Buch lesen: «A Virgin To Redeem The Billionaire»

PROLOGUE

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, we’ve had a surprise offer for the entire estate by Mr. Kaine Michaels. A figure has been accepted by the family for the house and all the contents. We will not be auctioning individual items. Thank you for coming, but no further bidding will take place.”

“What? No.” Gisella Drummond barely heard her own gasped words over the babble of discontent that rose from the crowd seated around her. They all let their bidding paddles droop in shock.

She instinctively looked to the tall stranger who had appeared in the room moments ago. He had captivated her as he entered to confer with the officials on a small dais near the fireplace. He was sinfully sexy in a suede jacket worn with casual elegance over black jeans and a button shirt without a tie.

Her first impression had been that his renegade appearance didn’t fit this setting at all. The Manhattan mansion was a gorgeous ode to French Renaissance style, full of antique furniture placed with care on fading silk rugs under crystal chandeliers. Marble columns held up the low ceilings, and heavy velvet drapes blocked out the view of Central Park. That man was too rough around the edges for such a pristine, refined space. Had he really bought it, lock, stock and barrel?

Beside her, Mr. Walters cursed the man. He was one of her uncle’s longtime business associates, had asked after her family and had confided he intended to buy the house.

Gisella was here only for an earring, but she was equally disappointed by this turn of events, probably more so. “Do you know him?”

“He owns Riesgo Ventures.” Mr. Walters spoke with a disparaging sneer. “It’s a tech company out of San Francisco. If he thinks he’s earning any goodwill in this city with a move like that...”

She was curious what else Mr. Walters knew about him, but through the confusion of people rising and talking, she saw Kaine Michaels was leaving.

Urgency gripped her. She quickly excused herself and jostled as politely as she could through the milling bodies toward the door.

For a second, she thought she’d missed catching him. He wasn’t exiting through the front doors of the entry foyer, though. His long legs had carried him up the wide, carpeted stairs to the gallery. He was moving along it with an auction house official hurrying to keep up.

She trotted up after him and pursued them down the hall. They paused at a pair of open double doors. The official spoke to the security guard standing watch.

“This is Mr. Michaels. He has just purchased the house and all of its contents. You can allow him to take anything he likes.”

“Just the one piece,” he said, indicating something on the clipboard in the official’s hand. “The rest can go into storage.”

“Mr. Michaels,” she called, wanting one piece herself before everything was sent to a remote, humidity-controlled facility.

He glanced back at her, then drawled to the guard, “Actually, you can go downstairs and show everyone the door.”

The guard gave her a hard look, as if he meant to include her in his sweep.

She held up a hand. “I only need a moment.”

Kaine jerked his head to dismiss the guard, then glanced at the official. The other man nodded and moved quickly into what looked like a sitting room. The jumble of paintings and sculptures wore numbered tags. So did a handful of furniture and other items. This was clearly the staging area for the auction.

The earring was probably among that collection, practically within reach. Butterflies of excitement batted around her midsection.

“Your moment is almost up,” Kaine said.

She looked to him and lost her voice as she confronted his handsomeness up close. His dark hair was short and thick, his brows bold statements above golden-brown eyes. His swarthy cheeks were smooth, but underlined by a precise border of stubble along his jaw. A goatee framed a mouth too full-lipped and sensual for words.

Men didn’t usually affect her. Not even very good-looking ones, but a funny squiggle in her midsection teased with intrigue, especially when his eyelids lowered in lazy, male appreciation.

She extended her hand. “Gisella Drummond.”

His relaxed demeanor altered. His expression tightened with dismay and he raked her with a more disparaging glance. It went down to her open-toed heels and came back to her snug top with the shoulder cutouts.

When he met her eyes again, she felt the impact as though she had walked into an invisible wall, one that teemed with icy electrical currents. They wrapped around her and squeezed the breath from her lungs.

He snorted in a way that suggested he couldn’t believe her gall.

It was highly disconcerting. She was usually very well received by men. Not just for her various wealthy and respectable contacts, either. She was naturally blessed with the slender height and patrician bone structure seen in ads for swimsuits and makeup.

Her beauty was as much hindrance as strength so she didn’t often use her looks for leverage, but this was battle conditions. She was on the verge of losing something she’d waited years to acquire.

She tried to melt his sudden frost with a warm smile, but it felt forced.

“I know who you are, Ms. Barsi.” He only looked at her hand, didn’t take it.

She let it drop along with her smile. Her heart also seemed to slump uselessly for a moment before she gathered herself with affront.

“I wasn’t trying to misrepresent myself. I use my father’s name.” Not that it should matter either way. Her family was complicated, but she was a Barsi in her heart, if not by blood. The Barsis were a well-regarded family here in New York. Counting herself among them was an honor.

Yet it held no sway over him. If anything, her being one of them seemed to provoke a disdainful tic in his cheek.

“Sir?” the official said, returning from the auction room. “You’re sure this is all you want for the moment?” He held a velvet box in his hands.

“Yes.” Kaine moved into a nearby bedroom. His lip curled with distaste as he took in the canopied bed, the sitting area of ornate boudoir furniture and the heavy blue drapes framing a view over Central Park.

Gisella followed, wishing she’d been able to leave work early enough for the guided tour. It was a one-of-a-kind home and prime real estate. Her parents had money, but no one in Gisella’s family was in a position to buy a house like this, especially if they didn’t love it, which Kaine clearly didn’t.

The official handed him the velvet box. “I’ll have the paperwork ready for you to sign when you come downstairs. Will you consider private offers on anything?”

“Everything but this. You can handle that for me?”

“Of course, sir.” The official waited for Kaine’s nod of dismissal, then hurried out, leaving Gisella alone with him.

Wait. He hadn’t bought a house to get one item, had he?

Kaine tucked the velvet box into the pocket of his jacket without opening it.

Gisella’s stomach swooped with dread. “What was that?”

She moved with panic to where a makeup table and dresser top held a number of open jewelry boxes, all with numbered tags on them. She scanned for the earring she’d only ever seen in the catalog for this auction. Several pairs of earrings were on display, but no orphans.

It wasn’t here. She scanned again, her sense of loss visceral. She was going cold with shock while a shot of adrenaline hit her heart, sending a stinging throb through her limbs. How could she be this close after so long and lose?

“Was that an earring?” She swung around.

He gave her a blithe smile. I know who you are, Ms. Barsi.

She was fully taken aback. A wild suspicion came into her head and out her mouth before she’d had time to absorb how ridiculous it was. “You did not just buy a house to get that earring!”

“It was the most expedient means of getting what I want before anyone else.”

Shock hit in waves. He really had bought the house for the earring. And there were other people after her grandmother’s earring? Enough that he’d gone after it this aggressively? That made no sense. It was one earring.

“I don’t know what you’ve been told, but it’s not that valuable. It’s not worth a house. Not this house. Why didn’t you just bid on it?”

“Buying the house serves other purposes. And I don’t have time to play game shows all day. Shall we?” He waved to invite her to leave.

“No.” She put out a hand, used to having control of most situations, but she was utterly at a loss. It was the stakes, she told herself. She had been hunting that earring for more than a decade. She had been so sure she would take it home today and now her stomach was knotting with gross disappointment.

No. She straightened her spine, mentally smoothing the wrinkles from her normally smooth, aloof confidence.

“I’d like to make you an offer for it.” He’d said he would take some, right?

On everything but this.

His expression grew both alert and satisfied. He cocked his head slightly, gaze scanning her features, taking his time studying her brow and cheekbones, her jaw and mouth. Almost as though he was memorizing them.

“Why do you want it so badly?” he asked. “If it’s not that valuable?”

She licked her lips self-consciously while a scent of danger had her heart doing one of those skips that showed up in movies as a jag of returned life on heart monitors. Her whole body suffused with tingling heat. The air between them crackled.

“It has sentimental value for my grandmother.” And her grandmother was growing frail. Gisella wanted to put it in her pale, elderly hand before another health issue arose to alarm all of them.

“You care about her very deeply.” He seemed to delve into her soul with his piercing golden eyes.

“I do.” A lilt of hope infused the words as she sensed he was coming around. “She’s a very special woman.”

“I’m sure you take after her.” It was a thick piece of flattery, something she knew better than to fall for. Even so, his smoky voice caused her to blush.

It was inexplicable. He wasn’t going out of his way to stoke the sexual awareness between them. She was simply aware it was there. Intensely aware. She didn’t know why she was reacting to him so blatantly. She wasn’t even sure she liked him. He seemed quite arrogant and ruthless.

But fascinating. She knew a lot of rich and powerful men. None radiated this innate confidence. None wore impervious armor that begged her to see if she could pierce it.

Maybe if she’d had lovers, she would have found her sensual side long ago, but she had a silly pact with her cousin to wait for that elusive thing Rozalia kept insisting was real—love.

Gisella had been humoring Rozi when she had made her vow of chastity. They’d been thirteen and sex had sounded ridiculous enough that Gisella had been happy to put it off. Until now, she hadn’t met a man who had tempted her enough to break her promise.

But here she was, locking gazes in a staredown that filled her with anticipation. So much so, if he slid his attention downward, he’d see her nipples straining visibly against the lace of her bra and the light jersey of her top.

“How much would you like for it?” she asked, struggling to stay on task.

“It’s not for sale.”

He sounded so firm, so smug, she scowled in consternation.

“Such a beautiful face shouldn’t wear such an angry frown.” He ambled closer and grazed her jaw with the side of his knuckle. “It might stay that way. Shall we go?”

She ignored the way his light touch made her breath stutter and tightened her mouth with resolve. She was an only child, used to getting everything she wanted.

“How can I persuade you to change your mind?”

“You can’t.” His mouth pulled into a wicked grin. “But I’m tempted to let you try.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t use sexual favors to get what I want,” she informed him coldly. “If I kiss a man, it’s because I want to.” There. It was a dropped glove, but it was true. If she thought a man boorish, she told him so.

If she found a man enthralling... Well, he was the first to fascinate her like this. She wondered if he might become her first in other ways. This power struggle was inordinately exciting.

“Is that so,” he murmured. All the humor bled out of his expression, leaving it full of grave angles. He seemed to consider her words while the backs of his fingers continued to caress her throat where her pulse thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings.

What was she doing? This was madness. He was a stranger. Voices were conversing in a nearby room.

But she wanted him to kiss her. It wasn’t about the earring. He was unlike any man she had ever met. If he walked away and she didn’t at least know what it felt like to have his mouth on hers, she would always wonder.

She stared into eyes that had become the incendiary gleam of liquid gold and dared him to make her day.

His hand came back to her jaw, his touch firm as he bent his head.

He claimed her mouth without ceremony, as if they’d been kissing like this every night for years. And, oh, did he know how to kiss.

This was what she had sought all her life. A man who met her strong personality with an even stronger one. One who took her out of herself with a twist of his mouth against hers, parting her lips and sinking into a hungry, passionate ravaging that dismantled her even as he promised she would be safe in his strong arms.

She became a molten substance as he gathered her hair and squeezed an arm across her back. She pooled like quicksilver against him, curves fitting into the dips and contours of his chest, arms curling around his tense waist to settle her fingers against the warm hollow of his spine.

She had never been kissed like this. Carnal and possessive, urgent and lazy at once. Her scalp stung under the clench of his hand in her hair. Heat consumed her, burning up any memory she had of other men. A moan of pleasure escaped her, but it contained loss. She understood that every kiss that had come before this one had been a manufactured fraud. This was the real thing. She could never settle for less again.

And he was already pulling away.

Her lips clung to his as his hand moved to the side of her face. His mouth lifted away. It was too soon. A sob of protest arrived as a lump in her throat. His breath was as ragged as hers, feathering across her wet lips. She refused to open her eyes, not wanting him to see how completely he had owned her in this too-brief encounter.

He knew, though. He spoke in a gravelly whisper that caressed her cheek and lifted the hairs on her scalp. “I’ll lock the doors and take everything you’re offering, but you’re not getting the earring.”

“What?” She blinked her eyes open and the world came back into focus. She saw the colorful mural on the ceiling, the gilded light fixture. Its glow haloed his dark hair, turning him into an archangel.

“A valiant effort, though.”

She made herself step back, feeling the loss of his heat like a splash of icy water down her front. The barest hint of her lipstick shaded his mouth. She wanted to use her thumb to erase it. She wanted to keep touching him. Lock the doors and stay in here and discover everything he could teach her.

She had always wondered what it would feel like to discover her chemical match. To be devoured by true, animalistic passion.

It was terrifying, as it turned out. Deliriously perilous, yet treacherously alluring.

“That wasn’t—” She cut herself off as she absorbed the jaded look in his eyes. Which was a harder kick to her pride? His thinking she had been trying to manipulate him? Or confessing her passion had been real when his was clearly nonexistent?

“Here comes the frown again. I didn’t expect you’d take this so hard.” The corners of his mouth deepened in a curl of merciless amusement. “It makes denying you what you want so much more satisfying.”

Her ears rang with the double entendre while her scrambled brain finally began to comprehend what was going on.

“Are you telling me you’re doing this as some sort of vendetta against me?”

“What I’m doing—” his voice turned to granite “—is getting your cousin’s attention.” His tone was hard enough to make her insides shiver with foreboding. “Pass the message along. I expect a phone call.”