Читать книгу Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride - Lee Wilkinson - Страница 10

SORCHA froze as she looked into Cesare’s dark, mocking face. ‘No.’

‘No?’ he echoed.

She clenched her fists. ‘If you want someone to front your new advertising campaign, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’

‘But we’ve already decided that it has to be a family member—your mother is the wrong age, your sister is the wrong marital status, and your brother is the wrong sex.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘We want to reach out and capture the single person who is living on their own—to introduce a whole new market to a very traditional product.’

‘No, Cesare.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not a model!’

‘Ah, but that is the whole point—we don’t want a professional model,’ he murmured silkily, and he bent down to pick up a large black cardboard envelope from which he pulled a thick sheet of cartridge paper in the manner of a magician withdrawing a rabbit from a hat. He handed it to her.

Inside was a mock-up of an advertisement featuring a girl with bright strawberry blonde hair—drawn to look just like her, she realised with a sinking feeling. On the table in front of her were all the delicious ingredients of a sandwich in the making, with a bottle of Whittakers Hot n’ Spicy in the foreground.

The girl was sucking her finger, her eyes gazing wide and coquettish at the camera, and just one word was splashed across the top of the page. SAUCY!

‘Simple, but effective,’ said Cesare, and he felt weak with desire just imagining Sorcha sucking on his finger, and on…

‘Just imagine the publicity,’ he said huskily. ‘This could be big, Sorcha. Really big.’

‘And if demand increases—just how are you planning to meet it? Are you just going to magic up X amount of sauce from nowhere, Cesare?’

He gave her a narrow-eyed look of admiration. ‘Leave that to me.’

He spoke in a tone of voice which told her that nothing was going to be a problem—and, infuriatingly, she believed him. But he hadn’t taken into account the unpredictability of human nature had he? Or of women in particular? ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ she breathed.

His smile was satisfied as he waited for the plaudits to come his way. ‘I’ve tried,’ he murmured.

‘Well, you should have consulted me, shouldn’t you?’ she questioned crisply. ‘Because I can’t do this.’

His smile vanished. ‘Why not?’

‘The rest of the family would never agree to me taking centre-stage.’

‘They already have.’

They already have.

‘Emma thinks it would be good for you.’

Emma thinks it would be good for you.

‘And your mother—’

‘Stop it!’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want to hear!’

It had taken a moment or two for her to register what had been niggling at her all along, but his words helped it to snap into crystal-clear focus.

Not only had he been brought in behind her back and then demanded that she be kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything to change it. But now—just as if they were engaged in some old-fashioned spy story—he had been briefing against her. It appeared that he had been masterminding a whole great scheme involving her—only she was the last person to know!

Sorcha glanced at the beautifully executed mock-up. This wasn’t something which he had just had an artist scribble up in a few minutes—this had all been carefully planned. She had been excluded, and the rest of the family had colluded with him. It felt like a betrayal in the most complete sense of the word.

‘You must have been working behind my back for weeks,’ she said in a stunned voice.

‘I thought it preferable if we presented it to you as a fait accompli.’

She looked at him, stunned. ‘You bastard,’ she said softly.

Cesare’s blood heated with an inevitable sense of triumph—because, in a way, wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted all along? For the precarious veneer of civility which had existed between them to be smashed by a simple word of contempt—leaving him free to give in to what he had wanted to do from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her again. And everyone knew that conflict made the best aphrodisiac in the world.

‘Is that what I am?’ he questioned as he walked towards her. Her eyes were filled with fury—and something else, too—or were they just mirroring what was in his? An unbearable hunger he had only just realised had been building away inside him all these years.

‘Then maybe I’d better start behaving like one.’ And with one unequivocal gesture he pulled her to her feet and into his arms.

She saw it coming—of course she did—but the pressure of his arms and the heat of his body drove everything from her mind—other than how much she had dreamed about this over the years, despite all her best efforts to suppress it. Sometimes in the middle of the cruel and indiscriminate night she had awoken to relive the achingly unfulfilled pleasure of his kiss—as someone stranded in the desert might remember how a glass of cool water tasted.

‘Bastard!’ she said again, but it came out on a shuddering breath of pleasure as he splayed his fingers possessively over her back. And this time something had changed. She was no longer eighteen years old, with a watchful mother lurking around in the house and a man who almost didn’t trust himself to touch her for fear that he would lose control. He was certainly trusting himself to touch her now.

She felt her knees weakening, so that instead of wrenching herself away from him she sank inexorably against him. It felt as if every taut muscle and sinew was imprinted against her. A body like rock and skin like silk—when had she learned to find that particular combination so utterly irresistible?

‘Damn you,’ she managed indistinctly. ‘Oh, damn you, Cesare di Arcangelo!’

‘But you don’t want to damn me,’ he taunted.

‘Yes, I do,’ she returned, and wondered how her voice could sound so reedy.

His gaze raked over her face and read the stark hunger in the emerald brilliance of her eyes. ‘You want this,’ he grated harshly. ‘We both want this.’

She told herself she would have denied it—but she would never know. Because the answer she had begun falteringly to frame was obliterated by the heady power of his kiss as he drove his mouth down hard on hers. And was this so very wrong? To give in to something it had nearly killed them to deny themselves in the past?

Hard and punishingly, he plundered her lips—and never had a kiss so overwhelmed him, leaving him weak and dizzy, like a man who had dragged himself out of the water after swimming too long.

Was that groan his? And that sigh—was that his too?

But even while his big body shuddered with unstoppable desire his response angered him. Which buttons did she always press which so weakened him—he, a man who neither needed nor wanted anyone? His anger transmuted itself into a desire to show her exactly that. To give her a coldly efficient demonstration of his sexual powers.

He dragged his mouth away from hers and brushed it over her neck. Her head tipped back as he did so, and the ponytail of her fiery hair dangled behind her. He wrapped it around his wrist like a bright, silken rope. His other hand reached for her breast, splaying possessively over the silk-covered curve and feeling the nipple peak and harden beneath his questing fingers.

‘Cesare!’ she cried.

‘What is it, cara? Is that good?’

‘It’s…It’s…Oh, Cesare.’ She wanted to call him darling—her darling—her sweet and wonderful and beautiful darling—Cesare. But he wasn’t her darling, was he? Not any more. He was just a proud and angry man who was setting her on fire with the mastery of his touch.

‘I should have done this years ago,’ he ground out, and pushed her back against the table, brushing aside all the papers and sliding her bottom onto the cleared space, scarcely aware of what he was doing, only that he was being driven on by a power greater than himself. ‘And then I could have rid myself of your face. Rid myself of your pale, beautiful body. Taken the memory of you and screwed it up into a tiny ball and tossed it onto the fire.’

That didn’t sound like affection—it sounded like the very opposite. Almost as if he despised her. Resented her. It should have killed her desire stone-dead—so why was it only escalating? ‘Maybe you should—’

‘Should what?’

‘Stop what you’re doing,’ she breathed.

‘But you don’t want me to stop, do you?’

‘Cesare—’

‘Do you? You would kill me if I stopped, wouldn’t you, my haunting green-eyed witch? You would rake those talons down over my bare back and draw blood, and then you would suck it off, like a vampire.’

‘Yes! No!’ No—no, of course she didn’t want him to stop, and the visual imagery of his words almost made her faint. He was right. She had wanted this to happen since for ever, and even before that. ‘Do it,’ she whispered. ‘Do it and get it over with. And then leave me with the peace that you so obviously crave, too.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he vowed furiously. ‘I intend to.’

The skirt was tricky, but there wasn’t a skirt in the world which would have defeated Cesare di Arcangelo. Never had his experienced hands trembled so much. He rucked it up over her knees, and then further still, to reveal hold-up stockings clinging to pale thighs, and he sucked in a ragged breath, his resolve almost leaving him, but not quite.

Now he could see the fine triangle of lace which hinted at the soft red-gold tangle of hair beneath, and he touched her there with ruthless precision—lightly grazing his finger against her moist heat so that she cried out.

‘Shut up!’ he bit out. ‘We don’t want any of the secretaries coming in. There is only going to be one woman coming, and it is going to be you, my beauty.’

‘Oh, Cesare,’ she whispered helplessly.

He skated his fingers over the cool silk of her inner thigh and she writhed restlessly, impatiently—Cesare knew then that he had her completely in his power, but that he must use that power wisely.

For once he gave her the orgasm her body was so badly craving might she not just turn around and tell him to go to hell?

His fingers stilled and she groaned.

Or would it make her more compliant if he satisfied her now?

He needed her co-operation just as badly as he wanted to have sex with her if his scheme were to succeed. Wouldn’t leaving her wanting him more make her much more acquiescent to his wishes? For hunger was one of life’s great motivators, and sexual hunger the most powerful of all…

He thought of all the times he had pulled back from the brink that long, hot summer, and it gave him the strength to resist pulling her panties right off and plunging into her there and then.

But she writhed her hips again, giving a little whimpering sound of something fast approaching pain, and Cesare knew that she was past the point of no return. His smile was cruel and triumphant as he acted quickly, swiftly disentangling from her to stride across the room and lock the door. And then he came back and began to unbutton her blouse, and suddenly his triumph became a kind of submission.

‘Oh, cara,’ he groaned as he peeled away the silk to reveal the twin thrust of her lush breasts encased in pure white lace. Like a virgin, he thought helplessly, and bent his head to suckle her through the lace, feeling her buck wildly beneath him.

Blindly, he felt for her again, his hand sliding up her skirt and finding her damp warmth, and suddenly he wanted to taste it. Taste her. He tugged at her panties and she lifted her bottom as he edged them down, over her knees and past her ankles, until they dropped to the floor.

She was positioned perfectly, he realised as he began to trace the tip of his tongue up over her stockings to where lace became skin and then beyond, where the skin was softest of all and exquisitely sensitive. And then the folds themselves—moist, warm, secret entrances to her most honeyed treasure. He felt the tip with a touch so light it was almost a whisper, and he felt her little shudder of disbelief. He moved his tongue, curling the very edge of it around her in a rapid little circular movement which had her groping wildly for his shoulders, tangling her fingers frantically in his hair and crying his name out until he shushed her.

Even before he felt a rush of sweet moistness against his lips he could sense her release, and he held her hips while she began to shudder against his mouth. And then he moved away to take her in his arms, pressing his fingers hard against her while she convulsed around them, and he kissed away her wild cry until—to his astonishment—the cry became real. And tears, great shimmering tears, began to roll down her cheeks. He felt them mingling with their merged mouths—so many different flavours of her—and heard the choking little noises she made as she tried to recover herself.

He drew back from her, his black eyes hooded—for he never trusted women’s tears. They turned them on and off at will, as weapons of manipulation, that was all. As a deterrent they could not have come at a better time, though, for they stilled his own sexual hunger so that he was able to rein it in—a feat of self-control which few other men would have been able to manage under the circumstances.

‘You cry?’ he demanded. ‘I do not please you?’

It was an absurd question to ask—for surely he must have known that he had? Sorcha felt hopeless—helpless, shaky and insecure, and completely out of her depth—as if he had scraped away the top layer of skin and left her raw and vulnerable, unsure what to do next. She shook her head.

He smoothed her hair away from her damp face and frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘That…That…’

She looked almost shy, he realised. Shy?

‘What?’

She felt the blush wash upwards from her neck and she opened her eyes, biting her lip. ‘It was just…Oh! With your tongue…Well, I mean, I’ve never…’

He held her still. Were his ears deceiving him. ‘Never?’ he demanded shakily.

She shook her head.

For a moment Cesare stilled, and then he buried his face in her hair, closing his eyes. It was like music to his ears, though he scarcely dared to believe it. Had she hungered for him so badly over all these years that there had been no other man for her?

He slid his arms around her waist and levered her back up, smoothing her hair and looking into her eyes. ‘You’re trying to tell me you’re a virgin?’

There was a split-second silence, and Sorcha was so tempted to lie. To tell him what he really wanted to hear—and wouldn’t that make it much easier to bear? Then the way that she’d reacted might have been a bit more understandable—if she’d loved and wanted and waited all that time for him to make love to her then who could blame her for what she had just allowed to happen?

But she couldn’t lie. Not to Cesare. And certainly not about something as important as that. She knew how highly he rated purity—wasn’t it the main reason he had asked her to marry him?

‘No, I’m not a virgin,’ she said quietly.

Now she had made him into a fool! Or had he only himself to blame for the sudden leap of hope he had felt? As if she wouldn’t have had a long line of lovers…not when he knew how instantly she reacted to a man’s touch.

His mouth curved. ‘Your lovers must not have been good lovers,’ he drawled. ‘If they did not know how much a woman likes to be eaten.’

‘You are disgusting!’ she breathed.

‘You weren’t saying that a minute ago.’

Distractedly, she tugged at her skirt and straightened her blouse over her swollen breasts. It was like waking up from a dream when she hadn’t even realised she’d been asleep.

What the hell would he think of her now?

Yet he had started it—set the ball rolling with that almost punishing kiss. And you let him. Egged him on. Incited him in a way which was almost wanton. Was it any excuse to say that she hadn’t been able to stop herself? That once she had felt Cesare’s lips on hers it had been like falling down a well straight into paradise?

She ran her tongue over her parched lips. ‘That should never have happened,’ she said hoarsely.

‘Shouldn’t it?’

Briefly, she closed her eyes. ‘Not at the office!’

Cesare bit back a little murmur of satisfaction. The location had only added to its allure—but it was neither the time nor the place to tell her that her sudden capitulation to his kiss and its subsequent repercussions had been among the most erotic things to happen to him in a lifetime of erotic situations. That piece of knowledge would make her a little too powerful, and he liked to be the one with all the power.

And what was it about her that she should weave such magic over him even now? Because his desire for her had eaten away at him over the years? Or because she was so unexpectedly responsive? He swallowed down the bitter taste of jealousy—for that would not further his cause. He wanted her, and he intended to have her, and angry accusations about the men before him would not help his cause. And why should he feel jealousy over a woman for whom he felt nothing?

‘And what about you?’ she whispered, suddenly aware of how selfish she must seem—as if her own pleasure was the only thing which counted. This might not be a love affair made in heaven, but Cesare must be going out of his mind with frustration. ‘Don’t you…? Don’t you…want…?’

‘Sorcha—do not look so fraught. Let us acknowledge what we have—the chemistry between us is incredibile,’ he murmured. ‘Of course I want you—but I do not want our first time to be marred by a lack of time. By wondering if the phone will ring or one of the secretaries will knock on the door. Yes?’ He lifted her onto the ground, enjoying the scarlet flush to her cheeks. He lifted her chin with his finger. ‘Yes?’ he said again.

His words only reinforced how stupidly she had behaved—without even a thought of what this could do to her career. This was the career she had sacrificed so much for, was it? She could afford to throw it away—along with her self-respect—just because sexy Cesare di Arcangelo had touched her?

She pushed his arm away. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered.

‘Crazy?’ He gave a slow smile. ‘That is not the definition I would have used, mia bella. It was stupore—amazing. And it is going to be amazing again. In fact, it’s going to happen in my hotel room tonight. You know it is.’

He silenced her protest with a finger placed over the soft cushion of her lips, and she could smell her own raw scent on him and her eyes closed helplessly.

And when he took the finger away, she did not argue with him.