It was the silent man who did.
Without taking his gaze off of her, he undid his cuffs. Next came the buttons on his dress shirt. Clio held his gaze, even as the shadow of his olive skin under the shirt beckoned.
The column of his throat was a visual feast as were the chiseled angles of his face.
“Damn it, Stefan. Say something.”
Not even Jackson’s ugly name-calling shredded her composure as Stefan’s silence did.
His olive green gaze was hard, flinty even. “I have never been maneuvered into a corner so publicly and so irrevocably, bella. I think I have been rendered mute.”
Maneuvered? Her stomach tying in knots, Clio blinked. There was no anger in his words, no resentment in his tone. Something else lingered there on a razor’s edge, waiting to strike.
“Stefan, I don’t know what came over me. I have never lost my temper like that.”
His posture screamed careless lounging but Clio knew he noticed every breath she took, every nuance that crossed her face.
“I know it’s not something you ask a friend over dinner, but I would owe you…” Shaking her head, Clio caught the words in her mouth. In her wildest dreams, she had never thought she would beg a man to marry her, to ask someone to turn such a big lie into reality.
She reconsidered it in her own head.
If she didn’t value herself, no one else would. Not Jackson, not the world and definitely not Stefan.
And she needed Stefan to value her, to respect her. Suddenly, it felt like the most important thing in the world that he did, that she become at least half the person he had known a decade ago.
“I’ll bring you everything I can on him, Stefan. This is my city, and my life. I will not let him steal any more from me.”
“Think carefully, Clio. You might only be exchanging one awful man for another. Because I’ll not change anything in my life for a woman, cara. Not even a surprise wife.”
Now there was no taunting smile, there was no lazy charm, only utter seriousness in his gaze. Urgency pounding through her, she reached him and grabbed the lapels of his shirt. Thrust her face so close to his that the masculine heat of him swathed her, pinging across her skin, infiltrating every cell and pore. “What do you mean?”
The rhythmic whir of the fax machine in the open study as it cranked out documents filled the cavernous lounge. The sound chafed against her skin as Clio waited for an answer, her breath suspended in her throat.
Grasping her wrists, he pushed her back. Prowled to the fax machine and returned with a sheaf of papers.
He produced a gold-tipped fountain pen from somewhere and nodded toward the sheaf of papers.
“It means the marriage will be only in name, Clio, a contractual agreement that we will both sign. It means all you will get from me is a peanut allowance. It means you’ll sign a prenuptial contract and a nondisclosure agreement that you won’t reveal any of this to another soul or sell the story or write a memoir of our life together at a later time.
“It means you won’t dictate who occupies my bed after we’re both through with Jackson, and you’ll not throw allegations of love at me.
“If you accept and then violate any of the above, the consequences will be far-reaching.”
Clio gasped for breath, as if someone had kicked her in the gut, as if something icy and vicious had been stuck in her chest. Tears pricked behind her eyelids, her lungs struggling to breathe.
“You think…you actually think I planned all this?” she poked him in the chest, hurt splintering into a millions shards. “You think I orchestrated it so that our farcical engagement turns into a real marriage and I can mooch off your millions?”
“The thought crossed my mind, sì,” he said, without blinking, without a beat, without wondering how much pain he was causing her with his casually elegant shrug.
Clio slapped him so hard that her arm jerked at the impact. Her entire body shuddered but it was still nothing compared to the sharp pain in her chest.
Before she could draw another breath, she was plastered against his hard body, her arms twisted behind her in a firm grip, her breasts crushed against his chest, her lungs filled with the scent of him.
* * *
Stefan didn’t know what shocked him more. The fact that Clio had actually slapped him, or his outrageous reaction to it.
He had to have truly become a twisted bastard because the sight of her—out of control with anger, her elegance all ruffled, her composure fraying, her lithe body vibrating, turned him on as if a fire had been lit inside his very blood.
That he had driven her to be that old Clio again felt like a win more than anything.
He turned rock hard and she was like heaven in his arms.
He held her hands tight with one hand and shuddered as her breasts rubbed against his chest. The tight tips of her nipples visible against the flimsy silk she had on drew his gaze. The scent of her perfume drenched his pores.
Dio, the woman smelled absolutely divine.
He moved his free hand over his own cheek, and then over hers. She was so silky soft that his mind instantly wandered to other areas. “Corner me into marriage first, then slap me second…no woman has even come close to what you have achieved today, tesoro.”
She pushed at him again with her hands, not that he budged at her attack. “Don’t you dare call me that, whatever the hell it means.”
“Then do not push me into retaliating the only way I know, bella.”
The more she struggled against him, the more aroused he became. He gave himself over to the moment and enjoyed the novelty of his own reaction.
Most of the women he had dated the past few years had been simpering, talking him up, catering to his every need before he even knew it. Until one face blended into another, until he was nothing but a carefully constructed projection of himself in their eyes, until there was nothing but emptiness inside him…
No one knew who he was, no woman was herself with him…
That Clio wouldn’t hesitate to be herself with him was an aphrodisiac unlike anything. It morphed his physical hunger for her into something else…
“I always wondered about that even temper of yours, bella. That first year at Columbia I would spend hours wondering if you ever lost it and how you would look if you did,” he drawled, and tugged at her hair.
Her gorgeous hair tumbled down to her shoulders like amber fire. Still holding her with one hand, he twisted the hair around his fingers. Wondered for the millionth time how she would look wearing nothing.