Star of Wonder (13 page)

Which apparently were her fantasies too.

You begged him to let you stay, Cel. Even after your hour was up.

A conflicted whimper tore up her throat. Dante released her mouth, though he lifted a hand and stroked her cheek.

“You okay?” His voice was as careful as his touch. He reached across the couch. A blanket had magically appeared there, during their time in what she’d secretly dubbed the Den of Decadence. With gentle tugs, he wrapped her naked torso with it.

“I—” she muttered. “I, uh—yeah, I’m fine.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” An ironic smile parted his dark beard. “You’re trembling, stellina.”

She shrugged. “I’m just a little cold.”

He snuggled her closer to his chest. He was toasty as a furnace. A bar-bully-kicking, Cirque-balancing, orgasm-inducing furnace. Crap, maybe money could buy everything.

No. Not everything. Not her.

She pulled away a little and dropped her gaze into her lap.

“Talk to me, Celina.”

He spoke in the same tone he’d used back in the den. Ordering, not asking.

“Talk? About what?”

“About
what
?” He chuffed. “Well, just a thought. Let’s start with what happened over the last ninety minutes, yeah?”

She twisted her fingertips together. “What about them?”

He let out a long breath, then quietly questioned, “Did you like them?”

“I—” She looked back up, hoping the indigo-and-black layers of his eyes would wrest words from her. Instead, a question bloomed in her mind, then burned at her lips. “Did
you
like them? I mean, did you—were you able to—”

“Come?” He chuckled, biting his bottom lip a little. Her stomach did a funny flip. Okay yeah, she loved the lip-biting thing. “Yes, cara. The last ninety minutes have been pretty great for me. Don’t worry.” He raised his palm to her cheek again. “But we were talking about you. Address the question, please.”

Now curiosity really flamed. “Okay, but why didn’t you—” Her cheeks joined the club, burning to the backs of her eye sockets. “Well, why did you have us stay like that, then? With our clothes on? Why not—”

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“Are you going to answer mine?” she retorted. “Why the clothes?”

His black brows lowered, but his eyes softened to dark charcoal. “Did you want to be totally naked? Did the clothes make things bad for you?”

All right, forget the lip biting. That look, a mixture of complete control and concern in the same moment, turned the gut flips into full cartwheels. She took his hand, tangling her fingers with his. Hell, she was actually worried about giving him a wrong impression. Which wasn’t a huge sin, right? Wasn’t it natural to be a
little
concerned about a guy after he turned you into a billion pieces of ecstasy?

“It was the most amazing thing my body’s ever experienced.”

And my mind. And my soul.

His Roman lips parted on a soft smile. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Mine too.”

The man could be bigger than life in so many ways but had never enraptured her more than this moment, as he bent his head and feathered that luscious mouth over hers. He pulled back by a few inches before speaking again. “The clothes stayed on, cara, because I didn’t bring you here tonight to have sex with you.” He held up a hand. “
Lo giuro sulla mia bibbia della nonna morta
. It’s the truth!”

She slapped his shoulder. “
Morta?
Did you just invoke a dead person to make your point?”

“My
nonna
wouldn’t mind.” He still smiled with that, though his eyes sobered. “What we have, Celina…what we’ve discovered with each other—this is about more than sex. I know it; you know it. If it had been about a few hours of crazy passion, we both would’ve been able to walk away.”

“I wasn’t ‘walking’ that well last Saturday,” she grumbled, enjoying his answering chuckle.

“At least you remembered me.” Once more, the tone was light, but his mien shifted to shadows. He dipped a finger beneath her chin and pulled her face up. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” He kissed her softly again. “I’ll tell you that a million more times if I have to. I’m not ashamed of it. I’m not ashamed of
us
.” His hand slid down her neck under the blanket and around her shoulder. “I know this is fast. I know this is overwhelming. But this is also
right
. It’s so right…”

He kissed her with more hunger now, dipping his tongue along hers, tugging at her lip with his teeth between his deep plunges. Celina’s body turned into a mass of needy magma that oozed over the landscape of her logic. Holy crap, could the man kiss. Her heart thudded with arousal and terror combined. He was right. This was overwhelming. And she had no idea what to do.

“So,” he finally murmured, “in answer to your question, the next time I get naked with you, I want it to count. I want it to count a lot. I want it to mean something.”

The magma kept coming. The confusion did too. Celina pushed from his hold, clutching the blanket with one hand and scraping back her hair with the other. Though she now sat just a foot away from him, the couch’s cushions felt cold in comparison to his body.

“Dante, I’m not sure there should be a next time.”

She expected his thick tension. Perhaps a minute or two of his silence. But when the stillness went on, turning the room from a plush haven into something more like a sepulchre, she wound her fingers together again. From the moment she’d met the man, the force of his spirit could dominate a football stadium. Now she couldn’t sense a single emotion from him. An ice bath would’ve been less jarring.

Dante rose in one quiet motion. He opened the door onto the play den again, shutting it with barely a click. Half a minute later, he came back bearing her bra and turtleneck. Her sweater was a tangle. He patiently pulled it apart before draping it across the easy chair’s arm. He draped the bra on top of it.

“I’m going to clean up.” His voice was low and flat. The words ripped into Celina as if he’d screamed them.

“Dante—”

Another
click
of the door answered her. This time it was the bathroom’s portal. The bathroom fan turned on. She heard his zipper slide down, the splash of water hitting a washcloth, the rustle of his clothes, but still nothing from him. Strangely, tears pricked her eyes. She gritted them away, searching for a surge of pissed to throw into the stupid pit of sentiment.

“What did you expect, Cel?” she muttered.

What
did
she expect? She shook as her brain tiptoed toward the answer. And if she was being honest, as her heart did too. Everything about tonight had taken her mental box marked
Relationships
and dumped the damn thing across the floor of her psyche. She’d watched a beautiful, headstrong woman submit to her Dom, and liked it.
Really
liked it. She’d begged the man
she
was with for fulfillment, and loved it. She’d imagined herself as that submissive…and God help her, she’d longed for Dante as her Dom. Dante Tieri, the epitome of Mr.
Not
Right on every page of her rule book. Dante Tieri, who could buy off any woman in the state, but decided to turn
her
world into goulash instead.

Dante, who’d fought for her at the Blue Sax.

Dante, who called her his star.

Dante, who’d arranged everything tonight just to explore all this by her side, who had the guts to open himself to it too.

She didn’t know what to do now. She didn’t know what to feel.

“Damn it!” The desperation in her voice filled the room. With frustrated jerks, she reached for her bra and managed to get it on right. The turtleneck was another story. With her eyes smarting, her lips quavering, and her muscles still turned into rubber bands, she tried to pull it on but ended up with her head stuck in a sleeve and one arm out the neck. “Fucking hell!”

Two strong hands pulled the thing off her. Her skirmish with the top had drowned out Dante’s reentry to the room. Now inches away once more, he righted the turtleneck, bunching up the fabric to push it over her head.

Her gaze lifted to his.

His hands froze.

Her heart clutched around the breath she held, the anticipation she endured. She watched the dark depths of his eyes, so intent beneath his ink-dark lashes. Any minute now, he was going to hurl the sweater to the couch, haul her close to him again, and use his lips—and his touch and his hips and anything else he had at his disposal—to shove all her doubts out of her again. And God help her, she couldn’t wait.

With a heavy exhalation, he lifted the sweater over her head.

As the material cleared her face, Celina stared up at him. She fought down the fire in her arms, the burning lust to hold him again. She pressed her lips together to hold in the entreaty that scratched and screamed for a way out.

Hold me. Please. Just one more time before I have to get out of here.

She shivered, huddling her arms against her chest, though her thumbs knocked her sternum like dual ice picks. Despite that, there was no way she was hurrying into the damn sweater. If he wanted to help her get dressed so badly, then he could work for the privilege. But she couldn’t tell anything by looking at his face. He still seemed switched to automatic pilot. The gears were working, but the life in him was gone.

At last, a tiny wince crossed his brow. For a flicker of a moment, he was back. His gaze was heated like smoldering coal. His mouth parted as if he was very hungry and she’d turned into a plate of homemade pasta. Appropriate, since everything from her scalp to her toes felt like a gigantic moist noodle.

He lifted both his hands, as if to grab the turtleneck’s arms. Instead, he caressed the lengths of hers. It was only his knuckles, but they were like stones warmed in Tuscan sun. Celina gritted her jaw to keep her sigh in. Skata, that resolve lasted for three seconds. In shuddering spurts, her breath left her.

With slow intent, Dante leaned closer. He captured the last of her exhalations with his lips. If his fingers were the warmth of Tuscany, his mouth was the temptation of Rome—and she craved more. God yes, more. As her head fought the thought, her body surrendered to it. She lifted her face, wordlessly begging him to open her again, to conquer her again. But with every inch she pressed closer, Dante pulled back. He was rigid with tension from the effort, but he wouldn’t touch her any deeper than this, as if she really were that overcooked pasta, and he was afraid of disintegrating her.

His head dipped as he dragged away with a hard swallow. He scooped one hand to her nape. A misty smile graced his lips.

“Stellina, I’ve done everything I can to show you what this can be, what we can have together. I want this. With you.
Only
you. But I can’t order the ‘yes’ from your lips. I can’t grab the power from your hands.”

He stepped back but circled both her wrists in his grip. Celina frowned. After the words he’d just issued, the move didn’t make sense, until he turned both her hands over. Into the center of each of her palms, he pressed a quiet kiss. When he looked up again, his gaze was again impenetrable onyx.

“It’s all here now,
cara
. The decision is yours.” He lifted those warm knuckles to her cheek. “Thanksgiving is in five days. You’d be the perfect blessing for which to bow my head at the feasting table.”

His words, sounding like a prayer already, swirled into her like smoke off a thousand votive candles, and drowned her breath just as completely. When he slipped his hand from her skin, all the candles blew out. Everything was cold once again. Pure instinct compelling her, she reached for him, but he’d already turned. Half a dozen steps, broad and determined, took him to the outer door.

Then he was gone.

She sank onto the couch again. She wondered why she felt like sobbing. She tried to give in to the temptation at last, but her teeth started to chatter instead.

* * * *

She dismissed the ongoing chill as a result of the crap turn the weather had taken. She stayed in all day Sunday with the furnace blasting, her e-reader in her lap, and her phone at her side. She got a dozen texts from Sami, a few from Dylan, and even one from Nik, who sent his best from the Middle Eastern desert as he got ready to go prevent something else from going boom. And Cameron? She didn’t expect to hear from him for several weeks. SEAL training pretty much shot a guy’s family time to zero.

Not a single call or text from Dante.

Not that she allowed herself to notice. For longer than a minute at a time.

Not that she didn’t tell herself a thousand times that she lived in the world of reality, not fantasy—that the “decision” he’d put back in her hands was one that didn’t involve just her, and running off to Oz was fine if someone was an eighteen-year-old with no integrity, responsibility, or family. Especially if that someone’s family hadn’t been torn apart twice by the flash of a black Amex and its matching Jag. Especially if that someone’s three naval officer brothers wouldn’t be jumping on said Jag owner’s ass—and God only knew what else—for being a sister-stealing old man as well. She wished she could be even half kidding about that scenario, but she could predict her brothers better than the Doppler foretold the rain. Maybe Dante wasn’t eighty, but he was at least half that, far away enough from her twenty-nine that Dyl, Nik, and Cam would be pulling out the black scowls and the invisible
Rejected
stamps faster than she could finish family introductions.

It was better this way.

It had to be better this way.

She’d forget about how good it all felt…soon. She’d be back to normal…eventually. She’d stop looking at her phone every five minutes…tomorrow.

She told herself all those things as Sunday night turned into Monday morning, then was on the verge of merging into Monday afternoon. But by now, she was beyond “telling” it all. As she stood in the bathroom at work staring at herself in the mirror, she promoted her inner mantra guru into a seething drill sergeant.

“Get your act together, Celina. He’s stepped away, and you’re fine with that. He’s given you the choice, and you’ve made it. And it’s the right one. It’s the
right one
.”