The Truth About De Campo (11 page)

The tears slid silently down her cheeks, shocking and unbidden. She hadn’t cried like this since Sile had died. When she had finally lost the fight she had so valiantly waged against the cancer that had been too strong even for her adopted mother, who had been the most courageous woman she’d known. Now it felt like a fissure had opened up inside her and exposed everything. Every part of her. Made it painful to breathe.

The silvery moon dipped behind the clouds. Everything became blindingly clear in that moment. So blindingly clear that she didn’t care anymore. She wanted more. She wanted her
life
to be more. The problem was, she thought, swiping the tears away from her cheeks with the back of her hand, she didn’t know any other way to be.
This
was all she’d ever been. Quinn, who got the job done.

She blinked hard as the tears flew faster down her face. Matteo was damn right she didn’t want to be human. Being human sucked.

* * *

Sometime around midnight Matteo, hot and unable to sleep, emerged from his bedroom and headed for the pool. The rhythmical song of the tree frogs filled the otherwise silent air with a deafening symphony he was surprised anyone could sleep through, yet he
had
slept through it these past couple of weeks, finding it exceptionally soothing white noise.

But not tonight. He’d emptied his email in-box, read every last report and talked to Gabe who was presently wildly excited over a new wine. And he was still wide-awake with no sign his head wanted to join his body in its state of complete exhaustion.

He grabbed a towel from the rack and turned toward the pool. Then he froze as he saw Quinn sitting with her legs dangling in the water. Her gaze was fixed on the dark mass of the Caribbean Sea, her profile so exquisitely drawn he couldn’t tear his eyes from it. He had never met a woman whose beauty was so all-encompassing—so layered. Just when you thought you’d reached the end of it, she revealed more of herself that made you fall deeper under her spell.

If he had continued on with his sensible behavior of late, he would have turned on his heel and gone back inside. Instead he focused on the spare amount of material in the tangerine-colored bikini that did little to cover her mouthwatering curves. Her upswept ponytail revealed the long, graceful curve of her neck that he wanted to sink his teeth into. Dammit. He should never have shared this space with her.

She sensed his presence as if a whisper of air had carried him to her. Looked up at him, the bright glimmer in her eyes wrapping itself around his heart and tugging. She’d been crying. Quinn, who took everything on the chin like a prizefighter and just kept on going, had finally showed a chink in her armor.

Run,
a voice inside him warned.
Run before this all comes falling down around you
. Except he didn’t. He stepped closer, lowered himself down beside her and dunked his feet in the bathtub-warm water.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

She shook her head.

“What’s wrong?”

She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know.”

He pushed a wayward chunk of her hair behind her ear so he could see her face. “You’re too hard on yourself. You need to back off and accept help before you break.”

“It’s not that.”

Just as Quinn had crossed the threshold into his room that night, Matteo knew what he was about to ask was the verbal equivalent of doing the same. But the words tumbled out of his mouth anyway. “Then tell me what it is.”

She looked down at her hands. Twisted them together in her lap. “You made me feel alive the night we were together. Like for the first time in my life I could
feel l
ike everyone else. That I wasn’t a machine programmed to churn out profit numbers...”

His heart stalled. “You aren’t unfeeling, Quinn. You just don’t know how to express yourself.”

“I’m scared to.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Being like this,” she said, waving a hand at herself, “is the only way I know how to be.”

“You can do it,” he growled. “I’ve watched you command a room of fifty workmen with your pinky, Quinn. A little self-honesty is not that hard.”

“All right then.” She turned to face him, amber fire burning in her eyes. “You want me to face my feelings? Speak my mind?
You
said a man would have to be crazy to walk away from me and yet you’ve had no problem doing that.... Actions speak louder than words, Matteo.”

“You
know
why I walked away from you,” he said harshly. “You know why we both walked away.”

She balled her hands into fists. “And so now you move on. You go your merry way, chalk me up as another of Matteo De Campo’s conquests while I—” She stared down at her fists. “I am...conflicted.”

Matteo felt as if someone should read him his rights. Tell him anything he said could or would be used in a court of law against him. Except
his
particular court of law was a ten-million-dollar deal that had become his personal hell.

“You see?” She sliced a hand through the air at him. “It’s easy for you. You probably have a dozen names in your smartphone you’re just dying to call when you get home.”

“That is ridiculous,” he muttered. “We are negotiating a deal that will make the front page of
The
Wall Street Journal,
Quinn. This is not about our hormones.”

“I
know
that.” She slammed her mouth shut, wrapped her arms around her chest and did an impression of a statue. Saliva pooled in his mouth at the sight of her plush flesh fighting for freedom over her bikini top. God, he wanted to touch her.

Her eyes grew brighter, the delicate muscles of her throat convulsing. “Tell me what’s really bothering you,” he said roughly. “Despite what women think, we men are actually not mind readers.”

“I’m afraid,” she threw at him, aggravation lacing her tone. “I am scared that I’m never going to feel what I felt for you the other night for anyone else. That what we had was some one-night aberration and I’m going to go back to being cold old Quinn who can’t have an orgasm because she can’t let go long enough to let it happen.”

His heart plummeted to somewhere beneath the concrete. “That’s crazy. Of course you will.”

She shook her head, lips trembling. “I’m scared I’m never going to feel that alive again, Matteo. It
terrifies
me.”

“You will,” he said hoarsely. “You just need to find the right man.”

“The right man?”
She looked at him as if he had cotton batting for a brain. “Am I the only one who thought what we shared the other night was inordinately special? Please tell me I’m not that big a fool.”

He pressed his lips shut.

“Goddamn you, Matteo.” She planted her hands on the ground to roll to her feet. “You could at least tell me the truth.”

His hand clamped around her wrist. “You want the truth?” She gasped as he yanked her back down, her thighs landing hard on his, her hand against his chest to steady herself. Blood pumped through his veins, filled his head with such pressure he was blinded to common sense. His gaze locked on hers like a heat-seeking missile. “The truth is I’ve spent the last week trying desperately
not
to make a mistake that will damn both of us. And if you think,” he ground out harshly, “that there has been one minute I haven’t thought about us together, then you can think again.”

Her eyes were big pools of forest-green laced with gold, her breath unsteady as her fingers bit into his hot, tense flesh. A trickle of sweat made its way down his nape. “You were not a placeholder that night, Quinn. You were the only woman who could have saved me from myself. The only woman I wanted so blindingly much I could have lost myself on that night of all nights.”

The hitch in her breath was deafeningly loud in his ear. He ran his thumb across the flushed skin of her cheek. “You know this would be a total disaster.”

She arched into his touch like a feline craving his possession. “I don’t care. I’m done caring. I will recuse myself from the committee. But if I’m just a deal to you, Matteo, you should walk now.”

His heart pounded like an out-of-control freight train. “Quinn—”

She pressed her lips to his forehead. Kept them there. “I need to be with you tonight. I need to know I’m capable of more.”

Perspiration slid down his chest, rivulets that pooled at the waistband of his trunks. He flexed his fingers against her soft skin, struggling for control. But this was bigger than both of them, this need for each other. It operated on a whole other level from anything he’d experienced before.

His hands came up to frame her face as he dragged his mouth up to hers. “If we’re doing this, if we’re jumping, it has to be all-embracing, Quinn. I’ll make love to you, but I won’t have sex with you.”

“What’s the difference?” she whispered against his lips.

“Try it and find out.”

His hands absorbed her still-damp, silky-soft skin. His mouth found the sweetness of hers, claiming it in a long, slow kiss that telegraphed just how this would be. She tasted like honey, like something he never wanted to leave. And he decided in that moment, if he was going to hell, he was going to enjoy every single minute of it.

“Matteo...” She breathed the word into his mouth, the edge of anticipation to it setting his blood on fire. His fingers sought out the knot of her bikini top at the nape of her neck and pulled it free, her soft ripe curves spilling into his palms. Her sigh of pleasure was like the most heady of aphrodisiacs. He pulled back so he could see her, drink in the rose-tipped perfection of her breasts.

“You knew this bikini was going to send me over the edge.”

“Maybe.”

He smiled, dipped his head and brought her nipples to firm, pink erectness with insistent sweeps of his thumbs and tongue. He waited until she was fully aroused and moaning softly for him before he slid his hand down over her stomach and eased his fingers under the elastic of her bikini bottoms. She was hot, wet and felt like velvet. Responsive to his every stroke. He wanted to taste her again, feast on her as he had before, but he wanted to sink his hard, aching flesh inside her more. To make her writhe beneath him until she begged for him to get her off.

He would. Eventually...

She arched under his hand as he stroked a finger into her. Took it deep. “
God,
that feels so good.”

“I can make it better,” he promised. He added another finger, curved them against her in an insistent caress he knew would take her higher. She moaned and ground her hips against his hand. He smiled with satisfaction and brought his mouth to her ear. “This time we’re taking it to the bedroom, Quinn.”

She stiffened against him. “I said no bedrooms.”

“Then you don’t get any more.” He pulled out of her, held her away from him so he could see her face. He struggled to control the beast inside of him that wanted to find Julian Edwards and extinguish him. “I don’t know what he did to you, Quinn. What he did to make you so frightened. But I promise you, I will never hurt you.”

He watched her waver. Saw the uncertainty flicker in her eyes. He rested his forehead against hers. “You have to trust me.”

A tremor went through her. Her hands curled into his shoulders as if she were waging a war with herself. Then she burrowed into him. “Yes.”

Matteo scooped her up off the concrete. Carried her across the terrace inside to his bedroom. When he set her down on the tile, he could feel the tension in her hips. See it etched in excruciating detail across the delicate lines of her face. He raked her hair back and let it fall down her spine, tangling his fingers in the smooth, satiny richness of it. “You say stop, I stop. No questions asked.”

She lifted her chin. Put her palm to his pounding heart as if to steady herself, to feel the connection between them. He lowered his head and kissed her. Took her lush mouth again and again until she swayed against him, her hands circling his waist. “You make me crazy,” he murmured, nipping at her lower lip until she bit back, sending his pulse into overdrive as her sharp little teeth sank into his sensitive flesh. “If you knew how many X-rated dreams I’ve had about that performance of yours on your knees... It was the hottest experience of my life, bar none.”

Quinn pressed her lips against the throbbing pulse at the base of his neck. Dropped her hand to slide her palm against the rigid hardness of him. He went willingly to his knees. Slid his fingers under the almost nonexistent sides of her bikini bottoms and yanked them off. The musky, aroused scent of her hit him like a brick to the head.

“God, Quinn.”

He put his mouth to her, drank in her essence until he was so crazy with want he thought he might lose it. Palms pressed against her buttocks, he held her to him, dragged his tongue across her, inside her. Made her cry out and dig her hands into his hair. She murmured unintelligible things, begged him to slide his fingers deeper into her in a caress he now knew made her crazy.

“Dammit, Matteo—”

He lifted his mouth from her. Pushed to his feet and brought her hands to the waistband of his trunks. “Take them off,” he growled.

She shoved her fingers into them and ran them down his long legs. When she straightened and came back to him her face was pinched, expectant. He lowered his mouth to hers, sucked her bottom lip into his and kissed her until she was pliant beneath his hands. “Relax,
bella
. You say stop, we stop.”

She rested her forehead against his and nodded. He picked her up and set her down on the massive king-size bed, her dark hair fanning out against the white silk sheets. She was creamy-skinned perfection, had the most exquisite hourglass figure he’d ever seen. Somehow he had the presence of mind to rummage up a condom and slide it on before he returned to her and smoothed his hand down over the curve of her hip, between the juncture of her thighs. Where he wanted to be.

Her eyes went huge. He straddled her, holding her gaze the entire time. “Touch me,” he rasped. “I need your hands on me.”

She leaned forward and curved her fingers around the heated, throbbing length of him. He was sure he’d never been this hard, this aroused in his life. She was just that beautiful to him.