Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I MPATIENCE WAS A SWIRLING TORRENT in his gut, as he stared at his watch for the tenth time in less than two minutes. Time seemed to have stopped moving.

Maddie was late.

Twenty minutes late, to be precise. And having not seen her since that fateful conversation in the floristry marquee in Italy, almost a week ago, he was at his wit's end with need.

A need that had only intensified in the face of his certainty that soon she would be his again. Soon he would be making love to her, making her his, for the first of five nights.

Pleasure hardened his body, but shame ate into his gut, because as much as he wanted that—and her—he still couldn't believe he'd stooped to this level to make it happen. But what choice had he had? She'd been about to walk away from him, so he'd found a way to give them both what they wanted. It wasn't just about Honeybee Lane for her. He knew that. She wanted him, too, but the only way she was prepared to admit that was with a time limit in place, a ‘get out' clause enshrined in the minutiae of their relationship, so she didn't need to worry about the future. About trusting him. She didn't need to worry he might hurt her one day.

Not when he'd got all the hurt out into this part of their relationship.

He swallowed a groan as he faced the reality of that. Yes, he'd hurt her. He'd dug a knife into her, in fact, with the surprisingly cold nature of his suggestion. Worse, he hadn't explained to her how spur of the moment it had been. He'd simply let the words hang there, and not retracted them. He hadn't dared. Not if it meant she might change her mind and walk away from him after all.

So, what now?

He began to pace the living room, eyes darting with regularity to his watch, until he took the damned thing off and placed it on an occasional table.

His only choice was to let the next few weeks play out and see where things stood at the end of them. Who knew what she'd want then? Or what he'd want?

Her fingers shook as she swiped the key—left for her at reception—and began to ascend in the elevator to his floor. Everything shook, in fact. Anxiety was her constant companion, as it had been since leaving Italy on a commercial flight early the next morning, after the wedding.

She hadn't been able to stand the thought of returning with him. She'd needed space, and time to think, to know how she felt and what she wanted.

Unfortunately for Maddie, the longer she went without seeing Rocco, the more some very specific things clarified for her.

Like how much she wanted from him—and would never be able to have. She wanted him to love her because she'd fallen in love with him. She didn't know how it happened, or when. Particularly when she'd sworn she'd always hate him, for his role in the housing project. Had it been in Italy? Or before? When had she stopped hating and resenting him and started to yearn for him in a way that took her breath away?

In theory, this conditional arrangement should have been a godsend, then. Because, while it was far from everything she wanted, it was at least a chance to be with him more. Longer. It was a way to keep him in her life for another guaranteed month, before letting him go. And she knew she had to let him go. No matter how she felt about him, Maddie was still too scarred by her experiences to think anyone was worth the risk of being in a relationship with.

Rocco had summed it up perfectly when he'd said he couldn't make her any promises.

He'd also claimed that she knew him, and yet this proposition had almost felled her with its crudeness and cruelty. He'd really been able to distill their experiences together down to this. A fling he was happy to see ended in four weeks. A fling he could easily put a price on—albeit a terrifyingly high one.

The doors opened directly into his hotel room, and she saw the way he was striding with purpose toward the kitchen, and his appearance hit her between the eyes like a punch might.

She stopped walking and stood perfectly still, looking across at him with all the intensity of her emotions.

He spun around, dark cheekbones slashed with colour. "You're late."

Yes, she'd been late. She hadn't known what to wear. A stupid consideration, given that her clothes were about to be stripped from her, for the first of their contractual nights together.

The very thought of that sickened her. Could he really do this? Would he really demean and debase what they'd shared, by reducing it to this?

And if he did, then what?

She fought the sting of tears, moving towards him with a determined glitter in her eyes. "I'm here now," she said with forced calm. "So? Where would you like me?"

His eyes widened in surprise. "I—thought we could eat?—,"

"What's the point?" she pushed, knowing she needed to serve like for like. He'd turned this into a business deal, so she'd do the same. "We both know why I'm here, and it's not for my conversational skills."

"Maddie—,"

But she didn't answer. She couldn't. She'd come here for one reason and one reason only. To see if he could really go through with this. If he could, then she'd walk away from him once and for all. There was no way on earth she was going to be traded for a property.

And if he was the kind of man to believe her capable of that, then she didn't want a bar of him. Even when she really, really did.

She reached for the buttons of her trench coat, unfastening the top one, and then the next, and the next, parting it until his eyes dropped and it became very clear to him that she wore only a silky negligee beneath.

A hiss escaped from between his teeth, that turned into a curse when she dropped the coat to the ground and stood before him in cream lace and a pair of sky-high heels.

"Maddie," he groaned now, shaking his head a little, eyes latched to her almost in fear.

Fear? Of what?

Her hands reached for the hem of her negligee, to lift and remove it, but his own hands stilled hers and her breath caught, out of a wild, essential hope that he wasn't going to do this after all.

"Please, let me," he groaned instead, lifting the negligee slowly up her body, sending a riot of goosebumps over her skin, and making her tremble all over for a wholly different reason now. He removed the garment completely, dropping it to the floor, letting his hands return to her body, his rough palms brushing her breasts, her nipples, then her sides, her hips, curving around her buttocks and cupping them, bringing her forward so she pressed against his hard length.

He swore into her ear. "I want you," he growled. "I've missed you."

I've missed you. If only she could believe that. If only she didn't want those words to mean so much more than they did. But all the ‘if only's' wouldn't change what they were, what he wanted, and what he saw her as.

"I know," she murmured, hating him then, from the bottom of her heart. For offering her close to what she wanted, but not quite. For making her realise she loved him, all the while showing her that love would never be in the equation for him. He just wasn't capable of it. And wasn't that a good thing? Maddie should have been thanking her lucky stars that there was no real risk here. No risk of trusting him, no risk of dreaming of a forever future with him, no risk of building a whole fantasy around what she wanted because he'd been as unfailingly honest as always. A wolf in wolf's clothing, as always.

Tears stung in the back of her throat so she did the only thing she could and kissed him. Kissed him so he wouldn't notice, kissed him so he wouldn't see. Kissed him so she wouldn't feel.

Her skin was like silk, so soft it had an almost dream-like state. So sweet to taste, like vanilla and lavender and something else, something he couldn't get enough of. He tasted her all over, his tongue running from each of her most sensitive points to the next—the flesh beneath her earlobe, her decolletage, her breasts, her nipples, her hips, her sex, all of her. All over. Again and again, until she was incandescent and writhing in his arms, begging him to take her, begging him to make her his. Begging in a way she didn't need to, but that he loved to hear, because it made him feel less alone in the ‘desperately needing' department. And when he took her, he kissed her on the mouth, his tongue dueling with hers in perfect synchronicity with his movements; thrust, take, feel, possess.

She arched her back, welcoming him deeper, and right there in the middle of the hotel's impersonal lounge room, he gave himself over to the seventh circle of hell, to the surrender of lust, to the sealing of a deal he'd had no business making in the first place.

Right there, he made love to Maddie, even when turning what they were into any kind of contract felt all kinds of wrong to him. He took her, because they both wanted it, because when it came to sex, they had no common sense, apparently. And then he rolled onto his back afterwards and stared at the ceiling, disgusted with himself for what he'd let happen, even when he was also rejoicing, because God, how he'd missed her…

"Well, then," her voice shook a little. "I guess that's that."

Tears were now doing more than threatening the back of her throat, they were filling her eyes with angry condemnation and disbelief.

Something in her voice must have communicated itself as serious, because his head whipped around to hers, his eyes landing with a questioning thud on her face even as his chest was still heaving with the motion of deep breathing, after the exertion of what they'd just shared.

"Maddie?"

She shook her head a little; she needed a moment. Or maybe she didn't. Maybe all she needed was to get the hell away from him. This had been a mistake. Thinking she could come here just to show him how stupid his proposition was had been a fatal miscalculation. Maddie wasn't like Rocco—she wasn't cut out to see sex as meaningless, nor transactional. Every time they'd been together had meant something to her.

And she realized then her worst fears had come true: she was just like her mother. Falling hopelessly for the wrong guy not once, but twice.

She pushed to standing, her whole body shaking with the force of her self-recrimination.

"Maddison." His voice was stern and came from right behind her.

She whirled around. "What?"

But his face was implacable, his features bearing a mask she couldn't perceive beyond. "Did I hurt you?"

She flinched, his meaning digging into her. So too his care. She didn't want care. She didn't want compassion. "No. Not physically."

She couldn't meet his eyes, because if she did, she might tell him that had been their best time yet. Their last, but also their most incredibly, overwhelmingly powerful coming together. Because she'd known it was the end of the road?

"Then what's happened? Why are you crying?"

She dashed at her cheeks before bending down and collecting her trench coat, cinching it around her waist with scant concern for the fact she was naked underneath.

"Did you honestly think I would go through with this?"

He looked as though the bottom had just fallen out of his world. Good. Now he knew what it felt like. "Did you honestly think you could blackmail me into spending a month having sex with you?"

A muscle throbbed low down on his jaw. "I thought you wanted this."

"This? You?" she demanded. "Like this?" She jabbed a finger into his chest. "How dare you imply I would sleep with a man for any kind of financial consideration."

"There is no financial consideration," he contradicted. "I am not giving you money. Rather, the opposite. I'm withdrawing my offer to buy your grandfather's house."

"And giving me something much more valuable—the house."

"That's not—you're making this sound?—,"

"No, I'm making you see," she interrupted, "just what this is. How dare you?" She demanded again, and though she didn't realise it, she reminded him strongly in that moment of the first night they'd met, in this very hotel, when she'd been so like Boudica.

"You agreed?—,"

"Yes, I did, but I never intended to go through with it." She tilted her chin in angry defiance. "I came here tonight to see if you were seriously so callous and deluded as to think that I might. I thought maybe the time in between making the offer and seeing me now might have helped you wake up and realise?—,"

Her voice trailed off as a sob burst from her. She smothered it with the back of her hand, took a second to regain her composure. "I told myself that if you slept with me, you were every bit as much of a bastard as I suspected. And if you didn't? Then maybe, just maybe, you had some moral fiber after all."

His eyes closed as her words hit their mark, but she felt no satisfaction in tearing shreds off him. It was all just…impossibly sad.

"So, this was a trap?"

"Don't you dare turn this around on me," she threw at him angrily.

"You're telling me you came here to intuit my worth by whether or not I slept with you. Well, how about another option that you evidently haven't considered? How about I slept with you because where you're concerned, any kind of common sense and ability to think clearly deserted me almost from the moment we met?"

Her lips parted on a wave of feeling, because if she wanted to—if she were really pathetic and hopeful—she might read something into that statement. She might hear his words and think there was some kind of admission there. But this was Rocco Santoro, and he'd made his feelings for her—and women, and sex—abundantly clear.

"Do you think I don't hate myself for this, Maddie?" he demanded, dragging a hand through his hair. Her gaze dropped lower, to his chest, and then back to his face, but it hurt so much to look at him and see the anguish in his features. She immediately wanted to put this fight back into a box, to shelve it for later. Or never. To ignore all her doubts and what he'd suggested and just lean into how freaking great this felt.

But that was a mistake her mother had kept making and Maddie would never be so stupid.

"Do you think I don't see what's happening with us and hate myself? How can I do this to you? How can I suggest that a month with you has any possible quid pro quo worth? When the truth is, another month with you is beyond value."

She closed her eyes, pushing away the words he was saying, pushing away the long-hoped for meaning. Because surely that was an admission that she meant something to him?

"I don't know, but you did," she said, hardening her heart, knowing she had to protect herself better this time. She wasn't going to let history repeat itself. She wasn't her mother, and she wasn't the woman Brock had made a fool of.

"It is a sign of how desperate I was for more time with you that I did this. What else can you possibly attribute my madness to?"

She shook her head though. It was too late. He'd had time to consider, to withdraw his offer, to apologise, and he'd done none of those things.

"I came here to say goodbye," she said, glad her voice, finally, barely shook. She turned away and moved to her handbag, discarded near the front door. She carefully removed an envelope and brought it back to Rocco. There was wariness in his eyes, but beyond that, she couldn't understand a thing he was feeling. He was too good at hiding himself away, walling himself off. She pushed the envelope towards him and watched, with satisfaction, when he opened it and saw what was inside: signed contracts of sale.

"The house is yours. Now get out of my life."