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‘Before or after the sex?’
‘Before,’ she declared. ‘I took the sex because it came free.’
‘You think?’
‘I know.’
‘Nothing comes free in this world, sweetheart,’ Anton mocked. ‘So, say thank you nicely to Gabriel, for letting you stay with him, and then set your treacherous little backside
moving out of the front door or I will throw you over my shoulder and carry you out!’
Cristina heaved in a hot breath as she twisted round in his grasp with the intention of fighting herself free. Only it didn’t work out that way. His arm banded her closer, and she found herself inhaling the clean, washed smell of him, and the much more disturbing scent of very angry male. Looking up into his face, she caught the flare of green in his eyes just before she heard her case hit the ground. Then his other hand was taking control of her nape, and all she managed was a husky, quavering, ‘Don’t…’ before she received the full force of his mouth on hers in a punishing, plundering act of pure vengeance that left her shocked, shaken and shamefully desperate for more.
Feeling like a boneless quivering wreck, it was all she could do to subside weakly against him, her face pressed into his shirt front while he held her there and talked over the top of her head to Gabriel as if the kiss had been nothing at all.
Just the fact that Gabriel had witnessed it was a further humiliation she had to contend with. When she heard him say, ‘I will leave the small print to you, Anton,’ Cristina felt as if she’d lost her only friend in the world.
Anton retrieved her case and pushed her towards the door. She went quietly after that. The lift took them downwards. Neither spoke. A chauffeur driven black Mercedes waited at the kerb. The moment they were both encased in its plush leather interior the car moved off. She sat staring out of the window. He sat staring directly ahead. He was angry…she was angry.
‘I suppose you told Gabriel that I am the love of your life?’ she said tightly.
‘I told him what he needed to hear to let you walk away with me.’
‘Lies.’
He released a dry laugh. ‘You fell apart in my arms over one short kiss, so don’t blame him for believing what his own eyes could see,’ he charged. ‘And we are both good at lying, Cristina, so you can drop that reproof from your voice. It cuts no ice with me.’
‘Does anything?’ She sighed.
‘No.’
‘Gabriel—’
‘Is no fool,’ he incised. ‘He knows I make a better friend than I would an enemy. Let him believe he allowed you to come with me because it’s what you really want. It’s safer for him.’
She turned her head to look at him then. ‘You are so powerful these days?’
He didn’t even bother to look at her. ‘Yes,’ he said.
He made her shiver. He made her truly fear the man he had become.
‘Leave Gabriel alone,’ she whispered.
‘If you possessed a modicum of sense, querida, you would be worrying about your own situation more than your friend.’
He turned his head to look at her for the first time since they’d left Gabriel’s apartment then, and Cristina’s heart gave a wary little squeeze in her breast when she looked at him. Everything about him was hard, coldly angry, intimidating.
‘I don’t know where you get the arrogance to think you can play games with me a second time,’ he delivered coldly.
‘I was not playing a game,’ Cristina replied. ‘I just needed—’
‘The sex,’ he cut in. ‘So you thought, Why not get it from Luis since he’s so damn good at it?’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘We did not have sex, we made love,’ she corrected.
The expression of derision in his eyes as they glinted at her made her want to crawl away inside her own skin and hide. She knew on one level that she deserved his anger. She knew that in the way she had sneaked out of his suite while he slept she had taken the coward’s way out. But—
‘You were bullying me, Luis!’ she hit back accusingly. ‘You backed me into a corner and gave me no room to think! I left because I needed some time to consider what you were proposing!’
