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Every synapse in her brain, every nerve in her body, was focused on him. Instantly. Totally.
A cold sense of pleasure went through him. Again, the years split away, and there was Mercedes de Carvello, her black, mascaraed eyes totally focused on him—her disbelief instant, her denial total—as he informed her of the new state of ownership of her home.
Now, in a different place, beneath a different sun, Portia Lanchester, who considered herself too good for his bed, had exactly the same expression in her eyes.
‘Are you mad?’
The clipped, upper-class tones cut through the morning air, carrying every gram of her disbelief, her denial.
He looked down at her. Saw the fingers digging into the soft cashmere at her neck. The soft gleam of sunlight on the row of pearls at her throat.
He had a sudden vision of her wearing nothing but those pearls. Walking towards him. Towards his bed. To do there whatever he wanted her to do.
And she would do it. He knew that. Knew it with every fibre of his being.
Knew it because it was what Mercedes de Carvello had done…
He dragged his mind away. He would not remember. Would not remember how the woman who had killed his mother, mown her down like a dog beneath the wheels of her car, had come to him that night he had returned to San Cristo, his heart heavy despite the cold pleasure of having taken possession, with the full panoply of the law to endorse him, of the estancia that had ground his parents into the dirt. Would not remember how she had come to his penthouse suite in the de luxe American hotel in the city, stripping the clothes from her body, offering herself to a man she had thrown from her house as a boy—the house he now owned, the house she was prepared to do anything, anything to get back…
He had thrust her from his room, his whole being filled with disgust, with loathing.
But this woman here, now, in front of him, her well-bred chin lifted as if she could smell the dirt of his former poverty in her delicate nostrils—her he would not reject…
What was it, he found himself questioning yet again, that made Portia Lanchester a woman he wanted so badly? She was nothing like his usual women. He had always preferred the voluptuous type—enticing, alluring, fully aware of their own sexuality, and of his.
Portia Lanchester was quite different. He had assessed that instantly, the first time he’d lain eyes on her at that bankers’ dinner. She had looked so apart. So completely oblivious to the regard she was gathering from male eyes.
Except his.
The memory of how she had realised he was looking her over replayed in his mind, and he savoured the moment, as he had done so often before, when she had met his eyes and recognised in them the look of his desire.
For that briefest moment she had let him look at her, knowing he was looking at her. And then all that chill had flowed back into place, freezing him out.
It hadn’t bothered him. It had interested him. Had she returned his assessment with the kind of knowing satisfaction with which women usually received his attentions then he would have been swiftly bored.
But Portia Lanchester had merely made him want her more.
And he would have her.
The desire to possess her was incontrovertible. The more she sought to evade him, the more he knew he was going to possess her.
And the more he wanted her.
Wanted to loosen that fine spun-gold hair and let it cascade over those slender, elegant shoulders. Wanted to reveal those high, soft breasts and feel them harden in his hands. Wanted to skim his hands down over those pale flanks and part her white thighs, take her, possess her.
Her constant evasion of his pursuit had merely made him more determined. He had hunted her down.
And then, like a deer at bay, she had turned on him. Lashed back at him with weapons that had been deadly.
To herself.
Until that moment outside the hotel he would have had infinite patience in his pursuit of her. Relishing every moment, assiduous in his inexorable wearing down of her resistance to him, until the moment came when she finally, gloriously yielded to what he wanted—and found her own satiation in that infinite fount of pleasure which he would release in her.
But at that moment when she had turned on him, rejecting him with words that doomed her, patience had become—unnecessary. He need exert no sensitivity towards her now, no consideration for her reluctance to let him ignite in her the passion that he knew was buried deep within her. Now he need only exert the pressure he knew she would respond to—the pressure that would make her do what all her kind did. Protect her possessions.
And so he would take her. Not against her will. For she would consent to him—consent to the deal he would offer her, the deal that would protect the possessions her kind thought most precious. And she would consent—oh, much more than merely consent!—to the pleasures she would find with him. And to make her feel such pleasure, even while her conscious mind would know that she had come to his bed merely to protect her possessions, that would assuage his anger.
His anger that a woman who had so beguiled him—so eluded him—had in an instant plunged him back to the sickening memory of the moment when he had taken his revenge on those who had destroyed his family and cast him onto the streets like a dog.
