Nobility

 The following evening, Clara stood before the assessing wrought- iron gates of the Donald estate, steeling herself for the battle ahead.

She cut an intimidating figure in her satiny burgundy dress and towering stilettos, every inch the power player ready to claim her due place among Beaumont's nobility.

Liam cast her a reassuring regard as the gates swung open, granting them entry to the strictly manicured grounds." Just flash back what we bandied. Stay confident, do not let Donald rattle you.

" Clara gave a curt nod. She did not need his advice- she had been preparing for this moment her entire life. The woman of a fat businessman, prepped from birth to navigate Beaumont's savage social waters with cunning and grace. They were steered into a cavernous study, the walls lined with bottom- to- ceiling bookshelves and priceless vestiges. Behind an assessing mahogany office sat a tableware- haired man with cold, setting eyes. Jonathan Donald in the meat. "Ms.

Robert," he said by way of greeting, not bothering to rise from his seat." I must admit, I was surprised to hear your request for this meeting." Clara refused to be intimidated by his curt manner. With a confidence skirting on arrogance, she paraded over and took a seat across from him.

 " Surprised, but I hope I'm intrigued as well, Mr. Donald," she replied easily." I've an offer that will be highly. lucrative for us both." One of the businessman's eyebrows curled overhead." Do you know? do." For the coming partial hour, Clara laid out her vision- a bold plan to sew up the sustainable energy request throughout Europe. Her exploration was impeccable, her protrusions watertight. By the time she concluded her pitch, indeed Liam sounded in admiration of her stratospheric intentions. 

 But Jonathan Donald showed no outside response, his face an inscrutable mask as he digested the information. An agonising silence stretched between them until eventually, he spoke. " An emotional donation, MS. Robert. easily, you are a woman with remarkable drive and vision." His steely appearance bored her." But I've toast. what makes you suppose I would entrust my substantial coffers into the hands of someone like yourself?" Clara's impeccably arched brows knit together in confusion." I am hysterical and I do not understand the question." " Of course you don't," Donald said with a shake of his head." You are Robert. A family that values plutocrat and status over all additional- indeed introductory mortal decency.

" Her blood turned to ice in her modes. Ever, some way, this man knew. He knew all about how she had ruthlessly cast Michael away like a piece of scrap after using his hard work and immolation to elevate her status. But Clara was nothing if not a consummate pantomime. Widening her eyes in an expression of inflated innocence, she replied," I can assure yours. Donald, that my family holds itself to the loftiest moral norms-"" Save your falsehoods," he intruded with a disdainful surge of his hand." I have done my exploration of you and your despicable treatment of you're-husband.

 To enter into any kind of professional arrangement with someone as immorally void as you would be business malpractice." Clara felt her impeccably constructed facade cracking as demotion and rage swamped her system. How dare this arrogant old man sit in judgement of her? She opened her mouth to unleash a blistering retort, but Donald pressed on relentlessly. " My decision is final. 

You are a woman without honour, without principles. The Donald conglomerate was erected on integrity- a commodity you easily warrant." He rose from his position, effectively dismissing her." I suggest you leave now ,Ms. Robert, before I've security remove you from my property." Liam shot Clara a pained look, but she was too stupefied to indeed admit him. With as important quality as she could muster, she rose on shaking legs and paraded from the study, her head held high. The drive back into the megacity passed in a blur of impotent fury. 

Clara remained stonily silent, her mind droning with the ruinous fallout of her failed meeting. Not only had Donald refused to invest- he'd gutted her particular and professional character with his harsh combination. How had he learned about the circumstances girding her divorce from Michael? More importantly, how could she avenge against such an important adversary? Because one thing was certain- Jonathan Donald had made an adversary this day. 

A revengeful, enduring adversary who would stop at nothing to make him pay. As her hostel suite came into view, Clara felt a rush of loathing so visceral, it stole her breath down. This was because of Michael. That snivelling, pathetic worm had orchestrated her downfall- she was sure of it. Well, no longer. It was time for Clara Robert to go on the attack. Settling in at her office, she began firing off a flurry of emails and calls to her vast network of connections and snitches in the Beaumont demi world. She'd uncover every last secret about Michael West's unforeseen rise to power and influence. 

 And once she had all the security she demanded? Michael would lament the day he ever crossed Clara Robert. Because in this megacity, treason was a one- way ticket to mutually assured destruction. While Clara colluded her vengeance against Michael and the Donald conglomerate, the man himself remained blissfully ignorant, luxuriating in the comforts of the lavish hostel suite Isabella had handed. He'd no way endured similar substance, with its plush furnishings, every amenity imaginable at his fingertips. 

 Yet material wealth blanched in comparison to the feeling of security and belonging he felt in Isabella's presence. In the sprinkle of days since she hare-entered his life, Michael tasted the first blossoming of a commodity deeper than bare fellowship taking root. There was an inarguable captivation between them, a graveness that drew their bodies and souls ever closer with each fleeting moment. He saw the way her amber eyes danced when she looked at him, the flush of colour that would shade her cheeks whenever their hands brushed in innocent contact. 

 For the first time since his ill- fated marriage to Clara, Michael allowed himself to contemplate the possibility of love again. Not the poisonous, codependent variety he'd endured for times but commodity pure, passionate, erected on a bedrock of collective respect and admiration. As if his studies had summoned her, Isabella appeared in the doorway, radiant in a simple white sheath that hugged her lithe figure. Michael felt his breath catch in his throat as he took in her ethereal beauty. " There you are," she said with a warm smile." I was hoping we could go for a perambulation through the auditoriums . Unless you are too busy?" Michael snappily set aside the ancient book he'd been studying, eager to soak up every spare moment with this inconceivable woman. " Not at each," he assured her, crossing the room to offer his arm in an unmanly gesture.

" Lead the way, my lady." Isabella felt a shiver of delight chime through her at the stately endearment. With a coy smile, she accepted his proffered arm, roistering in the establishment muscles beneath the fine fabric of his shirt. They made a striking brace as they descended through the opulent lobby and surfaced into the lush hostel auditoriums . Ambrosial blossoms of every tinge girdled them, strictly tended topiaries and prattling aqueducts creating an atomic paradise in the heart of the megacity. Michael could not flash back the last time he'd allowed himself to simply. breathe.

 To witness the simple man as of nature and good company. " It's stirring, isn't it?" Isabella muttered, running her fritters over the soft petals of a ruby- red rose." I used to spend hours out then as a little girl, getting lost in another world far down from my family's stuffy prospects." Michael's heart panged at the wistful note in her voice. For all her wealth and honour, it sounded like the Donald descendant had her own cross to bear, her own form of bejewelled prison.

 " You do not have to live up to anyone's prospects now," he said impulsively, cupping her delicate hand in his calloused win." With me, you can simply be yourself, Isabella. No masks, no pretence." She met his steady aspect , her suggestive eyes shining with an array of feelings- gratefulness, vulnerability, and commodity deeper than framed on hankering. In that charged moment, a cosmic shift sounded to do between them, an ineffable transition from bare companions to. something more. sluggishly, nearly appreciatively, Isabella leaned in until their facades touched. 

Her warm breath gentled his skin as she rumoured," also let me be yours, Michael. Only yours." It was an oath, a pledge, a cosmic challenge lay before him. One that Michael knew, without a shred of mistrustfulness, he was fated to accept. This was the launch of commodity transcendent, sacred- the harmony of two souls incorporating as one. And neither of them would ever be the same again. The stirring closeness of that moment hung in the ambrosial theatre air, suspending Michael and Isabella outside of time and space. They were the only two souls in actuality, bound together by profound hankering that defied coherent expression.

 Isabella was the one to break the reverie - suchlike study, pulling back slightly though their bodies remained a hair's breadth piecemeal. Michael incontinently mourned the loss of her nearness like a physical pang. " Did you mean what you said?" she asked in a hushed tone, her amber eyes searching for him with naked vulnerability." That you will allow me tosimply.be myself? No prospects, no judgments?" Michael felt his throat grow thick with the weight of her question- and all it represented. This remarkable woman had been manacled by the ludicrous pressures of her birthright for far too long. What she craved further than anything was the freedom to define her own identity, to make her own choices without the spectre of status and duty brewing over her every move. 

 He traced the delicate wind of her cheekbone with one rough fingertip, authentically astounded by her quiet strength, her adaptability in the face of similar grim demands and scrutiny. " You have my solemn oath, Isabella," he said gruffly." With me, you will Norway have to pretend or hide yourself down again. I want- I need- to know and cherish every hand of the real you." Her plush lips twisted into a tremulous smile, eyes shining with unshed gashes of. Was it a relief? Joy? Michael could not be certain, only that he no way wanted to see sadness pall her beautiful face again. 

Impulsively, he brought her knuckles to his lips, brushing a feathery kiss across her silken skin." You are safe with me," he pledged hoarsely." hugely and fully." Isabella's breath hitched at the exquisite tender heartedness of the gesture. She had been girdled by grand preludes of form and spectacle her entire life but no way had a simple path felt more meaningful, more profound. This man. This remarkable, natural man had the power to oust her with just a look or rumoured endearment.

 How had she lived the once twenty- five times of her actuality without the searing warmth he burned in her very soul? sluggishly, as though arising from a reverie , Isabella came apprehensive of their surroundings, formerly more the show of blossoms, the chattering of songbirds, the giggling of the gravestone cradles. She was in the heart of the public auditoriums , pressed privately against a virtual foreigner, hanging on his every word as if it were philosophy. But she knew deep in the gist of her bones that Michael West was no foreigner.

 This connection, this indefinable rightness she felt in his presence, was simply the joining of two reciprocal pieces of a whole, the completion of a fated path set from the moment of their births. " I feel as though I have been staying my whole life to hear those words," she confessed in a throaty whisper.

 As their lips met in a scorching lip lock formerly more, the world sounded to fall down until there was nothing left but the binary jiffs pounding between them. Michael and Isabella cleaved to each other amid the ambrosial blossoms, bodies intertwined, souls incorporated into one transcendent substance. He was drowning in the intoxicating wispiness of her mouth, the delicate floral scent of her silken permanents.

 Each part of her nimble fritters against the tense aero planes of his reverse seared through the thin fabric of his shirt, imprinting him with her possession. This was madness, he knew- losing himself so fully in her beguiling snares. Yet Michael set up he did not retain an ounce of restraint to repel Isabella's hot rush. Not when her very actuality awakened solicitations so primitive, so each- consuming that he felt trolled of every history hurt, every moping shred of bitterness. In Isabella's giddy grasp, he was revived.

 Remade into commodity satiny, sharper, more magnificently important than he would ever imagined possible. All the times of subordinating his true nature to Clara's vagrancies and demands had locked down the essential core of who he was, a man forged by the harsh trials of life into an insuperable force. But no more. With each heated meeting of their mouths, Isabella stripped down the impediment of Michael's tone- assessed thrall.

 He was releasing the proud, exacting man he was always meant to be. The man is good at confidently claiming this fierce, radiant critter as his match, his object mate, his eternal mate. Eventually, their kiss broke piecemeal through sheer need for oxygen. Michael and Isabella remained wrapped in a heated clench, cases heaving, binary points of vibrant colour staining those demitasse cheeks. His rough win cradled the leaning wind of her jaw, tipping her face up so their eyes could bore into one another with unguarded hankering.

 " Isabella." he muttered roughly, the sound of her name on his lips benediction and possession in equal measure. In the smouldering depths of her amber irises, Michael saw the verity laid bare- this remarkable, flexible woman now belonged to him, mind soul body. Just as he irrevocably belonged to her. " Do not let go," she rumbled back fiercely, her grasp tensing until there wasn't a hairsbreadth of space between them.

" I can not bear the study of being without you beside me now." A low, husky sound rolled up from the core of Michael's being- part scowl, part oath, all blistering manly entrancement. With one hand fisted in those lustrous groaner permanents, he angled her mouth into another searing, claiming lip lock that cancelled all generalities of time and place. There was only this. this raging, volcanic force devouring their separate beings until they were remade into a commodity larger, more luminous, more eternal. 

 When they eventually parted, it felt as though a tone had passed in the span of many superheated moments. Michael plodded to reclaim his capacity for rational study amid the whirling, lust- dazed storm of his mind. Questions, vague worries, transitory dubieties flirted around the hazy fringe of his psyche, no way relatively resolving into a coherent shape before dissolving formerly more under the searing brand of Isabella's closeness.

 " We should." he rasped out, the sound of his voice little further than clay and sin,". We should go to a private place to talk. It is so important I need to askyou.to understand." Isabella incontinently shook her head, that unruly groaner mane swaying with the vehement stir," No talking, no questions. Not yet." With passionate insistence, she pressed herself indeed more completely against him until her supple angles mouldered to every tense manly angle. 

The undulating warmth of her body burned a raging conflagration in Michael's blood, his hands dispersing possessively across the satiny lines of her midriff. " Do not ask me to explain with words what my soul is screaming for yours to comprehend," she said hoarsely." I sweat that if I essay to define this cosmic force between us, it may shatter into insubstantiality.

" Her hands cupped the rugged angles of Michael's face, holding his blazing regard trapped in her own smouldering regard. " So for now. simply feel me, Michael. I am unbosoming my substance to your pensive grasp. Let our bodies speak what bare language no way could." On a broken moan, Michael crushed his mouth back to hers in a searing tandem of teeth and questing speeches. He drank down Isabella's throaty chats of delight like a man dying of thirst in the desert eventually allowed his filler. 

Rational study along with any suggestion of mistrustfulness or vacillation- fled Michael's knowledge, banished by the each consuming runs of desire now raging between them. All that was Isabella. Isabella's taste, her scent, her skin searing deliciously beneath his calloused triumphs as they floated her lithe angles with rising urgency. Without breaking their frenzied lip padlock, Michael guided them blindly across the landscaped theatre paths until Isabella's back met the rugged aeroplane of a thick tree box.

 Cascading her pulsing body between the reliability of the oak and his own forcefully aroused frame, he angled his hips into hers with purposeful pressure. A strangled wail revealed from Isabella's lips into the hot emulsion of their joined mouths at the blunt disunion, her nails scoring succulent stripes of exquisite pleasure- pain down the rigid aeroplanes of Michael's reverse. Her demonstrative response burned a conflagration of primitive satisfaction in the core of Michael's being.

 This was the awakening of a bloodsucker long- domesticated by circumstances- a return to the introductory, eternal state of a man whose purpose was to lay claim to his mate, his nut, his equal in all the ways that truly signified. Isabella belonged to him now, as surely as night follows day. She might not comprehend the full compass of what her rendition included relatively yet. but she'd soon. Oh, how she would. With a deep, casket growling scowl, Michael abandoned the lush heat of her mouth and blazed a scorching path of nips and suckling kisses down the swan- line of Isabella's neck. She arched against him in wordless conjuration, her every breath a breathy exhalation of his name, over and over again in an endless litany of deification. 

 He'd mark her, Michael decided with a fresh swell of jealous satisfaction as his lips and teeth set up the juncture of her shoulder and throat. Brand her with inarguable evidence of his claim so the world would bear substantiation. She was his now- mind, body, the veritably substance of her soul intertwined with his own for the remainder of eternity. His hands gauged the lush angles of her backside, gripping with carnal strength as he rolled his hips into hers with chastising intensity. Their harsh, staccato breaths mingled in the overheated air, brutish sounds of demonstrative desire now echoing through the theatre sanctuary. "Michael. 

Michael!" Her heaved conjuration was the final detector, pelting him into a careless pattern. In a blur of movement, he hiked Isabella up until her shanks cradled his spare hips, cascading her indeed more forcefully against the rutted oak box. The lush fabric of her skirts rode up with the crude displacement, eventually allowing Michael to grind his straining thrill against the apex of her inner shanks in a blatant pledge of what was to come. One of Isabella's hands fisted in the docked beaches of his hair, her mouth slanting over his formerly more in a devouring kiss that framed on feral.

 Her hips undulated against his inflexible frame, artificially seeking that fugitive, transcendent disunion. They were fleetly twisting out of control, pelting into a whirlpool of eyeless sensation and primitive hunger. Michael was dimly apprehensive of the waning vestments of rational study, that last coherent voice in his mind prompting restraint before it was too late. But it was fading, drowned out beneath the sonorous roar of his body's demands to claim, to pattern, to mate this woman until she was as completely, irrevocably ingrained as his eternal mate. 

 And Isabella-wild, demonstrative Isabella- showed no signs of offering protest. However, her breathy sounds of rapturous abandon sounded to be herding Michael on, supersizing his formerly blazing lust into an incandescent conflagration, If anything. Just when it sounded the last remnants of civility and discretion would disintegrate, Just when it sounded the last remnants of civility and discretion would disintegrate, a unforeseen commotion echoed through the theatre - the unmistakable sound of fleetly approaching steps and raised voices. 

Michael incontinently stilled, every finely improved sense going into high alert as his head whipped around, lips shelling back from his teeth in a feral logjam of hostile warning. He was peripherally apprehensive of Isabella trying to prize herself from his exacting grasp, but his body refused to relinquish its precious burden. Not until the implicit trouble had been assessed and annulled. ". I saw them come out then, I swear it! The master's son and some strange man, carrying on like creatures!" The gruff, sneering manly voice entered the lust fogged haze of Michael's knowledge.

 His grip artificially tensed around Isabella's midriff, dragging her flush against his starkly aroused body in a territorial brand of possession. A low, growling scowl bucketed through his broad casket- a primitive interference against anyone foolish enough to essay separating him from his mate. " Michael." Isabella tried again, her triumphs groaning up the banded crossbeams of his shoulders in a gentle gesture." Michael, it's each right. Those are just the groundskeepers. You needto.to release me now before this situation escalates further." Her soft, praying tones eventually sounded to access the red- pigmented bank of his primitive urges. 

Michael blinked fleetly, the stark lines of his face gradationally smoothing out as rational cognizance came slamming back into intimidating clarity. Suddenly, he released his death- grip on Isabella's body, setting her pulsing form back on its bases with nearly shocking gentleness. Bare moments agone , he'd been a hairsbreadth down from taking her then, in this veritably public theatre sanctuary, with all the finesse of a ruthless nascence staking his claim. His face fairly burned with shame and nausea at his own lack of control. 

What kind of man- what kind of debased, feral critter- would defile the woman he watched for in such an unforgivably crude manner? " Isabella." he croaked out hoarsely, unfit to meet her eyes for the confusion coursing through his modes." Forgive me, I.I lost myself there for a moment." She shifted closer until the warmth of her body strained through the thin hedge of Michael's shirt. One delicate hand stroked over the harsh crests of his clenched jaw in a soothing pat. 

" Hush now, there is nothing to apologise for," Isabella muttered, ever managing to endure those soft tones with a sense of conviction that brooked no argument." You did not force anything upon me, Michael. I was a further than willing party in. well, whatever joyful distraction we had set up ourselves consumed by." Heat spitted across Michael's cheekbones at her honestly articulated assessment of their former conditioning. easily, Isabella Donald was refreshingly demonstrative when it came to intimate matters.

 A far cry from the flushing, virginal ideals of female propriety that had been so relentlessly executed on poor, woeful Clara. His sweet, manhandled woman would surely have conked from confusion to substantiate her hubby's surprisingly primitive gets with another woman. The bare study of it made Michael blench internally.

 Indeed now, times after the dissolution of that disastrous union, Clara's influence and instructed beliefs about joker/ womanish relations still visited his subconscious. Dragging his wandering mind back to the present, Michael eventually managed to meet Isabella's steady, unembarrassed regard. Her eyes were still spangling with the foreshocks of the important desire he'd roused within her- a heady, molten look that Sweet heaven, what kind of potent witchery did this woman apply over his senses? Her bare presence burned Jones so visceral, so each- consuming, that Michael's hard- won conditions began to fray at the delicate seams. Isabella was the spark hanging to sacrifice his iron discipline into cinders of flirter desire. t banged the smouldering banked coals of his own lust.