Page 26 of Forbidden Until Midnight

‘No,’ she replied stubbornly. ‘I won’t.’

‘Fine. If you insist on behaving like a child,I’llgo.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ she warned, moving to stand in his way.

Santo barked out a mean laugh. ‘Why? What are you going to do? Stop me?’ he demanded and made to push past her, but she moved to block his path.

Muscle clenching at his jaw, Santo could feel the anger in her pulsing from her in waves. But it was more complex than pure anger—something he was intimately familiar with. He could sense her helpless frustration, confusion, hurt... Arousal.

Cristo, she didn’t know what she was doing to him, he thought as he looked away.

She didn’t know how muchhefelt, as he wrestled with his own frustration and anger, his own confusion. They were both breathing hard, as if they were fighting battles and demons that demanded their all.

‘What do youwant, Eleanor?’ he growled, hoping to scare her off, hoping to send her running back to the safety of the party. Back to someone else.

‘I want you to kiss me,’ she said. ‘Like you kissher.’

A ripcord was wrenched within him, suspending him in mid-air on a piece of string tied right to her.

‘What?’ he asked, half convinced he’d imagined her words.

‘I want you to kiss me like you kiss her,’ Eleanor repeated, the dark gleam in her eyes swallowing the innocence whole.

Her tone left no doubt about whom she was speaking. Eleanor must have seen them last year.Merda, she didn’t even realise that she was the reason that nothing had happened between him and Marie-Laure. And that nothing would ever happen again.

And here Eleanor was, with that awful question on her lips. Couldn’t she tell how different they were? Couldn’t she see?

‘No,’ he bit out through clenched teeth. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘Then what use are you to me?’ she said, shoving back at him.

The taunt, the accusation, cut too close to the bone after years of stepping back and forth up to this line—the line that he couldn’t, shouldn’t, cross. Ever.

‘You want to use me?’ he demanded, stepping closer to her, crowding her a little more, letting just a little of his own anger loose.

‘No, I want you to useme,’ she cried, stepping forward, closing the distance between them until they were head to head, more like enemies than potential lovers.

‘You want me to be just like all the other men in your life, do you?’ he demanded, sick to his stomach.

‘No, I want you to do what I want, on my terms,’ she cried. ‘Because Iwantthis. I want to feel anything other than abandoned, rejected, unworthy, unloved and unknown.’ Each of these descriptions of herself twisted the knife in his chest. But then her eyes darkened.

‘And if you’re not going to help me, then I’ll find someone who will,’ she threatened, turning on her heel as if to leave.

His hand snaked out and slipped around her waist, pulling her back against his chest with gentle force. Fast breaths expanded her ribcage, flexing against his arm, tension holding her stiff in his arms as if she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to move or not, the scent of her rising from the curve of her neck and striking him deeply. Irrevocably.

He could lie to himself and dress it up a million different ways. But what really hid beneath the layers of protest and objection—towards her, the situation, the consequences that Eleanor Carson seemed wholly ignorant of—was that he had never, not once, been able to stop thinking about her...about the way she had looked up at him that night in Berlin. The way she had dared him to kiss her.

The way he’d wanted to, like nothing he’d ever experienced before in his life. The way he’d been tempted to throw away his promise to Pietro. The way he’d wanted to throw away everything he knew about himself and how devastatingly close he could be to his father sometimes and take what he wanted. It had nearly broken him and she’d had no idea. And here she was, threatening to find someone else to satisfy the same craving that coursed through his veins like a curse. And as she arched into his hold, her hands wrapping around the arms that held her tight, her backside restlessly pressing against his crotch, the last fragile tie to his sanity broke.

He spun her in his arms and her eager mouth met his in an almost violent confrontation. Tongues teased, teeth clashed, but it was her half-cried moan of sheer arousal that cut him off at the knees.

Santo pulled her tight against the length of his body, the hard ridge of his need for her pressing against her core. Unable to restrain himself, he felt feral, animalistic, primal and raw, in a way he’dneverexperienced before in his life. It was as if all their anger, all their frustration, all their hopelessness was bleeding out into their passion and he could only hope that it would run dry and leave him spent enough to let her go when it was done.

Eleanor pulled him against her by the lapels of his jacket, and he let himself be led straight into the drug that was Eleanor Carson. The boldness of her tongue had taken him by surprise and he was insatiable, addicted, unable to stop himself from going back for more... Dammit, for everything and anything he could get.

His pulse raged beyond his control, need a stronger impulse than his desire to breathe. She was pushing him closer and closer to the same hot-headed insanity of his father...and that alone was enough to make him sever the kiss.

He pulled back, breathing as if he’d run a marathon, the struggle to get himself back under control alarmingly close to a limit he rarely tested.

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