Star of Wonder (3 page)

He’d never felt anything more right.

“I’ve got you.” He murmured it into her ear, never meaning three words more in his life. He tucked her into the crook of his arm. “Can you walk?” When she nodded, the movement strong and steady, he smiled and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Good, because we need to move fast. Out the back. The cops have swarmed the front like flies on shit.”

The back alley kicked them out onto Wabash, where he easily hailed a cab, then let Celina give the driver her address. She had a little house in a pretty section of Arlington Heights, decorated in all the colors he expected. Soft shades of cream, burgundy, and brown were complemented by sturdy pieces in the craftsman style. Her only indulgence in knickknacks was a large collection of photos in frames of various sizes, most depicting the same trio of men who all looked too much like her to be anything but brothers, along with several of a young girl around nine or ten years old. Other framed items included her law degree from Loyola and a flag in a triangle box with a name on the frame plate: Nikias Kouris.

“My grandfather,” she explained. “He was a pilot in ’Nam. One of the first grads of the TOPGUN program, though he still got shot down over the wrong lines, saving someone else’s bacon. They never found him.”

Dante pivoted his attention from the flag, looking down at her. She’d only turned on one light in the room, and now her face was bathed in soft gold light. Shit, she seemed even more a goddess now, mighty yet so damn beautiful.

He swallowed. And told himself to take a step back. Instead, noticing one of her hairpins jutting from a spot near her nape, he leaned in and freed it. He was close enough now to hear her shaky little breath of reaction. So much for moving back. Even an inch would feel too far now.

He held up the pin between them. Swallowed again. If he spoke now, he knew what it would sound like. A man entranced. A man aroused. He opened his mouth anyway.

“So you come from a long line of ass-kicking heroes.”

She laughed at that. Actually, truly laughed. His senses rejoiced in the husky sound of it.

“Something like that,” she said and lifted her gaze to fully meet his. The forests were now alive in her eyes again, though their depths now danced with something new. The verb itself was new. Yes, her stare
danced
for him. It moved and flowed across his face, as if rewriting the label she’d originally attached to him back at the party.

He scooted closer to her. Like his muscles were going to let him do anything else. “That’s pretty damn cool.”

The laugh softened to a smile. “Is that so?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t smile back. Clearly, she wrote his words off as smooth-talking bullshit. “It really
is
, Celina.”

“All right, all right.” She held up both hands, snatching the hairpin from him, then tossing it into a bowl with about fifteen others. “I believe you, fancy pants.”

He did a double take. She deliberately used the same nickname on him as the dick wad from the Blue Sax—again, an attempt on her part to lighten him up somehow. Dante didn’t back off. He didn’t feel so “light” right now, and he was damn determined she saw the same thing as he leaned forward, bringing their noses within inches of each other. “You didn’t like me very much when we met, did you?”

Her nostrils flared a little. But that was it in the way of tangible reaction. “Very observant, Mr. Tieri.”

“Anyone with a pulse would have noticed it, Lieutenant Kouris.”

She hitched a little shrug. “Let’s just say I usually don’t have a lot of patience for cavalier cash-tossers.”

Now he stepped back. Well, hell. That was one for the gut—in a breath-halting, not so fucking great kind of way. His jugular felt the force of it too, constricting as he brushed back by another foot.

“Wow. That one’s new. I have to admit, I’ve been prejudged as a lot of different things, but ‘cavalier cash-tosser?’ Hmm. That brings the game to a new low.” His mounting anger made his movements jerky as he yanked out his cell phone. “Sorry I’m still dirtying up your house here, Lieutenant. Just let me get Vincent on the line, and I’ll be out of your hair. Yeah, I have a driver. Sorry, but sometimes they come in handy for us cash-tossers.”

“
Stop
.” With reflexes that shocked him, she snatched the phone from his hand. “I’m going to add ‘shitty listeners’ to the list too. Did you hear me? I said I
usually
don’t have patience for—”

“For what? People like me? Or just guys like me? I’m wealthy, Celina. So what? I also have earlobes that are way too long, an unnatural obsession with Christmas, and I snore the roof off my bedroom.” He grabbed the phone back. “But I’ve also worked hard for my money, so if I want to toss it around a little, then that’s my fucking prerogative.”

Without taking his eyes off her, he punched in the speed dial for Vincent and the car. He remembered the moment, just hours ago, that he’d beheld her for the first time. He’d picked up on her discomfort. He’d pegged
her
as a certain kind of person too. A person who would be willing to put away her initial impressions, and would get to know what he was really like, and perhaps even like the person he was. But her dig—he was right. It was low. And it hinted at a mental wall against his status that ran miles high around her mind.

Her little wince almost did make him stop. But he didn’t. Not even when she glared at him and demanded, “Hang it up.”

“V? Yo, man, you get Meredith squared away? Thanks. Listen, I’m in Arlington Heights. The address is—”

He thought he was ready for her little lightning moves now. But the woman had the phone out of his hand, into hers, and at her ear with a move that made even her first frog tongue of a move seem slow. “He’s just kidding,” she told Vince. “Thanks for your time.”

In one move, she punched End Call and hurled the thing across the room, onto the couch.

Dante looked at her and, goddammit, actually fumed. “What the fu—”

“Are you going to listen to me now?”

He snorted. “Why? What good will—”

For the second time tonight, he was cut off from speaking by a kiss. But unlike Meredith’s embrace at the party, this interruption brought a cavalcade of sensation with it. An avalanche of sensations, violent and wonderful, incongruent to the soft, sweet, seeking lips that had brought it all with them. Celina’s lips. A mouth, he now realized, he’d been fantasizing about all night.

When her hand slipped up around his neck, he was officially buried by the slide. Suffocated. Cut off from the rest of reality. Lost.

As he pushed open her mouth with his, claiming her with every inch of his tongue and teeth, he prayed they didn’t find him for at least a week.

Chapter Four

Have you lost your damn mind?

Celina would’ve laughed at the irony of that, if she were certain her mind was responsible for the message. But this man made it impossible to access anything resembling logic. He’d ruined everything from the moment he stared at her at the party, hacking into her psyche with his gaze, gutting her like a black-steel knife. She’d even tried to escape, but look where that effort got her. He’d come barging back into her world with damn movie-hero timing, a knight in Armani, his bigger-than-life presence filling the storage room where those three jerks had nearly given her a reason to write off men for the rest of her life. Not that she hadn’t considered doing so before.

Oh yeah. That made complete sense
now
, didn’t it?

Now, she didn’t feel so sensible. Not at all. Actually, she hadn’t felt right-side up since she stepped through her own front door ten minutes ago and realized even these familiar walls and furnishings were transformed by Dante’s presence. All of it was more vibrant, yet none of it mattered at all. She barely cared about anything in the room, yet she was painfully aware of everything, especially him in it. Filling it. Electrifying it. Consuming it.

And she’d liked it.

Too damn much.

So she’d gone and thrown up her wall of sarcasm. He’d thrown back a volley of indignation. The phone had come out. The driver got hailed. And that was what she’d wanted, right? It was the perfect solution. He’d be gone and he’d be pissed, guaranteeing his eyes, his body, and his whole dark-knight magic would never tangle up her life again.

Then why did
this
feel like what she wanted instead? Why did his lips feel like heaven and taste like sin, making her crave both at once? Why did his tongue tempt hers into a hot, thrusting dance she couldn’t resist, twirling heat through every inch of her body, ending in a liquid pool right between her thighs? Why did his deep, rough groan coax a sigh from her that could only qualify as open, needy, lusty? She didn’t do needy! She sure as crap didn’t do lusty.

He turned her into a liar on both accounts when he finally pulled away, and she twined her grip into his hair to keep him close. Shit, his hair. Turned out “satin” was a damn good descriptor after all. Her action thickened his breathing. His hands bunched against her uniform at the small of her back. His biceps went taut, as if he held himself back from letting them do other things.
Oh God…those other things
. Celina’s mind filled with exactly what she wanted those things to be as his rugged beauty consumed her stare. What would those long fingers feel like on her backside…traveling up her thighs…hitching into her panties…and then…

“Oh!” She gasped it, trying to fight off the next part of the fantasy. “Oh, hell!”

To her shock, Dante emitted a grim laugh. “Uh-huh. Welcome to the party.”

“Wh-what?”

He dipped his head a little, his ink-dark eyes boring into her. “It’s how I’ve felt all night,
stellina mia
. I’ve been in hell just thinking about holding you like this. Fighting it like a madman.”

Surprise made her jerk back a little. “R-really?”

His lips quirked. “Yes, really!” She could’ve sworn he’d break into a chuckle if it wasn’t for his tightening grip at her waist and the darkening shadows in his gaze. “Why do you think I was at the Blue Sax?”

She blinked. “I guess—I assumed that Eve and Rei had asked you—”

“No,
no
. I couldn’t stop thinking about
you
. I got worried, and I called. When I heard the place sounding like the apocalypse hit it…” His jaw hardened. “I wasn’t a pretty sight.”

More shock set in as she began to put pieces together. She’d been so grateful to see him at the Blue Sax, she’d not really thought about why he’d gone there. “You left the party because of that?”

“Because of
you
.” Frustration edged his voice, but the next second he stripped it back, giving her a raw rasp. “Celina…”

He huffed but cut himself short on that too. Finally, he leaned in and just kissed her again. Okay, she wasn’t sure the man could ever give “just” a kiss, but this touch was different than the plunge he’d gone for after she’d first leaped at him. This was a tenuous press, seeking her reaction, a question without words. But when Celina moaned, tangling her fingers deeper into his hair, it was clear he considered her answer rendered. He opened her, spreading her jaw wide with his, then dived and claimed and consumed, taking everything save her breath. And she gave it all too. Willingly—even wantonly.

What was going on here? What the hell was he doing to her? She did wanton even less than lusty.

Desire curled through her. She recognized that much. But this version of it—she could only label it as fire. Penetrating, terrifying, consuming fire. It turned her into somebody she didn’t recognize. This person looked like her, sounded like her, moved in her skin, but was guided by a new puppeteer tonight. A master with eyes of obsidian, a touch of pure heat, and a claim he’d staked from the second he’d laid eyes on her. A possession he sealed yet deeper by charging into that bar for her tonight.

On his own.

She shifted back for a second, looking at him again. Yet in so many ways, she looked at him for the first time. For a bizarre miracle of a moment, he wasn’t “the guy with the checkbook,” the stud from the society page, or the CEO playboy with the babe-ilicious arm candy. He was simply a beautiful man who’d bowled her over at a party, and incredibly, felt the same thing for her in return. He was a gift for this night, a blessing of chemistry, a chance to have a fantasy satyr in her bed, taking her in ways she’d only shared with her vibrator before now. This didn’t mean he was going to be forever. That word, if she gave it to anyone at all, would go into the hands of someone safe, likely a guy from the base who’d be loyal, steady, sweet, and all about the ten-minutes-foreplay/ten-minutes-screwing plan.

Tonight was
not
about plans.

Though as she gazed deeper into this man’s face, now looming closer to hers yet again, Celina knew she wasn’t going to have much choice on that subject. In response, she could only manage one word.

“Please.”

She didn’t have to explain. Dante’s face shifted, his black brows lowering, his eyes intensifying, his jaw hardening to new angles. He got it. She knew he would. Want was now need. Desire was now fire. Explanations? Done. Thought?
No
. She gave him the plea in the half second before he claimed her mouth with his again.
No more thought. Take it all. Take it from me. Take whatever you want, however you want it. Be my fantasy. Consume me.

He broke off the kiss only to trail his hot, wet lips to her chin, along her jaw, around her ear, and clear to the back of her neck. When he licked there, it felt like he’d hit her secret candy filling. Sweet warmth drenched her body. She clutched his shoulders and cried out.

“Shhiiiit! Oh!”

Dante gave a tentative hum, then sank his teeth into the same spot.

She screamed. He growled. “Does that make you wet, stellina?”

“Wh-what?” Astonishment spiked her voice.

“You heard me. Answer the question.” He did it again, biting harder. She surged against him, wondering if her skin was going to burst open from the pleasure.

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “All right; yes, it’s making me wet!”