Page 22 of Seduced By the Enemy

He responded:

Seriously starting to regret that ‘no going to each other’s homes’ rule.

She reached for her wine, took a sip, and settled back into the bath, deeper, so the warm water lapped against her breasts.

She felt like a teenager, giddy with the excitement of messaging a crush. A crush! Salvatore Santoro was the enemy, not a crush. Even when he was also the man she was sleeping with.

Only, Emilia didn’t want to think about the conflict of her situation. They’d already addressed it. Besides, they’d gone too far to walk this thing back. They’d had sex. A lot. What difference did it make if it happened once or ten times? They’d done the very bad, very forbidden thing—the thing no one in either of their families would be able to forgive if they learned of it.

Hotel rooms have baths, you know. Beds, too, for that matter.

She closed her eyes, and instantly he was there, as he’d been the night before. Kissing her, touching her, making her whole body sing as though he were a maestro, capable of playing her to perfection.

Give me ten minutes and I’ll arrange it.

She sat up straighter, her pulse suddenly hammering in her body. She stared at her phone, in a state of surprise. As much as she was craving him, and what they’d done last night, she hadn’t thought for a second he’d want to see her so quickly. Or that she’d want that, too.

But the truth was, the idea of meeting up with him again answered something inside of her that had been thrumming in her body all day. A craving and need she’d done everything she could to blot out. Not hard, when the Moricosian project she was overseeing was turning to shit before her eyes.

She tapped a finger against the edge of the bathtub, wondering if she should say ‘no’. Tell him another night would be better for her. She was exhausted, and hungry, and the bath was heaven for her over-used muscles. And yet, even as she wondered that, she knew she wouldn’t. How could she? What he was offering was what she’d secretly been needing all day—and if anything, the rigors of her day only made her need that more.

The distraction.

The euphoria.

The feeling that no matter what went wrong, knowing there was someone on earth who could make her feel so sublimely satisfied was somehow the perfect antidote.

She was still prevaricating about her response—knowing what she wanted and somehow couldn’t bring herself to admit—when another text buzzed in from him.

I’ve booked the Plaza. I’ll leave a key at the front desk for you.

She bit into her lower lip, hiding a small grin of appreciation. Her family owned several high-end hotels, three of them in Manhattan, yet he hadn’t booked into one of those.

Then again, even that made sense. Wasn’t it more likely they’d be seen—or talked about—if they booked into a Valentino hotel? Besides, it was the last place a Santoro would ordinarily be seen. Of course he’d chosen neutral ground.

She placed her phone down and took her time. While she knew how much she wanted to be with him again, some deeply-held sense of self-preservation told her that she shouldn’t let him see that. That she shouldn’t be admitting it to herself, much less him.

Even when he’d messaged and organized everything, thus showing that he felt the same way. She felt somehow vulnerable, knowing how quickly he’d worked his way under her skin. And if she stopped to think about the fact he was the first man ever to make her want to the point of insanity, she might run a thousand miles from him. If she was even capable of that anymore…

7

HE’D GONE BACK AND FORTH on the wisdom of this. The whole thing. Though he’d pretty quickly discounted any thoughts of ending their arrangement prematurely. A month was just a month. No big deal. Particularly not with the rules they’d put in place to protect themselves.

But even within those rules, he’d wondered if they should limit how frequently they saw one another. Was it fool-hardy to have set up a date, for want of a better word, for the second night in a row? Or was it just a mark of one of Salvatore’s defining characteristics: making the most of the time he had. He’d always been someone who’d pushed himself to the limits. Generally that applied most stringently to his business, but in some aspects of his personal life, he took the same, no holds barred approach.

Emilia was clearly going to be one of those instances.

They had agreed to a month together, and he had absolutely no reason to doubt he’d be able to walk away easily at that point. Not only because she was a Valentino, but also, because he was Salvatore—a man who didn’t do commitment, entirely by choice. It probably wouldn’t even last a month. Far more likely was that they’d get this out of their system and move on. To that end,seeing each other often was a great option. The faster this thing burned out and he could get back to his normal life, the better.

Whatever doubts he’d had about the wisdom of organizing this disappeared with each minute she kept him waiting. Ten minutes turned into twenty, turned into thirty, so his nerves were stretched so thin he’d started to pace the carpeted floor of the luxurious suite. Eventually, it occurred to him that she might not actually be planning to come. What if she was toying with him? Leaning into their family feud and having a laugh at the fact he’d been so eager to see her he’d barely been able to wait another night?

By the time he heard the handle turning, he’d gone from pleased and confident in how things were going, to convinced he’d made a monumental, uncharacteristic error and that he should leave before she arrived—if she was even going to arrive.

But then, the door pushed inwards and Emilia, with a small brown leather duffel bag thrown over one shoulder, and dressed in a black, fitted, woolen dress, hair tumbling down over one shoulder, strode into the room. Her lips were painted a deep red, and all he could think about was smudging it off.

No, that wasn’t true. He was also thinking about how to curtail his immediate reaction—of intense, desperate longing. Because he did long for her, body and soul. He ached and yearned in a way that bordered on obsession.

“Did you walk here?” he asked, aware his voice sounded flatly disapproving, even as he moved to her and unhooked the bag from her shoulder and placed it on the ground.

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