Olivia Gates Bestseller Collection 2012 (4 page)

“And you want to earn the removal of the
ex
part in an even harder way?”

“Ah,
there
you are. I knew you had plenty more to say.”

He’d thought she’d clam up again when she murmured, “Not if you don’t start behaving in a civilized and professional manner.”

His mouth twisted with a jumble of irritation and stimulation. “There’s another thing I have to warn you about. My severe allergic reaction to conditions and ultimatums.”

Just when he thought she might turn on her heel and walk out, she moved. Forward. Nearer. One prowling stride after the other.

By the time she was standing about two steps away, his mind had hurtled into wish fulfillment, dreaming of bringing her down to straddle him, grinding her heat against his hardness…

Before he dragged her down himself, he bit out, “Sit
down,
Phoebe.”

She finally did, in one downward sweep of grace and self-possession. On the far side of the couch, on its very edge. As if preparing to spring up and away at his least movement.

“Sit back, Phoebe, relax. Anyone would think you’re afraid I’ll pounce on you. Which is strange when you come to think of it, since you once wanted nothing more than for me to do so.”

She turned on him, and…
Dio.
A tigress baring her fangs before slashing a tormentor’s head off wouldn’t have been more magnificent, more stunning. More effective.

He didn’t know how he
didn’t
pounce on her.

“Okay,” she hissed. “Let’s get it all out in the open and out of the way and be done with these juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions. We had a sexual liaison a lifetime ago. It ended. We moved on. Eight years later, we’re different people, and not only doesn’t today have anything to do with the past, this has nothing to do with us as individuals. I’m not Phoebe to your Leandro here. I’m Ms. Alexander, international law
consultant and diplomatic troubleshooter for the Kingdom of Castaldini, present in my professional capacity to negotiate the acceptance of crown-prince status with
ex
-Prince D’Agostino.”

He stared at her. He’d wanted hot and harsh? He should have prayed he didn’t get what he wished for. He was so engorged now, his jeans might be causing him permanent damage.

Act or no act, the verdict was in. Whatever he remembered of her effect on him had been diluted by time. Or she’d grown a hundred times more potent with maturity. He’d bet on the latter.

Which was weird. He’d thought the malleable, even-tempered Phoebe his ideal woman. So why was he finding the guns-blazing, machete-tongued Phoebe far more attractive? He’d never found anything to tolerate in cold, cutting women, let alone something to arouse him to the point of pain. So why did he find her sub-zero bluntness the epitome of overpowering femininity? Especially when she’d just finished confirming everything he’d tormented himself with since she’d walked out on him: That he’d been no more than a sexual liaison to her? That she’d moved on, no problem?

And she wasn’t even finished yet.

He watched as she drew in a breath, the exquisiteness of her face preparing for the next salvo.

He couldn’t wait to be blasted to pieces.

Phoebe felt her heart stumbling in her chest like a panicked horse trying to gallop on slippery ice.

And the source of the turmoil, that huge, criminally majestic and beautiful…
rat,
was looking at her as she tore into him as if she were showering him with compliments.

This was far worse than she’d expected. And she’d expected the absolute worst ever since she’d arrived at the same building where she’d last seen Leandro. Then Ernesto had ushered her into the same
room.
Déjà vu had suffocated her by the time she’d seen Leandro with his back to her. And then he’d
turned….

She’d seen many high-resolution photos and hours of footage of him throughout the years. She’d had film-quality memories. She’d thought graphic effects had touched up his assets, that memories had been exaggerated by the distortion of passion and inexperience.

They’d been misleading, all right. And mercifully so.

The brunt of the reality of him had shut down her mind, possessed her instincts.
Mate,
they’d whimpered. She’d seen herself flying to him, seen him storming to her, felt him snatching her in mid-flight, crushing her in his assuagement.

She’d stumbled out of that alternate reality, reeling. She remembered, vaguely, what had hurtled out of her mouth. Survival. Like someone lashing out with flailing arms at a black hole.

Then he’d stalked to her, and with each step, she’d withdrawn into herself to ward off his incursion. But damn him, he’d kept coming, invading her senses, snatching her responses from her self-control’s white-knuckled grip. Then he’d spoken. Teased. Taunted. Pushed and pulled. Until the last anchor of her restraint snapped like an overextended string. She could swear she’d heard that final
twang
echo throughout her body. And she’d let him have it.

It was as if she’d let him have exactly what he’d been wishing for. The pleasure flashing across his face singed her, the tension roiling through his body resounded inside hers, spiking when every verbal slash hit home. It was as if she were chafing the exact spot he needed scratched, the very nerve cluster he wanted stimulated.

Who knew he was into S-M. The verbal kind. Maybe the physical, too. No wonder her “yes, Leandro” persona had been so…peripheral to him.

She thought she’d expended all her angst in that tirade. But with Leandro all but licking his lips for an encore, another was coming on.

“Now, to elaborate on what I said as I first came in…” She stopped. Her voice sounded as it once had at the end of the stamina-testing ecstasy sessions he’d exposed her to. She
gulped. “Even if you redeem yourself in some huge way, I think it’ll remain inexcusable that you’re playing games when your kingdom’s future is at stake…”

“
Former
kingdom.”

His indolent words thrilled behind her breastbone. “What?”

He leaned closer. Sucked whatever air was left from the universe. “I’m an American now.”

She grimaced. “Oh, please.”

Mockery intensified the emerald of his eyes. “Want to see my passport?”

She waved. “You’ll always be Castaldinian.”

The wings of his dense, perfectly formed eyebrows rose in mock interest. “Really? A whole kingdom disagreed for eight years. I don’t have one official tie to the place.”

“Like it or not, you
are
one.”

He turned his lip down in a perfect parody of a petulant little boy. Yeah. Sure. As if. “I have no say?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“I wonder how you have worked this out.”

“You don’t have a say in your genes, do you? Same thing.”

“Oh, but we do rise above our programming.”

“And you transcended your Castaldinian origins?”

“I was actually culled out of the Castaldinian pool. But I’ve adapted well to life as another species, thank you for caring.”

“Oh,
please.
”

He leaned back, the seat dipping under his shifting weight, exacerbating her imbalance. He spread his daunting body in a pretense of relaxation, giving her a more complete demonstration of his upgrades. And her effect on him. “You know, the way you keep saying ‘please’…anyone would think you’re inviting more ‘juvenile, infringing, lascivious allusions.’”

His words had the effect of quick-drying concrete. “Okay. It seems we won’t get anything of any value said or done before we indulge your need to harp about the past and drag out the sordid details. Fine. Go ahead. Get it out of your system.”

His gaze seemed to scald her body, to scrape it naked.

“There are…things I can’t get out of my system. Certainly not by…talking. As for other baggage from that phase in my life, don’t worry about it. I channeled any lingering resentment into my work. Whatever remains, I take care of with extreme sports. And punching bags.”

“
And
turning your back on your kingdom when it needs you.”

A laugh cracked out of his depths, loaded with astonishment and amusement. And virility. “That would be a great outlet.
If
I were into an eye for an eye.”

“Only it would be a limb—or a life, or even a nation’s worth of either—for an eye, in this situation.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest, revving up the itchy feeling in hers to an ache. “You think I’m that vital? Very inconsistent of you, when you already said how inconsequential I am.”

“That was a personal opinion,” she mumbled, furious with herself, with him, at the responses he kept yanking from her.

His gaze grew more baiting as he rubbed a languid hand over his chest, drawing her stare to the beauty and power of the first, the breadth and hardness of the second. “Off the record, eh?”

She did her level best to present him with her neutral look. “Do make it on. Your head must be swollen from all the butt-kissing you get. Consider my opinion a deflating agent.”

His laughter boomed again. Her heart ricocheted in her rib cage. “Ah, Phoebe, I’m having my head measured first thing in the morning.” He sobered a bit, his grin becoming an X-rated health hazard. “So why try to convince such an irredeemable egomaniac to take the reins of a kingdom?”

She swallowed. “I’m an emissary, as you said. I’m not here to put forward my convictions but rather my employer’s case.”

“Even if you suspect he’s senile and is turning the kingdom over to the one person who’ll drive it into the sea?”

“King Benedetto isn’t senile by a long shot.”

“How else do you explain his change of heart?”

“I am sure he has his reasons.”

“So he hasn’t shared them with you? You’re the little foot solider with need-to-know info you’ll never need to know?”

“One thing I do know is that his heart has always been with you. I believe having to cut you off nearly cut it out.”

He threw his awesome head back with a hoot of delight. “I didn’t see
that
coming.”

Her throat constricted as the rain-straight silk of his hair cascaded back to frame his head to maximum effect. “What?”

“Appealing to the insecure little boy inside me who craves his hero’s approval, his validation.”

God help her, she actually snorted. “The day I believe there’s an insecure little boy inside you is the day I believe I’ll sprout wings if I cluck hard enough.”

His laughter was louder this time, lasted longer. Spread more damage. “Ah, Phoebe, you know me too well. How about the vindictive little boy inside me, then? Who wants to see the object of his hero worship groveling, admitting how much he’s wronged him, and how the guilt of his transgressions has never given him a moment’s peace?”

She stilled. His eyes lost the crinkle of amusement as he stared back at her. And she saw it.

A groan escaped her. “I don’t believe I’m saying this, but I don’t think there’s a vindictive little boy inside you, either. Whatever you have in there, I think it’s still just…just…”

“Angry? Affronted?” he offered, mock helpfully.

“Stunned.”

He went totally still. His stare lengthened. Until she was sure he’d burned a hole between her eyes.

Suddenly he was surrounding her. All her nerves gave way at once. She melted back into the couch. He followed her, still not touching her. She felt as if he’d licked her all over, with fire. When he was inches away from her lips, he rumbled, “Didn’t you notice that you haven’t done any negotiating so far?”

Each word jolted through her, coating her lungs with his scent, his potency. “If—if I’ve learned anything as a negotiator,” she gasped, “it’s how to know for certain when my…opponent has no intention whatsoever…under any persuasion…to negotiate.”

Another inch disappeared. “I’m your opponent now?”

“You’re worse. An opponent I can handle. You’re…you’re…”

“I’m…what?” He obliterated half of the last inch.

Her hand went up. To keep him away? All she knew was that her hand met the convergence of silk and steel and searing heat and stuck there like a pin to a magnet.

“Phoebe…”

Her ears rang with her name, the very sound of wonder, of hunger, with the racket of doors slamming shut in her mind. All existence was his lips. Almost there. On hers. At last.
Please.

She couldn’t breathe, so she breathed him. He smelled so much better than air. Felt so much more vital. Necessary…

No.
No.
He
wasn’t.
She’d let him be that once, and…
No.

She twisted away, feeling as if she’d wrenched back from a precipice. Her heart hammered inside her; her lungs burned. Somewhere an auxiliary power source kicked in, yanked her up to her feet.