room opened and a flash of slender leg caught his gaze. He turned his focus to her, a hot slug of lead landing in his gut and making his body feel heavy.
Her dark hair was hanging loose, in glossy waves around her shoulders. The bright blue dress she had in place showed off her curves, enhancing her modest bust with the heart-shaped line.
The shimmering, fluttering fabric hung loose over her stomach, a stomach that was showing subtle changes brought about by the pregnancy.
Gold shadow enhanced her eyes, and her cheeks were the color of poppies, matching her full lips.
She was an explosion of color, of shimmering light, and he could not take his eyes off her. Not for the first time, he wondered who might be seducing whom. Perhaps the idea of staying with him was in her plans already. Perhaps all of this was an elaborate ruse to gain access to his wealth and power.
Looking at her now, combined with the incontrovertible evidence of her pregnancy from the scan, he wasn’t sure if it mattered. If she was every bit as innocent as she claimed, and appeared to be, or if she was calculating.
He should care. He just found that he didn’t.
“You look amazing,” he said, closing the space between them and curving his arm around her waist. The stylist he had hired was behind her in the room, and he knew that he could use that as an excuse later for what he was about to do.
He leaned in, brushing his lips against hers. A taste, a tease for them both.
It became apparent immediately that he had not imagined the heat and fire between them. In fact, just that brief touch ignited something inside him that was hotter than anything he’d felt in his memory.
It was nothing. Just lips. Just a hand on the curve of her waist.
And it left him shaken.
“Come,” he said, his voice rough, “cara, let us go to the ball.”
THE VENUE WAS packed full of people, lavish and expensive, money dripping from every corner of the place. From the diamonds that hung in women’s ears, to the chandelier that hung overhead. It was the perfect example of the kind of opulent lifestyle that Renzo could offer her if she chose to stay with him. The perfect piece of manipulation, and one he had not even planned for.
But it would do. It would do nicely. Esther clung to his side, her delicate fingers curved around his biceps. And even though there were layers between them—his coat and his shirt—he could still feel the heat from her skin.
Yes, this was a very nice diversion, and one that would work to his advantage, but he couldn’t wait till after. Till he would finally strip her bare and hold her in his arms. It had become a madness over the past few weeks. To resist her, to wait.
To speak to her over dinner when he’d wanted to pull her over the table and have her there. To bring her books to read in bed, when he wanted to keep her occupied with other things in bed.
He had thought so many times of going into her room and breaking the door down, laying his body over hers and kissing her until neither of them could breathe.
Of taking full possession of her without any of this pretense. Without any of this delicacy. Because he had a feeling that it wasn’t needed. He had a feeling that the fire burned as hot in her as it did in him. And he desperately wanted to find out if that was true.
However, he could not afford to allow impetuousness to make his decisions for him. He could not afford to make a wrong move simply because his libido was ratcheted up several notches.
He shifted, her hip brushing against him. The reaction was immediate. Primal.
He wanted to hold on to those hips, hold her steady as he thrust into her. As he made her cry out. Thankfully, he had thought to call the doctor before they left Rome. Under the guise of discussing safe travel. And he had of course asked her about what sort of intimacy would be all right, given that the pregnancy was considered a slightly higher risk.
She said that normal intercourse would be fine.
A smile curved his lips. Yes, he was going to have her. Tonight.
“There are so many people here,” Esther said, “and they all seem to know you.”
“Yes, but I do not know them.”
“What must that be like?” she asked, as though he hadn’t spoken. “To be...famous.”
“Infamous, more like. I’m not going to lie to you, I’m mostly well-known because men know they have to watch their women around me.” Now she stiffened, and he was pleased with himself for that well-timed comment. It was a risk, but there was no hiding his reputation from her. However, using it to fire up a little jealousy in her couldn’t hurt, certainly.
“Is that so?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I was single for a very long time, Esther. And I didn’t see any point in living with restraint. As I told you earlier, I don’t have to watch the way that I behave. I have a certain amount of immunity granted to me because I am both male and very rich.”
“That must be nice.”
“I don’t know any differently.”
“My father was big on the men-having-whatever-they-wanted thing,” she said, the tone of her voice disinterested, casual, but he sensed something deep beneath the surface.
“Traditional, was he?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s one word for it. One of the things I’ve been working on is recognizing that whatever my father and the other men like him believed, it isn’t necessarily connected to anything real. It’s not about other people who believe similarly to them. They took something that was all right and twisted it to suit their own ends. And I do understand that.”
“You had...a religious upbringing?”
She shrugged. “I’m hesitant to call it that. I’m not going to put the blame on religion. Just the people involved.”
“Very progressive of you.”
She shrugged both shoulders this time. “Isn’t that the point of life? To progress? That’s what I’m trying to do. Move forward. Not live underneath the cloud of all of that.” She looked up, refracted light shimmering across her face from the chandelier above them as she did. “I’m not under a cloud at all right now.” She smiled then, and all of the thoughts he had earlier about her potentially calculated behavior faded. It was difficult for him to imagine somebody who was simply genuine. Because it was outside his experience. Yet, Esther seemed to be, and if he looked at her from that angle, if you looked at her now, he felt slightly guilty about what he intended to do. Because that really did make it a manipulation, rather than a simple seduction.
But still, she would get everything that she wanted in the end, just in a slightly different format. So, he should not feel guilt.
He turned, and suddenly it felt as though the chandelier had detached from the ceiling and come crashing down around him. It was everything he’d been afraid of, and yet no amount of forward thinking could ever prepare him for it.
There she was.
Samantha.
His daughter.
Seeing her like this, closer to being a woman than a girl, always shocked him. But then, everything about this had always been shocking, horrifying. Seeing her was always something like having his guts torn out straight through his stomach. Having his heart pulled out of his mouth.
It was a pain that never healed, and for a man who avoided strong emotion at all cost it was anathema. He controlled the world. He controlled more money than most people could fathom. He had more—would have more—than many small countries ever would. And yet