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‘You were trying to scare me off?’ Mina questioned in a tone of revelation.
‘I was a fool. I gave you the job.’
Mina’s mouth curved downwards. He had been lusting after her from the start but he hadn’t shown it. He had played a waiting game, doubtless entertaining himself with the prospect of her willing and grateful surrender at the end of his little game. Wham-bam, but not thank you, ma’am.
She had been as naïve as a lamb skipping into the slaughterhouse and she was exceedingly tempted to demand to know why he hadn’t taken precautions. Considering that she had dissolved into mindless joy at his first kiss and he had been the experienced partner, she was still astounded by his reckless disregard for the consequences. Only then did it occur to her, for the very first time, that where Susie was concerned she had absolutely no regrets about that night. She could not imagine life without her daughter.
‘But now, at least, I know the kind of woman I am dealing with!’ Cesare asserted with driven savagery.
Dragged back to the present, she discovered that Cesare was now so close that she could feel the heat of him. Her spine was already in contact with the window behind her. ‘You know nothing about me!’ she protested shakily.
‘You excite me—what else is important?’ he said thickly, regarding her with sizzling intensity from the vantage point of his greatly superior height.
Her breasts were stirring, swelling. A heady languor was sweeping through her limbs, a betraying twist of high-voltage sexual awareness curling low in the pit of her stomach. But she fought every treacherous sensation with all her might, wild colour burnishing her openly dismayed face. ‘You don’t even like me…you called me a thief and a confidence trickster!’ she gasped. ‘How can you still——?’
‘Desire you?’ Cesare filled in, his hands settling down on her narrow shoulders with a pronounced air of finality. ‘Sex is an appetite. If I’m tired, I sleep. If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m——’
‘Shut up and let go of me!’ Mina was starting to tremble, a terrible fear stirring inside her as she was subjected to the magnetic pull of his smouldering gaze. Her head whirled and her body no longer felt as though it belonged to her. Don’t you dare touch me——’
‘You’re scared of this…’ With a blunt forefinger he traced the scooped neckline of her summer dress, his touch so light that it whispered across her skin, but it left a trail of fire in its wake, made her breath catch in her throat, made the blood in her veins pound in insane acceleration. ‘Now isn’t that an interesting discovery?’ he murmured in a satisfied purr. ‘You’ve got an Achilles’ heel after all, cara. That steel trap of a brain can’t control what I make you feel and naturally that scares you.’
‘Don’t——’
‘Don’t what?’ In an indolently smooth movement, Cesare dropped his hands to the swell of her hips and swept her up into his arms, a primitive blaze of triumph firing his lancing gaze. ‘Don’t touch you because you’re afraid I might realise how desperate you are for my caresses? Don’t touch you because you might give yourself to me for nothing?’ He flung back his dark head and laughed with hard satisfaction. ‘And you will. With me, there will be no price!’
‘Put me down!’ she shrieked, a spasm of rage taking hold of her, breaking through the erotic spell he cast.
He kissed her. He kissed her until her heartbeat was a crashing thunderclap inside her ribcage. She fought the hunger he was inciting, wild with fear that he was right and she could not control her own treacherously susceptible body. But he kept on kissing her with a wild hot passion that bruised her soft lips against her teeth and suddenly, as he sent his tongue in a delving foray into the tender interior she had attempted to deny him, she was jolted by an uncontrollable surge of need that clawed cruelly at her, making her moan like a trapped animal in pain.
Her head was swimming with dizziness when he let her come up for air. She was as weak as an accident victim, quivering with shock. She was lying across his lap on her bed. Long brown fingers, dark against her pale skin, were engaged in flipping loose the pearlised buttons on the bodice of her dress. In horror at the sight, she clasped a small hand to his in an effort to stop him.
‘No!’ she gasped, stricken.
‘You’re mine,’ Cesare muttered thickly, one strong arm closing fiercely round her to stress the assurance, and he simply shifted his hand smoothly from beneath hers and slid it beneath the parted edges of her bodice, slowly curving his fingers over the firm thrust of one unbound breast.
It had been so long since she had known such intimacy that her teeth clenched on the sweet pleasurepain of her own helpless excitement, and in the interim her hand fell away. He tugged the dress open, exposing the smooth pale flesh he sought, discovering the delectable curves she had tried to conceal. With an unashamed groan of hunger he caressed a pouting pink nipple with almost worshipping fingers, watching the bud bloom into aching prominence.
Her eyes were closed. ‘No…no,’ she mumbled, lying back against his arm, struggling madly to control the electrifying response shooting through her in debilitating waves.
‘Exquisite…Your body remembers me even if that mercenary little heart doesn’t want to,’ Cesare murmured, his breath fanning her cheek and his fingers playing with her unbearably se
nsitised breasts with erotic mastery.
A throbbing pulsebeat of terrifying hunger was controlling her now. Her mind was a desert, a wasteland, empty of every thought. Her entire being was centred on a knife-edge of anticipation. As the moist heat of his mouth engulfed a tender pink nipple, she gasped as though he had thrown an overload switch, lost to everything but what he could make her feel. With every sure caress, she was sucked deeper into a whirlpool of passion, seduced by her own desperate hunger.
On some other level she was aware of the cooler air that brushed her skin as her dress fell away entirely and then he was laying her flat, crushing her mouth under his with raw, unashamed hunger. Her hands swept over his silk-clad back in sudden frustration, instinctively seeking the satin-smooth skin she remembered. His muscles rippled as he tautened and broke the connection of their mouths.
Her glazed eyes opened on that shock of separation. He was ripping off his shirt, and she remembered that from before, but she heard no warning bells. Past and present had merged indistinguishably. The pectoral muscles of his lean, golden torso were hazed with a sprinkling of ebony curls. Like someone in an hypnotic trance, she focused on the blazing gold of his eyes and sank ever deeper into his power.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he muttered, his accent roughening every syllable.
She wanted to return the compliment but she couldn’t find her voice. She lifted a hand slowly and spread it against the warm wall of his chest, mesmerised by the power of her own craving and the thunder of his heartbeat below her palm. He bent his dark head, ran the tip of his tongue sensually along the full swell of her lower lip and came down beside her again.
‘Cesare…’ It was a whisper of surrender so complete that she melted to liquid honey making it.
He found her reddened mouth tremulously open in welcome and responded to the invitation with a savage drugging intensity which overwhelmed her. Her fingers smoothed through his silky hair, tracing his well-shaped head, joy singing through her veins. In one impatient movement his hand closed round the band of fabric at her narrow hips and wrenched it out of his path, tugging up her knees to facilitate the operation.
She shivered violently and twisted under the onslaught of his mouth as he parted her thighs and explored the hot, moist centre of her. Deep in her throat she emitted a low cry, gripped by an intolerable pleasure that made her burn and quiver and shamelessly crave more. With a raw groan of excitement that more than matched hers, Cesare knelt over her, ravishing her soft mouth one more time as if he was stamping her as his possession.
