Star of Wonder (15 page)

He stopped stressing about conversation when he looked deeper at her face. Her eyes were in enchanted-forest mode tonight, full of mossy shadows and deep thoughts, enhanced by a little makeup at their corners and on their lashes. She tried, unsuccessfully, not to chew at her lightly glossed lips. She pressed them together as she swallowed hard and tried to smile.

“Hi.” Her greeting, while soft, bounced back from the white marble floor and walls. “I found your address on one of your old texts.”

He smiled as warmth surged his chest again. “Then I’m glad I sent it so many times.”

“I—I’m intruding.” Her gaze did a nervous sweep around the foyer. She looked at the modern stone art busts like they were gargoyles about to come to life. “I should have called first. But I would’ve lost my nerve.”

“It’s okay.” He issued it fast and got his hand around her back even faster. He hated that his world made her so skittish, but her confession was a good sign. She’d gotten dressed up for him. Gotten nervous about him. “Come on.” He cupped his hand around her shoulder. Along with the hope, every protective instinct roared to life in him again too. “It’s cold out here. Let me get you something.”
Let me get you anything.

She took a few visible breaths as he led her into his place, took her jacket and laid it on the football field couch. Through all the motions, he didn’t let her go. Though he was increasingly convinced she wasn’t a hallucination, it was still best not to leave anything to chance. He let his hand drop into hers, and pulled her toward the bar. The deeper he got her into the room, the better.

“You’re freezing,” he said. “It’s going to snow tonight, I think.” He splashed some scotch into a fresh glass. “Sip this carefully. It’ll warm you up.” He brushed a strand of hair from her face as she complied then grimaced from the strong liquor. Despite the wet air outside, her hair looked glorious. He fought the temptation to bury his hands in the shiny sable mane.

An awkward pause took over the air between them. This time, he didn’t know how to interpret it.

“Dante, I came to see you…” She bit her lip again and turned to sit on the couch. That was before she stopped and gasped at the expansive view. “I—I had to see you—”

“It’s okay. Go slow. I’m not going anywhere.” He forced himself to stay next to the bar. Whatever she was trying to get out, she clearly needed some space to do so. He took another sip of scotch himself, hoping it loosened the Gordian knot now calling itself his gut.

She said her next words to the floor. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Saturday night.”

He swallowed hard. His body’s first reaction, besides the rush of blood between his thighs, was to drive a fist into the air. But the quaver in her voice and her fascination with his wool carpet kept the emotional confetti cannons in check.

“I haven’t either.” He kept his voice modulated. “You were amazing. So brave for me. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It was…eye-opening for me too.”

“In good ways?”

“In many ways.”

She squirmed, almost like her own skin was too tight. Dante took a step toward her, but she stood and walked closer to the windows. Looking out into the mist and the lights, she continued, “I’ve landed at a crossroads because of it, on a couple of different levels. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about any of this, but I can’t ignore that your feelings matter to me now.”

He felt like throwing back the sliding door and taking a walk out on the balcony railing. It would’ve been less risky than the direction of her words. “Thanks,” he muttered. “I think.”

“Stop it,” she snapped. “This is hard for me!”

He clenched his teeth. “I know.”

“No,” she countered. “I don’t think you do.”

She wheeled around, taking in the spacious room again, then shaking her head. To his eyes, it was simply a place to live, a living space he threw together for the sake of appearance for the corporation’s stockholders. But he saw what it looked like to her. A damn palace. An extravagance for a prince with his head in the clouds. Literally.

“Do you know how hard it was for me to come here? To know it was shit like all of this that lured my mom away from my dad, from my family, then ripped us all up again when Natalie left my brother? But I came, Dante, because of you. Because despite how I try, I can’t forget you or how incredible it is to be with you. And I came because I know that will never change, even if GRI goes bankrupt tomorrow.”

“Nor will how I feel about you.” He didn’t say it with any joy, because he didn’t feel any yet. The tormented lines of her face told him she still had plenty to confess, and most of it wouldn’t be making its way onto a screen saver with hearts and butterflies.

“But even being with you is complicated now. I know you meant well on Saturday night, but all of that only crystallized things for me.”

He forced himself to sit. An instinct told him it might put her a little more at ease, if that was a possibility right now. “I’m listening,” he ensured her.

She twisted her fingers together. “And I’m here and confused.” After a hard breath and a nervous glance, she started to pace. “You started it by saving my shit in that brawl at the Blue Sax. Then you didn’t just put me in the cab, but you saw me home, personally—”

“Stellina,” he interjected. “That was the fun part.”

“Yes, smart-ass, I get that. But then I woke up the next morning, thinking you’d probably left, to find you on the phone with your mom, to whom you just sent six dozen flowers.”

“Not exactly following you. Wasn’t that the point where we fought?”

“But you didn’t let that stop you.”

He smirked. “I guess you could say that.”

To his shock, she gave a tiny smile in return. “All right, so the calls and the texts were a little weird. But sweet.”

He let both eyebrows leap. “Sweet?”

“Own it, Tieri. It fits.” Her smile dipped into serious territory again as her eyes gained an intense backlight. “It’s part of why, hard as I fought to keep it slapped on, you tore off that ‘Hi, I’m Asshole Billionaire’ name tag and burned it right out of my fingers.”

He let his brows drop in perplexity. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Not when you’re the woman who dreams of the lights going out and that sweet guy turning into a Dark Escape Dom.”

The words clung to the air between them, thicker than the clouds outside the window. Elation cut through it, beaming into Dante’s senses. “Celina—”

“That’s insane, right?” She spread her hands, shaking her head. “How can I ask for a man to be two things? How can I want the man with flowers in one hand and a flogger in the other? This is the twenty-first century. I’ll be thirty in six months. I’m supposed to be evolved! I’m supposed to know what I want! How can I be so confused about this?”

Dante lurched back to his feet. He grabbed her hands in his own and jammed them against her sides while he pressed close. She had to lean back to keep looking at him, a position that did some crazy, amazing things to his arousal level.

“Why
can’t
you be confused? I know that
I
was.” He tilted his head over her. “But now I also know that I want it all too,
cara
. I want to be both those things,
all
those things, for you.” He released one of her wrists in order to lift his hand to her head and dig it against her scalp. He kept up the pressure, steadily pulling, letting her know the words weren’t play for him. “Why can’t we find both sides of ourselves, on this amazing journey, together?”

He yearned to bend down, closing the inches between them to kiss her. But her eyes swam in unsteady emerald pools, depths that looked so much like the emotional version of kerosene. Imagine
that.

He forced himself to stop as she took in a shaky breath, preparing her next words.

“Because there can’t be a journey.”

Though she was still captive to his hold, she closed him out for a moment as if summoning supernatural help for her next words. When she reopened her eyes, the shadows in them had turned into chasms. She raised her hand to cover his. “I’ve accepted a transfer to the JAG Region Legal Service Office in Atsugi, Japan.”

For a long second, it seemed she’d issued the words in another language. They were like gibberish, syllables he didn’t expect.

“What?”

He loosened his hold and finally stepped back from her altogether. “
Japan
?”

“Yeah. I—I leave on January second.”

“What. The—”

He grunted, unable to finish. All her cat-in-the-rain behavior now made a shitload more sense and twisted his gut in a thousand more ways.

She hadn’t come here tonight for their new start. She’d come to say good-bye.

“I’ve been prepping a case in conjunction with their office,” she explained. “The CO is short on advocates for his team, so—”

“So you just volunteered to move yourself six thousand miles. Is that it?”

A breath rushed out of her. It was edged with more tears. “Dante—”

“Wait. Let me correct that,” he spat. “Six thousand miles away from
me
. That hits the mark a bit better, doesn’t it,
cara
?”

She had the nerve to close the three steps between them again and grab his hand. “Listen to me. We’re only flying this op at low altitudes right now, okay? We haven’t gotten to the tough stuff yet.”

“Because you’re moving to
Japan
.”

He wrenched free from her, stomped back to the bar and dumped more scotch into a glass. The liquid never hit his lips. He glared down into the gold fluid, too shocked and enraged to even drink his way into a decent stupor.

A silent minute stretched into another. Another. Celina broke into the fourth one with a trembling voice.

“My brother Dylan flies F-18s for a living. They’re fifty-million-dollar jets. But if the plane is headed for disaster, the navy doesn’t expect the pilot to hang on and try to save the plane. They’re ordered to eject their ass and get out safely.” A sad huff escaped her. “We can’t hang on to this op, Dante. The view looks great right now, but—”

“View?” He slung a bitter laugh. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. There’s no ‘view,’ Celina. This flight has barely cleared the tower, and you’re already grounding us.”

“That’s not true, damn it.”

“No?” He wheeled, snapping his head toward her a second after his body led the way. She wet her lips and grabbed the couch for balance, confirming he’d accomplished the daunting purpose of the move. But he had no intent of stopping there.

“Are you telling me you didn’t yearn for me to help you back out of that sweater Saturday night, instead of into it? Are you standing there expecting me to believe you didn’t want more, stellina, much more? You want me to believe that you didn’t want me to come back in as soon as I left? That you didn’t long to go back into that playroom with me and have me strip you, bind you, mark you, fuck you?”

With each question, he took another pair of steps in a circuitous path around her, deliberately circling and, watching, introducing new visuals into her head with his growling cadence and his blatant words. And it was working. He watched her chest pump faster beneath her sinful dress. He noticed her hands at her sides, curling with the effort to keep her composure in check.

When he stopped, he was just a foot away from her. He braced his feet, then folded his arms. “Yeah, I call bullshit on your defense, counselor. With every word of it. But I’m done trying to talk about it.”

That caused a fast raise of her gaze. She couldn’t hide the lingering sorrow in her face or the resigned jerks of her nod. “I understand.”

Dante chuffed. “No. You don’t.” He moved his hands to his sides now. “I said I’m done talking about it. I said nothing about not proving it in other ways.”

“Wh-what do you mean?”

Before he spoke again, he reached and unclasped the brooch at her waist. He tossed the jewelry to the coffee table. The action didn’t make her dress fall open, but it sure as hell loosened everything up. He now peeked at a red demibra and matching red spaghetti panties. Fucking hell. If this didn’t work, he’d be in a cold shower until midnight.

“You’re going to Japan,” he stated. “Fine. I can’t stop that. But that means that
this
is what we have left. Now. Tonight. So, game on, stellina. You say you’re fine with ejecting from the flight? Then let’s make you’re really goddamn sure about yourself.”

Her breath hitched as he stepped closer, cranking the burners in his blood higher. He clutched a handful of her hair, this time with hot and determined intent, pulling her head back for his lunge of a kiss. He ended the assault by sliding his mouth down to the defiant crest of her chin and biting her there.

“You’re going to go mach five with me tonight, Celina, or you’re going home. It’s your choice. If you stay, we’re going to the bedroom, and you
will
submit to me. Let me be clear about how this will go. You’ll sob, you’ll scream, you’ll moan, and you
will
come, more than once. But first, you’ll give me your body in any way I want, as many times as I want. If you want to go home now, then that’s all right too. I wish you a wonderful adventure, Pippi Longstocking; send me a fucking postcard.”

He released her as gently as he could, but he wasn’t feeling magnanimous right now. His senses flailed in a tangle of frustration, fury, and the raw claw of lust. He wanted to punish her. He needed to fuck her. He longed to brand her, body and soul, in any way he could before she left his life. He wasn’t about to tell her that GRI had expansive offices in Tokyo too, or that he enjoyed the use of a penthouse on top of them nearly as opulent as this. She’d made the decision to go because she needed space—six thousand miles of it—from him. It was done. He had no control over that part. But if she stayed now, it was time for him to take back a few bunkers in the camp known as Celina Kouris’s mind. He was going to make damn sure that even six months and a fourteen-hour time difference didn’t make him easy to forget.

“I’m going to the kitchen,” he told her. “I need a drink of water, and you probably do too. When I get back, I want you either naked or gone.”