“My housekeeper comes twice a week. The rest of the time I fend for myself. Eat, please. Or would you prefer I feed you?” He lifted a candy. “These are the chocolate-covered cherries you enjoyed the day we met. I would like to taste it on your tongue.”
Her breath snagged. She staggered back a step, but that wasn’t nearly far enough. She needed a break from his overwhelming charisma because she was perilously close to caving. “I need the restroom.”
“Bien sûr. This way.” He popped the chocolate into his mouth and led her down a hall, through a set of arched double doors, and he then stepped aside and gestured to another door. “C’est là.”
Stacy stood frozen in what could only be Franco’s bedroom. A huge wooden bed covered in a red-and-gold nubby silk spread dominated the otherwise black-and-white space. “You, uh … don’t have a guest bathroom?”
“Of course, but I wanted to see you in my bedroom, and I wanted you, mon gardénia, to imagine yourself in my bed and in my bath with my hands and my mouth on your skin. As I have done.”
The tantalizing vision exploded in her mind in vivid Technicolor, and a fine tremor rippled over her. Her heart hammered and her mouth dried.
Franco didn’t attempt to touch her or coerce her by using the desire clearly visible in his blue eyes. He’d simply stated his wishes and left the rest to her.
One step and she’d have financial security for life and a lover who might possibly make sex enjoyable rather than endurable. And when she left there’d be an ocean between them.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Play it safe? Or risk it all?
Four
“Okay. You win, Franco. I’ll be your mistress for a month. But I have conditions,” Stacy added before Franco could speak. She dodged when he reached for her. There was no way she could think with his hands on her.
Cynicism replaced the triumphant spark in his eyes. He leaned against the doorjamb and folded his arms over his broad chest. Cocky. Arrogant. Male. “And they are?”
She had to be insane to agree to this, but if she hoped to survive it then she had to maintain some control and keep the affair on a business footing. What she needed were boundaries and rules. Safeguards. With her heart racing, she dampened her lips.
“I don’t want Candace, Amelia and Madeline to know about the money.” Or any chance of friendship would be destroyed. She wasn’t even sure she could respect herself once this was over. She hadn’t had to go hungry or bail on a landlord in the middle of the night since her mother’s death, but the memories of the hunger pains and furtive escapes of her childhood lingered. And then there was her current employment—unemployment—status to deal with once she returned home. She’d had excellent reviews at work, but still, the job market was tight and hers wasn’t the only company downsizing. Add in a dwindling saving account and …
Focus on the future. With careful investing you’ll never be poor or homeless again.
He inclined his head. “Anything else?”
“I won’t spend the night.” Call her crazy, but she didn’t want to let her guard down enough to literally sleep with him.
A single dark eyebrow lifted. “Non?”
“No. My duty is first and foremost to Candace. We begin most days going over the wedding planning stuff. My time with you can’t interfere with that.”
“I shall return you to the hotel before your morning meetings.”
Suddenly, she felt dirty. “When and how will I get paid?”
His nostrils flared and his generous lips thinned. “Your bridesmaid duties will end when Vincent and Candace depart on their honeymoon trip following the reception. You are scheduled to leave Monaco the next day, oui?”
“Oui. I mean, yes.”
“You will spend your last night in Monaco with me. The entire night, Stacy.” It was an order not a question. “In the morning I will give you a cashier’s check and drive you to the airport, but should you not fulfill any part of our agreement, then no money.”
Her breath hitched and her pulse thumped as loudly as the helicopter taxi they’d taken to Monaco from the Nice-Côte d’Azur airport. “And if you decide to end it early?”
A muscle in his jaw bunched and then his lips curled in a slow, devastatingly sexy smile. “I assure you I never finish anything prematurely.”
It took a second for his meaning to sink in and when it did her cheeks caught fire. “But if you do?”
“You will be paid.”
“Okay.” Now what? Did they shake hands over the deal or—
Franco captured her elbows and tugged her forward. His mouth slanted over hers in a hard kiss as if she’d angered him. Stacy stiffened as second, third and fourth thoughts descended like an avalanche. She was on the verge of pulling away and cancelling their arrangement when his lips softened and parted. The fingers grasping her arms loosened and swept up to sift through her hair and cradle her head in his hands.
His mouth lifted, realigned and returned, seducing a response from her with long, luxurious turn-her-muscles-to-mush kisses. She tasted a hint of dark chocolate on his tongue. Chocolate and Franco, a hot and heady combination. His hands painted warm stripes down her back, over her hips and then around to her waist, before rising until his thumbs rested just below her bra.
Her breasts ached in anticipation of his touch, and desire simmered inside her. She couldn’t believe her body could respond with such abandon when she knew Franco was using her. She’d been used before. But she wasn’t a lonely seventeen-year-old trying to fit in at her third high school anymore. She wouldn’t expect love or forever this time, so she wouldn’t be hurt.
“Hey guys, where’d you go?” Candace’s voice called out from somewhere in the house.
Franco slowly lifted his head, his lips clinging to Stacy’s for several heartbeats. His passion-darkened gaze speared hers. “Tonight we begin.”
She couldn’t find her voice, but she managed a stiff nod.
Dear God, what had she done?
She’d agreed to trade sex for security. She couldn’t help feeling she’d sold her soul to the devil, and she hoped she didn’t live to regret it.
Anticipation made Franco edgy. He hated it. He was, after all, a man of thirty-eight and not a boy of eighteen. His hormones did not seem to know the difference tonight.
Impatience urged him to take Stacy directly to his bedroom, to strip away her modest black dress and cover her ivory skin with his hands and mouth, but her pale, anxious expression cooled his ardor. Standing in his foyer, she looked torn between running back into the night and fulfilling her end of the bargain no matter how unpleasant.
Where was the passionate but reserved woman he’d left at the hotel mere hours ago? The one who’d kissed him with such fervor this morning that only her friend’s untimely interruption had prevented him from consummating their agreement against his bedroom door? He wanted that passionate woman back. And he would have her. Stacy would be warm and pliant in his arms and his bed before the night ended. And he would win. The woman. And the contest with his father.
He pitched his keys onto the credenza, halted behind her and curved his hands over her shoulders. She startled. “May I take your wrap?”
“Oh, um, yes, sure.” She darted a quick, nervous glance at him and tension tightened inside him as an unacceptable thought pierced his conscience.
“Stacy, are you a virgin?”