“How were you sure I wouldn’t after you said yes? I guess you’ll have to trust me.”
“I don’t.” She’d trusted him before. Look where it had gotten her.
“We’re even, then.”
What? What did that mean?
Before she could voice her puzzlement, he pressed her harder, cupped her face, and her questions combusted at the feel of the warm, powerful flesh cradling hers. “Don’t say anything now. Let’s forget everything and go with the flow. Let me give us tonight.”
Tonight. The word reverberated between them, sweeping through her, uprooting the tethers of her resolve and aversion. His lips were half a breath away, filling her lungs with his intoxication.
She hated that she yearned for his taste and urgency and dominance, but she did. How she did. The need screwed tighter, squeezing her vitals, strangling them. Everything that would assuage the craving gnawing her hollow was a tug away, on his lapel, his hair. Then he would give her everything she needed.
But she couldn’t do it. Literally. She couldn’t move a muscle. And he was giving her the choice of the first move. He wouldn’t take that out of her hands, too. When that was where she needed him to leave her no choice.
Leave it to him to do the opposite of what she wanted.
Annoyance spurted, infusing her limpness with tension.
With a look acknowledging that he wouldn’t get a cease-fire that easily, and with a last annihilating stroke across her stinging lips, he pulled back.
In moments he’d stepped down from the car and come around to her door. She almost clung to him for support as he handed her down. The coolness of twilight after the warmth of the vehicle sprouted goose bumps all over her, adding to her imbalance.
Then every concern evaporated as she gaped. Up.
They were beneath a massive jetliner that looked like a giant alien bird of prey. This was his jet?
The next moment left no doubt as he took her elbow and led her to the Air Force One–style stairs that led from the tarmac to the inside of the jet.
Once inside, her jaw dropped further. She’d been on private jets before, though never his. Another proof of how marginal she’d been to him, when he’d been the center of her universe. But any other jets she’d seen paled in comparison.
She turned sarcastic eyes up to him. “It’s clear you believe in going the extra hundred million in pursuit of luxury.”
He smiled down at her. “I wouldn’t say I go that far.”
She looked pointedly around. “I’d say you go beyond.”
His smile remained unrepentant. “I travel a lot, with staff. I have meetings on board. I need space and convenience.”
“Tell me about your need for those.” She waited until she got a “so we won’t stop dredging up the past, eh?” look, then added more derision. “And you must have yet another castle in the sky to accommodate both ‘needs,’ huh?”
“My family’s being the first one on terra firma?”
“And the third being the futuristic headquarters in New York. Next, I’ll find out you have a space station and a couple of pyramids. Hang on…”
She got out her phone.
He gave her a playful tug, plastering her to his side. “What are you doing now?”
Squeezing her legs tighter against the new rush of heat, she cocked her head up at him. “Just estimating how many thousands of children this sickeningly blatant status symbol could feed, clothe and educate for years.”
He tipped his head back and his laughter boomed, sending her heartbeats scattering all over the jet’s lush carpeting.
“Dio, will I ever come close to guessing what you’ll say next?” He still chuckled as he led her through a meeting area, where staff hovered in the background, to the spiral staircase leading to the upper deck. “So you consider this jet too pretentious? A waste of money better spent on worthy causes?”
“Any personal ‘item’ with a price tag the length of a phone number ranges from ludicrously to criminally wasteful.”
“Even if it’s a utility that I use to make millions of dollars more, money I do use to benefit humanity at large?”
“By advancing science, protecting the environment and creating jobs? Yeah. You forget how I started my working life. I’ve heard all the arguments. And seen all the tax write-offs.”
“But you started your working life with me, so you know I’m not in this to make money or to flaunt my power or status.”
“Do I? Solid experience has taught me that I know nothing about the real you.”
He didn’t answer that as he walked her across an ultrachic foyer and through a door that he opened via a fingerprint-recognition module. It whirred shut as he let her lead him into what had to be the ultimate in airborne private quarters.
The sheer opulence hit her with more evidence of the world he existed in. The world he now maintained she could choose to enter, or not.
He guided her to one of the tan leather couches by huge oval windows and tugged her down with him. She hit the soft surface and it shifted to accommodate her body in the plushest medium she’d ever sat on. Not that she could enjoy the sensation with his body touching hers, making her feel split down the middle, with the half touching him burning and the other half freezing.
She tried to ignore him and her rioting senses by looking around the grand lounge drenched in golden lights, earth tones and the serenity of sumptuousness and seclusion. At the far end of the huge space that spanned the breadth of the jet, a wall was decorated in intricate designs from the blend of cultures that made up Castaldini: Roman, Andalusian and Moorish. A double door led to another area. No doubt a bedroom suite.
A ghost of a touch zapped through her like a thousand volts. His finger feathering against her face, turning it to his.
“Regarding the ‘real me,’ as you put it,” he said, his eyes simmering in the golden lighting. “If you insist you don’t know him, let me rectify this.” He sank deeper into the couch, taking her with him until their heads leaned on the headrest, their faces close enough for her to get lost in the pattern of his incredible irises. “The real me is a nerd who happens to have been born in a royal family then inherited lots of money. He owes not squandering said fortune on his research and impractical ideas to the teachers he’s been blessed with, who tutored him in business practices, and directed his research and resources into money-making products and facilities. He, alas, never had the temperament or desire to become a corporate mogul.”