She moaned. “Durante…”
He lowered his head. “Sì, Gabriella. Say my name like that.”
She averted her face before his lips connected with hers. It was like leaping over one volcano to plunge into another. His lips scorched down her face instead, her neck, his whispers of her name an invocation, a supplication, tampering with all electrical activity powering her. Her brain waves blipped, her heart rhythm plunged into arrhythmia.
She gasped, pushed at him. He let her go at once, his gaze heavy with desire and regret. “Still punishing me?”
“I don’t indulge in pointless posturing. Life’s too short.”
“Exactly. And this, along with the past ten days, is time we won’t get back.”
“Philosophy is great, when one can afford it. I can’t. Life is also too short to spend any of it feeling as miserable as I did during those ten days.”
He reached for her again. “And you won’t. I promise.”
She scrambled away as if from the ledge of this skyscraper. “I-I came up here for two reasons, Durante. Because I believed you were interested in my offer. And because I couldn’t take one more would-be paparazzi covering our little sideshow.”
He grunted. “Forget them. They don’t matter.”
“Really? Strange. You condemned me based on ‘facts’ people like them perpetuated.”
“Ero uno sciocco, I was a fool. A moron.”
“And a senseless jerk. Oh, wait, am I allowed to say ‘jerk’ to Your Highness? No? Bummer. I’ll say it anyway.”
“You’re allowed to say anything to My Highness as long as you deem to talk to me at all. But senseless jerk that I am, I came to my senses. Don’t I get points toward a second chance for that?”
“You would have, if you had come to your senses. Which you didn’t. I slapped some sense into you. You were wallowing in your senselessness and decided to seek me in spite of what you believed, not because you no longer believed it. You thought I was a succubus but were risking being drained of life to satisfy your curiosity and lust. Or was danger what fueled your desire, sort of like the rush of sticking your hand in a snake pit?”
“I was doing it in spite of the danger I thought you represented, not because of it. I don’t get my kicks that way.”
“You get them by thinking the worst of people. By never giving them the chance to defend themselves, condemning them and carrying out the sentence. And if one of your victims is your own father, I guess I was in great company.”
“Maledizione, Gabrielle…sì, bene? It’s true, only those who matter can make me react emotionally. I’ve only ever had those crippling feelings in relation to two people in my life. My mother and my father. Now you.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel special? I got the full, mutilating effect of your anger because of how much I mattered?”
“Hard to believe but…sì.”
“What’s freaking impossible to believe is you. I live with a lot of casual cruelty, but now I know how it can hurt when someone who matters doles it out. I have no support system and the only one who’ll defend me is me. The only way I know how to do that is to stay away from you. So if you’re not interested in my offer if it doesn’t come attached with me in your bed, say so and let me go.”
“You said you understood why I reacted the way I did. If you do, then you realize it will never happen again.”
“All I know is that you judged me based on unsubstantiated evidence. The evidence against you was as damning, yet I believed my own senses, my own mind, my own experience of you.”
He raked his fingers through his hair, linked them at the back of his head in a gesture of a man at a total loss. He closed his eyes, rumbling the unmistakable fury of self-abuse. Then he opened them, all previous lightness and cajoling gone.
“I’ve broken your trust in my basic fairness, in my ability to always treat you with consideration and respect.”
Every muscle in her face trembled. He’d put her biggest fear in words. She nodded. A tear splashed on her lip.
He winced as if the tear had hit his flesh, burned it. “I would offer amends, anything at all, but it seems I hurt you too much and it won’t matter what I do, not now.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “I was interested to hear your offer. And you’ve convinced me. I agree to the basic concept, but we’ll work out the specifics. Send me the draft of the contract at your convenience. I’ll inform you of any amendments at the earliest.”
When he said no more, she stuck her hands at her waist. “So what are you saying? ‘You don’t want my amends so I won’t bother to make them’? And then what? ‘Would have been fun knowing you’?”
His eyes probed her. “What are you saying, Gabrielle?”
“That it’s surely heartening to see how long you thought ‘making amends’ warranted. It’s been—” she flicked a look at her watch “—forty-eight minutes. That must be an all-time record for you. Bet you don’t even consider apologizing to anyone. Guess that’s another thing that makes me mighty special. Yay me.”
“Are you being a contrary female, Gabriella mia? Saying you want something, then getting disappointed when you get it? Or are you saying no when you mean yes, to make me grovel?”
“Are you being a condescending chauvinist, Your Highness? I was commenting on the limits of your perseverance. When I didn’t collapse under your charm after a few nudges…poof. Suddenly it’s “I would do anything, but you don’t want me to, so I’ll save myself the trouble.’ Talk about staying power. Lack of, that is.”
“Do watch what you say to me right now, Gabriella mia. I am in a very critical condition. I’m a breath away from an all-day-and-night campaign to prove my…staying power to you.” Desire forked from every point his eyes touched to her womb. He trickled a phantom touch down her cheek. “I was letting you go because I thought you were still raw, that I was causing you more distress. I was giving you a couple of days to cool down—maledizione, I probably wouldn’t have lasted a couple of hours. Then I was coming after you and never stopping until you gave me a second chance.”
“Great. And because never has forever scope, you won’t mind if I go now. Plenty of time for ‘we’ll see, won’t we’ in forever…”