Naughty Little Gift -- A Temptation Court Novella (Temptation Court, Book 1) (5 page)

“Damn you.” Her syllables are more like sobs. They jab my gut, reaffirming that all my stress about doing business with a jackass is pretty stupid.
Like attracts like.

It’s not a new revelation. But right now it sears like pure acid, and I have to halt the damage—no matter how desperate the measure.

“I’m sorry.” All right, maybe I
am
desperate. In the last five years, those words have only left my lips once before—on an occasion I’m determined not to dredge up. Not now. “Sshhh, Ella.
I’m sorry.
”

She huffs through her nose. Several more times. “Let me go.”

I concede, despite the harsh twist of my gut.

Unbelievably, she stays put. Lowers her arm into a protective wrap around her waist, but doesn’t move beyond that.

Like an idiot, I brush fingertips up to her face again.

Like a miracle, she lets me.

“I’m a moron. And I
am
sorry.” It’s the truth. I hope she can feel it in the pressure of my thumb, slowly tracing the strong line of her jaw. God, she’s so warm and smooth. “I’m also trying to make logical sense out of this. Out of…us.”

Her laugh is quick—and strangled. “There
is
no ‘us’.”

“Oh, there’s an
us
.” And in another bonehead move, I drag her hand away from her body…sliding it beneath my blue silk tie, against the dress shirt covering my sternum. “You know it as well as I do, Mishella. You feel it too. You feel it…right here…don’t you?”

Her lips work against each other. “What I feel does not matter. What
either
of us feels—” She lets her hand drop. Blinks slowly, her lashes shimmering with new salty drops. “I am not free to
feel
, Cassian. You must know that by now. You have spent two days exposed to my father’s determination and will. He desires your money, but only because it will bring him something greater.”

“Power.” I could have supplied the answer from a coma. It was the Holy Grail of the elite, a high better than multiple zeroes in a man’s bank account. And in the hands of fools—worse, in the hands of arrogant fools—it could end the entire planet.

“And my brother and I…are additional tools in helping him gain that power.” She looks down, using her dress as a visual aid in her argument. She has no fucking idea that the staid color and the conservative cut, accented only by the gemstones on her ears, have only stoked my imagination more. It’s a battle not to visualize peeling the garment away from her sleek curves, her creamy skin contrasted by the dark fabric…and showcasing the marks of my grip. “I am to be the ultimate prize for the man at court who helps our family rise the highest. Any ‘dalliance’ before that time, especially with an American investor who was only here for three days, would wag enough tongues to lower his asking price for me.”

I don’t even try to contain a disgusted growl. “Like a fucking virgin offered to a dragon.” When her reply is nothing but extended tension, my head jerks up. “Wait.
Shit.
Because you really
are
still a…” Her eyes confirm it in a second. God
damn
…her eyes. Those wide blue depths, such a turn-on for me from the start, ignite me to shaking lust now. Openness and honesty, because she
is
open and honest.

And a virgin.

A thought—like so many others that have struck about her—that should horrify the hell out of me.

But doesn’t.

Holy hell…just the opposite.

The idea of being the first man to fill her…to bring her to the bliss that will convulse her walls around my cock, make her scream my name as I pump my hot release deep inside her body…

Crap. Shit. Fuck.

You’ve had enough, sailor. Time to close out the tab and wobble on home.

Somebody needs to tell that to the breathtaking blonde now pushing from the wall and pressing her body against mine, that gaze again betraying so many of her thoughts. At least the ones betraying the exact match of her fantasies to mine.

Crap. Shit. Fuck.

No.

“I want to give it to you, Cassian.” She slips her hand up to my neck, working those slender, seeking fingers beneath my shirt. “You know that, yes?”

Hell.

Now she curls her heated touch into the ends of my hair, awkwardly at first, as if she’s just learned the move from movies and is shocked that it works…that such a small gesture has pierced my entire body, slicing into my cock—pulsing heavily between our bodies. Her lips part on the sexiest gasp I’ve ever heard. The flare of her gaze ensues, making my dick swell again.

“Creator’s sweet stars,” she whispers. “Would it even fit?”

“Holy
fuck
.”

It’s all I can say—fortunately, all I
have
to say. She opens her mouth before I even descend, an invitation to plunge with every wet, needing inch of my tongue, embedding her taste into me…gifting me with her soft supplication. And goddammit, I take it. Every inch, every drop, every taste I can possibly steal.

Because it’s all I’ll get to take from her.

All I’ll allow myself to take.

Because despite how much I want her, I refuse to ruin her. Refuse to even think of what her life could be like, if she is of no use to her father’s master plan of Arcadian commercial dominance.

Pathetic bastard.

Will he even listen if I tell him it’s a losing track? That he’ll attain his goal, only to want something beyond it?
Right.
Shaking a spider in its web often just makes the spider work harder—making life hell for its prey.

With a rough moan, I tear myself from her kiss. On legs that shake, step back from her. Then again. Force my hand into a quivering claw, pulling her grip off my neck. But before I set her fingers completely free, I push my face against her palm and impale her gaze with the unmitigated fire in my own.

“It would fit, sweet Circe.”

She smiles, acknowledging the illicit imagery I invoke—but winces, recognizing what I do. We’ll never act on the words. “Circe.” she finally echoes. “The Greek sorceress? The one who transformed her enemies into animals?”

I answer with a growl into her hand. She tries to hide the answering quiver down her body. Fails miserably.

“But you are not my enemy.”

“But you have turned me wild.”

Her breath catches. In the exquisite silence that follows, sneaks her tongue between her lips.

“
Cassian
.”

My own name has never brought me more heat, more tension…more arousal. Two syllables, and my whole system is heated by another ten degrees…and my cock now throbs against the plane of her belly.

I groan. She whimpers. But the temptation to shove her back, hike her dress to her waist and take her right here, against the wall, hits my gritted restraint. This woman isn’t just a whim. She’s not a fuck-then-flee socialite, or remotely close to my other preferred social distraction: haute couture bimbo, sans panties. In my jacket pocket is a phone with hundreds of those women on it, willing to be ready the moment my plane touches down in New York once more.

The thought of it makes me ill.

It will pass—it always does—but as I dip toward her, needing one more taste before giving her up forever, I give in to the illusion that it won’t. That Mishella Santelle has pulled a real Circe on me, and accomplished the impossible.

Transformed me.

Changed me back into a creature I recognize. A man I respect.

Impossible.

Impossible.

I am so screwed.

*

Mishella

M
y eyes itch.
My back aches. The indents in my palms are likely permanent by now, considering the hours my fingernails have been digging into them. How many hours, I have no idea. At this point, time has been slammed into the same category as my physical comfort level. Irrelevant.

I sit in a stiff chair in Father’s study, scooted forward, hands tucked in my lap, knees at a ninety-degree angle. I focus on my toes, flat against the floor, peeking from beneath my sleep pants. Distractedly, I note how they have changed color through the hours, going bluish at the brink of dawn. Living in Sancti, the warmest part of Arcadia, still means ocean breezes that chill the air at night.

Winds capable of lifting Cassian’s hair off his high, straight forehead…

Of teasing that hair into his eyes, changing like ripples across a lagoon with his rising desire…

Of infusing wild new scent across his skin, so taut and tanned over all the hard ridges of his body…

“
Salpu
.”

Not even whispering the profanity against myself is effective against the relentless images of him. And maybe, as awful as the torture is, it is for the best. The pictures are all I will have now.

He is gone.

And I am a selfish
salpu
for lamenting the bizarre sense of loss in my heart, when so much more has walked out the door with him.

New memories assault, making me grimace. That moment, having let down my hair and climbed into bed, when the door of my chamber burst open…then my gape when Father filled the portal. Luckily, the curse I had prepared for Saynt was not yet at my lips. I had expected nobody else, since Mother retired to her own quarters after we bid good night to Father and Cassian, immediately following dinner. I had not diverted from acceptable decorum during the meal, despite the yearning to do exactly that—cheese soup, crème fraiche, and stuffed chicken breast gained new meaning when one dined across the table from Cassian Court’s intense gaze—but when Father stormed in, rage mottling his face, I discerned the awful truth before he spat it.

Did I
not
tell you, two damn days ago, not to throw yourself at the man like a common
rospute
? Do you know what you have done, Mishella? Do you know what you have ruined?

“Tell me again.” Mother’s mandate jerks me back to the present—though it is no less agonizing than the flashback. “Word for word, Fortin—what Court said before he left, and when.”

Father growls. “I do not fathom how this will—”

“Tell. Me. Again.”

“
Woman
.”

“
Husband
.” She jerks the edges of her dressing robe tighter. Firms her stance. She doesn’t need to say more. Even with a bare face and tangled hair, etched in the unforgiving gray of early morning, Selyna Santelle’s golden beauty arrests a whole room.

Suddenly—strangely—I feel sorry for her. Father and she are children of equally ambitious court schemers who married them off for political gain. For many years now, it has been plain that little connects them but a mutual drive for more. And, I suppose, Saynt and me. They love us, in their bizarre way—which might be the only way they know how.

“He is likely preparing his plane for takeoff as we speak,” she persists with the same steely calm. “So if I am to help with salvaging the damage,”—a glance in my direction gives chilling clarity about her definition of
damage
—“I must visualize it again. He said he was ‘unable’ to commit to the agreement ‘as is’?”

“Yes,” Father bites out.

“Not that he refused the terms outright?”

“He said what he said, Selyna. I did not have time to dally with semantics.”

Mother waves a hand like his snarl is a persistent fly. “But
he
took the time to issue the last of it? It was issued in the parlor, not tossed over his shoulder in the front drive, on his way out?”

Father expels a breath. Finally mutters, “Yes. In the parlor. After he turned down cigars, had
one
bite of the trifle, and excused himself to take a discreet shit.”

Mother cocks her head. “And you are certain that was it?”

“Certain what was what?”

“The shit. That was what he excused himself for?”

Exhaustion. Shock.
Not
the best combination for containing frantic laughter. A tight choke helps me at the last minute. Is there any ground forbidden in the path of their ambition?

Father’s loose shrug confirms the answer. “I gathered so,” he mutters. “I very well did not listen at the door, though he was gone long enough, so I assumed…”

He trails off with a tense scowl—though it has nothing to do with spying on Cassian’s bathroom business.
Assumed
. The word alone implies one of their cardinal sins, as bad as laziness or murder. In this case, it brings just as heinous an outcome—if I correctly interpret the messages beneath their extended, silent exchange…

What if he wasn’t spending the time on
that
private matter? What if he went to the bathroom for other reasons—such as the chance for second thoughts? Why has he backed out of signing the contract so suddenly
?

No answers of logic or comfort come forth.

The only thing that has changed in the last four months, since Father and Cassian first communicated about this deal, has been—

Me.

I can peg the millisecond my parents reach the same conclusion. My head jerks down as theirs swing around, though that helps not in battling the weight of their scrutiny.

I want to cease breathing. Not an exaggeration. Every breath I take is a sharp slice between my ribs; like the air itself is contaminated by their disappointment—and disgust.