A Scandal in the Headlines(31)

So what if you lose a little bit more of yourself? she asked herself briskly, shoving aside what felt like a kind of despair, concentrating instead on that ravenous hunger for him she couldn’t seem to escape. That was what she had to exploit. The possibility of a pregnancy had brought her this far—passion would do the rest. It had to. There are worse things to lose—and far worse fates.

“All right,” she said.

The moment stretched out. He cocked his head slightly to one side, eyes narrow and jaw hard. “What did you say?”

“I’m agreeing with you, Alessandro.” She swung her feet off the chair, pressing her bare toes into the polished wood floor beneath her. Like that would keep her grounded. Like anything could. “You win.”

There was a tense, shimmering silence. Elena kept her gaze trained down at her bare feet, on the toes she’d painted a bright pink in some attack of hopefulness when she’d still worked on his yacht—but then, she didn’t have to look at him to feel the way he was glaring at her. The fire and the force of him like a wild heat against her skin. A dark magic inside of her, changing her. Ruining her.

Only if I let it, she assured herself. She might lose a bit of herself, but it was worth it, wasn’t it? She was safe here, and she needed to stay that way. And he would lose interest in her all the quicker once she ceased to be a challenge, because that was how men like him operated—so this would ensure that when their forty days were up, he would wash his hands of her. Discard her, happily, without bothering to inform on her to Niccolo. She would be free, and Niccolo would have lost her trail completely.

This was insurance, plain and simple.

“And what,” he asked, his low voice threaded with seductive, sensual menace, “do I win, Elena? Be specific.”

She lifted her head. His expression was deeply cynical, his stance tense, and yet that same passion burned in him, bright and hot, as obvious to her as if it was tattooed across his face.

“Whatever you like,” she told him.

She raised her brows as he only stood there in the doorway and did no more than continue to study her, as if she was a code he intended to break. A trickle of apprehension worked its way down her spine—because she couldn’t let him do that. He could have her, but not all of her. And never the truth.

“Isn’t this what you want?” she asked, taunting him. Distracting him. She smiled, cool and challenging. “My complete and total surrender, entirely on your terms? Well, here it is. This is what it looks like. You should be pleased, surely.”

“Is that meant to shame me?” he countered, a dark gleam in his eyes then, and Elena had to fight back an involuntary shiver. “I think you’ll find I’m far past that. Nothing can. Certainly not you.”

“Then you have nothing to fear.” She stood, smoothing her hands down the front of the silk-and-lace chemise she wore, in a soft champagne shade that she knew made her eyes that much bluer. “I found this on the end of the bed, like all the rest of the clothes I’ve found waiting for me since I got here. It’s as if you make them all yourself in some secret workshop in the night.”

“Not me.” There was a sardonic curve to his mouth, but his dark eyes burned as he watched her walk toward him. Possessive. Hungry. “My cousin Luca runs a fashion house. We may not be close, but the clothes speak for themselves.”

Elena didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure she could, now that she was really going through with this. It was one thing to decide to surrender herself to this man, at least in bed. It was something else again to do it.

It might very well shred her into tiny little pieces she wasn’t sure she’d ever manage to put back together. But she knew this was the only way.

And she couldn’t deny the fact that it excited her. That he did. That the idea of sharing his bed made her shiver with need, no matter what price she’d end up paying.

She walked toward him, holding his gaze. Letting her hips sway beneath the silken embrace of the fabric that clung to her. Letting him watch, wait. She could see the stamp of hunger across his face. She could see the blaze of it in his eyes.

And felt more powerful in this moment than she had in a very long time. Since she’d looked up from her life to find a shockingly beautiful man watching her as if she was a goddess come down to earth. She felt it hum in her like an electrical current.

She stopped when she was no more than a breath away and stood there. She waited. He tensed, but he didn’t move. His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his loose black trousers as if he was perfectly at ease, but she knew better.