Bought by Her Italian Boss (7 page)

“If only I still worked for you and could charge you with sexual harassment,” she said, but her voice had thinned and her twitching thighs wouldn’t cooperate enough to lift her away.

“I don’t have to buy women,
cara
. They come to me for this.” His hips came up just enough to press where too many nerve endings were centered. She bucked in an allover response, gasping.

“You’re so full of yourself,” she told him, shivering, not fighting the hands that pressed her hips so she felt that delicious grind again.

The corners of his mouth deepened in satisfied amusement. “Let’s see which one of us wants to be full of me, hmm?” His hand slid up her side, across her shoulder to cup the side of her neck.

A trail of tingles followed his caress, sensitizing her, making her go still when self-preservation instincts told her to get the hell off his lap.

As he exerted a tiny pressure, urging her forward, asking for her mouth against his, she gave in.

It’s only a kiss.
They’d done it before.

But this wasn’t a kiss. It was a match to a flame.

As her mouth reached his, he captured her in a hungry kiss, like last night, only hotter. With a confident hand on her butt, he rocked her against his erection, making her shudder and take over the move herself, seeking the rhythm that would build the desire in the heated, dampening flesh between her legs.

Distantly she told herself to be cautious, remember this was about the bank. He was only doing this to prove a point, but her arms went around his neck in a kind of instinctive twine. She pressed to crush her breasts against his chest. Their tongues tangled and they both opened their mouths to deepen the kiss into something flagrant and wildly passionate.

Maybe there was something else she ought to have been thinking about, fretting over, but few thoughts of any clarity stuck after that. She became a being of pure sensation. All her awareness centered on the points where they touched, how he stroked her back and hips, how her body prickled and responded like firecrackers were exploding at different points.

His hand slid to cup her breast, weighing and gently massaging. She rubbed her nipple into his palm, never so free when it came to sex. Maybe if he’d seemed surprised by her lack of inhibition, she would have pulled back, but he groaned with appreciation, encouraging her, giving her all the pressure she needed as he shaped and squeezed her breast. She loved the way the light fabric of her top and silky cami made it easy for him to find and tantalize her nipple, pinching the peak and causing a stab of arousal straight between her legs.

She gasped and moaned approval. More heat rushed to pool in her loins, making her ache there and seek that hard ridge. She rubbed, trying to soothe the needy throb between her legs, unable to remember the last time she’d had any sex, let alone thrown herself into it like this. No man had ever aroused her this quickly and thoroughly with little more than a kiss and a few brazen caresses.

She arched as his other hand found its way beneath her top and pulled her cami askew, so he could pull back and look at her through the translucent film of her overtop. They both watched his thumb circle her nipple, flicking back and forth, stimulating the tight bead so she shuddered and panted, scalp tight, excited beyond what she could imagine could happen from such a simple bit of teasing.

“Come here,” he said, urging her to lift on her knees and push her nipple toward his mouth.

She did, bracing her hands on his shoulders, vaguely aware they were in a moving car. Maybe the blur around them was empty of humans, but the darkened glass at her back wasn’t. She ought to be showing more decorum, but his tongue moved the silk of her top against her nipple in delicate friction. The dampness of his mouth enclosed her in heat, sucking and inciting. She was lost, groaning with delight as he tortured her, licking and moving that damp fabric, squeezing the swell of her breast just enough to push more blood into the tip.

She was going to climax from this alone, she thought, working her nails with agitation against his shirt, thinking she should stop this, but she was compelled to keep going because it felt so damned good.

Her waistband released and his other hand slid in, confident and possessive, cupping soaked lace, saying something in Italian she didn’t have the wherewithal to interpret, but he sounded pleased. Like he was complimenting her. She absolutely flowered when he sounded so appreciative and admiring.

He held his palm steady for her to grind herself into the heel of his hand. She moaned with pleasure as her arousal became acute. She tore at his collar and tried to stroke his skin, wanted to bend and kiss him, but as she pulled back, he stared at her chest.

“Give me the other one,” he growled, eyeing her left breast, still tucked away.

With trembling hands, she lifted her top out of the way, pushed the cami down so her breasts were thrusting out the top of it, brazen in the extreme—

He opened his mouth wide on her bare nipple and she nearly screamed at the sensation of his teeth closing softly, dragging all the way to the tip before he sucked her into the deep, wet cavern of heat that was his greedy mouth.

A rush of need flooded into her sex. Into his palm.

He made an animalistic noise and his fingers pushed past silk, fingertips seeking, two penetrating, burying deep, thumb tracing and finding. Circling.

“Yes,” she gasped, giving herself up to the stunning height of pleasure, welcoming the thrust of his fingers, clasping him hard to her breast as he nipped in a way that was just short of pain. The sensations he was offering were so sharp and intense it was almost too much to bear. She clenched, trying to hold back, realizing how close she was to losing it. This wasn’t what she’d meant to happen.

His arm clamped around her waist and he kept lashing her with those twin sensations until she couldn’t hold back. Orgasm crashed over her. Her body nearly buckled under the power of it. Her cries of abandon filled the backseat and she pressed her hands to the ceiling, all of herself offered to him as he pleasured her, nearly bursting into jagged tears at the intensity of her release. Dying. She was dying and would never breathe again.

The paroxysm held her for a long time, until she slowly became aware that his caress had become soothing.

His damp hand moved, sliding onto her hip then cupping her backside, urging her to nestle her tender, throbbing flesh against the aggressive ridge of his erection straining the front of his pants. He lifted his head and licked at her panting mouth, teasing her into kissing him back.

She was still shaking with reaction and kept her eyes closed as she kissed him with swollen, trembling lips, aware of his hardness everywhere: shoulders, arms, thighs. Even his lips were firm where hers were soft with spent pleasure. His heart was pounding while she was still trying to catch her breath, both of them damp with perspiration.

Finally she dragged her eyes open to see he had a very smug, satisfied light in his half-closed eyes. That arrogance was unnerving, making her realize he had completely taken her apart while losing none of his own control. Only his collar was slightly askew, his hair barely out of place.

He told her in a low growl what he wanted to do to her.

What was wrong with her that she responded with an internal clench of anticipation to his dirty talk?

She pushed off his lap and shakily tidied her clothes, avoiding his gaze, trying not to think of where his hand had been. How she’d sounded as she called out with release. Had the driver heard her? How did things just keep getting more mortifying?

She managed to rally, responding to what he’d said with a scathing, “The way you’re looking so self-satisfied, I’d think we already did that.”

He angled to look at her, reaching to smooth a wisp of her hair from its tangle on her eyelashes. Her pulse leaped with excitement, but his finger didn’t even brush her skin.

“It was bothering me that other men had seen you naked. But no man has ever seen you like that, have they? I’m very satisfied.”

What an egotistical—

“You’re a jerk,” she told him, thinking there were saltier words and she was tempted to find them.

“Are you losing the feel-good already? Because I’m right here, ready and willing to take you to your happy place all over again.”

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, turning her face to the window. Pride. Who knew it was such an unaffordable luxury?

CHAPTER SIX

G
WYN
DIDN
’
T
KNOW
how close she’d just come to being taken in the backseat under the straying eye of his driver. Oh, Carlo would have known they were petting, would have turned up the music so he wouldn’t hear anything indelicate, but neither he nor Gwyn knew that Vito had nearly lost control, so caught up in Gwyn’s pleasure he’d almost found his own, fully clothed and completely at her service. He’d barely stopped himself from rolling her beneath him on the seat, stripping them bare and quite possibly planting a baby in her without a single thought for the consequences.

The thought disturbed him. Was that how he’d been conceived? In a fit of blind passion that completely disregarded the impact to the woman in question?

By the few accounts Vito had from his adoptive parents, his mother had been deeply infatuated, if far too young and naive for a thirtysomething gangster with a pitiless determination to get whatever he wanted. He had wanted Antoinietta Donatelli. He had seduced her. His family had always sworn up, down and sideways that Vito wasn’t a product of rape. No, he was the product of a man taking advantage of a woman who didn’t have nearly the worldliness needed to resist him.

Not unlike Gwyn, who didn’t take lovers strictly for the pleasure of physical release.

Because, he suspected, no man had given her a release like that. He probably shouldn’t have, but her animosity had been eating at him. That remark about buying women and her resistance toward him on every level had been grinding away at his control. When she had called herself “cheap” for wanting to sleep with him, something feral in him had snapped, demanding that he
show
her how good they would be together.

Cheap? It was unique and precious, beyond even what he had imagined it could be. Disconcertingly powerful.

And honest.

Her reaction now, so taken aback by her own abandonment, told him how thoroughly he had owned her in those moments. He thrilled to it, but it caused a shift inside him. Something he wasn’t fully prepared to examine, fearing he was making a rationalization to justify getting what he wanted: her.

But the way she’d ignited in his arms made thinking of anything except possessing her impossible.

* * *

They seemed to have left the paparazzi far behind and circled back toward the house. As soon as they were inside, Gwyn went straight through to the small patio outside the back door, where the cool afternoon breeze off the water gave her the first proper breath she’d taken since coming apart at Vito’s touch.

She went down the steps to the pool deck where she stared out over the lake, blood cooling, hands curled around the rail to ground her back into harsh reality. Why had she let that happen? And what did it mean for the rest of this pantomime they were acting? Would they become lovers in every way, not just a one-sided grope that only proved his superiority over her?

That was the part that devastated her. She could give herself orgasms if she wanted them. But despite all the ways he’d turned out to be different from the urbane Italian gentleman she’d fantasized about, she was even more in thrall than ever. Would she become his lover?

She couldn’t imagine finding the will to say,
No
.

Vito came outside with two wineglasses and a corked bottle. He wordlessly poured and offered her one, not speaking until she took hers.

“Salute,”
he said, gaze trying to catch hers.

She couldn’t do it, too aware of how intimate things had been between them. Too vulnerable to him.

“I keep making you angry because it seems the only way to keep you from falling into despair,” he said, as though explaining the answer to a riddle.

“Something else for my own good?” She snapped her gaze up to his.

He smiled faintly. “Whatever works.”

She released a shaken sigh, finding his statement not exactly comforting, but oddly bolstering. He wasn’t toying with her for fun, but trying to help her in his backhanded way.

She couldn’t deny that his lovemaking had, for a few minutes, completely wiped away her anxiety over her nightmare of a life. Now everything was flooding back and she would be very thankful if he did something annoying. Despair hovered like a rain cloud looking to move in and burst over her.

He set his glass on a table and shrugged out of his new jacket, a vintage cut in light wool with leather patches at the shoulders. It was gorgeous on him, very debonair, but the dove-colored shirt beneath was equally smart, clinging to his muscled shoulders, buttons open in a V that showed his throat and collarbone and a few dark chest hairs.

He slung the jacket negligently over the back of the nearest chair, attention shifting to his phone. With a flick of his thumb across the screen, he paraphrased from something he was reading. “The spa is claiming they had no knowledge of the photos, but the press has found the same connection my team discovered this morning. Your masseuse is related to one of Jensen’s employees. I’ll take you to lodge a formal complaint with the police when we return to Milan so they can look at pressing charges for invasion of privacy.”

“Charging the masseuse doesn’t put the blame on Kevin, though, does it?”

“He has worked very hard to keep his hands clean, but we’ll get there. It’s early days yet.” He picked up his glass and sipped, continuing to read his emails.

Days
. It hadn’t even been two full ones, but she’d already gone further with him than most of the men she’d dated for months. She was in so much trouble if that was a precursor of what was to come.

Pensively sipping the pale gold of the wine, she wound up exclaiming a very sincere, “Oh, that’s very good!”

Not that she was any sort of connoisseur, but Travis always brought wine when she cooked and he didn’t punish anyone with cheap stuff. She’d been enjoying trying bottles here in Italy and hadn’t found a bad one, but this surpassed anything in her price range.

Vito glanced up, offering what looked like a very genuine smile for a change. “It’s the private reserve from my great-grandparents’ vineyard. One of my cousins runs it and doles the bottles out to family every year. We could make a fortune, but it’s too good to sell.”

“Do you—” Gwyn forgot what she was going to ask as a flash of movement caught her eye.

Was that a little boy? He touched his lips to signal her to keep quiet as he climbed the rail that bordered the pool terrace then darted behind an oversize terra-cotta planter.

Vito followed her gaze and glanced backward at the empty landscape, then brought his alert frown back to her. “What’s wrong?”

She started to say, “I saw a little boy—”

Before she could get the words out, the boy was barreling straight for Vito’s legs.

In the same moment, Vito’s expression hardened. He plunked his glass down and spun in a fluid motion, like he knew exactly what was coming. He crouched, grabbed, then threw the boy high into the air as he straightened, then caught him firmly and held him nose to nose.

“You little gremlin. I ought to throw
you
into the pool.”

“Do it!” The boy’s laughing eyes brightened with excitement. He splayed out his arms and legs, ready to fly through the air into the still, blue water despite being fully dressed.

“I won’t,” Vito told him, hitching the boy’s wiry figure onto his arm so they were eye to eye. “That’s your punishment for trying to push me in. No swimming at all. Say hello to Miss Ellis,” he said, indicating her with a nod. “This is Roberto. He has all of his mother’s sass and twice his father’s disregard for danger.”

“I was going to come in with you,” the boy excused, curling his arm around Vito’s neck and pressing his cheek to Vito’s with open trust and affection. He was speaking perfect English but could have been Vito’s son, his looks were so patently Italian. He turned his attention to Gwyn and pronounced what sounded like a coached speech. “It’s nice to meet you. Welcome to our home.” He offered his small hand for a shake, making it a firm one.

“It’s a beautiful home,” Gwyn said, ridiculously charmed, even though he couldn’t have been more than five. “I’m very pleased to meet you, too.”

Roberto gave her a stare reminiscent of Vito’s most delving look.

“Are you American? Mama is Canadian and sometimes people think she’s American, but your accent is different. You sound like our housekeeper in Charleston.”

“Good ear,” Gwyn said with a bemused smile. Honestly, he had more sophistication than some thirty-year-old executives she had met.

“Did you drive here yourself? Where is your father?” Vito asked, giving the boy a little bounce.

“He won’t let me drive,” Roberto said with a disgruntled scowl, then pointed to the top floor. “He’s putting Bianca in her bed. She fell asleep in the car. She has a cold.”

“He brought both of you? How is your mother?”

“So pregnant,” a woman said, coming out the back door of the house.

Lauren Donatelli was very pregnant, but carried it beautifully on her tall frame, glowing and graceful as she came down the short flight of steps onto the pool terrace, nary a waddle in her step.

Gwyn recognized her from photos she’d seen in the Charleston news several years ago, along with the odd image published in the company newsletter where Lauren invariably stood next to Paolo looking warm and approachable despite how aloof and distant her husband always seemed.

“Hi, I’m Lauren,” she said, offering her hand.

“Gwyn,” she murmured, and tried to thank her for the loan of clothes, but was waved off.

“Anything for Vito. Hello,
caro
,” she said to him. He stooped a little so she could kiss both his cheeks.

“Should you be anywhere but a maternity ward?” he asked her.

“I offered to check myself into a clinic, but the doctor said there was no point since it will be at least two weeks. Paolo wouldn’t let me stay in the city without him, of course. His mother is at the house, but you know what he’s like. Won’t let me out of his sight.” She shook her head in exasperation.

“Roberto was born inside their front door. Bianca delivered in a car,” Vito informed Gwyn.

“It was easier to lose the paparazzi waiting at the gate if we made it look like we were going for a simple family outing,” Paolo said, arriving with a baby monitor that he set on the table next to Vito’s wineglass. “Miss Ellis,” he greeted with a cool nod.

“Signor Donatelli,” she murmured, intimidated to the soles of her feet.

Thankfully his son pleaded, “May I swim, Papa.
Per favore?
”

“Vito and I must talk about work, but if you put on your trunks you can come to the shore with us and wade.”

“Yes!” Roberto dropped out of Vito’s arms and started to run toward the house.

“Quietly,” Lauren warned, slowing his step. “Don’t wake your sister. I’ll start dinner,” Lauren said with a well-practiced hostess smile.

“You will not,” Paolo told her. “I’ll cook when I come in. Stay off your feet.”

A man willing to cook. Gwyn was so astonished it took her a moment to blurt out the sensible solution that broke the challenging stare between the married couple.

“I can make dinner.”

Everyone looked at her. These two men really were too much masculinity in one impactful wall for any woman to handle.

“Unless you need me to be there while you talk?” She had no doubt she would be the topic of their discussion. Frankly, she was hoping to avoid listening to her humiliation being kicked over like something a dog owner had failed to dispose of properly.

“I would appreciate your cooking, if it’s something you don’t mind doing,” Paolo said, then turned to his wife. “You may sit and chop tomatoes if you promise not to put your weight behind it.”

She made a face at him.

“If our daughter wakes, would you call me?” he added to Gwyn. “She’s under the weather and will want to be held, but Lauren needs to take it easy. At this stage the hiccups will start her labor. I have my hands full enough without catching a baby today.”

“It’s twenty minutes out of your life,” Lauren murmured, looking at her fingernails. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”

He caught her hand and brought her curled knuckles to his lips. “I can barely think of anything else as it is. You know that. Try to buy us a few more days while we settle this work crisis? Please?”

The looks they were giving each other were such a mix of open emotion, tender and teasing and loving, Gwyn knew she ought to look away. It was a private couple’s moment, but it was so beautiful, she was transfixed. She wanted that. The cajole and silent communication and connection that bound in a thousand ways. The secretive smile. The way they looked like they wanted to kiss, but were in no hurry because Paolo was stroking her bent knuckle against his upper lip and they had an abundance of time and opportunities for loving affection.

“Maybe this one will have my patience instead of your lack of impulse control,” Lauren teased. “We could get lucky.”

“Do not blame me!” Paolo scoffed. “They wind up with your sense of humor and think it’s funny—stop laughing. I’m serious. No laughing. You’ll put yourself into labor.”

Lauren disobeyed, releasing a hearty chuckle that made Gwyn smile along with her.

Their son came outside in his trunks and Gwyn turned her expression of amusement into a greeting for the boy, giving the couple their privacy to exchange a kiss.

When she glanced at Vito, she saw he was watching her, his expression unreadable.

* * *

A few minutes later, Gwyn was moving around Lauren’s kitchen, chatting with her with surprising ease. Perhaps Lauren wasn’t resting with her feet up as her husband had demanded, but since she wasn’t holding anything heavier than a paring knife, Gwyn didn’t say anything. Besides, every birth story she’d ever heard was a lengthy process, happening in the midnight hours. Lauren wasn’t complaining of a backache or any of those other things women talked about as precursors to labor. She was relaxed and pleasant and ever so nice!

Feeling as vilified as she did, Gwyn was deeply relieved to be treated like a normal person.