A Ruthless Proposition

  ALSO BY NATASHA ANDERS

  The Unwanted Series

  The Unwanted Wife

  A Husband’s Regret

  His Unlikely Lover

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2016 Natasha Anders

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503951068

  ISBN-10: 1503951065

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  For Lorinda and Chevon with so much love.

  The best friends a girl could ask for.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Freshen up, Miss Knight, and meet me back in the living room in forty-five minutes. We’ll have to work through dinner,” Dante Damaso commanded as he tugged off his tie with one hand and poured himself a brandy with the other.

  Cleopatra Pandora Knight stared at her boss with a simmering resentment that she hid behind a mask of impassivity. She was exhausted. They had landed at Narita airport that afternoon and had hit the ground running, with one meeting after the next, as they attempted to deal with the bureaucratic red tape that had delayed the start of construction on Dante’s new hotel. All she wanted was a hot shower and a good night’s sleep since she knew that she had to face more of the same frenetic pace tomorrow.

  Sadly, that was not to be; the boss wasn’t done working, and that meant no sleep for Cleo until he said so.

  “Yes, Mr. Damaso,” she said demurely, keeping her voice low and emotionless. He didn’t acknowledge her response, picking up a newspaper and perusing the headlines with the intense focus he gave whatever activity he happened to be engaged in at any given moment. Recognizing the dismissal, Cleo turned and headed for her room.

  When Cleo realized that she would be sharing the penthouse suite of one of the most exclusive hotels in Tokyo with her boss, she had a moment of panic. Until she’d seen the suite. Her entire apartment back in Cape Town could fit into this place several times over. It had three huge bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a living room. Nothing but the best for Dante Damaso. Until his hotel was built, he would stay in what would soon be the second best hotel in Tokyo.

  Cleo rolled her head on her shoulders and listened to her neck creak with the movement. God, she felt like she could sleep for a week, whereas the boss barely looked winded. It was a little infuriating how indefatigable he was, especially since it impacted Cleo directly. She sighed and allowed herself a moment of self-pity before rummaging through her suitcase for a change of clothing, and padding to the bathroom.

  She was back in the living room exactly forty minutes later, dressed in a modest blue slip dress in which she felt a lot more comfortable than the suits she was required to wear for this job. Her short bob was still damp from the shower, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup. She hoped that the boss wouldn’t mind her lack of formality and was relieved to note that he’d removed his tie, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his white shirt, and folded back his shirtsleeves to reveal extremely masculine forearms. Her favorite kind—strong, lightly dusted with hair, with raised veins mapping a path to his capable-looking hands.

  He looked up and grunted when she entered the room.

  “Good, you’re back. We have to go through today’s minutes and compile a list of the most pertinent facts. Then take care of the day’s correspondence. You get started on that; I have to make a few phone calls.”

  He turned away from her and lifted his phone to his ear. Cleo stared at his broad back for a moment before trudging over to the laptop with a muffled sigh. She wondered if he’d ordered room service yet; she was starving. She glanced around the room and gasped in outrage when she saw the room-service cart standing off to the side of the room, with the uncovered empty plates precariously stacked one on top of the other. Another quick look around the room told her that there was definitely no other food around. Had he actually forgotten to order something for her? Was the man wholly incapable of thinking of anybody but himself? She picked up the room telephone to order her own meal, but he had finished his call and cast her a sharp look.

  “Stop wasting time, Knight,” he growled, tapping away at the screen of his phone. “We have a lot of work to do. I didn’t bring you along to sit around looking pretty and doing nothing.”

  The injustice of that statement left her fuming, and she bit back a sarcastic retort, knowing that she had no alternative but to swallow down the anger she felt toward him. Cleo knew that—due to the last-minute nature of this trip—she’d been his only choice as assistant. And since the man had avoided testing her full potential in the office up until now, he didn’t trust her to get anything done competently. Still, Cleo had jumped at the opportunity to join him. The heady excitement of a trip to Japan combined with the desire to prove herself capable of doing this job to both Dante Damaso and to herself had proved hard to resist. Yet now, feeling completely overwhelmed, all she wanted was to run back home with her tail between her legs.

  All because her boss was doing his level best to be an ass.

  Don’t respond! Don’t respond! She repeated the two words over and over to herself. No mouthing off at the boss, no matter how much he deserved it.

  An hour and a half later, after they had powered their way through a series of e-mails and memos and had pored over her notes from the day’s many meetings, Cleo was starting to feel cross-eyed from staring at the computer screen too long. Her brain was scrambled, and she was practically drooping with exhaustion. Even though she hadn’t eaten since the flight—a decade ago—she was too damned tired even to think about her stomach.

  Dante Damaso peered at her when she stopped tapping at the keys and frowned over the top of his black-rimmed glasses.

  “Let’s take a five-minute break,” he suggested, and Cleo almost melted into a puddle of gratitude. She stretched lavishly and enjoyed a jaw-popping yawn at the same time. A quick look at her boss told her that while he had suggested a break, he wasn’t taking one himself—his head was once more bent over zoning ordinances and blueprints. The man really was tireless, a trait that she found both admirable and frustrating at the moment. She supposed years of international travel and frantic work schedules had inured him somewhat to the effects of a forty-eight-hour-long day, one that had started on a completely different continent.

  She padded over to the huge floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked Tokyo in all its sparkling glory. She had never seen anything remotely close to this spectacular view. The city was vast, and its lights sprawled as far as the eye could see. Despite being forty floors removed from the heaving excitement of the city, Cleo could feel it calling to her like a seductive siren.

  She turned away from the allure and found her
self inadvertently appreciating a spectacular view of a different kind. Big, sexy Dante Damaso as she had never seen him before, ruffled, stubbled, and completely disheveled. The look suited him and gave him an edge that the normally smooth, urbane man kept hidden beneath layers of intimidating sophistication and flawless tailoring. It was an image of the man she really preferred not to have in her head, because it made him seem a lot more human—more approachable—than he usually was.

  He looked up and happened to catch her eye, and even from across the room, she could see something spark and smolder in his gaze. It was gone in a flash, and she wondered if her tired brain had tricked her into seeing things. She wandered over to the exquisite coffee table where she had left her cell phone to charge and checked her messages. A couple from her brother, Luc, and her best friend, Cal, and one informing her that she could very well have won five hundred grand already! Fantastic. She allowed herself a moment of pure whimsy—with her “winnings” there’d be no further need to spend her mornings making coffee, watering Dante Damaso’s precious ficus, or sending the polite equivalent of “Thanks for the sex. Let’s never see each other again” notes with flowers to her boss’s random lady friends. In the nearly four months that she’d been working for him, she’d already sent five notes accompanying equally polite, pretty floral tributes. It was sickening.

  Her nose wrinkled at the thought, and she jumped guiltily when the object of her thoughts called her name curtly.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Ready to get back to work?”

  Not really.

  “Of course, sir,” she said, proud that she managed to keep her voice relatively emotionless.

  She sat down at the antique secretary that she had claimed as her workstation and tried to hide her wince when her butt and back hit the hard, unforgiving surface of the ornate high-back chair. She rolled her shoulders and sighed quietly as she closed her eyes and kneaded the tightly knotted muscles in the back of her neck.

  “Tired?”

  She jumped when Damaso’s voice came from behind her, and she looked up over her shoulder to meet his dark, enigmatic gaze. He’d come up to within half a yard of the back of her chair and had his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. He was staring down at her, his eyes narrowed and intent.

  “A little,” she admitted.

  He nodded, never taking his eyes off hers, and seemed to weigh his next words before speaking.

  “Would you like a neck rub?”

  Cleo blinked, shocked by both the question and the heat that flared in his eyes. She knew very well what that neck rub would entail, where it would lead, and he meant for her to know that. Until that very moment, she would never have guessed that the man had even noticed her as a female, yet the way he was looking at her right now told her that he very much appreciated what he was seeing. He kept his hands to himself and his expression—despite everything going on in his eyes—impassive. If she refused his offer and all it entailed, she imagined he would simply shrug it off, and they would carry on as if this crazy moment had never happened.

  The question was . . . did she want to refuse him? She was tired, frustrated, and his offer could be a fantastic way to let off steam and unwind after a hard day. Who would it harm? They were both consenting adults. There was no romance or love or hearts and flowers here. She might dislike him, but she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit to feeling sexually curious about him. Maybe just this once? Just a taste. This was sex, plain and simple, and sometimes that’s really all anybody needed.

  Dante Damaso watched the play of emotions on his assistant’s ridiculously expressive face. Shock and confusion, followed by intrigue, trepidation, and definite interest. He couldn’t have surprised himself more with that damned question. She was a tempting little thing, which he’d been trying damned hard to overlook in light of their personal connection through her brother. To that end, he limited the amount of time he spent with her as much as possible. But right now he was as human as the next guy. He was irritated by the way his day had gone, and his frustration built as the hours wore on with little progress being made. Now, after seeing this woman in her distracting blue dress, he was also horny as hell. He could do something about at least one of those things, but if she wasn’t interested, they’d move on. It would probably be for the best anyway, considering the spur-of-the-moment nature of his proposition. He should withdraw his offer and leave it at that. After all, he couldn’t think of a more inappropriate—

  “Yes, thank you.” Her whispered words brought his commonsense train of thought to a screeching halt, and his jaw dropped as he watched her dip her head, allowing the sharply defined points of her sleek bob to swing forward and hide her face. His throat went bone-dry, and all sound judgment fled as he watched his hands reach for that vulnerable nape. He hesitated just shy of touching her and inhaled deeply, catching a whiff of the fresh, floral scent that had tantalized his senses all evening. When his fingers finally made contact with her soft, exposed flesh, his breath shuddered out of his chest in tandem with hers.

  He was instantly, painfully, and immutably hard, and he allowed himself to deepen his touch, even though every instinct in him was screaming that this was a mistake.

  This is a mistake. The thought—which had been buzzing around in Cleo’s head from the moment of initial contact between them, through their first stunning kiss, into the shedding of her clothing, and then when his mouth latched onto her breast for the first time—was getting ever more insistent. But Cleo had more interesting things to focus on, like the way his large, assertive hand was making its way down her body to . . .

  “Oh God!” she moaned as that hand did magical, sinful, unimaginable things. Her back arched, and his smoldering gaze fell to the beaded tips of her breasts. She uttered another breathless little cry when his hot mouth fixed on one hypersensitive nub. Her fingers curled into his silky hair as she tried to keep him there.

  “I can’t . . .” Her voice tapered off into a high-pitched whine when his supremely talented mouth left her breast only to lavish the same treatment on the other mound.

  She could feel his hot hardness poised at her entrance, and her hands left his hair to claw at his back and tight buttocks, trying to pull him toward her. He lifted his head to stare down at her, his eyes feverish as they pinned her with single-minded concentration.

  “You want me?”

  God, his sexy voice, roughened with desire and strain, nearly made her come right on the spot. She couldn’t quite believe how much he was making her feel, how very much she wanted him inside her. She couldn’t remember wanting any other man half as much as she did this one. And yet . . .

  This is a mistake!

  The words had grown shrill and insistent, but Cleo pushed them away as she reached up for another one of those drugging kisses.

  He complied, but only for the very briefest of seconds. Her frustration reached new heights when he took himself in hand and deliberately ran his blunt, sheathed tip down her slick, sensitive channel. From the tight bundle of nerves at the apex, slowly back down to her entrance, where he came to rest for a long, aching moment.

  “You want this? Yes?” He pressed forward slowly, and she hissed when she felt him breach her, so much thicker and harder than she had ever had before.

  MISTAKE! The clamoring was incessant, but she ignored it again and arched toward him.

  He refused to comply, remaining still, not even breathing, giving her just that one small taste of what was to come.

  “Sí? Yes?” His voice remained annoyingly steady, but the fevered gleam in his eyes told her he wasn’t as indifferent as he seemed.

  “Yes! Damn you.” She truly hated him in that moment, and a bit of venom seeped into her voice. “Yes, I want you. I crave this. I need . . . oh.” This last as he inched forward with such slowness and care that it felt like forever before he was buried from tip to hilt. He was almost uncomfortably large, and it took her out of the moment for a brief second. Sensing her di
scomfort, he rested there and gave her time to adjust to his size while he lowered his head and focused his lavish attentions on her breasts again. He braced one of his hands on the bed beside her head, keeping his weight off her, and allowed his other hand to go roaming. When that hand finally dawdled its way down to where they were joined, Cleo was already arching her hips toward his. He grinned and slid his free hand under her to palm her butt and adjust her position. He sat upright, knelt between her spread thighs, and dragged her even closer.

  It was a seriously sexy position, sprawled flat on her back while he feasted his eyes on her uninhibited nakedness. He lifted her higher, forcing himself even deeper inside, and then, with a wicked grin, finally began to move again.

  “Play with your breasts!” he commanded, his voice sounding a little breathless. She complied, rolling the distended nipples between her thumbs and fingertips, then flicking at them. He grunted in approval and moved his hands to her hips, angling her upward while he continued his assertive thrusting. God, he is magnificent. Sweat beaded on his forehead, dampened his hair, and added a fine sheen to his bronzed skin. He kept his focus on where they were joined, watching intently as he plowed into her tightness. His brow furrowed and his chest heaved, the first real signs that he was as affected as she was.

  “Give me your hand,” he growled, and she reluctantly released one taut nipple and lifted her right hand toward him. He didn’t release her hips. Instead, he leaned down, captured her middle finger in his hot mouth, and sucked it inside. After one final seductive lick, he released her finger.

  “Touch yourself,” he said, and she groaned before obediently doing as he had commanded. “Good.” The word was so gruff it was barely recognizable.

  Cleo was unbelievably turned on by the picture she presented to his lascivious gaze. She had never been sexually shy, but this was . . . this was way beyond anything she’d ever experienced. Her back arched off the bed, her thighs lay sprawled across his, and she was quite unashamedly pleasuring herself for his—and her own—gratification. This was complete abandonment with the least likely man in the world, and she wasn’t at all sure how she’d gotten here.