“Why don’t you speak for yourself?”
“Fine, I did myself a favor by not sticking around to experience the deterioration of ‘things’ before their inevitably nasty end.”
He stared into the twin storms of her eyes.
Was this her admission that there’d never been more than self-interest behind her actions? Or was it self-preservation? Her words could be interpreted that way. Had his rage at the time made her fear he’d take his bitterness out on her?
What was he thinking? Why was he debating this yet again? He’d admitted there was no way to find out the truth for sure. And what did it even matter? That was then. This was now.
He was taking now. And when the end came this time, he wouldn’t spend eight more years agonizing over the reasons why. The whys would be of his own orchestration. And his own timing.
It was time to set things in motion.
Phoebe felt like a cat who’d just streaked across an antiques exhibit and sent everything crashing to the ground. Hurling those bombshells of self-pity sure felt as if it had caused comparative damage. So what now? Back to square subzero?
Her heart clanged as he unfurled to his full six-foot-five and gestured to someone in the distance. Music at once drowned out the cacophony of memories, the tumult of this confrontation.
Then he extended his hand to her in imperious invitation.
“Dance with me.”
He’d said the same thing the night they’d met. Before they’d even been introduced. She remembered only that he’d taken her in his embrace and that her feet hadn’t touched the ground until he’d first kissed her and changed the course of her life forever.
Now was the same. She didn’t know when she’d taken his hand, or how she’d reached the dance floor. All she knew was that he surrounded her like an extension of her own body, all her missing parts, moving with her, moving her, as if she shared his nervous pathways, as if he was in control of hers.
Suddenly her whole body shuddered on a shockwave. His whisper. Against her temple. “You learned to dance the guadara.”
The guadara. That unique dance born of the inextricable Moorish, Amazigh and Italian folklores that formed Castaldini. She’d seen it performed in rural areas on romantic occasions and at celebrations. She’d never danced it before. She’d never tried.
She was dancing it now, the sensuous rhythm turning her body into a malleable instrument that merged with the demands and vitality of the beat, flowed into the power and beauty of his body, rode the grace and fluency of his movements.
But soon the dance morphed into something else—syncopated footwork, a full-body embrace, entwining legs, a creation of his own invention, and she suspected from the intensity coming off of him in waves, his own improvisation. And that she managed to follow his spontaneous lead, move as one with him…magic.
Suddenly he spooled her away, whirled her back, gathered her, back to chest, in a off-the-ground hug that had emotion blossoming into pain behind her eyes, threatening to burst into an outpouring of pent-up longing and heartache.
Before she could bring herself to struggle, he swept her around and into an embrace that no longer pretended to be about dancing.
She began to shake. Recollections of his possession were brutal, accomplices to his passion, to his eyes as they bore down, burned down on her. She needed a reprieve. She needed…Needed. “Leandro, I—I…”
He wouldn’t let her find words. He lifted her, making her feel weightless, soaring. His arms fused her to his chest, where she’d once nestled for hours, under which she’d writhed in ecstasy, where she’d dreamed of being again every day of the past eight years.
She moaned her greed, her welcome. His eyes grew voracious. Volcanic. She wanted him to devour her, destroy her.
But he only watched her, singed her with the emotions fast-forwarding across his face. Why wouldn’t he give anything to her? His lips, his breath, his possession? Did he want more than surrender?
She succumbed, gave him more, clutched his hair and pulled with all she had. A growl revved inside his chest, driving her to her toes, reaching for his half-open lips. She sealed them, took his scalding “Phoebe” and breath inside her.
He still didn’t respond until she whimpered, “Please…”
The broken entreaty seemed to shatter whatever was holding him back. His lips crashed down on hers, wrenched hot, dark, desperate kisses from her depths. Yes…yes…Leandro…
Leandro. From the first moment, everything about him, everything with him, had been beyond reason, out of the bounds of right and wrong. He’d warranted one-off rules. Still did. And it had been so long without this…without him. No reason was good enough for that kind of deprivation. Had he suffered too? Tell me…
One of his hands answered in spasms of passion in her hair, the other pressing her where contact was a necessity. His legs continued the confession, rough, urgent, spreading hers for the relentlessness of his arousal. Her core wept, remembering, ready. His mouth told her the rest, every molten glide, every invasive thrust showing her how much, just how much…she’d lost.
Suddenly he tore away. She cried out as if he’d ripped her flesh off, surged up, needing his breath so she could breathe, his heartbeat so her heart wouldn’t stop. He let her drag him down, only to bury his face in her neck, her breasts, growling jolts of molten agony to the very depths of her. Then he groaned, “I will do it.”
She jerked as he pushed away, left her swaying without his support. “You—you mean you’re accepting the succession?”
“We will have to wait and see if I’ll accept it. But I will go back to Castaldini. On one condition.”
Tremors wracked her. “I…knew you’d make demands.”
“One demand. Do you also know what it is?”
She bit her lip, trepidation and temptation turning her body into their battleground. “Something concerning me.”
“And what would that be, do you think? From the man who ‘muddies the professional with the personal’? Come on, guess.”
“You want me to…to…” She couldn’t say it, damn him.
“What?” he prodded, a huge cat nudging its exhausted catch to entertain him some more. “Sacrifice your virtue for Castaldini?”
That turned her stone-cold steady. “How can I, when my virtue is something of the past? As you’re best equipped to testify.”
His face turned to stone, too. “Virginity is not virtue, Phoebe. Or have you been on Castaldini so long that you’ve subscribed to its dated, narrow-minded views of morality?”