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‘Don’t do that. Don’t kiss me.’ People who liked each other kissed. People who were in love.
‘Why not?’
Because kisses were dangerous. You could lose yourself in a kiss, and she didn’t want to be lost with Luca Barbarigo.
‘Because I hate you and I don’t think you particularly like me that much. It just seems false.’
‘And sex doesn’t?’
‘Not when it’s just sex.’
‘Just sex. Is that what you thought we were having last night—just sex?’
‘What would you call it?’
‘Mind-blowing. Earth-shattering. Maybe even some of the best I’ve ever had.’
She gasped, her eyes searching his face for laughter, finding no trace. It had been like that for her...but for him? And whether it was the sudden acceleration of the taxi as it joined the main canal, or because she didn’t want to prevent it, but this time when his mouth came closer—so close that his lips brushed hers—all the air disappeared from her lungs in a rush of heat, leaving a vacuum that could be filled only by him.
He filled that vacuum with the more solid press of his lips upon hers. He filled it with the taste of him in her mouth.
Coffee and wine and heat combined in a knee-trembling cocktail that threatened to bring her undone, and only his arms around her kept her standing. And as his lips made magic against her mouth, it occurred to her that she’d been right to worry, because a girl could not only get lost, but drown in a kiss like that.
She was already drowning—in sensation. There was nothing between them but silk and cloth and the knowledge that when they came together it would be explosive.
His hands moved over her like both a caress and a demand. His kiss promised her his soul while it wrenched free her own.
She could not afford to let go of her soul.
She turned her head away and pushed against his chest, determined to show him she was unmoved while she still could, before she got lost for ever in his kiss. Before she believed its promise.
He let her go and she spun away, grabbing hold of the railing like a lifeline. ‘I wish you hadn’t done that,’ she hissed.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes! Because this whole thing still makes no sense, when you could have your pick of any woman in Venice. Any woman anywhere for that matter and without having to blackmail them into the deal.’
‘But I didn’t want any other woman,’ he said, peeling her away from the railing and back in his arms. ‘I wanted you and you alone.’
‘Lucky me.’
He laughed. ‘And would you have come to me if I hadn’t blackmailed you into my bed?’
‘No,’ she said breathlessly, still trying to grapple with the sense of it all. ‘I wouldn’t have come to you if you were the last man left on earth.’
‘Then there you have it,’ he said with another of those deadly smiles, his lips pressing to her forehead. ‘You gave me no choice. Your not wanting it makes having you all the more satisfying.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
ANGER was good. Anger she could harness and mould and shape into something to sling right back at him. And it would not be simpering submission, but forged in hatred, and it would be slung back at him on her terms.
Anger coloured desire and turned it into a weapon. Anger shaped passion and turned it into something much more dangerous, much more lethal.
So that by the time the water taxi arrived back at the palazzo she didn’t feel fearful or afraid or vulnerable.
Instead she felt stronger than she had ever done. She had survived his kiss, she had suffered his taunts, and if he thought he was going to take and take freely of her, he was very much mistaken.
Because she’d make damn sure she would take more than she would give. No, there was nothing to fear from Luca Barbarigo.
Aldo greeted them discreetly at the water door, just as discreetly evaporating as Luca ushered her upstairs, every slight caress of the hand at her back a siren’s call to her senses while ratcheting up her simmering resentment; every silken whisper of his presence both a caress and a curse.
And it didn’t matter any more that she didn’t understand whatever game Luca was playing. Because she knew what was expected of her as they climbed the stairs.
And what was expected of her was the easy bit.
It was just sex, after all, whatever he wanted her to believe. It wasn’t as if she needed to put on a special performance. All she had to do was take off her clothes and get into bed with him. Nothing to it.
