Page 22 of The Truth About De Campo

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.”

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