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The women he’d dated in the past would’ve fallen over themselves to receive any gift he chose to bestow on them, especially the one he’d tucked into his back pocket.
Slowly, he walked towards her. He made sure his intent was clear. The moment she realised, her hands shot out. ‘Stop! Didn’t your mother teach you about the honey versus vinegar technique?’
Bitterness drenched him. ‘No. My mother was too busy climbing the social ladder after my father died to bother with me. When he was alive, she wasn’t much use either.’
She sucked in a shocked breath and concern furrowed her brow. ‘I’m sorry.’
Zaccheo rejected the concern and let the sound of her husky voice, scratchy from the vocal strain that came with singing, wash over him instead. He didn’t want her concern. But the sex he could deal with.
The need he’d been trying to keep under tight control threatened to snap. He took another step.
‘Okay! I’m coming.’ She walked barefooted to him. ‘I’ve done as you asked. Give me whatever it is you want to give me.’
‘It’s in my back pocket.’
She inhaled sharply. ‘Is this another of your games, Zaccheo?’
‘It’ll only take a minute to find out. Are you brave enough, dolcezza?’ he asked.
Her gaze dropped and he immediately tilted her chin up with one finger. ‘Look at me. I want to see your face.’
She blinked, then gathered herself in that way he’d always found fascinating. Slowly, she reached an arm around him. Her fingers probed until she found the pocket opening.
They slipped inside and he suppressed a groan as her fingers caressed him through his trousers. His blood rushed faster south as she searched futilely.
‘It’s empty,’ she stated with a suspicious glare.
‘Try the other one.’
She muttered a dirty word that rumbled right through him. Her colour deepened when he lifted his eyebrow.
‘Let’s get this over with.’ She searched his right pocket and stilled when she encountered the box.
‘Take it out,’ he commanded, then stifled another groan when her fingers dug into his flesh to remove the velvet box. It took all the control he could muster not to kiss her when her lips parted and he glimpsed the tip of her tongue.
During his endless months in prison, he’d wondered whether he’d overrated the chemistry that existed between Eva and him. The proof that it was as potent as ever triggered an incandescent hunger that flooded his loins.
Sì, this part of his revenge that involved Eva in his bed, being inside her and implanting her with his seed, would be easy enough and pleasurable enough to achieve.
‘I cannot wait to take you on our wedding night. Despite you no longer being a virgin, I’ll thoroughly enjoy making you mine in every imaginable way possible. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll forget every other man that you dared to replace me with.’
Her eyelids fluttered and she shivered. But the new, assertive Eva came back with fire. ‘A bold assertion. But one, sadly, we’ll both see unproven since there’ll be no wedding or wedding night. And in case I haven’t mentioned it, you’re the last man I’d ever welcome in my bed.’
Zaccheo chose not to point out that she still had her hand in his pocket, or that her fingers were digging more firmly into his buttock.
Instead, he slid his phone from his front pocket, activated the recording app and hit the replay button.
Despite her earlier assertion that she’d grown a thicker skin, shadows of disbelief and hurt criss-crossed her face as she listened to the short conversation summoning her father to a meeting first thing on Monday. Unlike the night before where Pennington had blustered his way through Zaccheo’s accusations, he’d listened in tense silence as Zaccheo had told him he knew what he was up to.
Zaccheo had given him a taster of the contents of the documents proving his innocence and the older man had finally agreed to the meeting. Zaccheo had known he’d won when Pennington had declined to bring his lawyers to verify the documents.
Thick silence filled the room after the recording ended.
‘Do you believe me now, Eva? Do you believe that your family has wronged me in the most heinous way and that I intend to exact equal retribution?’
Her nostrils flared and her mouth trembled before she wrenched back control. But despite her composure, a sheen of tears appeared in her eyes, announcing her tumultuous emotion. ‘Yes.’
‘Take the box out of my pocket.’
