so effectively that she flinched. Instantly, Stefan pulled her behind him. Shocked at how low the chopper was flying and the long-range camera directed toward the terrace, Clio clutched Stefan’s shirt and hid her face in his muscled back.
A pithy curse fell from his mouth.
“Is this all so that they can have a story on Alessandra?” she asked, remembering the scandal that had haunted Rocco’s sister.
“Yes. But they won’t get anything on her as long as I have something to say about it.”
Her heart raced as the muscles of his back tensed under her fingers. “How? Even you can’t sprout wings and block the chopper.”
His arm shot out and pulled her forward. Tripping against her own feet, she fell onto Stefan. And jerked at the sudden male heat that surrounded her. His arm around her waist was like a muscular rope she couldn’t pry off her.
Warmth crawled up all over her body, the scent of him swirling around her, binding her to him.
“No, I can’t sprout wings, bella.” Slumberous heat came alive in his gaze. “But I have a beautiful woman next to me and I can give the hounds a juicier piece of meat first. By the time they’re through with us, Christian will have his own security armed and Alessandra protected from the worst of it.”
Realizing too late what he intended, Clio pushed away from his chest. “No, Stefan. There has to be another way.”
But he was as solid and impenetrable as the walls of the Parthenon. He clasped her face with his palms, and tilted it up toward him.
“Look at me, bella. Pretend like you can’t get enough of me.”
She didn’t have to pretend. The errant thought stole through her, inciting a panic. She didn’t have to pretend that she was already flailing, falling into the haze he cast over her senses with ease.
She struggled again and their legs tangled, the tensile, hard muscles of his thighs rubbing against hers.
The sound of his jagged exhale settled over her skin, while the whir of the rotor blades of the chopper above felt like a death knell.
Her breath left Clio in a dizzying whoosh, every inch of her thrumming and pulsing. “Wait...I...”
Words melted away from Clio’s lips as the pad of his thumb moved over her chin, traced the curve of her lower lip. “It’s just one kiss, bella. If you flinch every time I lay a finger on you, no one’s going to buy it, Clio. Least of all Jackson.”
Her breath hitched like a balloon inside her, crushing her chest with a weight she couldn’t bear... The last thing she wanted was a kiss and that, too, from the man who could so easily shred the small part of her that was still intact.
But the reminder didn’t work quite as well as it should have.
Because when he dipped his head and touched her lips, Clio felt her own walls tremble and quake, her skin burn with need and fire, felt the shudder that racked his wide, solid frame.
His lips were rough and soft, his jaw bristly against her skin, and his thick eyelashes not hiding his shocked expression for once.
“Cristo, bella,” he whispered, touching his forehead to hers.
His nose rubbed against hers, a strange intimacy growing around them.
“Stefan,” she begged, desperate to flee, but yearning to feel that rough mouth against hers again. Desperate to be touched again, desperate to feel his muscles tense. “Don’t do this.”
His fingers crawled over her nape and into her hair, his gaze almost angry. “I can’t stop, Clio. Not now.”
He slanted his mouth over hers and dragged it across.
Fiery need burst across the seam of her lips and Clio shuddered all over.
With a curse that resounded in the air, Stefan tightened his grip until her scalp prickled. Buried his nose in the crook of her neck and breathed.
“You smell like sunshine and oranges, bella. Dio, you taste like...”
Clio didn’t know what else he said. All the fight left her as he found her mouth again and devoured it with little bites and nips. Stroked and tasted her lips as if she was a feast to be savored.
Kissed her as if there was nothing else he wanted to do, as if nothing but her total surrender would do.
And Clio surrendered. To him and even more, to the desire inside her, both freeing and binding.
Their bodies fused to each other as they crossed a line they shouldn’t have.
A kiss they could never undo because it already engulfed them.
* * *
A day later, Clio and he were due to leave for New York in a couple of hours and the chasm of need that the kiss had ripped open felt just as raw to Stefan.
He had only meant the kiss as an evasion.
But one taste of her lush, pink, trembling mouth, and he had been knocked in the gut. All of the fantasies he had spun around her as a raging twenty-year-old became intoxicating reality.
Prowling the carpeted interior of his suite, he stared at the video coverage of the kiss that was already being aired on every site that fed on his life, his mood slowly spiraling out of his control.
Just as his libido did by the memories of her warm mouth, the scent of her skin, of the way she had shuddered and moaned when he tangled his tongue with hers.
Watching their kiss shouldn’t have been the most erotic experience he had ever had. Exhaling a pent-up breath, he acknowledged it was.
Christian and Alessandra’s wedding and reception had gone on without an ugly visit from the media, thanks to his diversionary tactics. But there was a betrayed look in Clio’s eyes that pierced him when she met his gaze now.
Like he had crossed an imaginary boundary between them.
And the fact that he could think of nothing but baring her completely to him, of removing the fear and self-doubt that had flashed in her eyes and replacing it with liquid lust, proved her right.
It had been a long time since a kiss had turned him inside out with need.
A long time since anything had touched him.
But he would have preferred if it had been anyone but her.
The short clip was already up on most celebrity gossip websites and spreading like a virus. The rabid speculation had begun.
His features had been distinctive. So the media knew it was him.
What they hadn’t figured out yet was her identity. And they were going crazy trying to figure out who the new woman in his life was, angling to find out who else was on the guest list at Christian’s wedding.
The press had dubbed her Bianco’s Redhead, a name he was sure the redhead in question was going to dislike, if not despise.
He grabbed the remote just as Rocco, wearing the blackest scowl Stefan had ever seen, entered the suite without knocking.
His gaze turned to the plasma screen on the far wall seconds before Stefan turned it off. The silence grew heavy, almost stifling, as Rocco, his oldest friend, studied him.
“Whatever you want to say, don’t,” Stefan snarled, his hackles rising at his friend’s continued silence.
“All four of us have treated the world and the women in it as our playground for years, true,” Rocco said, cutting straight to the point, “but I always thought there was still a bit of honor left in all of us. First Christian with Lessie, and now you and Clio... Dio, didn’t you find anyone else to play with other than our oldest friend, Stefan?”
Stefan had had every intention of telling his friends the utter truth. But now, his friend’s well-meaning