the decision. Even the part I still have yet to face…

“
Please
, Cassian.” She pulls harder. “Is there
not
any other way?” Her gaze rakes my face. “Any other plan we can consider?” Her fingers follow, tracing the lines of my face through my stubble, spreading to bracket the corners of my eyes. “Any corner of the world we can go…and just
be
?”

For an instant, maybe two, the yearning to nod becomes another choke chain. Resistance becomes a strangle. A
yes
pushes at my lips so violently, my entire jaw aches from holding it back. I grab her closer, ordering myself to focus on the feel of her, the warmth of her, the beautiful island smell of her. This,
all
of this, is what’s going to get me through the hell of what’s to come.

“Cassian?”

Before I can succumb, I shake my head. Shove words out. The right words—spoken with every scrap of my pride and strength.
I am the subject of nobody’s pity.

“No,
raismette
.” I tug her closer, fitting her head atop my heartbeat. “We’re not going to go anywhere.”

She jerks back. Glares up in a mix of supplication and accusation. “Because we cannot?” she levels. “Or because
you
will not?”

Heavy exhalation. “Because I refuse to turn you into a goddamn fugitive.”

“What if that is not your call to make?”

“What if that’s a shitty card to throw?” I ride out her anger, as tangible as a fireball on the air, more than ready with a counterblast. “Let me be completely clear, Mishella DaLysse.” I anchor a thumb beneath her chin. “You are
mine
—and I will never hide it. Because of that, you’ll never hide, either. You will
not
skulk around in some shithole corner of the globe, having to worry about every stranger turning you in, looking over your shoulder every time you so much as step outside the door.”

She absorbs that with a shaky sigh. “But what if—”

“You want that life?” I damn near snarl it. “No. You
don’t
want it. You don’t want it because that is not who you are, dammit. It is not the woman I first met in that reception hall downstairs two months ago, or the person I glimpsed in beautiful little spurts over the three days after that, or the goddess worth scaling a trellis for, just to steal one perfect kiss.”

I add a forefinger to my grip. Yank her face a little higher. My heart jerks too—into the center of my throat. She is so fucking beautiful. Her flawless skin, now bathed in shades of moon glow, is contrasted by the silver-kissed lagoons in her eyes.

Finally, I state, “It sure as hell isn’t the woman who stood before me in her parents’ villa, willing to sign away six months of her life in exchange for a life of freedom—
not
a life of secrecy, pretense, and double truths.”

Her eyes shimmer brighter. The thick tears threaten to brim over. Her chin juts against my hold, defiant and adorably obstinate. “The only truth I need is you.”

“I know,” I grate. “But the truth you
deserve
is much more.” I lift my thumb, tracing the bottom edge of her lip. Committing her soft, smiling bravery to every corner of my memory. “You deserve a life of fulfillment and laughter, of joy and excitement and beauty.” I shift closer to her, because I’m fucking unable to help myself—and getting inside the bubble with her, just one more time, feels too perfect. Completely, irrevocably, right. “You deserve to have breakfast every morning up on the terrace. To wander flea markets on Saturdays and stay in bed half the day on Sundays. You deserve to help Scott tinker with the cars and to go to the spa with Kate, then taunt me with your newly waxed ‘sweet parts’, until you wake me up in the middle of the night to watch a storm roll down the Hudson from our special spot up in the turret…”

Shit.

You
had
to bring up the turret, asshole?

My self-edit is much too late. Ella’s violent sway and silent sob are my punishment. A violent breath into her hair is a piss-poor apology, especially because I hardly mean it. If I’m going to end this night in a jail cell, I’ll selfishly grab a memory as a goodbye gift: the vision of our first night in that tower—one of her first in Manhattan—when we’d watched such a storm take over the city, before letting the electricity take over our minds, spirits, and bodies.

I’d been inside her for the first time that night.

A magic we’ve never duplicated…

…because every time we fuck, it gets even better…

and better…

and better…

She kisses me again, turning this moment into an example that’s completely exquisite…

and erotic…

and eternal…

and unlike any mesh of our mouths I’ve ever experienced.

Holy. Fuck
.

She pulls me down harder, twisting my hair and scoring my skin, returning the stabs of my tongue with ferociousness and fury. Her needy mewl turns into a thousand sparks in my blood. Her desperate touch ignites pure fire in its wake.

I’m so stunned, I almost stop.

Almost.

Where is my little Arcadian courtier? The maid with the flowery wall of reserve I always like seducing out of the way, often through
very
creative wickedness? The girl with the face of a Victorian cameo, the panties of a pin-up virgin, and the mind of a sweet temptress—all of which she celebrates, every time she relinquishes them to me.

Completely.

Irretrievably.

So fucking beautifully…