Page 28 of Seduced By the Enemy

“Well, Salvatore, that’s enough talking for one night, don’t you agree?”

His jaw shifted, and he stared back at her silently for a moment, so in the back of her mind she wondered if he was going to disagree, to ask her another question, or reveal something else about himself. But then, he was reaching for her, pulling her into his lap, and kissing her until all those silly concerns about finding him interesting as a man, not just someone she was sleeping with, fell right out of her head. This was just sex; everything was fine.

8

HE WASN’T SURPRISED WHEN, twenty minutes later, Emilia stepped out of bed and began to gather up her clothes, preparing to leave. If anything, he was relieved. There had been a part of him that wondered if she’d actually be able to stick to the rules they’d established. Not because she was a woman and he had some patriarchal idea about women always wanting more from men, or whatever. This was specifically about them.

Salvatore and Emilia.

Where Salvatore had spent his entire adult life having short-term, casual affairs that could easily be walked away from, Emilia was clearly less experienced in every way. And that lack of experience had the potential to cause…issues. If they let it.

So he’d been prepared to be the one to enforce the rules. To leave first. To shut down conversations. To remind her of what they were.

Instead, he’d been drawn out by her persistent questions, had asked his own in return, so if Emilia hadn’t stood up and removed her shirt, practically begging him to make love to heragain, he wondered if he might have been happy to sit at the dining table of this suite, just simply talking.

It was something he hadn’t done a lot of in his relationships. Harmless flirtation, sure. A bit of back and forth, either side of sex, but nothing meaningful. Nothing deep or real, nothing about his life, his family, his work. Then again, he’d never had such clearly delineated relationship expectations before. They were incredibly freeing. Knowing that no matter what, they’d each set their end point, their objective, what they were willing to give in order to be able to take without concern.

“Here,” she placed the keycard on the foot of the bed, now fully dressed and looking, once again, immaculate. So immaculate and untouched that he ached, as he had last night, to draw her back to bed and make her scream for him again.

“Keep it,” he pushed to standing, reaching for his boxer shorts and dragging them on. He didn’t miss the way her eyes fell to his chest and rested there.

“As a souvenir? I’m good.”

He laughed at that. He loved how quickly she had a retort lined up. How much pleasure she seemed to take from sparing with him.

“As a key,” he corrected. “I booked the room for the month.”

Her eyes widened when they met his. “You did?”

“I thought it made sense.”

“I—guess it does.” She frowned. “So we can come here…whenever…”

“Yes,cara.We can come here whenever.” He prowled towards her, pressing a finger beneath her chin so her eyes met his. “Shall we say, soon?”

Her smile was slow, but addictive. “I like the sound of soon.”

“Me too.” It was flexible, but promised they wouldn’t be waiting long for more of this. And he really likedthis.

His gut was telling him to kiss her. To drop his head and mesh their lips as he pulled her into his arms and held her against his body, but he didn’t. Because it felt too personal? Or because it would lead to something else?

“Well, Emilia Valentino, I can’t say I’m sorry I met you.”

She grinned. “Me neither.” And she turned and walked away from him, her hips swinging in a way he just knew wasn’t intentional, but nonetheless turned his pulse into a raging torrent of need and lust. At the door, she spun and blew a kiss in his direction, but Salvatore didn’t see: he was already making for the bathroom and an ice-cold shower.

They’d promisedto see one another ‘soon’ but it was pretty clear by the middle of the next day that ‘soon’ would have to wait. The situation in Moricosia was devolving before Emilia’s eyes; there was nothing for it but to fly over and sort it out herself.

This was the first project of quite this magnitude that she’d spearheaded of her own. And even though she knew her brothers valued her and her contributions, there was a part of Emilia that knew how important it was to her to prove—not just to her family, but to the entire world—that she was every bit as capable of achieving this as they were.

Unfortunately, sexism was alive and well in the corporate world. It didn’t matter that Emilia was every bit a Valentino, as much as her brothers, or that she had the same skillset, and was every bit as smart and determined. She’d come up against the assumption, time and time again, that it was Leandro and Max who made the decisions in their family. That she wasn’t empowered to have a final say in negotiations.

It was the main reason Emilia had taken over their family’s charitable initiatives. Her brothers weren’t overly interested, meaning she wasn’t in competition with them. She didn’t have to prove that she was as good, if not better, than them. But just as Salvatore had leveraged his network of well-heeled contacts, she’d done the same thing, convincing her altruistic friends to streamline their philanthropy by making a single donation to her foundation. From there, Emilia oversaw the dispersal of funds. But giving money wasn’t enough for Emilia. She had grand plans to join the two branches of her family together, taking their foundation and working hand in hand with their business projects to practically improve the world. Though she hadn’t spoken to her brothers about it yet, there was an urban construction project they were working on, on the outskirts of London, and Emilia had already earmarked a section that would be perfect for low-income housing. She could use the charity to fund tenants into the properties, and partner with local initiatives to create employment or employment training opportunities nearby, thus creating a closed-loop system of support.

When Emilia thought of the good she could do, the sky really was the limit. But for now, her focus had to be on Moricosia, and in the short-term, that meant trying to contain the damage before the parliament lost all faith in them to be able to deliver what they’d promised.

It was hard.

Trying to keep the government onside and convince them the project would still be delivered as planned and on schedule, when she had no idea how she was going to make that happen, meant using every negotiating tactic at her disposal, but after five days in the capital having high level meetings, she left Moricosia with a feeling of hope. So long as she kept a close eye on the development, she could do this. And she would. Therewas no way she’d lose this job having worked so hard to win the tender.

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