Her heart pounded. She bit her lip against saying another word, gripped by incredulity, but having enough sense to know she needed him out of here so she could get herself back under control. As the door clicked, she sank onto the sofa and tried to decide if she wanted to cry or scream or swear. Maybe all of the above.
Why had she kissed him? Let alone so lustfully he thought she was offering to prostitute herself? It was humiliating!
It hadn’t felt humiliating while they were doing it, though. He’d made her feel things she’d never felt with anyone.
Why him?
All her life she’d waited for the right man. Dating and relationships were distractions she couldn’t afford, so avoiding going all the way hadn’t been difficult. It wasn’t as though she thought of her virginity as holy or golden, but she came with baggage and liabilities. She didn’t feel like a catch. When she did have sex, she expected it to be with someone who had earned her trust, loved her for who she was and deserved this part of her life that was, as yet, unmarred by memories of anyone else.
Now Dante Gallo had barged in and set the bar on sexual encounters to unimaginable levels. She very much feared reaching it again would be unattainable. Where would she meet another man who made her feel like that?
“Oh!” She buried her face in her pullover, still restless and tingling. Aroused, damn him. She was sensitized and filled with yearning. She would have slept with him. Totally would have let it happen, which wasn’t her at all. She’d never understood when other women behaved wildly, having sex with courier drivers in the back of a van or going home with a stranger, saying things like, I was really into it. We got carried away.
Cami had disparaged such stories. She never got carried away. She had secretly feared there was something wrong with her. Like she was a tiny bit frigid.
Nope. She just hadn’t meant Dante Gallo.
But he was the wrong man. Totally, utterly and completely.
Yet she could still feel that deliberate way he had thrust against her. In that moment, she had felt as carried away and with someone as it was possible to feel. She had thought they were both in the moment, edging toward ecstasy together.
A fresh rush of excitement flooded her loins along with a sting of fresh mortification. He hadn’t been nearly as caught up, and she should have been thinking about—
She jerked her head up, ardor finally subsiding as she remembered what they’d been talking about before the kiss.
How did he not know about her payments? She was so faithful about making them. Had been for five hard years, no matter what other financial disaster had befallen her. There was always something. A rent increase or her brother’s new shoes.
Despite making a decent salary and living very frugally, she was consistently flat broke because she made the equivalent of a generous mortgage payment to Dante Gallo every single month.
His playing dumb about that had her popping onto her feet and dragging on some proper clothes. She didn’t care about dinner with his grandmother, but she wasn’t about to face him in next to nothing again.
Or let him come barging in after her.
She put on the outfit she had left out for her travel to Vancouver tomorrow. It was a classic wool miniskirt in charcoal, black tights and the soft blue pullover she had squeezed a couple of tears into a minute ago. A pair of knee-high boots that were actually worth a fortune finished it off. The mother of a ski student had given them to her because they hadn’t fit in her suitcase back to France. That was precisely the reason Cami had left them out to wear tomorrow.
She felt tough and feminine and confident every time she zipped the supple leather up her inner calf. They had just enough heel to give her some swagger and always earned her compliments, boosting her ego.
She had needed that kick of self-assurance as she prepared to leave for Vancouver and her brother’s decrepit sofa in his shared basement suite in a dodgy part of the city.
With a glance at the clock, she saw she had two minutes to run a brush through her hair and lock her door. She tapped her bank code into her phone as she walked outside, searching her recent transactions until she found the one from last month.
She glanced up as she reached the parking lot and paused.
Dante was on his phone, too, leaning on a black SUV. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were low and heavy, bringing on early dusk, casting him in uneven light. He was shadows and power and had touched her as if she belonged to him. She still felt his hands on her, still felt under his spell.
No. She was a steady, levelheaded, smart woman who controlled her own life. She had grown up fast and shouldered responsibilities way beyond her years.
Yet he erased that by lifting his glance. A fair distance separated them, but she felt him take her in from eyelashes to boot tip.
She had never felt so anxious for approval. So green and uncertain in herself or her own autonomy. Her near climax at the touch of his body was right there, torturing her with her own weakness.
Yet, maybe there was a twisted piece of her that felt so guilty about her father, she wanted Dante’s punishment and blame. Maybe that’s why this attraction was blindsiding her this way.
“You look nice. Grazij.”
His words stung through her, mostly because she was so affected by the lukewarm compliment. “I didn’t dress for you. Here.” She strode forward, holding out her phone as if it was a shield that could deflect all his barbs and ability to undermine. “See?”
He didn’t take the phone. He steadied her hand and glanced at the screen.
She held her breath, pulse tripping while she tried not to be affected by something so innocuous as his touch over the backs of her fingers. Everything they’d done in her apartment came rushing back to torment her. She wanted to pull back, but made herself stand there, heart hammering, watching for some kind of change in his expression. She thought she might have stopped breathing and begun to shake.
* * *
Dante didn’t know what the hell he was looking at. He was still half-blind with lust. This woman had got him so hot, so fast, he’d nearly lost control from a randy bit of necking. She had gone from wary and surprised, to participating, to what appeared to be a surrender of the most exquisite kind.
Appeared.
Somehow, at the last second, he had remembered who she was and hadn’t let her get the better of him. He’d had to stand out here in the spit of spring rain, counting down the minutes with a barely acknowledged hope that she would defy him. Speculating what he would do if she forced him to go back in there and finish what they’d started had not helped cool him off.
She had emerged on time, looking lovely in an elfin way, with her short skirt and sleeves falling past her wrist. Her hair was loose and lifted on the evening breeze while she closed in on him with purpose, her insanely sexy boots making soft splashes as she strode through shallow puddles in the pavement.
As she stood here with her hand trembling in his, he wondered how he’d found the will to leave her without stripping them both naked and driving into her. Was this closeness of hers still part of her act? He couldn’t afford to think her reaction to him was anything but a put-on, but damn did he want to.
“Well?” An underlying huskiness in her tone seemed to stroke over his skin, making his back prickle.
“Well what?” He let a finger steal beneath the edge of her soft sleeve.
She snatched her hand back. “Do you recognize the amount?”
“No.”
“It’s the same every month. Who does your bookkeeping?”
“My accountant.” Why was she going on about this? “But I know where my money comes from and where it goes.” He opened the door of the SUV.
“But—”
“Do you need help getting in? It’s starting to rain again.” The fat drops were falling in a more steady patter, soaking through his shirt.
She let out a huff of impatience and swung into the vehicle with surprising grace.
“Ask him,” she demanded when Dante climbed behind the wheel. “Ask your accountant.”
“She,” he corrected, then rested his forearm on the steering wheel as he gave her a frustrated study. Was she really trying to prove something here? Or was it more of her shell game tactics? Either way, there was an easy fix. “Fine. Give me that.” He held out a hand for her phone.
She tucked it into her chest. “What are you going to do?”
“Take a screen shot and send it to myself. I’ll forward it to my accountant.” He glanced at his watch. “But it’s two in the morning there. She’ll be asleep.”
With a disgruntled scowl, she warily handed over her phone.
He turned the scratched fossil this way and that, giving her a side-eyed frown. “Is this what they call a ‘classic’?”
“Do you know what they want for a ‘free’—” she hooked her fingers into air quotes “—upgrade? Do not get me started on the racket that is cell phone plans.”
He smirked, bemused by her ire against something so inconsequential.
He clicked the screenshot and tapped in his details. The whoosh sounded and a ping emanated from his pocket. He handed back her phone and took out his own, sent the message, then tucked his phone back into his chest pocket to start the engine.
“Oh, I wasn’t—”
Her hand went to the door latch, but he was already backing out of his spot. The seat belt reminder pinged and rain drummed harder against the roof. He flicked the wipers to their highest setting so they slap, slap, slapped.