Читать книгу Paper Marriages - Сара Крейвен, Jacqueline Baird - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

PANIC-STRICKEN, Penny arched up, trying to dislodge Solo’s weight from her body, but it was a futile exercise as his mouth with unerring accuracy covered hers. Forcing her head back onto the bed, and prising apart her soft lips, he began a ravishing exploration with tongue and teeth in a kiss that shattered her romantic concept of a kiss for ever.

Before when he had kissed her it had been a gentle invasion, but now it was a blatantly sensual demand to possess, and to her shame she felt the rising heat of desire scorch through her, heating her blood to fever pitch.

As he sensed her capitulation Solo’s mouth softened on hers, and with the tip of his tongue he soothed her swollen lips, before raising his head. Her glorious eyes were dilated with desire and her lips softly parted. She was his for the taking…

Penny drew in a deep, shuddering breath of air. She was so caught up in him she was hardly aware he had released her wrists. And before she could recover from the shock of his kiss his hands slid to her hips and in one swift movement had flipped her jumper up and over her head, and tossed it aside.

‘I’ve waited a long time for this,’ Solo opined huskily, his sweater removed in a flash. His eyes bored into hers with undisguised sexual intent.

‘No. Please,’ Penny breathed, shaken to the core by the devastating awareness of the powerful naked torso looming over her stirring a terrifying weakness in her. She was compelled to touch the hair-roughened chest so that her no please sounded weak even to her own ears. But he was not listening. His arm slid around her waist, and arched her slender body off the bed, removing the lacy scrap of bra with a deftness that smacked of long experience.

She spread her hands on his chest in a belated effort to push him away. ‘No.’

‘You invited me.’ His face tightened, and his silver eyes glittered with a deep angry passion over her face and lower down to her firm, lush breasts.

Invited! Was he mad? ‘No way,’ she cried. ‘I don’t want this!’

Molten silver eyes held hers ‘Your body tells me otherwise.’ His gaze dipped sensually over her bare breasts as his long fingers tightened around then caressed her waist.

‘You can’t,’ she whispered hoarsely, a peculiar weakness overwhelming her as she took in his bronzed semi-nudity. ‘Let me go.’ The blood pounded with increasing excitement through her veins. ‘You can’t force me,’ and even as she said the words she did not really believe he would use his superior strength against her.

At eighteen she had ached for him, and he had controlled her girlish fervour with ease, but now he was unleashing the powerful expertise of his awesome masculinity on her and she had no defence. What little resistance she had left collapsing like a house of cards against his sensual onslaught.

Solo ate her body with his eyes. Dio but he wanted her, and he knew she wanted him. It was there in her pouting lips and in the jade depths of her gorgeous eyes. She was sex personified, and the fact she had once turned him down made the prospect of her ultimate surrender all the sweeter.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he responded silkily, and cupped the smooth, creamy fullness of her breast, and trailed his thumb over the rosy tip, bringing it to rigid life, and watched her helpless, trembling response with cynical masculine satisfaction. He would seduce her slowly, and once he had her begging in his arms he would finally cure himself of the fatal attraction she held for him. She would be a body in his bed like countless others before her—until he tired of her.

Penny did not know what had hit her. One minute she was showing him the bedroom, now she was half naked on the bed drowning in a sea of sensations she did not really comprehend. The hands that had tried to push him away with a will of their own stroked over his satin-skinned shoulders, and when his head moved down to kiss her other breast her whole body shuddered in mindless delight.

‘Don’t lie, Penny,’ he drawled against her hot skin, sprinkling tiny kisses back up her throat. ‘You want me as I want you.’ Once more he found her mouth, his tongue slipping between her teeth with a seductive sensuality until she forgot she was supposed to be fighting him and welcomed the intimate probing of his tongue with innocent, wild enthusiasm. Her fingers slid around his neck and into the silky black hair of his head, her breasts pressed into the hard heat of his naked chest as he held her closer, and she surrendered to the throbbing need his mouth and hands aroused in her.

So it was a brutal shock when suddenly Solo jerked away from her. Senses swimming, her green eyes wide and wondering, she looked up into his handsome face. Hard grey eyes stared back at her.

‘This has been a long time in coming. Now tell me you don’t want me.’ His mouth curled mockingly, his gaze skimmed cynically over her full breasts, his hand flicking insolently over her rigid nipples. ‘Deny the evidence of your own body.’

Penny stared back at him, too stunned to speak, and hating him for deliberately arousing her to a point of mindless surrender, simply to point out the weakness of her own flesh.

‘Force does not come into it, Penny,’ he drawled, his eyes boring into hers with stark demand. ‘Make up your mind. You are no longer an innocent young virgin, so stop pretending and act like the mature woman I know you to be. Admit the need, the desire I can see in your eyes. Yes or no.’

Scarlet-faced, her body throbbing with unfulfilled need, she was vitally aware of Solo’s half-naked form, the dark intimacy of the bedroom, and she shuddered, unable to subdue the fierce excitement flowing through her veins however hard she tried.

She had thought herself over him long ago, and she had never considered herself to be a particularly sexual person. She’d had no trouble rebuffing the young men she had dated at university, but now she was forced to face the fact that, where Solo was concerned, he only had to look at her, touch her, and for some inexplicable reason her untried body was perfectly attuned to his. It didn’t make sense…

‘Your silence is very telling, Penny,’ Solo drawled throatily, his grey eyes burning into hers as he kissed each breast in turn, while his deft fingers unfastened her trousers and stripped them and her briefs from her body, and she let him… Hypnotised by his fiercely glittering gaze.

‘You want to be persuaded. Very feminine,’ he husked. Penny gasped out loud as slowly he slid his hand down over her stomach and swept along the length of her thigh, and then trailed his long fingers sensually down her leg with deliberate provocation. ‘Very beautiful, and I’m happy to oblige.’

Penny trembled, mesmerised by the rapt expression on his strong, lean face, and the emotions surging inside her. Then lazily he stood up, and, taking her unresisting hand, he slowly lifted it to his thigh.

‘See what you do to me, Penny.’ He pressed her hand hard against him, and her palm seemed to burn as she felt the strength of his manhood through the fabric of his trousers. Fascinated and terrified at the same time, she would have pulled back, but he spoke in a throaty, seductive murmur. ‘I need your answer, Penny.’

She gulped and then he was leaning over her; his other hand gently touched her shoulder and lower, her skin burnt. Why me? a tiny voice of sanity cried in her confusion. Why did this one man in the world have this devastating effect on her? Her fingers flexed. Horrified, she realised she was stroking Solo with tactile fingers of desire. Swallowing hard, she jerked her hand back and closed her eyes in mortification at her loss of control.

She did not know what she was, what she had become lying naked on the big bed, every nerve end in her body quivering with tension. She opened her eyes and tried to sit up. This had gone far enough, too far…

Solo was as naked as she was! Penny’s stomach clenched at the sight of his magnificent bronzed body, the flagrant proof of his manhood casually revealed. She had never seen a totally naked man in her life, and she couldn’t credit the rush of excitement that shivered over every pore of her skin simply from looking.

‘Well, what is it to be, Penny?’ Solo demanded, his voice deep and full of sensual invitation. His finger curled gently around her shoulder and eased her back down onto the bed. He draped his long body alongside hers and her pulse leapt at the contact of naked flesh on naked flesh. Rising over her, he slid his leg between hers as his mouth came down to claim her lips in a scorching kiss.

‘Decision time.’ Solo’s mouth seductively glided along the curve of her cheek, leaving only a breathing space between them; his glittering eyes held hers, demanding an answer.

For a moment a nerve-jangling fear hit her, but with the heat of his body searing into her skin, and bewitched by the sensual promise in his silver eyes, she suddenly thought, Why not? Why deny herself the experience of making love with Solo? She had always wanted to, from the first time she had set eyes on him. No other man had ever been able to make her feel a tenth of what Solo could with a glance. Whatever happened in the future, at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing she had started with the best, she thought wildly, impulsively. ‘Yes.’

One simple three-letter word, and Solo Maffeiano’s heart leapt and so did another part of his anatomy. For the first time in his life he was speechless. He looked at the exquisitely beautiful naked girl beneath him and it took all his self-control not to rush. He stroked the elegant curve of her throat, the hollow of her collarbone, and his fingers trembled.

He shuddered, and Penny was aware of every inch of his huge male body and her own, the beating of his heart, the heat, the pressure of his hips against her inner thighs as he eased her legs apart.

Emboldened, she ran her fingers over his back and felt the contraction of muscle and sinew beneath her touch. She pressed her lips to the strong cord of his throat, tasting the salty tang of his skin. Then she gasped as his hand tangled in the long length of her hair and pulled her head back.

The bronzed skin was taut across his perfectly chiselled features as he fought a savage battle for control. But his eyes… his eyes burnt dark as night as he scattered gentle kisses on her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, and finally took her mouth.

His mouth searched hers with a sensuous, building passion and with a wild, uninhibited delight she responded, her tongue duelling with his, her hands stroking feverishly over his broad back, his firm buttocks. She felt the urgent thrust of his body as, with a hoarse groan, he broke the devouring hunger of their kiss.

His dark head bent to press hot, hard lips to her throat and lower to her breast, and she arched in wanton pleasure. Her fingers raked through his hair and slipped to his shoulders as he reared up. His hands cupped her breasts, kneading and pushing them together. His thumbs teased the rosy nipples, his blazing eyes watching in rapt fascination as the tips strained to hard, aching peaks beneath his sensuous manipulation.

‘Exquisite.’ He groaned and then swooped, his hungry mouth tasting first one and then the other in a compulsive, greedy passion.

Penny felt the pulsating waves of sensation flooding through her in ever-increasing force. She clung to him, and cried out when his head moved lower, to kiss her navel, and lower still. He kissed and caressed her slender body with a sensuality, a need that Penny had never imagined possible, and she exulted in the tremors that shook his great frame as she responded, her hands touching him, stroking him, wanting to give him the same incredible sensations.

When his caressing fingers slipped into the soft heart of her femininity, she shuddered violently. Every nerve end in her body was taut with a painful, aching need. She grasped his head and drew him to her, and she kissed him with a hungry, untutored, mindless passion.

Solo wanted to wait, to make it last, but he could not; he had waited years already and her aggressive kiss, the scent, the wet, silken readiness of her tossed him over the edge. A near-violent wave of desire surged through him and, with an animalistic growl low in his throat, he lifted her slender hips and drove forward into her moist, tight core.

Penny cried out, the breath left her body, the need was gone, and only the pain remained. The hand that had curved round his shoulder now hit out at him.

‘Dio, no,’ Solo groaned; his slate-grey eyes burnt into hers and his great body stilled. ‘No, relax.’ His deep voice caressed her cheek, her mouth as he murmured husky words in Italian, then added, ‘Wait, Penny.’

He held her pinned to the bed. His magnificent body still linked to hers in the most intimate way possible. He pressed a soft kiss to her lips, and, easing very slightly from her, he licked the rosy tip of her breasts once more, and then, just as slowly, he moved again.

Gradually she became aware the pain had subsided, and an exquisite sensation of mind-bending pleasure bathed her in wave after wave of ever-building sensual tension. Slow then fast, pause… advance and retreat… He stretched and filled her body and soul, and miraculously her inner muscles clenched around him in ever-increasing need until she was once more mindless, lost in a passionate world she had no prior knowledge of.

Solo’s darkened gaze flashed to her bemused molten jade one. She was with him every step of the way, he exulted, the cords and tendons of his face and neck etched in rigid lines of restraint. There was no sensual movement that he did not know, and with phenomenal control he utilised them all. With mouth, hands and body he used every refinement of eroticism to make it good for her, to drive her to the brink.

‘Solo,’ she helplessly moaned his name, pulsating with the exquisite torture of his possession.

It was his downfall. With one final thrust he drove them both over the edge into a tumultuous climax, his great body shuddering violently, the breath stolen from his lungs.

Penny lay there, the weight of Solo’s body still pinning her to the bed, but she didn’t mind; she was floating in a bubble of euphoria. This incredible man had shown her what it was to be a woman, and it was beyond her wildest dreams. So this was love; she sighed happily. ‘Solo,’ she murmured for the sheer joy of saying his name.

‘I am too heavy for you,’ Solo opined roughly, and rolled off her to lie on his back. He was still reeling from the fact Penny had been a virgin, and when he could think straight again he finally concluded the blond boyfriend she had rejected him for had to have been a fool. The thought cheered him no end.

Deprived of the warmth of the closeness of his body, and stung by his prosaic comment, suddenly Penny felt chilled, her euphoria vanishing as reality kicked in. What had she expected? Avowals of undying love, or at least a little romance.

Instead she was lying naked flat on her back staring up at the ceiling in what used to be her parents’ bedroom, having just been thoroughly seduced by Solo Maffeiano, a man she’d thought she hated half an hour ago. She wanted to weep. What had she done?

Panicking, she glanced wildly around and, spotting her sweater, she grabbed it and, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, tried to stand up, but a heavy arm curved around her waist and dragged her back against his broad chest.

‘Where do you think you are going, Penny?’ Solo levered himself up into a sitting position while keeping a firm hold on Penny. ‘We need to talk, cara.’

Talk! She almost laughed out loud on the edge of hysteria. But, keeping her back determinedly to him, she managed to say steadily, ‘I think it would be better if I got dressed first.’

Solo grinned smugly down at her bent head, his arm tightening around her midriff, his hand splayed under one luscious breast. He hadn’t felt this good in years. Who was he kidding? He had never felt this good, ever!

‘Are you all right?’ he asked, his voice gruff with inexplicable emotion. Lifting his hand, he ran his fingers through the tumbled mass of her silken hair in a gentle gesture. Revealing the perfection of her delicate profile. She was shy, and now he knew why.

Solo considered himself broad-minded, a man of the world—he had to be with his parentage, he thought with a tinge of cynicism. He had never been the sort of man who was bothered about his female companions’ past affairs. His only rule was monogamy for as long as a relationship lasted. He never asked about past lovers, and by the same token never told.

He let his fingers trail down the long length of Penny’s blonde hair, loving the silken feel, the warmth of her small body against his chest, and he had to admit, on a purely primitive level, it gave him incredible satisfaction to know he was her first and only lover. She had rejected him once, but not any more…

‘Yes. But do you mind?’ Penny said, grasping long fingers that were edging ever closer to her breast, and trying to prise the arm from around her waist. ‘You have had your fun, now let me go.’

Solo’s arm tightened fractionally. She was doing it again… rejecting him. His silver eyes turned cold grey, and he withdrew his arm from her waist. ‘Certainly.’ And to Penny’s surprise she was free.

Not daring to look at Solo, she scrambled off the bed and pulled her sweater over her head, not caring about underwear, and, finding her jeans on the floor, she quickly pulled them on.

‘Why the rush to dress, Penny? I have seen a naked lady before, and I already know every intimate inch of you,’ Solo prompted mockingly.

‘Thank you for reminding me,’ she said with icily polite sarcasm, incensed by his mockery. In her fragile state, she needed reminding she was one of a legion like a hole in the head…

Then she made the mistake of turning to look at him. He was lounging against the headboard of the bed, like some great, smug god of mythology, totally unfazed by his nudity. His magnificent olive toned body made her feel weak all over again. No man had the right to look so damn sexy.

‘So polite.’ Solo casually slid off the bed and pulled on his boxer shorts and walked towards her. ‘But, sex aside, we still need to talk about this place.’

Sex. That was all it was to him, Penny thought bitterly, the most momentous, mind-blowing experience of her life, and it was nothing to him. He stood there in black shorts, tall and powerful with the arrogance of a man who had complete conviction in his mastery over the female of the species, his slate-grey eyes staring blandly down at her. Suddenly, amid the chaos of all the emotional highs and lows storming through her brain, the one overriding emotion was anger.

‘Why, you no-good, lecherous pig, you deliberately seduced me!’ She waved a hand at the horrendous fake-leopardskin-covered bed. ‘In that bed, and you dare stand there half naked and say we need to talk, as though it was a flaming board meeting.’

Solo reached out and dragged her hard against him, and plundered her mouth in a deep kiss. Penny tried to bite him, but it was a mistake, it gave him easy access to her mouth, and in moments her slender arms were wrapped around his neck, her slender body arching into his in helpless response. To her utter humiliation Solo grasped her hands from his neck and placed them firmly by her sides before stepping back.

‘No more talk of seduction, Penny, we both know it’s a lie.’ His deep voice held a cynical edge ‘Your come-on was just that. A come-on.’

Shamed by her instant surrender, she looked at him, the pull of sexual awareness impossible to deny, and something tugged at the edges of her memory. Oh, no! She silently groaned. Earlier she had smiled and said, ‘Come on,’ but he had never let her finish. Did he really think she had asked him to make love to her? In the next half-hour she had her answer.

‘Wait while I dress and we will continue our business discussion over a drink.’ Solo’s cold, mocking eyes flicked over her tense body and to where her small hands curled into fists at her sides before he added. ‘A whisky should hit the spot. It does not look as if anything else is on offer, except maybe a slap on the face,’ and he had the gall to laugh at her gasp of outrage.

‘I’m going to have a shower. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ Penny spun on her heel and marched out of the room, blinking rapidly to keep the tears of anger and humiliation at bay, and silently cursing the arrogant devil under her breath as she headed for her bedroom and locked the door behind her.

Her anger lasted until she had a shower, and stepped from the tiny en suite back into the room she had slept in all her life. She glanced at the cuddly toys arranged on top of a chest of drawers, oddly at variance with the opposite side of the room where a long desk took up all one wall, with her computer in the middle, and shelves of books above.

Suddenly the catastrophic events of the past two days hit her like a punch in the stomach. Her body aching in places she’d never known was possible, she sat down on the narrow bed and stared around. Her home was no longer hers to keep. James would never know the idyllic childhood she had enjoyed, the timeless sense of belonging. She wrapped her arms around her middle and, doubled over, she finally let the tears fall. How long she sat silently sobbing she had no idea until a knock on the door made her hiccup.

She heard the handle turn, and was glad she had locked the door. Quickly she rubbed her wet cheeks with a shaking hand. The last thing she needed was for Solo to find her red-eyed from weeping and naked but for a towel in a bedroom. She shuddered—whether in fear or remembered pleasure, she refused to acknowledge.

‘If you are not downstairs in five minutes, I’ll break the door down.’

‘Yes, all right,’ she snapped back, the cold determination of his tone telling her he meant it. Rising to her feet, she dashed into the bathroom and splashed her face and eyes with cold water. Returning to the bedroom, she withdrew clean bra and briefs from a drawer and a fine blue sweater, and slipped them on.

Solo Maffeiano was right about one thing, she admitted with brutal realism. Sex aside, she did have to talk to him. She stepped into her jeans and eased them up her legs.

Crossing to the mirrored dressing table, she snapped the fastener at her waist, and took a minute to brush her hair back behind her ears. She didn’t appear any different, she thought in surprise. Without make-up and with her hair loose, she still looked like a teenager. It was the bane of her life, and why very few people took her seriously. Well, that was about to change as far as Solo Maffeiano was concerned…

Penny pushed her feet into a pair of mules, then opened the bedroom door, a light of steely determination in her green eyes. It lasted until she walked into the kitchen and found Solo leaning against the bench, two cups and saucers arranged before him, and waiting for the coffee to percolate.

‘I thought you wanted a drink,’ Penny said, refusing to admit she had been surprised to see the sophisticated, super-rich Solo doing something so mundane as preparing coffee, or that the sight of his long body dressed again in black trousers and the cream sweater had the power to make her heart miss a beat.

Shrugging one wide shoulder, Solo turned to face her. ‘I decided against alcohol. I want you to have a clear head for our discussion.’ His grey eyes met and held hers. ‘So there can be no mistakes, or cries of foul later,’ he informed her with a tinge of sarcasm colouring his tone.

‘As if I would,’ Penny denied hotly. How dared he imply she was less than honest?

One dark brow arched sardonically. ‘This from a girl who once spent an unforgettable few weeks with me years ago, and then declared it was a mistake.’

Unable to hold his gaze, and without a ready answer, Penny pulled out a chair and sat down at the pine table before raising her head and glancing back at him. ‘I can assure you our business dealings will be strictly legitimate.’

A cynical smile twisted his hard mouth. ‘We will see,’ he said enigmatically, and, turning his back on her, he filled two cups with coffee as she watched. ‘Black with one sugar?’

He had remembered, Penny thought, astonished. ‘Yes,’ she murmured, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, and when Solo placed a cup and saucer on the table, and held out the other one to her, she managed to take it with a firm hand. Then she took a deep swallow of the reviving brew, and waited.

Penny watched Solo pick up his cup and drain it in one go before placing it back on the table, and could hardly believe that not so long ago she had been naked on a bed with the man. He was so firmly in control, whereas she felt like a nervous wreck.

He swung a kitchen chair next to hers around, and straddled it, his arms resting on the bowed-back. Involuntarily Penny’s green gaze dropped to where his legs were spread over the chair, the fabric of his trousers pulled taut across his muscular thighs, and felt a swift curl of heat in her belly.

‘Right, Penny. Haversham Park, and what is to be done with it,’ Solo said crisply.

Penny lifted her head, embarrassed at where her wayward thoughts were leading, and, fighting down the blush that threatened, she said equally crisply, ‘Firstly, to satisfy my curiosity. How did you acquire a share of my home? I still cannot get my head around the fact my father sold it to you without telling me.’

For years Solo had thought Penny must have been in on the deal he’d made with her father, a deceitful little gold-digger, but now he wasn’t so sure. Her dismay at finding she had lost half her home was obviously genuine. But then she had always been a consummate liar. She had led him to believe their marriage had been a foregone conclusion, when all the time she had been waiting for her boyfriend to return. But it left him with the tricky question of what to tell her. The truth wasn’t an option; he had no intention of appearing a bigger fool over Penny than he already had.

That last Saturday four years ago, he had formally asked her father’s permission to marry her, and had told Julian obviously he had no intention of developing the land around what was his future wife’s family home. Julian was disappointed, and hinted he needed money. So as a form of compensation, or, to put it more cynically, the price of his bride, Solo had parted with a large amount of cash and Julian had insisted Solo take a half-share in the house in return.

Solo had had to leave in a hurry, and so he’d been delayed in asking Penny to marry him. When he had returned six days later, he’d been glad he had. Penny had not been around, but Solo had signed the deed with her father while waiting for her.

Then, with Veronica’s information that Penny had been at the vicarage with her friend Jane, he had gone looking for her and found her with Simon. Fury did not begun to cover how he had felt at the time. Rejected and robbed in one week was not something he had ever contemplated happening to him. But it had reinforced the belief he had developed in his youth that women were not to be trusted, with his mother and grandmother as prime examples.

Remembering the fiasco now made his teeth clench. For once in his life he had let his guard down and as far as Solo was concerned the whole damn family had taken advantage of the fact to con money out of him. A half share in a house they had no intention of leaving or selling was of no use to Solo. He had been well and truly tricked.

‘Well?’ Penny said, the long silence praying on her already-taut nerves.

His eyes flickered, the pupils hard and black, dilating with what looked like anger. For a moment he stared at her, and then suddenly he smiled, his expression bland.

‘As you know I bought some acreage from your father with a view to developing it. Your father was quite happy with the price I paid, but he had a very expensive wife in Veronica.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Penny muttered dryly.

One dark brow elevated sardonically. ‘Yes, exactly. Anyway, I had a feasibility study taken on the profitability of the project, and it wasn’t viable. Your father was disappointed, because he needed more money. Veronica had very expensive taste, though not particularly good, judging by what she has done to the house.

‘Knowing Veronica, I felt some sympathy for your father when he approached me and offered me a half-share of the house as collateral for a rather large sum of cash for an alternative investment he had in mind. I agreed because I felt a little guilty that we were not going ahead with the original project.’

‘How very altruistic of you.’ Penny said scathingly. ‘But that does not explain why he never told me.’

‘He was a proud man, maybe he was hoping to invest and make a profit.’ Solo shrugged his broad shoulders indifferently. ‘Perhaps he was hoping to remedy the situation before anyone knew. But I am sure he would have told you eventually. Even you must admit he couldn’t possibly have expected to die so soon.’

That was true enough, Penny thought sadly. Veronica and her father had spent every summer in the south of France, while Penny had stayed home and looked after James. Veronica had always flashed the photographs around to all and sundry of the villa and yacht they’d leased.

‘You’re probably right.’ There was a connection tugging at the edge of her brain, something that she was missing. But with a sigh she gave up. There was no sense in dwelling on what she could not change. ‘So you buy me out or we sell,’ she said flatly, getting back to the point of the talk.

‘No,’ Solo’s steel-grey eyes met hers. ‘There is another choice. In your case it’s the only choice.’

‘That sounds ominous,’ she said, trying for a lightness she did not feel. ‘In fact it could almost be construed as a threat.’

‘Not a threat, a promise. I promise to restore Haversham Park, and pay all your debts, plus your expenses, and you and James can stay here. In return…’

For a split second hope sprung in her heart. ‘You turn most of it into a hotel and leave us with an apartment or something,’ she finished for him, thinking with relief that it was an incredibly generous offer.

‘Not quite.’ Hard eyes stared down at her. ‘It stays a private home, you will still run the place, but we share it.’

‘Share!’ she exclaimed, jumping to her feet. An unpaid housekeeper was what he meant, and Penny could imagine nothing worse than sharing a house with Solo, having to see him parade his girlfriends in front of her. ‘No way.’ She could not bear the idea and she did not question why.

Rising to his full height, Solo let his strong hands fall on her shoulders; she tried to shrug him off, but his hold tightened.

‘So impulsive,’ he opined hardly. ‘But allow me to finish. We get married and you stay here but as my wife for as long as I want you.’

‘Your wife?’ She almost choked.

‘Yes,’ Solo said flatly. ‘Then when we part the place is yours free and clear.’

Her stunned gaze lifted up to his. He had to be joking… His grey eyes stared back cold and implacable, and there was a ruthlessness about his hard, handsome features that told her he was not. The colour drained from her face; she could hardly breathe. Solo was a man who always got what he wanted—she should have remembered that.

A hollow laugh escaped her. Well, he’d already had her, to put it crudely; what had she got to lose? ‘Why?’ Penny demanded stonily. ‘What earthly benefit will it be to you?’

‘What do you think? After what we did earlier, how can you ask that?’ Solo looked at her, his smile filled with arrogant amusement. ‘Or perhaps like most females you are fishing for compliments.’ He shrugged slightly, his powerful shoulders lifting beneath the fine cashmere of his sweater, his handsome face expressionless.

‘I don’t mind humouring you. You were exquisite at eighteen, and the years in between have been very good to you. You have matured into a stunningly beautiful woman.’ Blatantly he let his eyes drop to her high, full breasts clearly outlined by her blue sweater. ‘My hobby is collecting perfect works of art, and to my utter astonishment I discovered you were one of that rare breed of woman, pure in body, if not mind.’ he inserted cynically. ‘I intended to be your lover four years ago, but you denied me, and I don’t take denial easily. I figured you owed me, and today I collected,’ he declared dangerously, and Penny erupted into angry speech.

‘I owe you. You have some gall. I don’t know how you did it but you have already stolen my home—what more can you want?’

‘You,’ he told her inexorably, his fingers biting into her shoulders. ‘I was surprised to realise I was your first lover, so naturally I intend to hang onto you for as long as I want you.’ His eyes glittered with ruthless disregard and Penny could not believe the colossal arrogance of the man.

She tilted her head back, a light of battle in her gaze. ‘That is the most disgusting, chauvinistic statement I have ever heard. You can’t own a woman like an object,’ she flared back.

‘I don’t want to own you for ever. A temporary wife was what I had in mind,’ Solo said mockingly, and she shrugged in an attempt to dislodge his restraining hands.

Penny shook her head. ‘This is surreal. I don’t believe I am having this conversation.’

Slowly his eyes drifted over her and her skin heated where his eyes touched. His mouth twisted in a menacing smile. ‘Believe it, cara,’ he commanded just before his mouth settled with deadly accuracy over hers.