A Scandal in the Headlines (3 page)

For a moment, she forgot herself. His dark green eyes were so fierce on hers then, searing into her. Challenging her. The world fell away and there was nothing but him and all the things she couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell him. All the things she shouldn’t want.

And despite herself, she remembered.

Six months ago …

“Tell me your name,” he demanded, sweeping her into his arms without even asking her if she’d like to dance with him.

Elena had seen the way he looked at her. She’d
felt
it, like a brand, a claim, from halfway across the room. She told herself that Niccolo, who had gone to fetch her a drink, wouldn’t mind
one dance
. They were in full view of half of Rome. It was all perfectly innocent.

She knew she was lying. And yet, somehow, she didn’t care.

He was stunning. Overwhelmingly masculine, impossibly attractive and, she thought with a kind of dazed amazement,
hers
. Somehow hers. He looked at her and set her alight. He touched her, and her whole body burst into a hectic storm of sensation, like being dropped headfirst into freezing cold water at the height of summer.

“Your name,” he urged her. His hands were on her, hard and hot, making her shiver uncontrollably. His dark head was bent to hers, putting that mesmerizing mouth of his much too close. Tempting her almost past endurance.

“Elena,” she whispered. “Elena Calderon.”

He repeated it, and made it into something else. A kind of song. It swelled in her, changing her. It hung there between them, like a vow.

“I am Alessandro,” he said, and then they’d danced.

He swept her along, every step perfect, his attention on Elena as if she was the only woman in the room. The only woman alive. Lightning struck everywhere they touched, and everywhere they did not, and some
shameless, heedless part of her gloried in it, as if she’d been made for this. For only this. For him.

She felt him in the treacherous ache of her breasts, the unmistakable hunger low in her belly and the glazed heat that held her in its relentless grip as surely as he did. She
felt him
—and understood that what she was doing was wrong. Utterly, indisputably wrong.

She understood that she would have to live with this. That this was a defining moment. That her life would be divided into before and after this scorching hot dance, and that she would never again be the person she’d believed she was before this stranger pulled her against him. But his eyes were locked to hers, filled with wonder and fire, and she didn’t pull away. She didn’t even try—and she understood she’d have to live with that, too.

And then he made it all so much worse.

“You cannot marry him,” he said, those dark green eyes so fierce, his face so hard.

It took her longer than it should have to clear her head, to hear him. To hear an insult no engaged woman should tolerate. It was that part that penetrated, finally. That made her fully comprehend the depths of her betrayal.

“Who are you?” she demanded. But she still let him hold her in his arms, like she was something precious
to him. Or like she wished she was. “What makes you think you can say something like that to me?”

“I am Alessandro Corretti,” he bit out. She stiffened, and his voice dropped to an urgent, insistent growl. “And you know why I can say that. You feel this, too.”

“Corretti …” she breathed, the reality of what she was doing, the scope of her treachery, like concrete blocks falling through her one after the next.

He saw it, reading her too easily. His dark eyes flashed.

“You cannot marry him,” he said again, some kind of desperation beneath the autocratic demand in his voice. As if he knew her. As if he had the right. “He’ll ruin you.”

Elena would never know what might have happened then, had she not jerked her gaze away from Alessandro’s in confusion—and seen Niccolo there at the side of the dance floor, glaring at the two of them with murder in his black eyes.

Elena was amazed that it was possible to hate herself so much, so fully. And that the shame didn’t kill her where she stood.

“How dare you?” she ground out, all her horror at her own appalling actions in her voice. “I know who you are. I know
what
you are.”

“What
I
am?” As if she’d stabbed him.

“Niccolo’s told me all about you, and your family.”

Something like a laugh. “Of course he has.”

“The Correttis are nothing but a pack of violent thugs,” she threw at him desperately, quoting Niccolo. “Criminals. One more stain on our country’s honor.”

“And Niccolo is the expert on honor, I suppose?” His face went thunderous, but his voice stayed cool. Quiet. Somehow, it made him that much more formidable. And it ripped into her like a knife.

“Do you think this will work?” she demanded, furious, and she convinced herself it was all directed at him. All
because
of him. “Do you really think you’ll argue me into agreeing with you that
my fiancé
, the man I
love
, is some kind of—”

“You don’t strike me as naive,” he interrupted her, that fierce, dark edge in his voice, his gaze, even in his hands as he held her. “You must know better. You must.”

He shook his head then, and she watched as bitter disappointment washed over him, turning his dark green eyes black. Making that fascinating mouth hard, nearly cruel. Making him look at her as if there had never been that fire between them, as if she couldn’t still feel the flames, licking over her skin.

And she would never forgive herself, but she
ached
. She ached.

“Unless you like the money, the cars, the houses and the jewelry.” His gaze was a jagged blade as it raked
over her, and she bled. “The fancy dresses. Why ask where any of it comes from? Why face so many unpleasant truths?”

“Stop it!” she hissed at him.

“Ignorance is the best defense, I’m sure,” he continued in that withering tone. “You can’t be a stain on Italy’s honor if you’re careful not to know any of the sordid details, can you?”

None of this should be possible. A look, a dance, a few words with a total stranger—how could it
hurt?
How could she feel as if her whole world was ripping apart?

“You don’t know what kind of woman I am,” she told him, desperate to reclaim herself. To fix this. “And you never will. I have standards. I can’t wait for Niccolo to do me the great honor of marrying me—to make me a Falco, too. I would never lower myself to Corretti scum like you.
Never
.”

He looked shattered for a moment, but only a moment. Then contempt moved over his fine, arrogant face, and made her stomach twist in an agony she shouldn’t feel. He led her to the edge of the floor, gazed at her for one last, searing moment and then walked off into the crowd.

Elena told herself that wasn’t grief she felt then, because it couldn’t be. Not for a stranger. Not for a dance.

Not for a man she’d been so sure she’d never see again.

“I don’t really remember,” Elena said now in desperation, standing out on his terrace with only the sea to hear her lies. “It was a long time ago.”

Alessandro only watched her, that wolf’s smile sharp-edged, digging deep into her and leaving marks. He was much too close, and she hadn’t forgotten a thing. Not a single thing.

“Then why are you blushing?” he asked, a knowing look on that battered, somehow even more attractive face—and her heart kicked hard against her ribs.

“I’m not spying on you,” she gritted out, trying to break through the tension that gripped her. Trying to pretend he couldn’t see into her so easily. “And if you really think I am, you should have let me leave with the boat.”

But something had changed. His dark eyes burned. She felt the flames licking at her, seducing her and scaring her in equal measure.

“Alessandro.” Saying his name was a mistake. She saw him react to it as if it was a caress, saw his intense focus on her sharpen, and it stole her breath away. “My being on your boat was a coincidence.”

“Liar.” Implacable. Fierce.

Elena’s stomach knotted. She felt a deep kind of itch work through her, from her neck to her breasts to her
core, and she felt a terrible panic bite at her then, as if she was in danger of losing herself completely.

You’re supposed to be beating him at his own game!
some last remnant of her self-control cried out inside her head.

“You can call me any names you like,” she threw at him, desperate to find her balance again—to claw her way back to solid ground. “It won’t change a thing. I met you once a long time ago. It wasn’t particularly memorable.”

That ruthless, cynical mouth kicked up in the corner, and his gaze turned jet black. It rolled through her, too hot to bear, shaking her apart from the inside out. Until there was nothing at all but this moment.

This. Him. Now.

“Such a liar,” he whispered.

He reached out as if to touch her, but she knew she couldn’t let that happen—
she couldn’t
—so she threw out her own hand to catch his.

Skin against skin, after all this time. The same way their hands had touched once before, on that glimmering dance floor far away.

And they both caught fire.

The sea and the sun and the whole bright world disappeared into the blaze of it. There was only this man, who she should have run from the moment she’d seen him six months ago. This man, who had eyes
like thunder and saw straight through into the heart of her. This man, who had claimed her from across a crowded room with a single, searing glance.

There was only the riot inside of her, the electricity that roared between them.
Skin to skin
. At last.

Neither one of them moved. Elena wasn’t sure she breathed. This disastrous, unquenchable attraction seemed to swell and grow, radiating from his hand to hers, a hard, gnawing ache that every heartbeat only made worse. It penetrated every part of her, and made her want. Crave.
Need
.

“It haunts you,” he said, a dark, male hunger stamped across his face. “I haunt you. Believe me, Elena. I know.”

She jerked her hand from his. But as she did, she had a searing burst of clarity.

She wanted him. She always had. It didn’t matter that it didn’t make sense, that a single dance should never have affected her so much. It had.
He
had. And that wanting had ripped apart her world, changed everything. She’d been paying for it for six long months, in isolation and often in fear, moving from odd job to odd job across the whole of Italy, trying to keep herself out of sight and away from Niccolo.

All because of this. All because of Alessandro.

She had already been crucified for this crime. She paid for it every day. Why not commit it?

And if there was a part of her that knew that this was also the best way to prove to Alessandro that she was exactly the kind of woman he believed her to be, that this would cement his opinion of her, she told herself that only made the decision easier.

“This isn’t a haunting,” she whispered, watching the thunder roll through his eyes. “Neither one of us is a ghost.” She smiled then. “I can prove it.”

And then she indulged the roaring inside of her, that terrible hunger, and put her hands on him.

Not a light touch on his shoulder as she had when they’d danced, polite and appropriate. She slid her palms over the whisper-soft cotton that strained against his marvelous torso, and felt the pure, raw heat of him. The iron strength. Her head spun, dizzy and delicious.

Alessandro let out a sound that was almost a laugh, and then he tugged her closer, lifting her up against him. Her aching breasts pressed hard against his beautiful chest, sending a frantic shiver through her, and he muttered a curse. He settled her on the rail, his arms strong and hard and exquisite as they held her fast. She heard her boat shoes fall off, two loud slaps against the stone floor, and then she forgot them.

Alessandro stepped between her legs, and it wasn’t enough. Her skirt kept him from pressing against her, into her, even as he leaned into the palms she’d flattened
against him. She was surprised to see her hands were shaking. She was shaking. Or maybe the world was, all around them, and she didn’t care.

This was finally happening.
Finally
.

He held her with one hand in the small of her back, hot and hard and
his
, while his other hand moved to her neck, her jaw, tracing patterns. Igniting her. And it wasn’t
enough—

“Look at me,” he commanded her, that low voice of his snaking through her like a brushfire, making her skin seem to pull tight over her bones, and she would do anything. Anything he wanted. Anything at all.

Anything to keep them both burning like this.

His dark green eyes flashed, triumph and fire, and that wonder she knew was only theirs. Only this. His mouth looked nearly grim with need, and she knew she should be afraid. Of him. Of what was about to happen—what had always been going to happen, sooner or later.

But again, she felt only that wild passion. That desire. And that conviction that she was safer now, in his clever, dangerous hands, than she had been in months.

“Inevitable,” she whispered before she knew she meant to speak, and the faintest hint of a smile moved across his mouth, then was gone.

“Hold on,” he ordered her with a gruff intent that made her core seem to glow.

He moved his hands to cradle her face between them, and she grabbed his shirt in greedy fists.

At last
, that voice chanted inside of her, again and again.
At last
.

And then he took her mouth with all of that ruthlessness and command, and Elena lost her mind.

H
OT
. W
ILD.

She was his
.

And she kissed him back as if she wanted to devour him, too.

As if he’d set her on fire and this was how they’d burn, together, in this tumult of heat and glory, and her perfect mouth he couldn’t taste enough.

She was better—this was better—than Alessandro had dared imagine in the middle of a hundred nights, when he’d pictured this in stark detail. When the dark fury that she could bewitch him as she had and be so much less of a person than he’d hoped didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter now, either. Need stormed through him, making him closer to desperate than he’d ever been before.

He wanted her skin against his, slick and sweet. He wanted his hands on those tempting breasts, her enchanting
curves. He wanted to lick between her legs and stay there until she screamed. He wanted deep inside of her.
He wanted
. And every kiss, every taste, every little way she moved against him, only drove him higher.

“More,” he said, and he picked her up again, yanking that damned skirt up and over her hips.

Deep masculine elation pounded through him when she lifted her legs and wrapped herself around him. And then he was there. Hard and hot against her melting heat, separated only by his trousers and the slightest wisp of material she wore. A delicate shudder moved through her, and for a moment he thought he might lose control.

But Alessandro wanted her too much, and had for too long. He took her mouth again, thrilled when she met him with a passion he could taste. She arched against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, and it wasn’t enough.

It would never be enough.

He carried her to one of the loungers scattered about the terrace, then set her down. She was unsteady on her feet, her blue eyes wide and dazed, bright with need, and he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anyone else. More than he’d imagined it was possible to want.

“Please,” Elena said, her voice ragged with desire. The most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. “Don’t stop.”

Her hands were still on his chest, and he could feel each touch, each caress, directly in his sex. He kissed her again, deep and demanding, ravaging her mouth, and she thrilled him by returning it in kind.

Out of control. So good it hurt. Again. And again.

“These clothes need to come off,” he muttered, pulling his mouth away from hers.

Alessandro moved to tug her T-shirt over her head, then hissed out a breath when he threw it aside and she stood there before him, bared to the waist. No bra to block him from her perfect breasts, small and round, with nipples like hard, ripe points. Lovely beyond reason. He nearly shook as his hands went to her skirt, working the zipper and then grabbing on to her panties as he tugged all of it down over her hips and out of his way.

And then Elena was naked. Gloriously, beautifully naked, and she was real and
here
and his. Finally his.

For a moment he only stared at her, a kind of awe sweeping through him as his body went wild, so desperate for her he could hardly bear it. He swept her up and then took her down with him, splaying her out above him as he lay back on the chaise.

Elena twisted against him, and then her frantic hands were on the hem of his T-shirt and he sat up
slightly to peel it off. He brushed her hands out of the way to rid himself of his trousers, kicking them aside. And when he pulled her back into place they both sighed in something like reverence. And then she was like silk against him, all over him, soft and naked and hot.

Finally
.

Alessandro’s heart pounded. He was so hard it bordered on the painful, and then she rolled her hips and moved all of that slick, wet heat against the length of him, and he groaned. He traced the line of her spine down to her bottom, and then bent to take one of those achingly perfect nipples into his mouth. She made a wild, greedy sort of noise, and he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t take another moment of this magnificent torture.

It had been too long already. It had been forever.

He sat up, holding her against him, her soft thighs falling on either side of his. She knelt astride him, her hands moving from his chest to his shoulders, then burying themselves in his hair. Alessandro reached down between them, sinking his fingers deep inside the molten core of her.

She cried out, and he loved it. He tested her slickness, learned her lush shape, his palm hard against the center of her need. He watched her pretty face flush, felt her hips buck against his hand, and he returned to
her breasts, sucking a taut nipple into his mouth and then biting down. Just hard enough.

She broke apart in his arms with a wordless cry, hot and wet in his hand, her head falling forward until her face was pressed into his neck. He lifted her in his arms while she still shook and shuddered, and then he thrust hard and deep inside her.

At last
.

She was scalding hot, so deliciously soft, and still in the grips of her climax when he began to move. Alessandro held her hips in his hands and guided her into the rhythm he wanted. Slow, but demanding, catching the fire that was tearing her apart and building it up again with every stroke.

Higher. Hotter. Hungrier.

He heard her breath catch again, felt her stiffen, heard the shocked sound she made in his ear. She gripped his shoulders tight and shook all around him again, just as he wanted. He watched her arch back into the sunlight—so painfully, perfectly beautiful. This woman,
his woman
, lost to her pleasure, mindless and writhing against him, while he moved hard and deep inside of her.

He rolled them over on the lounger, coming on top of her and deeper into her. Alessandro let his head drop down next to hers, and then her arms wrapped
around him, her hips meeting his in a wild, uncontrollable dance.

He felt her move beneath him, heard her gasp anew, and each hitch in her breath, each mindless cry, made him want her more. He was so deep inside of her, and they moved together like a dream—like a dream he’d had a thousand times, only much slicker, much hotter, much better.

And this time, when she began to break apart around him, when she threw her head back once more and arched up against him, Alessandro called out her name like the incantation it was and fell right along with her.

Elena came back to herself slowly. Painfully.

She was tucked up against Alessandro’s side. He was sprawled out on the lounger beside her, one arm thrown over his head, looking for all the world like some kind of lazy, sated god. There was no reason he should be so appealing, even now, with his dark lashes closed, his arrogant features with the marks of the previous night’s violence stamped into his skin. And yet …

She sat up gingerly, surprised her body still felt at all like her own when he’d made it his—made her his—with such devastating completeness. Her body still hummed with pleasure. So much pleasure Elena
could hardly believe she’d survived it, that she was still in one piece.

Then again, perhaps she wasn’t.

He shifted, and she felt his hand on her back, smoothing its way down to curl possessively over her hip. Impossibly, she felt something in her catch anew. A spark where there should have been nothing but ash and burned-out embers.

Surely this was the end of it. Succumbing to what had burned so bright between them had to have destroyed it, didn’t it? But his fingers traced a lazy alphabet across her skin, spreading that fierce glow deep into her all over again, making her realize this wasn’t over at all.

Elena had made a terrible mistake, she understood then. There were many ways to pay, and she’d just discovered a brand-new one. Perhaps, on some level, she’d held out the hope that what had surged between them was all smoke, no fire. That indulging it would defeat it.

Now she knew better. Now she knew exactly how hot they burned. She would have to live with that, too.

“Come here,” he said, and she felt his voice move in her like magic, making her chest feel tight.

Despite herself, she turned. She looked down at him, bracing herself for a smug expression, a cocky smile—but that hard gaze of his was serious when it
met hers. Almost contemplative. And that was worse, because she had no defense against it.

He reached up and traced a lazy line from her collarbone down over the upper swell of her breasts, and there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes when she caught his hand in hers and stopped him.

“Alessandro …” she began, but she didn’t know what to say.

He didn’t respond. Instead, he tugged her back down beside him, surrounding her once again with all that warm male strength. As if she were safe, she thought in a kind of despair. As if she’d finally come home.

When she knew perfectly well neither one of those things were true.

His gaze darkened as he watched her. He slid a hand around to the nape of her neck, but she was the one who closed the distance between them, pressing her mouth to his, spurred on by a great wealth of emotion she didn’t want to understand.

This time, there should have been no wild explosion, no impossible heat. This time, she should have been more in control of herself, of all these things she didn’t want to feel.

But his mouth moved on hers and something incandescent poured through her, lighting her up all over again. She felt that spark ignite, felt that same fire
grow again inside of her. His kiss was tender, something like loving, and it ripped her into pieces.

She kissed him back, desperately, letting her hands learn his fascinating body all over again, letting herself disappear into this madness that she knew perfectly well would destroy her. It was only a matter of time.

And this time when he slid into her it was a different kind of fire. Slow, deliberate. It stripped her bare, made her eyes fill with tears, battered what was left of her defenses, her carefully constructed veneers. He gazed down at her as he moved inside of her, his dark eyes grave and something more she didn’t want to name, as he spun this wicked fire around them.

As he wrecked her totally, inside and out, and she loved every second of it.

And then he pushed them both straight over the edge of the world.

When she woke a second time, the sun was beginning to sink toward the sea, bathing the sky in peaches and golds, and Alessandro wasn’t next to her. Elena sat up in confusion, only realizing as she almost let it slide from her that she was draped in something deliciously silky. A robe, she discovered when she frowned down at it.

She pulled it on as she stood, belting it around her waist, and when she looked up she saw him.

He sat at a nearby table in the gathering dusk, a wineglass in one hand, his gaze trained on her. He hadn’t bothered with his shirt. A quick glance assured her he was wearing those loose, soft trousers, low on his narrow hips. That lean, smoothly muscled body was even more beautiful from a distance and now, of course, she knew what he could do with it.
She knew
. She snapped her attention back to his face—and went still.

He was watching her with an expression that made her breath catch in her throat. She recognized that look. This was the Alessandro Corretti she remembered, brooding and dark.

And it seemed he’d remembered that he hated her.

Elena steeled herself. It was better this way. This was what she’d wanted. She ran her hands down the front of the silk robe, but then stopped, not wanting him to see any hint of her agitation.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating the table before him and the selection of platters spread out across its inlaid mosaic surface. His voice was cold. Impersonal. A slap after what they’d shared, and she was sure he knew it. “You must be hungry.”

The moment he said it she realized she was ravenous, and she told herself that was the only reason she
obeyed him and sat. Alessandro seethed with a dark menace, lounging there with such studied carelessness, watching her with a slight curl to his lip.

She’d expected this, she reminded herself. She’d known sleeping with him would make him despise her, would confirm his low opinion of her, when he believed her still engaged to Niccolo and all manner of other, horrible things. But it shocked her how much it hurt to see it, how it clawed into her, threatening to spill out of her eyes. She blinked it away.

And then she settled herself in the seat across from him as if she hadn’t a care in the world, and gazed down at the food spread out before her. A plate of plump, ripe cheeses, tangy cured meats and an assortment of thick, lush spreads—an olive tapenade, a fragrant Greek-style taramasalata—next to a basket of fresh, golden semolina bread. A serving dish piled high with what looked like an interesting take on the traditional Sicilian caponata, a cooked aubergine salad laden here with succulent morsels of seafood, rich black and green olives and sweet asparagus spears.

Elena took the wine he poured for her, a rich and hearty red, and sipped at it, letting the mellow taste wash over her, wash her clean. She tried to match his seeming insouciance, leaning back in her chair and holding her glass airily, as if she spent most of her evenings with her various lovers in their magnificent
island estates. As if this—as if he—was nothing but run of the mill.

“It’s quite good,” she said, because she thought she should say something.

Not for the first time, she was painfully aware of how deeply unsophisticated she really was—how categorically unsuited to playing in these deep, dark waters with men like him. Niccolo had dressed her up and taught her how to play the part, but here, now, she was forcefully reminded that she was only Elena Calderon, a nobody from a remote village no one had ever heard of, descended from a long line of mostly fishermen. She was out of her league, and then some.

Alessandro only watched her. Something about that cold regard, that dark, silent fury, made her feel raw. Restless.

“Alessandro Corretti with nothing to say?” She attempted a smile. “Shocking.”

“Tell me,” he said in that calm, easy way that only emphasized the deadly edge beneath. “When you run back to your fiancé and tell him what you did here, how detailed a picture will you paint for him? When you tell him you slept with a man he loathes, will you also tell him how many times you screamed my name?”