She should leave. Now.
She had to pry her gaze—her will—from his first.
Somehow she did, was at the door when a rough velvet whisper hit her between the shoulder blades. “Don’t run off yet.”
Logic said that omnidirectional/internal sound effect was the surround system’s doing. But there was no logic here. There was only the influence the voice exercised, the reactions it ignited. The certainty that it was talking to her.
She swayed around, found him on the dais in front of the mic, his gaze still cast on her like a stasis field.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Thank you for paying the ten-grand admission fee. But because you’re getting…restless, I’ll fast-forward to prying some real contributions out of you. You have the auction list, but in light of a certain…development, I have made some changes. Now the first item on auction is…myself.”
Chapter Two
If Prince Durante D’Agostino had announced he was Superman and launched into the air to circle overhead, there wouldn’t have been a more drastic reaction to his announcement.
Not that it would have shocked her. He did look like some superhuman being as he dominated the scene just by standing there, the rugged nobleness of his features and his leonine forehead accentuated by the swept-back mane of raven satin, the jacket of his sculpted designer charcoal suit casually pushed back by the hand resting on his hip, his white shirt stretching across his torso, detailing the daunting power beneath. He looked like a modern god swathed in the trappings of the times that equalized other men but that didn’t begin to contain the influence he exuded, to disguise his in-his-own-league nature.
His gaze panned the ballroom yet somehow managed not to release hers. That alone kept her heart practically dropping to the polished Carrara marble floor. But what restarted her tremors was what she saw in those eyes—an intensity untouched by the cynical amusement with which he watched the mayhem he’d kicked up.
“Before you get too excited,” he finally said. “I’m not auctioning off all of me, just my ear. Considering how in demand it is, with so many of you attempting to talk it off, I’m offering one hour of its exclusive use.” His lips tugged into what had to be the most arrhythmia-inducing weapon ever deployed on susceptible females. And it had her in its crosshairs. “I already have an opening bid. One hundred grand.”
Now she knew how mamma mia had been coined. It had to have been a woman who’d first exclaimed it, as a brutally gorgeous male plucked her strings.
And she did feel like a marionette, compelled to obey his every tug, any reluctance or misgiving evaporating in the excitement his mischief sent through her. She walked back under the pull of his challenge.
When she stopped at the fringe of the bidding crowd, he put his lips to the mic, implanted hot, wild images and sensations straight inside her, pitched his voice an octave lower. “Do I hear one hundred ten?”
Over three-dozen people, mostly women, raised their hands. She’d beaten them all in speed of response.
His lips spread in satisfaction, his pose grew more languid, a conqueror certain of his victory, indulgent in his triumph. “Thank you. Do I hear one hundred twenty?”
Her hand was up in the air before she could will it to be there. Seemed he’d jumpstarted her competitiveness. More. He’d sparked the first sign of life in her since she’d witnessed her mother’s being extinguished.
He kept raising the bid, and her competition dwindled. Soon suspense was fast reaching the point of overload.
When a dozen hands still shot up in the air when he reached the four hundred fifty grand mark, her stamina snapped and recoiled like an overextended string.
She blurted out, “I bid one million.”
A hush fell. Everyone turned to gape at her.
He straightened, his eyes losing all lightness, singeing hers through the charge that filled the space between them. “Now that’s a nice round figure. Anyone willing to top that? No? Fine, then. I have one million from the lady in blue. Going once, going twice—”
“I bid ten million.”
Durante saw shock seize his mystery woman’s face before he registered the words that had caused it. Only then did he drag his eyes and senses from her and search out the new speaker.
His every muscle tensed. How had he gotten past security? How had Durante not noticed him before?
His security had messed up. As for him, all his faculties had been converged on her, everything else skimming his consciousness without leaving an imprint.
And there was the now-gaunt, wild-eyed Jeremiah Langley. Staring at him like a drowning man would at a lifeboat. A month ago he’d looked at Durante as if at his own killer, before attempting to stab him. Durante couldn’t imagine how Langley had ended up blaming him—and not the investments he’d made against his advice—for his bankruptcy, but he’d hushed everything up, not wishing to add criminal charges to the distraught man’s troubles. He’d also postponed announcing Langley’s bankruptcy until he sold shares that would leave the man with minimal debt. But he’d made it clear to Langley, and to his security—he didn’t want to see the man again. Not in this lifetime.
No one knew how things stood between them, or that Jeremiah didn’t have the ten million he’d bid for Durante’s leniency. He couldn’t call Langley on it without outing him. Langley had cornered him into accepting his so-called bid as the winning one.
And that was his worst crime.
She had already accepted defeat. This time, she was walking away. He might not have more of her. Not tonight. Unacceptable.
He would have more of her. And if he had his way, as he always did, he would have all of her.
Gabrielle felt all animation drain from her system.
The moment her bid had burst from her incontinent mouth, she’d launched into feverish calculations to determine how she could part with that much cash in one lump sum in her current situation. Then that ten-million-dollar sledgehammer had fallen, pulverizing both worry and hope.
So that was it. She’d bid and lost. And he was no longer looking at her. Ten million dollars would distract even him.
So what was that tightening behind her ribs? Disappointment?
How stupid was that? This scheme wouldn’t have worked anyway. She didn’t know how she or King Benedetto could have thought it might. All her moronic endeavor would achieve was to give the scandal sheets fuel for the coming decade. She had to leave before the paparazzi he’d banned from the event got wind of this and ambushed her. Leave. Now. And don’t look back.