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'Okay, Sorcha—if you could stand just over there,'
Sorcha stood on the chalk cross the assistant was indicating while they held light meters up close to her face and wobbled sheets of white paper around the place. She had only been there half an hour, and already she was bored out of her mind. How did professional models manage it? she wondered, devoting yet more silent sympathy towards that breed of overpaid beanpoles, because at least it stopped her thinking about...
Wriggling her shoulders, she smiled at the assistant. She was not going to think about Cesare and the way he had assumed he could seduce her into doing any damned thing he pleased.
Still, at least in some things she had shown him that she had a mind of her own. Every time he had made love to her she had insisted on going home to sleep in her own bed,
even though he had tried his best to make her stay. Even though he was...was...
She shivered and closed her eyes. Why remember the way his lips had trailed a slow path from neck to belly and beyond? The way he had made her cry out in surrender, her back arching helplessly as he gave a low laugh of triumph?
Why think about that now, when she was trying to be strong as she prepared to have her photo taken, trying not to melt when she thought about his dark, irresistible face?
That was why her need to sleep apart from him was so urgent—so necessary—for who could predict what would happen in those strange, unreal hours before dawn, when you were lying so close to a man who had been part of your heart for so long? How difficult she might have found it not to cradle him in her arms and tenderly stroke his thick black hair—to tell him that he made her feel whole again.
And was it her fierce resolve which made Cesare seek to demonstrate his power over her in different ways? That if he could not have her at night, then he would avail himself of every other opportunity which came his way? Did he take more than erotic delight in seducing her again and again at the office, despite her breathless protestations that it felt wrong?
'It does not feel wrong to me, cara/ he had murmured as he'd pushed her back against the boardroom door and rucked her skirt up, and thrust into her long and hard and slow. 'It feels oh...so...right.'
And Sorcha had sobbed softly into his shoulder as he brought her to another shuddering orgasm, telling herself that she had only herself to blame for this surreptitiousness. That she was the one who had demanded it be kept secret.
That morning he had picked her up from the house to drive her to the photo-shoot, and during the drive she'd seemed to be aware of him in a way she never had been before.
As if even the strip of hair-roughened wrist which showed beneath the crisp, starched shirt-cuff with its gleaming golden cufflink was of endless fascination to her. As though she could have studied his skin for hours and never tired of it.
Was that because his collecting her was about as close as they had come to replicating a date?
But there had been no kiss to greet her, just an atmosphere of simmering tension in the car, which Sorcha had tolerated until she'd been able to bear it no longer.
'Is something wrong, Cesare?'
"Wrong? ' He gave a short laugh. 'I want you so much that I can barely drive in a straight line—what could possibly be wrong?'
'I thought you would have worn yourself out yesterday/ she said tartly. He shot her a glance.
'So did me' he observed dryly.
And in spite of everything, Sorcha's heart leapt with longing. "Why don't you stop the car and kiss me? ' she said softly.
'Because we're stuck on the M25, you're about to be photographed by a genius—and time is money’ he snapped frustratedly.
"Well, you're the one who booked it!'
'Please don't remind me!'
Sorcha stared at the jammed road ahead, and sighed. "Why don't you tell me how you know the photographer?' she said.
'Are you trying to change the subject?'
"What do you think?'
There was a silence. "Well? ' she prompted.
It was hardly a state secret, was it? "Maceo and I have known each other since we were kids’ he said.
'Schoolfriends, you mean? '
Cesare's mouth twisted. 'Not exactly. ’
