An Enticing Debt to Pay

She was so responsive, inciting a surge of arousal that swamped all else. Blood roared in his veins, primal instinct taking over. His focus blurred, his mind racing frantically with the practicalities of getting her horizontal as soon as possible.

He nipped lightly at her ear lobe and she turned her head restlessly as if seeking his lips.

Triumph hummed through him as he pressed a kiss to the corner of her lush mouth.

One quick taste then he’d find that preposterous gilded sofa and treat them both to sexual release so intense it would shatter them. Already he was hard as a rock. Carrying her across the room would be torture but he wasn’t letting her go till he’d had his fill. Till they were both limp and the urgent hunger gnawing at his vitals was appeased.

His ears rang with the force of his blood rushing. He ignored it and tilted his head to take her mouth.

Except her eyes were open now and that dreamy expression had faded. Stark horror flared instead in those dark gold depths.

Jonas frowned. She wanted him. He knew it. He felt it with every muscle and sinew as she pressed herself against him. Yet—

The ringing sounded again. This time he realised it came from somewhere outside his head—the front door.

‘Let me go.’ Her voice was so hoarse he read her lips rather than heard her. Jonas blinked, trying to make sense of the abrupt shift in mood.

She pushed against him with both hands. ‘I said, let me go!’ Her gaze slid from his as if she couldn’t bear to look at him. Because he’d made her forget her little game of temptation? Because she’d been the victim of unexpected lust this time instead of the temptress?

Something soured his belly. Memory. Disillusionment. The realisation that despite his vaunted immunity he’d fallen hard and fast for what she offered: hot sex with a gold-digging opportunist.

Just like his father before him.

He released her so quickly she wobbled and he reached out a hand to steady her.

‘Saved by the bell,’ he murmured and watched heat flush her cheeks. Not for the life of him would he let her see how she’d knocked him for six. That was his private shame.

She knocked his hand away, rubbing her palm over the place he’d held her as if to erase his touch. But he wasn’t fooled by her show of antipathy. She’d lost control too. It was that latter truth that cut him to the core, tapping the long-dammed reservoir of fury so it finally broke free.

He watched her spin away from him, her steps uneven as she headed for the foyer. With each step he cursed himself for his weakness. He’d seen what she was. She’d told him. Yet he hadn’t been able to resist her.

‘If that was you being unaffected,’ he drawled, ‘I look forward to seeing what you’re like when you put a little effort into sex.’ He drew a slow breath, watching her stumble to a halt. ‘I was willing to test the waters to see how far you’d go. And I wasn’t disappointed.’

Her shoulders hunched but she didn’t turn around.

For a moment something like sympathy hovered. Jonas had a ridiculous urge to cross the room and pull her close to comfort her.

He shook his head.

What was it about Ravenna Ruggiero that got under his skin despite what she’d done?

Was there a family weakness after all? Something in the Deveson genes that made them putty in the grasping hands of the Ruggiero women?

He gritted his teeth against a howl of fury and, worse, disappointment that now he’d never have her in his arms again. He couldn’t trust himself with her. How sick was that?

He buried the knowledge behind a wall of disdain.

‘Do let me know, if you decide you have something to offer me after all. I might even consider being a little less discriminating just for the novelty of it.’

CHAPTER FOUR

RAVENNA STARED AT the mellow wood of the floor, wishing the old boards would part in a yawning void and suck her away into nothingness. Anything to escape the sarcastic lash of Jonas Deveson’s contempt.

As if she should be so fortunate! This past year there’d been no good luck in her life. Except the unexpected gift of the rest cure in Switzerland. But now it turned out that had an awful catch. An enormous debt to be paid.

And a big, ruthless debt collector to make sure she paid in blood.

She shivered, cold to the bone, yet her skin crawled with a clammy heat that matched the nausea twisting her insides. She fought it, refusing to be ill in front of him.

Could anything be more humiliating than this?

She felt sullied by him. It was far worse than facing a dressing-down by the head chef at work, whose explosive tirades were legend. As for the torments of her school years—they’d been nothing to this excruciating shame.

For this time every word was deserved. She’d behaved like some slut, eager for the touch of a man who despised her. For the first time she hadn’t behaved like the sensible, careful, self-contained woman she was.

She’d acted like a hormone-riddled stranger with no scruples or self-respect.

The doorbell rang again and she dragged herself into the foyer, propping herself against the wall with a shaking hand as she pressed the intercom.

‘Monsieur Giscard?’ The words were so faint she cleared her throat to try again. The response from below was garbled in ears that still thrummed with the pulse of arousal.

Nevertheless, she pressed the button to let the visitor in downstairs. Whoever it was, he couldn’t be more devastating than Jonas Deveson.

She felt his eyes on her. Her skin prickled and heat drilled her spine. She could pinpoint the exact place between her shoulder blades where that penetrating gaze scored her. If she found later that his laser-sharp gaze had scorched a hole in her jacket she wouldn’t be surprised.

Ravenna struggled to swallow the hard knot of emotion blocking her throat.

What had got into her to behave so utterly out of character?

Taking a deep breath, she tried to centre herself but instead inhaled the remnants of his tangy, hot citrus scent. It had impregnated her very pores.

Never in her life had attraction been like that—instantaneous and absolute. Consciously, to her thinking mind, there’d been no attraction—just fear and shock at his revelations, and a determination to divert his thunderous anger from her mother.

But something had happened when he’d touched her. Something unheralded.

She’d heard of animal attraction. She had some experience of desire.

But this... This had been a tsunami obliterating reason and doubt and anything like resistance. She’d stood like a rabbit spotlighted by a hunter, watching his eyes cloud with desire as he touched her. Excitement had stormed through her.

Part of her brain had screamed for her to move, to slap his hand away, but she’d stood, rooted to the spot, eager for more. When he’d bitten her neck in that delicate tasting, she’d gone up in flames.

How was it possible?

Brushing off male attention had never been hard. Yet she’d practically begged for more from him as carnal heat melted her insides and left her a quivering, pathetic wreck.

Where was her backbone? Her sense of self-preservation?

The doorbell rang and she stumbled forward. Her legs felt like melted wax and she fumbled at the door with shaking hands.