“I said okay.”
* * *
Entering Antonio’s sprawling mansion a fraught half hour after he’d asked her to go home with him, Lili still wondered if she was having another wish-fulfillment dream. One far more detailed and realistic...and outrageously ambitious. She kept wondering if she’d wake up any moment now.
But the dream continued, tangible, all-encompassing, like his heat at her back, his aura intoxicating her like the champagne had failed to. Everything was way over the top.
Problem was, it was really happening. He’d asked her to come home with him and she’d accepted. In embarrassing speed and eagerness.
“Would you like a drink?”
She swung around at his quiet question, almost losing her balance, and found him watching her with the most unreadable glance he’d leveled on her so far. Every fiber in her body quivered. He’d been almost silent since she’d said okay. Now the way he regarded her... What was he thinking?
To give herself space, to figure out what to feel or do, she nodded. With an even more disturbing glance, he nodded back as his powerful hand loosened his tie and undid a button as if they were suddenly suffocating him. Her dry throat convulsed as she watched him turn away, cross the lavish, ultramasculine great room to a wet bar at its end, his every movement sheer poetry of grace and control.
Her mind raced as he prepared their drinks, every now and then saying something that only necessitated monosyllabic responses from her.
She was now convinced he was interested in her. As a woman. Also known as sexually. While she could tell him he couldn’t have picked a worse candidate for such interest, she doubted he’d listen. His intense fixation on her had only grown at her attempts to dissuade him from coming closer.
Maybe because he could talk to her, or she jogged his jaded senses, or she was a type he’d never encountered. Whatever the reason, he was interested.
But interest was too mild a word, insultingly so, to describe what he provoked in her.
She craved him.
When she’d never wanted anyone. Or anything, for that matter. Besides scientific discovery. Not that she’d ever felt anything this out of control for science.
Still, mere craving didn’t describe her feelings now. Every last component of her being was aroused. Her mind, her senses, her body. She was in an uproar. For him. Only ever him.
But while his interest had grown directly proportionate to her resistance, since she’d stopped resisting him back there in his car, something had changed. He’d been almost...subdued.
Had he regretted inviting her here the moment she’d agreed? Had he only done so because, based on her behavior so far, he’d fully expected her to decline? Was he already losing interest now that she’d suddenly stopped providing him with the only things that had attracted him to her, resistance and surprises?
This probably explained the way he was behaving now.
Even if it didn’t, she knew if she capitulated and joined his worshipping hordes, he would lose interest in her and move on. Sooner would be better than later. The longer she was exposed to him, the more severe the havoc he’d leave in his wake.
That led her to one possible decision. She’d give him what he expected as his right from all mortal beings.
He was sauntering back now with the drinks, as if he were postponing reaching her as much as he could. Stopping two steps away, when he’d always kept only one between them, he brooded down at her as he handed her a glass.
Gulping down agitation and regret, she took it. Then she reached for his glass, too. His eyes widened as he unclasped the glass and let her take it. Trembling in earnest now, she put the glasses down on a nearby coffee table.
His expression was perplexed when she straightened. It became stunned when she covered the space he’d kept between them, then reached up and pulled the tie he’d fully undone right off.
Dropping it to the ground, she lowered her eyes, unable to take the brunt of his blazing eyes this close up, or his disappointment that she’d turned out to be like every other woman he’d ever met. Squeezing her eyes shut, she did what she’d been aching to do since she’d laid eyes on him.
Sliding her hand beneath his shirt, she longingly glided her shaking, prickling hand over his hot, hard flesh.
Six
Antonio felt his mind short-circuiting.
Liliana. She was touching him. Igniting him into an uproar. Shocking him into paralysis.
This wasn’t even among the things he’d expected or hoped for. He’d planned to court her, to break down her resistance in stages. But with a single “okay,” she’d thrown everything out of whack. He felt like he’d been pushing with all his strength against an immovable object when suddenly all resistance was removed. He found himself hurtling with unstoppable momentum, falling flat on his face.