“A Thanksgiving Day call from Dante Russo.” Christian’s drawl rolled over the phone. “I’m honored.”
“You’re the one who emailed me first on a federal holiday, Harper.”
I’d retired to my room after cleaning up. My parents and Luca were downstairs, but I wasn’t in the mood to play late-night UNO or whatever the hell they were doing.
My parents would continue to be inappropriate, and my brother would bug me about Vivian.
No fucking thank you.
“Ah, yes.” Christian’s voice sobered, a sign he was entering business mode. “We found another set of photos in a safety deposit box registered to an alias. Total count is now five.”
Francis was a paranoid bastard.
“Do you think there’s more?” I glanced at the ensuite bathroom. The sound of running water leaked under the closed door like erotic white noise.
Vivian was in there. Wet. Naked.
Heat and annoyance rushed through me in equal measure.
I turned my back to the door and waited for Christian’s response.
“There could always be more,” he said. “That’s the game we’re playing until we can confirm exactly how many backups Francis has.”
Basically, I was playing chicken with my brother’s life.
I could call Francis’s bluff, but…
I rubbed an aggravated hand over my jaw.
It was too damn risky.
“My team will continue looking until you tell us to stop.” Christian paused. “I have to say, I’m surprised you haven’t checked in since October.
I thought the issue held more urgency for you.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Hmm.” The sound resonated with knowing. “Or perhaps you’re warming up to your bride-to-be? I heard you two disappeared for quite a while at Valhalla’s New York gala.”
My teeth clenched. Why was everyone so obsessed with my feelings toward her? “What we do in our private time is none of your business.”
“Considering I’m actively surveilling her father on your request, it’s partly my business.” Ice clinked in the background. “Be careful, Dante. You can either have Vivian or you can have her father’s head on a platter—
figuratively speaking, of course. You can’t have both.”
The shower stopped running, followed by a beat of silence and the opening creak of the bathroom door.
“I’m well aware. Keep looking.” I hung up right as Vivian stepped out in a cloud of steam and sweet-smelling fragrance.
Every muscle tensed.
Objectively, there was nothing indecent about her silk shorts and top. It was the same outfit she’d worn in the kitchen during our snack night, only in black instead of pink.
Un objectively, it should be outlawed. All that exposed skin couldn’t be good for her. Never mind the fact we were in tropical Bali; the outfit was a hypothermia case waiting to happen.
“Who were you talking to?” Vivian loosened her hair from its bun and ran her fingers through the dark strands. They cascaded down her back, begging me to wrap my fist around them and see if they were as soft as they looked.
My jaw muscles flexed. “Business associate.”
I’d stayed up late the past three nights so I wouldn’t have to share the room with Vivian while we were both awake. She was always asleep when I came in, and I was always gone when she woke up.
We didn’t have that option tonight.
Apparently, Vivian wasn’t in the mood for card games with my family either, so we were stuck in the same room. Awake. Half dressed. Together.
Fuck my life.
“On Thanksgiving?” Vivian smoothed body lotion over her arms, oblivious to my torture.
I should’ve stayed in the damn living room.
“Money doesn’t rest.” I turned my back to her and pulled my shirt over my head. The air conditioning was on full blast, but I was burning up.
I tossed the shirt over the arm of a nearby chair and faced her again only to find her staring at me with wide eyes.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ready for bed.” I cocked an eyebrow at her visible horror. “I sleep hot, mia cara. You wouldn’t want me to roast to death overnight, would you?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” she muttered, setting her lotion back on the dresser. “You’re a grown man. One night of sleeping with your clothes on won’t kill you.”
Vivian’s eyes dropped to my bare torso before she quickly looked away, her cheeks red.
A knowing smirk worked its way onto my mouth, but it quickly faded when we turned off the lights and climbed into bed, making sure to stay as far apart as possible.
It wasn’t enough.
The California king was large enough to host a small orgy, but Vivian was still too close. Hell, I could be sleeping in the bathtub with the door closed and she’d still be too close.
Her scent stole into my lungs, blurring the usually crisp edges of my logic and reasoning, and her presence burned into my side like an open flame. The murmurs of our breaths overlapped in a heavy, hypnotic rhythm.
It was half past eleven. I could reasonably wake up at five.
Six and a half hours. I could do this.
I stared at the ceiling, my jaw tight, while Vivian turned and tossed.
Every dip of the mattress reminded me she was there.
Half-naked, close enough to touch, and smelling like an apple orchard after a morning rainstorm.
I didn’t even like apples.
“Stop it,” I ground out. “Neither of us will get any sleep if you insist on moving around like that all night.”
“I can’t help it. My brain is…” She blew out a breath. “I can’t sleep.”
“Try.” The sooner she fell asleep, the sooner I could relax.
Relatively speaking.
“What great advice,” she said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. You should start a Dear Dante column in the local newspaper.”
“Were you born with a smart mouth, or did your parents buy it for you after their first million?”
Vivian let out a sardonic breath. “If my parents had their way, I wouldn’t say anything except yes, of course, and I understand.”
A twinge of regret softened my aggravation.
“Most parents want obedient children.” Except mine, who don’t want children at all.
“Hmm.’
It struck me that Vivian knew more about my family dynamics than I did hers, which was ironic considering she was the more open one in our relationship. I rarely discussed my parents, both because the gossip mills churned overtime and because my relationship with them was nobody’s business, but there was something about Vivian that pulled reluctant admissions and long-buried secrets out of me.
“Are your parents upset we’re not celebrating Thanksgiving with them?” I asked.
“No. We’re not big on the holiday.”
Of course. I knew that.
More silence.
Moonlight spilled through the curtains and splashed liquid silver across our sheets. The A/C hummed in the corner, a quiet companion to the thunder rumbling in the distance. The sense of an impending rainstorm snuck past the windows and soaked the air.
It was the type of night that lulled people into drowsy disclosures and deep sleeps.
For me, it had the opposite effect. Energy buzzed like a live wire under my skin, heightening all my senses and setting me on edge.
“How much did your family change after your father’s business took off?”
We’d touched on the topic after our engagement shoot, but she hadn’t gone in depth about it beyond the arranged marriage expectations.
Since neither of us could sleep, I might as well try to get some intel out of Vivian. Plus, the conversation kept my mind off other, more impure thoughts.
“A lot,” she said. “One day, Agnes and I were attending public schools and eating school lunch. The next, we were at a fancy private academy with gourmet chefs and students showing up in chauffeured limos. Everything changed—our clothes, our house, our friends. Our family. At first, I loved it because what child wouldn’t love dressing up and having new toys? But…”
She drew in a deep breath. “The older I got, the more I realized how much money changed us. Not just materially, but spiritually, for lack of a better word. We were new money, but my parents were desperate to prove we were just as good as Boston’s old-money elite. There’s a difference, you know.”
I knew. Hierarchies existed even— especially—in the world of the rich and powerful.
“The desire for validation consumed them, especially my father,” Vivian said. “I can’t pinpoint the exact turning point, but I woke up one morning and the funny, caring man who’d carried me on his shoulders when I was a little girl and helped me build sandcastles on the beach was gone. In his place was someone who would do anything to reach the top of the social ladder.”
If she only knew.
“I’m not complaining,” she continued. “I know how lucky I am to have been raised with the money we had. But sometimes…” Another, more wistful breath. “I wonder if we would’ve been happier had Lau Jewels stayed a tiny shop on a side street in Boston.”
Jesus. An unfamiliar ache settled in my chest.
She and Francis shared the same blood. How could they be so damn different?
“Sorry for rambling.” She sounded embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to talk your ear off about my family.”
“You don’t have to apologize.” Her words were sad, but her voice was so sweet I could listen to it forever. “This beats counting sheep.”
Her laugh carried into the night like a soft melody. “Are you saying I’m putting you to sleep?”
Our legs brushed, and my muscles tensed at the brief contact.
I hadn’t realized how close we’d gotten.
Against my better judgment, I turned my head to find her doing the same. Our gazes met, and the rhythm of our breaths splintered into something more jagged.
“Trust me,” I said quietly. “Of all the things you do to me, putting me to sleep isn’t one of them.”
Moonlight kissed the curves of Vivian’s face, accentuating the hollows of her cheekbones and the sensual fullness of her lips. Her eyes shone dark and luminous, like precious stones gleaming in the night.
Surprise glinted in their depths at my words, along with a smoky wisp of desire that made heat curl in my groin.
I hadn’t touched her since our tryst in Valhalla’s library, but all I wanted in that moment was to see those eyes darken with pleasure again. To feel the softness of her body pressed against mine and hear her breathy little cries when she climaxed against me.
My blood pounded in my ears.
The breeze from the vents grew hotter, the air thicker.
The electricity from dinner returned and stretched the moment into one long, perfect thread of tension.
“We should go to sleep,” Vivian breathed. There was a slight shake in her voice. “It’s late.”
“Agreed.”
For a suspended moment, neither of us moved.
Then another boom of thunder crashed in the distance, and the tension exploded with the force of a lit match in a barrel of gasoline.
My mouth crashed down on hers, and her arms wrapped around my neck, pulling me flush against her. A low moan vibrated against my mouth when I rolled on top of her and pinned her hips between my thighs.
Raw desire took over, eradicating thoughts of anything except Vivian.
No Francis. No Luca. No blackmail. Just her.
I stroked my tongue against the seam of her lips, tasting her, demanding entry. They parted, and the heady, intoxicating taste of her coated my tongue.
I cupped the back of her neck and angled her head so I could deepen the kiss.
Her hands sank into my hair; my palm swept beneath her top and over her stomach.
We kissed like we were drowning, and the other person was our only source of oxygen. Wild. Frantic. Desperate.
And it still wasn’t enough.
I needed more of it. More of her.
“Dante.” Her soft cry when I cupped her breast almost undid me.
“Keep screaming my name, sweetheart.” I kissed my way down her neck and chest, eager to map every inch of her body with my mouth. I closed my mouth around a clothed, peaked nipple and pinched the other between my thumb and forefinger, eliciting another moan of my name.
Approval rumbled in my chest. “That’s a good girl.”
I made my way down her stomach to her thighs, my journey languid despite the need raging through me.
I smelled Vivian’s arousal before I tugged her shorts and underwear down, but the sight of her pussy, so wet and ready and fucking perfect, hit me like a shot of pure heroin.
“Please.” She panted, her grip strangling my hair when I nipped the soft skin of her inner thigh.
My cock pulsed so hard it ached, but I didn’t touch it, too focused on the glistening temptation in front of me.
“Please what?”
I received only a whimper in response.
“Please eat out this pretty little cunt of yours?” I taunted, my voice soft but the words rough. “Tongue fuck you until you beg me to let you come?
You have such a smart mouth, mia cara. Use it.”
“Yes.” The word was half plea, half demand. “I need your mouth on me.
Dante, please.”
This time, the sound of her voice, moaning my name, in that way, did unravel me.
I pushed her legs further apart and delved in like a man starved. I focused on her swollen clit, licking and sucking until her cries of pleasure crescendoed to the edge of pain.
Vivian writhed and bucked, begging me to stop one minute and keep going the next. She was dripping all over my face, and I couldn’t get enough.
I was addicted to the taste of her, to the way she sounded when I buried my tongue inside her and the way her back arched off the bed when she finally came with a full-body shudder.
I waited for her trembles to die down before I touched my tongue to her sensitized clit again and gave it a slow, leisurely lick.
“Hai un sapore divino,” I murmured.
“No more,” she pleaded. “I can’t… oh God.” Her protest split into another moan when I slid two fingers inside her up to the first knuckle. I kept my mouth on her clit and slowly worked my way up to the second knuckle before I pulled my fingers out and pushed them back in.
In and out, faster and faster, my mouth still exploring her clit until she drenched my face and her sharp cries filled the room again.
My cock throbbed in time with my pulse as I pushed myself onto my knees.
Vivian stared up at me, her cheeks flushed and her chest heaving from the aftermath of her orgasm. A light sheen of sweat misted her skin, and her face was so full of trust and satiated pleasure it made my gut twist.
No one had ever looked at me like that before.
Just like that, a cold trickle of reality pierced my fog of lust.
It suddenly hit me who we were and what I’d done.
We weren’t a normal engaged couple. She was the daughter of the enemy, and I’d been forced into this engagement, even if she didn’t know it.
I wasn’t supposed to like her, much less desire her.
Vivian wrapped her arms around my neck and pressed her hips up against mine, the message clear.
Fuck me.
I wanted to. My body screamed for it, my cock ached for it. It would be so easy to sink into her softness and let it carry us away for the night.
But if I did, there would be no going back. Not for her, and not for me.
My hands fisted on the mattress as indecision warred.
You can either have Vivian or you can have her father’s head on a platter—figuratively speaking, of course. You can’t have both.
Ice water doused the remaining heat in my veins.
Of all the voices I wanted to hear in bed, Christian’s ranked in the bottom five, but the bastard had a point.
Vivian didn’t have a perfect relationship with her family, but she still cared about them. One day soon, she’d find out the truth about our engagement and her father’s deception, and she’d be devastated.
Adding sex to the mix would only complicate things further.
“Dante?” Tentativeness crept into her voice at my hesitation.
Goddammit.
I unwound her arms from my neck and straightened, trying to ignore the hurt and confusion on her face.
“Get some rest,” I said roughly. “It’s been a long day.”
I didn’t wait for an answer before I got off the bed, headed into the bathroom, and locked the door. I turned the shower as cold as it would go, letting the icy water blast some fucking sense into me.
Self-loathing formed a concrete block in my chest.
What the hell was I doing?
Kissing Vivian. Letting my guard down. Almost having sex with her in my parents’ villa, for Christ’s sake.
I’d intended to stay away from her until I took care of her father and ended our farce of an engagement.
Now here I was, taking a cold shower at midnight so I didn’t fuck up my plans any more than I already had.
I’d spent my life honing my control. Enzo Russo had drilled its importance into me since I was a child. Even when I occasionally lost my temper, I never lost sight of the bigger goal.
But I’d also never met anyone like Vivian.
Of all the people in my life, she was the only one who could make me lose control.
