The Couple who Fooled the World (12 page)

“It will be touch screen. And voice activated. It will be able to look things up by landmark or by street, state, zip code, whatever. It will be especially handy when you’re lost, and say, you’re on Third Street, but you need to get to the wharf. So you can push a button on your steering wheel, activate voice recognition And say, ‘How far am I from the wharf?’ And it can tell you and map a route.”

“Good ideas,” he said. And they were. Julia did have a way of thinking like the kind of person who would need to use this piece of technology.

It was harder for him. Maybe because he didn’t understand people especially well. Not normal, functional people.

They spent the next few hours altering her rendering, discussing features, modifying specifications and fighting over things one of them found necessary and the other felt was useless.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed the conception of a product so much. And it had to do with Julia. With the fact that she felt so deeply about what it was they were doing. It made him want to put more into it. To match what she was giving.

By the time they were finished, there were five empty cartons on his desk that had once contained Chinese food, and they were on their fourth pot of coffee. And the sun had gone down, their afternoon meeting extending long past work hours.

“This is it!” Julia said, standing up from her position at his desk. “They’re going to choose our design. How can they not? It’s genius. Beyond genius, if I say so myself. I mean, really.”

When it came to work, Julia was unable to disguise her passion all the way. And he was glad. She tapped into a part of herself, a part of life, that was off-limits to him. Watching her, being near her when she was overflowing with energy and exuberance was intoxicating.

Nearly as much as sleeping with her had been. No, he wasn’t going there. He was determined to put that out of his mind. To forget it happened. It opened up too many doors he simply didn’t want opened. Let in too many ghosts from his past.

And it almost felt like it might be worth the cost. Almost.

“It is a good design,” he said, trying not to betray his thoughts. Trying not to show just how badly he wanted to push her onto his desk and have a repeat experience of what
it was like to have sex on his own terms. With a woman he wanted. Wanted so much it made him burn.

“It’s an amazing design.”

“I think that should be all, then,” he said, standing and straightening a stack of papers on his desk. Something to keep his hands busy, to keep from touching her. She was like fine porcelain, and he was afraid his hands were far too rough from all his years on the street. He had been foolish to think he could touch her without breaking her.

Foolish to think he could play with sex again and walk away unaffected. It never worked that way. It was why he hadn’t gone there again since escaping Rome. Not until Julia.

And he wouldn’t do it again. Not with her. There would be another woman, one who wouldn’t challenge him so much. One who wouldn’t make him feel like he was being torn apart from the inside out.

“That’s…all?” she asked, her blue eyes round.

“Yes. There’s nothing more for us to discuss today. We can pitch this to Barrows in person next week. Until then, we can both get back to our businesses.”

Julia only stared at him, her mouth parted slightly, her cheeks flushed. And then she reached out and grabbed his tie.

J
ULIA WASN’T QUITE
sure what possessed her. Only that she’d been waiting, their entire eight hours together, for Ferro to give some indication that he remembered sharing the most intense and intimate moments of her life with her. But he’d refused.

He’d been cold, and when he hadn’t been cold, he’d been that perfect brand of fake charming that she’d identified as such from moment one.

And he was trying to pull it on her again. Like he really was the womanizer that the press made him out to be. Like she didn’t know the truth about him.

Like she didn’t know the man had never had a partner who hadn’t paid cash for him. Like she hadn’t been his first lover.

And she couldn’t take it anymore. One minute, she was standing a perfectly respectable distance from him, and the next, she was lunging at him, her hand wrapped around his silk tie.

He had the decency to look shocked for a split second. And that second was all she needed. When his mouth opened, she pulled hard on his tie and angled her head, pressing her lips to his and thrusting her tongue in deep. Tasting him. Punishing him.

His arms wrapped tight around her waist, pulling her close to him. She could feel him hardening, lengthening against
her stomach. Her internal muscles clenched in response, an ache building where she longed to be filled by him again.

She pulled at the knot on his tie and it loosened. She pulled again, undoing it completely, and throwing it to the floor. She unbuttoned the top of his shirt, and continued on without asking, without checking his face.

He could stop her if he wanted. He would have to. Because she couldn’t stop herself. She wanted him. With everything she had in her, she wanted him, and she didn’t want to let him hide behind that facade he’d built up.

She wanted him real. She wanted him raw. She wanted him naked. And that wanting, that need, unblocked, unchained, no more fear holding her back, felt like the most delicious freedom she’d ever tasted.

She felt like Julia. Not like Julia who had been told she was wrong. Not like Julia who had been told she should be thankful for her attempted rape, because no other man would want her. Not like Julia who had been hiding behind her armor.

She was just Julia. Who she would have been without all of that garbage. Without all that pain.

Finally she had his shirt open, her fingers skimming along his perfectly defined muscles, his chest hair tickling her palms.

She wasn’t taking orders today. She wasn’t afraid of being clumsy. And when she looked at his face, his expression taut, his eyes nearly black, she wasn’t afraid of being rejected, either.

She pushed his shirt off his shoulders and leaned in, pressing a kiss to his pectoral muscle before sliding her tongue around his nipple. He jerked beneath her touch and she smiled, kissing his skin again.

The way he responded to her now was completely different than after their first kiss. He’d been calm then, unruffled. Now, he wasn’t. His heart was raging, his erection
hard. There was no pretending that their night together hadn’t changed things.

No way for him to pretend he was in absolute control. No way at all.

She had the control. But all she wanted to do with her control was pleasure him. Until he was shaking, until he was sweating. Until he was begging.

She dropped to her knees in front of him and started to work at his belt. Her fingers were trembling now. She’d never done this before, but she wanted to. She’d wanted to that first night they were together, and she would have, if he hadn’t gone to the couch.

“You kept me from living out all my fantasies that night we were together,” she said, sliding her hand over his cloth-covered shaft before undoing the button on his pants and lowering the zipper. “You won’t deny me again.”

She didn’t know where the confidence was coming from. Didn’t know who this woman was, with her hand wrapped around a man, with every intention of tasting him, having her way with him. She didn’t know who this woman was, but she liked her.

And then she realized, this woman was her. The real her.

He reached up and grabbed her bun, tugging her hair, pulling her head back so she had to meet his eyes. “You think not?” he growled.

“I think I have you in the palm of my hand.” She squeezed him and a feral groan escaped his lips, rumbling through his body. “You’re mine, Ferro Calvaresi.”

She reached beneath the waistband of his underwear and freed him, her fingers curled around his bare, heated flesh.

She leaned in and ran her tongue along the length of him, a shiver working its way through her body. She’d never felt so powerful. Had never felt so supremely comfortable in her own skin. On her knees, in front of a man, she might seem
like she was the submissive. But she knew she had the control here. That she’d taken it from him. A good thing, because he badly needed the control stripped from him.

Ferro looked down at Julia, pleasure ripping through him. He was lost. He was past the point of regaining control in the situation. Past the point of thought and reason. He was lost in his needs, in the pounding, insistent need for release, and the need for her to keep going forever.

As she took him deep into her mouth, he lost the capability to think. To breathe. No woman had done this for him before. It was the ultimate in giving pleasure, while taking none. And she did it as though she could feel what he was feeling. As though she was just as lost in it all.

But he wasn’t in charge here. He was at her mercy. And it felt like he was hurtling toward the edge of a cliff, with no choice but to go over. Flame roared through him, pushed him further, faster, dangerously close to the edge.

“Enough,” he bit out. “Julia, I can’t last.”

She moved away from him, her face pink, her eyes bright. “Okay,” she said, her breathing labored.

He moved to her then, undoing the buttons on her top while she finished discarding his pants and underwear. “I have no protection,” he said.

“I, uh…I do.”

“You do?”

“Thad,” she said. As if her assistant’s name explained things.

“What?”

“He slipped some in my purse before I left. He wants to make sure I play safe. And of course I couldn’t tell him that we weren’t…because he has to think we are. And anyway, now we are.”

She shoved at the center of his chest and his legs gave easily, his body sinking into his office chair. Julia pulled her
shirt off the rest of the way and unhooked her bra, tossing it to the side. Then she shimmied out of her skirt, leaving her in a pair of black panties and heels.

He’d thought a more vampish image would make her less appealing to him. He was wrong. He liked her like this. Aggressive, sexy. She pushed her panties down and kicked them to the side, then started on her shoes.

“Leave them,” he said.

Her face turned pinker, and she smiled. “Okay.” Then she reached into her purse and produced the condoms, walking to him slowly, her hips swaying. She was the very image of temptation. Of all the things he’d been denying himself for so long.

He was tired of denial. He just wanted to feel her, tight and wet around him, pushing him to release.

He didn’t need a fantasy to stay hard for her. She was the fantasy.

She opened the protection and slid it onto his length, her fingers clumsy, delicate and arousing. “I’m hoping this will work,” she said, putting one knee to the side of his thigh and gripping his shoulders, then bringing the other knee up alongside his other leg.

He put one hand on her lower back, the other around his erection, guiding himself into her body as she lowered herself onto him slowly.

Her hold on him tightened, her head falling back. “Oh, yes, this works.”

He couldn’t speak. He could hardly breathe. He had never wanted with such intensity. Had never had the arousal in his body mirror the desires in his heart like this. It was intoxicating. It was dangerous. And he didn’t care.

He clung to her while she rode him, pushed them both higher. He lifted his face, caught her nipple between his lips
and sucked her in deep, the hoarse cry that escaped her mouth sending a shock of need through him.

His lowered his hand, gripped her butt. The answering tightening of her hold on him, told him that she liked it.

And then he couldn’t think anymore at all. His control was back in the distance and he didn’t care. He could do nothing but feel. Could do nothing but chase his release, the pleasure blinding, burning, ravaging old scars and laying them open.

He felt like he was being torn to pieces. She arched into him, her internal muscles pulsing around him. No, this wasn’t like being torn to pieces. That had already happened. His mind and body, his emotions, torn raggedly, violently into separate entities so that he could survive the indignity of his life. Survive the shame.

Here and now, it was like being forced back together. Cauterized and sealed by heat. Painful. Intense. Undeniable.

And with his name on her lips, she came, her nails digging into him hard, her eyes closed tight, her entire body rigid. And he could do nothing but follow, his blood raging in his ears as he poured himself out, spent himself. And when it was over, he was left hollowed out and breathless, savaged by the flame that had just burned through him.

He started to move and her fingers dug into his shoulders again. “No. Stay. Don’t leave me. Please.”

“Julia…”

“I need you.”

And because no one had ever needed him before, he stayed.

Julia’s breathing slowly normalized as she say curled against Ferro’s bare chest. She had really, truly, just jumped him in his office, with the door unlocked. And she had really, truly, begged him to stay and clung to him like she was a koala bear.

And she was still clinging. She didn’t know what had come over her. No, she did know. He’d been so calm. Acting
like nothing at all had happened between them and so she’d wanted to make it so he couldn’t ignore her. Couldn’t deny that something had happened, that things had changed. Because she felt altered. Completely and utterly altered and the fact that he didn’t just…sucked.

“I…Oh.” She stood up, and almost fell back down again. All the blood had now rushed to her head and her thighs felt like overcooked noodles, thanks to the workout she’d just gotten. “I don’t know what…I just…I did that.”

Ferro was still sitting there, naked at his desk. She had to turn away from him because looking at him was making her all hot again.

“Don’t ever apologize for your passion, Julia,” he said. She turned to face him, her heart thundering. “I don’t.”

“You do. It’s beautiful. Don’t apologize for it.”

“This is…incredibly awkward. I don’t really know what to say to the guy I just sort of attacked.”

“Let me make a deal with you, Julia,” he said, leaning forward.

“What sort of deal?” She started hunting for her clothes, knowing she couldn’t just stand there all naked like it was casual and whatever. She was so
not
casual and whatever about being naked beneath the bright lights of Ferro’s office.

“I will teach you,” he said. “And you will accept my offer for a larger share of the Barrows deal.”

“No. I don’t want to deal like that.”

“I do. I need it, Julia. In exchange, you will be my lover.”

“We talked about this in Alaska.”

“But you denied me my terms, and I can’t have that. Neither can I seem to keep my hands off you. It’s unacceptable. That means this attraction has to be allowed to run its course. I need my control, Julia.”

“Ferro, I don’t think I can do that.”

“Trading your body is beneath you,
cara mia?”

“But I would be with you for nothing.”

“Everything has a price, that’s how life works. That’s how I understand it.”

There was something horribly cold in his eyes, where before there had been heat. Something disconnected when for a moment she’d felt so close to him.

“Use me, Julia. I am offering to let you use me.”

“As you’ll use me?” she asked.

“Yes. But it is still not a balanced trade.”

“Why not?”

“The one with the power in bed, the one making the commands, is always in control. And I will give you your due for allowing me this.”

“But I want it,” she said. “I want it like that. It’s part of you teaching me.”

“It’s still not the same. This is…beyond me. Beyond my experience. I want you so much it makes me ache. I have never wanted like this. Always for me it’s been survival. When I bought things for my office, it was because I could. A way of proving that I could have everything those women had in their homes, those women who were so superior to me. Everything that was in shops that barred my entrance could belong to me now. That I owned a part of the world that did such damage to me. But it wasn’t because I wanted it. I hate this trash. Gaudy, pretentious. Utterly meaningless.” He moved his hand in a sweeping gesture and brushed a plaster bust off his desk, onto the hard floor where it shattered.

“It is nothing,” he said. “I didn’t want it, I wanted what it represented. You, you I want. You are the first thing I have ever wanted. I will have you, Julia, if I have to work to find your price, I will have you and damn my soul.”

Even though the coldness remained, the disconnect, she could sense more, a fire burning beneath the surface. Trying to melt the ice.

“You think I would cost you so much?”

“I know you will,” he said. “But I don’t care. Why do you want me?” he asked. “I am…there is dirt on my skin that will not come clean. Why would you touch me?”

“Because I don’t see you that way.”

“How?”

“You think I’m innocent, Ferro, because I was a virgin, but innocence and virginity aren’t the same thing. I was a virgin because I was afraid, not…not so much of sex but the trust I would have to give in order to have it.”

They were still naked, and that seemed right. It seemed appropriate that she should be naked while she told him this story because it made her feel exposed. Made her lower her armor. Made her strip herself completely.

She’d thought being with Ferro would be perfect because all she’d have to give was her body, and never herself, but she saw now that it wasn’t enough.