The Billionaire Beast(10)

Something caught in his chest, and it felt like he was being slowly but surely squeezed in a vice, all the air escaping, and he couldn’t get a breath because of the pressure on his lungs.

Shit. He hadn’t felt like this for goddamn years.

Turning abruptly away from her, Nero strode toward the door of the gym, heading automatically for the place where he felt the most strong, the most calm, his control room

“Mr. de Santis?” Phoebe’s voice was laced with surprise.

“Get me a woman for tonight then,” he growled without turning around. “In fact, get me two.”

Then he went through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

* * *

Phoebe stared at the closed door of the gym, one hand still raised in a fist, ready to strike. Her heartbeat thundered in her ears, and she could hear the harsh sound of her breathing. Too fast, too heavy. And she was shaking, adrenaline snapping and crackling in her bloodstream like electricity.

But it wasn’t because she was scared.

She inhaled sharply and turned away from the door, taking a few steps toward the big glass windows that gave a view out over the magnificent garden, looking blindly at it. Then she noticed that the fingers of the hand that had hit him were curled inward, as if she wanted to hold onto the memory of that contact and not let it go. He’d felt hot, his jaw hard, the scrape of stubble prickling against her palm . . .

Phoebe swallowed.

No, it wasn’t fear that was making her shake, and she knew it. And the fact that it should have been made no difference. When he’d grabbed her wrist and pulled her close, when he’d refused to stop even when she’d told him to, it hadn’t been fear that she’d felt. She’d been angry, certainly. No, more than angry, she’d been furious.

And something else. Something she didn’t want to look too closely at.

He’d been so . . . big. So tall. That tank had clung damply to his skin, outlining every hard muscle, and she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him. He’d been hot, too. So very, very hot. Like a radiator on a cold day, throwing off heat, that intense, vital energy she found impossible to resist.

Yet if it had only been the physical pull of him, she might have been able to shrug it off. But it wasn’t, and that was the really difficult part.

It was the way he’d looked at her, those black eyes staring intently into hers. As if she was a fascinating piece of text he was desperate to translate.

No one had looked at her like that before. No one had looked at her like she was an unknown quantity they were interested in figuring out. Even Charles had never looked at her like that. When they’d met—an almost clichéd cute meeting in a Tube station in London, when he’d been the clueless American tourist trying to work out a Tube map and she’d helped him out—he’d shown his interest in her immediately, sure. But he’d already decided who she was even before he’d asked her for coffee: the pretty English rose with her sexy accent and typical English reserve, needing the right man to crack it. At the time, she hadn’t cared. Charles had been handsome and foreign, and the help he’d needed from her had been of a different kind. Of course, he’d needed her help back in New York as well, since he’d not only been inept with a Tube map but with a whole lot of other things, too, though that was neither here nor there.

Her parents were the same. When they looked at her, they only saw what they wanted to see. The daughter who provided emotional support whenever her mother needed it. The daughter who could be criticized whenever her father needed a target. They never looked deeper. They were never interested in who she actually was. She was what they needed her to be, and that’s as far as they were willing to go.

Phoebe pressed her hands to her hot cheeks, trying to get her racing heartbeat under control. No, she couldn’t be thinking these things, and she definitely couldn’t be feeling them, because apart from anything else, Nero de Santis was her boss and she was still engaged to Charles.

God, she loved Charles. She’d been caring for him for two years now and she was going to be there for him should he ever wake up.

What if he doesn’t?

No, she couldn’t think like that. He would wake up. He would.

Taking a few more deep breaths, Phoebe pulled herself together, lowering her hands and smoothing down her skirt, touching her hair to make sure her bun was still firmly in place. The familiar movements settled her, calming the riot of emotions twisting and knotting in her gut.

She shouldn’t have hit Nero. That had been a huge loss of control, not to mention a massive mistake, and she’d known it the second her palm had come in contact with his cheek. Something had ignited in his black eyes then and it hadn’t been fury. It had been something far more dangerous. Something that had called a response from way down deep inside her. An intrinsically feminine response she hadn’t expected and didn’t want.

Phoebe sucked in another breath. Thinking about that look was also a massive mistake. Perhaps what she should be thinking about instead was what had actually made him stop, because even the threat of being kicked in the balls hadn’t been enough. He’d been very intent on coming for her—at least until she’d mentioned the police and a jail cell.

Realization seeped slowly through her, and she blinked at the expanse of green outside the windows. He’d stopped in his tracks the moment she’d said she’d call the police, the fire in his eyes dousing instantly.

Had it been because he didn’t want the police themselves here? Or was it the jail-cell threat?

Silly question. She knew which one it was. He wouldn’t be scared of legal trouble, not a man like him. It was the threat of being dragged from his house that had gotten to him, she was sure.

She’d been very busy the past three days, busy enough that she hadn’t thought about the fact that she hadn’t seen him leave his house, not once.

But there were those rumors, the ones about how much of a recluse he was. About how no one had ever seen him outside. In fact, one of those job contacts of hers had told her that Nero hadn’t been seen outside his house for ten years.

Phoebe turned around, staring at the door again, frowning.

He was so vital, so alive. So full of that fierce, primitive energy. She couldn’t imagine him allowing himself to be contained anywhere let alone in one giant house for . . . what? An entire decade? Surely that was impossible?

And yet in the three days she’d been here, he hadn’t gone out, or at least not that she’d seen. In fact, now she thought about it, he seemed to live in only four rooms: his office, his gym, the mysterious room behind the door in his office that he disappeared off into every so often, and sometimes he went into his library, situated right next to his office, but not very often.

Something shifted inside her, the same thing that always shifted inside her whenever she encountered someone who was in trouble or someone who was broken. An intense sympathy. A desire to help. The need to do something for them, make them better. Heal them.

It was an old, familiar urge and she really didn’t want to feel it for such an arrogant, selfish man as Nero. A man who seemed quite able to look after himself and who didn’t seem to care about anyone else’s feelings. He certainly hadn’t given a thought to hers just now. All he’d been concerned about was what he wanted.

So no, she shouldn’t want to help him, God forbid. In fact, what she needed to do was concentrate on being his perfect assistant, earn herself those dollars so she wouldn’t have to move Charles somewhere else, somewhere cheaper. Somewhere that might compromise his care. Think about not getting herself fired and not hard male bodies or the feel of hot skin on hers or the bright, burning look in dark eyes . . .

Phoebe swallowed, put her shoulders back, and headed for the door.

First item on the agenda for the afternoon was to get the bloody man the women he wanted. And hope like hell that’s all he wanted from her.

* * *

Nero clicked on the tab he wanted, and a window opened up on one of his screens. He hadn’t thought about it at all for the past three days and yet now, in the hours since he’d walked out of the gym, he hadn’t been able to get it out of his head. And since temptation was something he never resisted, he didn’t bother resisting it now.

On the screen was Phoebe, in the little sitting room that was part of her suite. She was on the white linen couch, a laptop on her knees, and she was looking intently at it, her finger moving on the trackpad.

Nero had cameras in every room in the house, and he had no qualms about checking them now and then. It was part of his considerable personal security and it also enabled him to make sure his staff were doing exactly what he required of them. Some would call it an invasion of privacy, but Nero didn’t give a shit what people might call it. His house was his property, and he could do what he liked with it. His staff, too, he tended to view as his property, and not only did he want to make sure they were doing a good job, but he also liked to check to see that nothing had happened to them. Shit, if he hadn’t been watching James last year, the old guy would have died from the heart attack that had struck him as he’d walked down the main staircase to Nero’s office.

Of course, Phoebe wouldn’t be in any danger of having a heart attack, nor was she likely to not be doing her job. So really, checking up on her was unnecessary. Yet he didn’t stop himself from staring at her on the screen, watching her face as she frowned at the laptop in front of her.