She had to surface from under his spell, run for her emotional and psychological survival. She had to get back on track, do what she’d come here to do. Quit playing the game by his rules, according to his agenda. Whatever that was.
Disillusionment became venom as it exited her lips. “That’s interesting, how you get your conquests to become your willing thralls. Thanks for sharing that insider tidbit. Especially as it gives me the opening to get to the point of this…charming evening. Now that we’ve gotten the dinner you’ve been harping on for years out of the way, I hope you’re satisfied and we can finally get down to discussing something important.” His eyes drained of the warmth that had ignited them for the past hours. She braced against the moronic urge to soften her tone, to see his eyes fill with that fake intimacy again. “So…go ahead. Negotiate. I can’t wait to hear your ‘terms’. They should be…entertaining.”
Ferruccio almost flinched. He felt as if she’d kicked him in the gut. And she had. Figuratively speaking.
After the first shock passed, rage crashed over him.
How had this happened? He’d set out to lull her, to overcome her resistance. Where had it all taken such a sharp detour, so that he’d been the one who’d been lulled, who hadn’t seen this coming?
For the past hours he’d forgotten his harsh intentions. He’d gradually drowned in the pleasure of her nearness as she’d shown him a persona that combined the vulnerability he’d thought he’d seen that first night with a steel shield of will and wit, wrapped around a core of fun and warmth and passion.
And it had just been another of her masks.
How had she blindsided him again? He could still swear she’d finally taken off all her masks and shown him her true self. Which her own words now told him was premium self-delusion.
She’d taunted him with the memory of his rejected invitations, intimating she’d considered them the undignified and unimportant pursuit of an unacceptable suitor, and that this evening was her way of giving him what he’d been “harping” on, to humor him, because of the situation she’d been forced into. And would he now stop behaving irrationally?
Her sarcasm sent the beast inside him clawing out of his gut. Disappointment spilled from there to burn his insides.
She hadn’t been enjoying herself, had been leading him on to equalize the balance of power so that she wouldn’t be the beggar here. She was trying to set a record that, no matter what upper hand he held now, between them, he’d get nothing but the condescension he deserved. It was clear it didn’t matter that he was a D’Agostino. He remained a bastard in her eyes.
She really had no idea who she was dealing with, how out of her depth she was. He might be cultured and suave on the surface, but he was a street fighter at heart. Playing against odds she couldn’t begin to imagine in her wildest nightmares, to win at any cost was what he did. And it was time to do so.
It was time to make her regret her snobbery.
His bared his teeth in a smile he knew would chill her bones as it had so many, from politicians to tycoons to mafia dons. “You want to negotiate, Principessa? By all means. And since you’re so enthusiastic to hear my terms, here they are. Or here it is. I have one term for taking the succession. That I take you with it.”
Chapter Three
“You’re insane.”
Ferruccio leaned back in his chair, stuck his hands in his pockets and indolently surveyed Clarissa, savoring her shock and indignation as she choked on his declaration.
“Am I, now? Hmm. Literally all the financial world disagrees with your verdict.”
“That’s because you’re so intelligent that you manage to hide your insanity. And it’s possible to be a financial genius and a raving lunatic all at once.”
He feigned boredom even as he cursed himself for letting her barbs prick him. “Maybe. But you’ve heard my term, Clarissa. And it should answer all your questions about why I asked for you, why I summoned you here. To pay you the courtesy of demanding it directly from you, rather than from your father and his Council.”
Her mouth opened on a silent O. The lust that had been eating through him like slow acid all those years poured through his system in seething torrents. Imaginings of what devouring those dimpled lips would be like had ratcheted to a new dimension after watching them do so many things he’d never seen them do before—thin, curl, purse, tremble, quirk, spread in smiles and laughter, get bitten by those pearls she had for teeth, licked by that tantalizing-in-every-way tongue….
As for that vital body of hers, which had grown progressively more voluptuous as he’d burned for her from afar, he now knew how limited his fantasies of possessing it had been. Now that it had filled his arms, pressed against his flesh, trembled in his hold, buzzed with what he knew, against all her condescension and disdain, had been as unbridled a hunger as his own, he knew. Possessing it would be beyond anything he’d experienced or dreamed about.
Which meant one thing. Pulverizing her resistance had just turned from a resolution to a necessity.
At last, she seethed, “You think they would have even considered your crazy demand? What do you think this is, the Middle Ages?”
He reached out and calmly poured himself a glass of pomegranate juice, quirked an eyebrow at her over the rim after the first sip. “This juice shares so much with you. The richness of the complex flavors that make it up, the sour sweetness.”
Her hands fisted on the table. “Spare me the false praise.”
“I won’t spare you anything.” He watched his multifaceted threat invade her sculpted cheeks with a peach hue that burned bright, even in the dimness of the flickering firelight, made him struggle not to storm up and go devour it and her. “You really think I’d make such a demand if I had any doubt I’d obtain it? You claim to have studied my methods, Clarissa. Didn’t your extensive studies and all those postgraduate degrees reveal that I don’t make a move if I’m not one hundred percent certain of its success?”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip to control the tremor that took hold of it. His own twitched with a surge of intoxication. What could he say? It was such a delight to see her with her composure shattered, with anger, dread and arousal tearing at her.
Just as he thought she’d realized she was outclassed and overpowered, those uncanny eyes seemed to pulse purple with each flare of the flames. “My studies and degrees also revealed another thing, Signore Selvaggio. That sooner or later, even impervious, unstoppable business gods miscalculate. As you did this time. Big time. I’m not some commodity Castaldini can bestow on you as a side benefit. And I sure as hell am not volunteering myself as an incentive to sweeten the deal.”