The Couple who Fooled the World Page 13

  She didn’t know where the confidence was coming from. Didn’t know who this woman was, with her hand wrapped around a man, with every intention of tasting him, having her way with him. She didn’t know who this woman was, but she liked her.

  And then she realized, this woman was her. The real her.

  He reached up and grabbed her bun, tugging her hair, pulling her head back so she had to meet his eyes. “You think not?” he growled.

  “I think I have you in the palm of my hand.” She squeezed him and a feral groan escaped his lips, rumbling through his body. “You’re mine, Ferro Calvaresi.”

  She reached beneath the waistband of his underwear and freed him, her fingers curled around his bare, heated flesh.

  She leaned in and ran her tongue along the length of him, a shiver working its way through her body. She’d never felt so powerful. Had never felt so supremely comfortable in her own skin. On her knees, in front of a man, she might seem like she was the submissive. But she knew she had the control here. That she’d taken it from him. A good thing, because he badly needed the control stripped from him.

  Ferro looked down at Julia, pleasure ripping through him. He was lost. He was past the point of regaining control in the situation. Past the point of thought and reason. He was lost in his needs, in the pounding, insistent need for release, and the need for her to keep going forever.

  As she took him deep into her mouth, he lost the capability to think. To breathe. No woman had done this for him before. It was the ultimate in giving pleasure, while taking none. And she did it as though she could feel what he was feeling. As though she was just as lost in it all.

  But he wasn’t in charge here. He was at her mercy. And it felt like he was hurtling toward the edge of a cliff, with no choice but to go over. Flame roared through him, pushed him further, faster, dangerously close to the edge.

  “Enough,” he bit out. “Julia, I can’t last.”

  She moved away from him, her face pink, her eyes bright. “Okay,” she said, her breathing labored.

  He moved to her then, undoing the buttons on her top while she finished discarding his pants and underwear. “I have no protection,” he said.

  “I, uh…I do.”

  “You do?”

  “Thad,” she said. As if her assistant’s name explained things.

  “What?”

  “He slipped some in my purse before I left. He wants to make sure I play safe. And of course I couldn’t tell him that we weren’t…because he has to think we are. And anyway, now we are.”

  She shoved at the center of his chest and his legs gave easily, his body sinking into his office chair. Julia pulled her shirt off the rest of the way and unhooked her bra, tossing it to the side. Then she shimmied out of her skirt, leaving her in a pair of black panties and heels.

  He’d thought a more vampish image would make her less appealing to him. He was wrong. He liked her like this. Aggressive, sexy. She pushed her panties down and kicked them to the side, then started on her shoes.

  “Leave them,” he said.

  Her face turned pinker, and she smiled. “Okay.” Then she reached into her purse and produced the condoms, walking to him slowly, her hips swaying. She was the very image of temptation. Of all the things he’d been denying himself for so long.

  He was tired of denial. He just wanted to feel her, tight and wet around him, pushing him to release.

  He didn’t need a fantasy to stay hard for her. She was the fantasy.

  She opened the protection and slid it onto his length, her fingers clumsy, delicate and arousing. “I’m hoping this will work,” she said, putting one knee to the side of his thigh and gripping his shoulders, then bringing the other knee up alongside his other leg.

  He put one hand on her lower back, the other around his erection, guiding himself into her body as she lowered herself onto him slowly.

  Her hold on him tightened, her head falling back. “Oh, yes, this works.”

  He couldn’t speak. He could hardly breathe. He had never wanted with such intensity. Had never had the arousal in his body mirror the desires in his heart like this. It was intoxicating. It was dangerous. And he didn’t care.

  He clung to her while she rode him, pushed them both higher. He lifted his face, caught her nipple between his lips and sucked her in deep, the hoarse cry that escaped her mouth sending a shock of need through him.

  His lowered his hand, gripped her butt. The answering tightening of her hold on him, told him that she liked it.

  And then he couldn’t think anymore at all. His control was back in the distance and he didn’t care. He could do nothing but feel. Could do nothing but chase his release, the pleasure blinding, burning, ravaging old scars and laying them open.

  He felt like he was being torn to pieces. She arched into him, her internal muscles pulsing around him. No, this wasn’t like being torn to pieces. That had already happened. His mind and body, his emotions, torn raggedly, violently into separate entities so that he could survive the indignity of his life. Survive the shame.

  Here and now, it was like being forced back together. Cauterized and sealed by heat. Painful. Intense. Undeniable.

  And with his name on her lips, she came, her nails digging into him hard, her eyes closed tight, her entire body rigid. And he could do nothing but follow, his blood raging in his ears as he poured himself out, spent himself. And when it was over, he was left hollowed out and breathless, savaged by the flame that had just burned through him.

  He started to move and her fingers dug into his shoulders again. “No. Stay. Don’t leave me. Please.”

  “Julia…”

  “I need you.”

  And because no one had ever needed him before, he stayed.

  Julia’s breathing slowly normalized as she say curled against Ferro’s bare chest. She had really, truly, just jumped him in his office, with the door unlocked. And she had really, truly, begged him to stay and clung to him like she was a koala bear.

  And she was still clinging. She didn’t know what had come over her. No, she did know. He’d been so calm. Acting like nothing at all had happened between them and so she’d wanted to make it so he couldn’t ignore her. Couldn’t deny that something had happened, that things had changed. Because she felt altered. Completely and utterly altered and the fact that he didn’t just…sucked.

  “I…Oh.” She stood up, and almost fell back down again. All the blood had now rushed to her head and her thighs felt like overcooked noodles, thanks to the workout she’d just gotten. “I don’t know what…I just…I did that.”

  Ferro was still sitting there, naked at his desk. She had to turn away from him because looking at him was making her all hot again.

  “Don’t ever apologize for your passion, Julia,” he said. She turned to face him, her heart thundering. “I don’t.”

  “You do. It’s beautiful. Don’t apologize for it.”

  “This is…incredibly awkward. I don’t really know what to say to the guy I just sort of attacked.”

  “Let me make a deal with you, Julia,” he said, leaning forward.

  “What sort of deal?” She started hunting for her clothes, knowing she couldn’t just stand there all naked like it was casual and whatever. She was so not casual and whatever about being naked beneath the bright lights of Ferro’s office.

  “I will teach you,” he said. “And you will accept my offer for a larger share of the Barrows deal.”

  “No. I don’t want to deal like that.”

  “I do. I need it, Julia. In exchange, you will be my lover.”

  “We talked about this in Alaska.”

  “But you denied me my terms, and I can’t have that. Neither can I seem to keep my hands off you. It’s unacceptable. That means this attraction has to be allowed to run its course. I need my control, Julia.”

  “Ferro, I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Trading your body is beneath you, cara mia?”

  “But I would be with you f
or nothing.”

  “Everything has a price, that’s how life works. That’s how I understand it.”

  There was something horribly cold in his eyes, where before there had been heat. Something disconnected when for a moment she’d felt so close to him.

  “Use me, Julia. I am offering to let you use me.”

  “As you’ll use me?” she asked.

  “Yes. But it is still not a balanced trade.”

  “Why not?”

  “The one with the power in bed, the one making the commands, is always in control. And I will give you your due for allowing me this.”

  “But I want it,” she said. “I want it like that. It’s part of you teaching me.”

  “It’s still not the same. This is…beyond me. Beyond my experience. I want you so much it makes me ache. I have never wanted like this. Always for me it’s been survival. When I bought things for my office, it was because I could. A way of proving that I could have everything those women had in their homes, those women who were so superior to me. Everything that was in shops that barred my entrance could belong to me now. That I owned a part of the world that did such damage to me. But it wasn’t because I wanted it. I hate this trash. Gaudy, pretentious. Utterly meaningless.” He moved his hand in a sweeping gesture and brushed a plaster bust off his desk, onto the hard floor where it shattered.

  “It is nothing,” he said. “I didn’t want it, I wanted what it represented. You, you I want. You are the first thing I have ever wanted. I will have you, Julia, if I have to work to find your price, I will have you and damn my soul.”

  Even though the coldness remained, the disconnect, she could sense more, a fire burning beneath the surface. Trying to melt the ice.

  “You think I would cost you so much?”

  “I know you will,” he said. “But I don’t care. Why do you want me?” he asked. “I am…there is dirt on my skin that will not come clean. Why would you touch me?”

  “Because I don’t see you that way.”

  “How?”

  “You think I’m innocent, Ferro, because I was a virgin, but innocence and virginity aren’t the same thing. I was a virgin because I was afraid, not…not so much of sex but the trust I would have to give in order to have it.”

  They were still naked, and that seemed right. It seemed appropriate that she should be naked while she told him this story because it made her feel exposed. Made her lower her armor. Made her strip herself completely.

  She’d thought being with Ferro would be perfect because all she’d have to give was her body, and never herself, but she saw now that it wasn’t enough.

  “When…when I was in high school, I got this idea that I might like to go to prom. And my mother was thrilled because it was the first time I’d shown an inclination toward being ‘normal.’ All she’d ever wanted was a daughter who cared about shopping and boys, but I just wanted to program text-based adventure games and reenact fantasy battles in the park with other geeks. As you can imagine, no one was lining up to be my date. But right before the dance, Michael Coleman asked me to be his date. I said yes. He was handsome and popular and it seemed too good to be true. It was, by the way. It was too good to be true.”

  She swallowed. She hadn’t realized how hard it would be to tell the story. She’d never told anyone, not the whole thing. “We spent hours choosing the dress. It was very pink. It was like bubblegum. And my date was handsome. He danced with me, spent time with me. It was great. And then…after the dance we got in the limo my parents had rented for us and he started…He kissed me, only I’d never kissed a boy before and he was going too fast. I asked him to stop and he wouldn’t. He tore my dress, grabbed my breasts. He was so rough and it all just hurt. And I can’t even explain how he looked. Like he was angry at me. Like he blamed me. And I kept saying no, but he kept going and he pushed my dress up and put his hand between my legs. And I hit him. As hard as I could. In the nose. Then he hit me across the face with the back of his hand. My nose was bleeding and…and then he said ‘you stupid bitch. I was doing you a favor. No other guy would ever touch you. You should be thanking me. I’m only here because your mom paid me to be. After forcing me to dance with you all night I deserved to have you put out.’ That was when the limo driver realized something was happening and intervened. He didn’t…call the police or anything he just unrolled the divider and had me come up to the front seat. It’s amazing how little people do in those situations, because no one wants to believe it happened.”

  “Dio, Julia that’s…”

  “That’s why I don’t see dirt on you, Ferro, because I understand what it feels like to have someone else try to own your body, to have someone act like they have a right to you. I understand that you were a victim.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “He told me I should thank him, Ferro. Because no other man would ever want to touch me. He told me I should thank him for holding me down and trying to force his way into my body. Should I have thanked him?”

  “Cazzo.” Ferro’s voice was rough, raw. “No, Julia. Of course not.”

  “How is it any different? She held food and shelter over your head. Your very survival. And I’m sure she acted like you should be grateful, or like you were business partners, or whatever she made you believe, but you don’t have to thank the person who abused you. She could have just given you money, if she cared she could have. She could have put you to work in her kitchen, but instead she took a sixteen-year-old boy and demanded the use of his body, sold his body. I fail to see how you, as a boy, had any more control than me at sixteen in the back of that limo.”

  “But you punched his face. You walked away.”

  “I had somewhere to go.”

  “It doesn’t matter…it doesn’t make it okay.”

  “No. Not for either of us. Especially not for you. But we were the victims here. And it’s a horrible word, I know. I hate it, but it’s the truth. I want you to know I look at you and I see a man who earned his success. A man who deserves everything he has. A man who doesn’t deserve to be defined by what he did to survive.”

  “A nice thought, Julia, but even if I believed I didn’t need to be defined by it, I can’t simply make it go away.”

  “I know that, too.”

  He leaned forward. “I would kill him. I want you to know that. Any man who touched you like that…who hurt you. I would kill him.”

  “I believe you.”

  “It’s important that you know.”

  It made her want to cry. Because her parents had asked why she was bruised the next morning, but they’d also believed her lies about why. Feeble lies about tripping over her feet. They’d accepted it without batting an eye.

  And when she’d started spending more and more time in her room, they just stopped asking her to come out.

  Ferro made her feel like it mattered. Like she mattered.

  “I really think you’re a pretty good man, Ferro Calvaresi,” she said.

  He slid his thumb over her cheekbone, his eyes intent on hers. “I’m not, Julia. I don’t want you to lie to yourself. That’s just another reason we need these rules. I need to make sure you understand what this is. What this really is.”

  “I accept your terms,” she said, an echo of the agreement she’d made with him the first time they’d made love. “But you have to agree to mine.”

  “And they are?”

  “Don’t leave me after. I want to sleep with you. I need that.”

  He searched her face. Unwilling to disappoint her, not now. She could read it, clearly, in his expression. “I will stay in bed with you at least until you fall asleep. I would not be able to sleep with another person.”

  She nodded, even though she didn’t like his answer. She wouldn’t push.

  “Don’t fake charm me. I’m not one of your clients. We might be making a deal, but we’re not selling our bodies, do you understand? I want you. The real you.”

  “I’ll give you what I can on that score, Julia, but I
don’t know if it will be enough for you.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Julia, I had to work at separating my mind from my body, what I wanted, from what I needed to do. I don’t just connect with people and that’s not by accident. I learned something very quickly in my life. It’s easy to survive if you realize you always have control of your mind. The harshest street doesn’t seem so bad if you can go into yourself and imagine you have a bed, imagine you’re safe. Sex with a stranger you don’t even want touches your body, but you can close it out in your mind. You can go so far inside yourself that nothing touches you anymore. My problem has been finding the way back out. Honestly, I don’t even want to most of the time. Except when you touch me. Then I want to feel it all.”

  Her heart crumpled in on itself. “I want to try to help you.”

  “You can help me. In my bed. I feel the most with you, when I’m in you, that I’ve ever felt in my life.” He reached and she extended her hand to him, let him take it, let him draw her to him. “Kiss me.”

  She bent down and pressed her lips to his.

  “You will come home with me tonight,” he said, a command, but she knew it was her choice.

  She nodded, not caring that it was impractical and that she didn’t have her things. Not caring about much of anything but Ferro and her need for him.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “As per our agreement, cara.”

  And she couldn’t help but feel like she’d made a deal with the devil. But she had a hard time feeling too bad about it. And the strange thing was, she didn’t feel trapped anymore. Not by the media, not by her past.

  She felt free.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FOR THE FOURTH night in a row, when Ferro got home after work, Julia was at his house. And for the fourth night in a row he told his chef to have dinner delivered to his room in an hour. And for the fourth night in a row, he picked Julia up and took her upstairs where he made the best use of that hour possible. Naked and beneath the covers.

  Then he answered the bedroom door in his robe, closed the door, discarded it and served them both dinner in bed with nothing between them.