Power: Marchese's Forgotten Bride / Ruthlessly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded

‘I remembered you while I was kissing you,’ he returned huskily, ‘and it was the sweetest thing I’ve tasted in years.’

Cassie stopped, her narrow shoulders wrenching backwards so her hair slithered like a silk curtain between her shoulder blades. ‘Only an unprincipled rat would select that particular memory to mention,’ she iced out.

Then she walked out, taking a teeth-clenching pleasure in pulling the door shut behind her with a slam she hoped doubled the pain in his head!

She came back to find him still stretched out on the sofa where she had left him but his jacket and tie were missing, which told her he’d attempted to get up, only to end up having to lie back down again.

Feeling that same stab of concern attack her insides as she walked across to where he lay, she stood trying to fight it for a good thirty seconds, then gave in with a sigh, and sat down next to him to reach out and place her fingers against his brow.

‘You’re cold,’ she murmured worriedly.

‘Never.’ His mouth gave another one of those amused twitches. ‘I am Italian. We don’t do cold.’

‘Be serious.’ She frowned. ‘Perhaps you have a virus or—’

‘Mothering me, cara?’ he taunted softly. ‘If I remain lying here, looking pale and pathetic, will you soften your hostility towards me enough to listen to what I have to say?’

Cassie ignored the taunting tone. ‘Why do you think you’re feeling like this?’

Catching hold of her hand, Sandro lifted it away from his brow, long fingers enclosing her fingers, the dark, curling sweep of his eyelashes rising upwards to reveal the cavern-darkness of his eyes, now swept by fine golden flecks she’d only ever been able to see in them when she was this close. Those golden flecks gave the darkness life, added a glittering strength and shimmering vitality that was at odds with his pallor and his physically weakened state. And they held her captive, as they’d always been able to hold her captive. He was unfairly—too dangerously—attractive. He possessed the kind of dominating height and masculine body that probably turned most women weak at the knees. Yet, for all of his other assets, those eyes had been the pinpoint centre of Cassie’s attraction for him from the first time she’d looked into them. And they still had the same power to draw her in, closing down her brain to a hazy, mesmerised state which made her feel totally exposed and hopelessly vulnerable to his magnetic pull.

‘Because…’ he said, the low, gentle husk of his voice barely registering in her stalled head, ‘six years ago I was involved in a serious car accident which put me into a coma for three weeks and wiped my memory clean of something like six weeks of my life. Until tonight, that is, when I saw you standing across a crowded room and things started to come back to me in short, sharp, lightning flashes… and I want to kiss you again so badly I ache…’

Still gazing into those gold-flecked eyes, still trapped by their beauty and their mesmerising power over her, Cassie didn’t move or speak. She didn’t even breathe or blink. Then his words finally—finally sank in and on a strangled choke she wrenched her fingers free from his and launched to her feet.

The next thing she knew she was gasping for breath and staring down at her front, now dripping with ice-cold water which had splashed all over her because she had forgotten she was still holding the glass.

‘Now look wh-what you’ve done,’ Cassie shivered out. ‘How—how dare you speak such a wicked pack of lies to me?’ She refused to so much as acknowledge that last bit he’d said.

A soft mutter and Sandro was rising up from the sofa, the speed with which he went from pale and pathetic to energy-packed giant towering over her enough to spin her already dizzy head.

‘Stop accusing me of lying,’ he said, removing the now-empty glass from her nerveless fingers.

Cassie was trying to hold icy, wet, black silk away from her breasts without losing her dignity. She’d also soaked her face and the sides of her hair—water was dripping off the end of her nose and her chin. On a growl of impatience Sandro took possession of her wrist again, using it to haul her like a piece of quivering baggage back across the room and into the square hallway then across it into another room.

It was a huge white space of a bathroom with unforgiving lighting that set Cassie blinking as Sandro threw a switch. Grabbing a towel off the rail, he tossed it at her.

‘Dry your front,’ he instructed, then picked up a smaller towel and stepped up close to use it on her dripping face.

By now the water had warmed to her body heat and she was feeling calmer though no less shaken by what he’d said. ‘What is it about you that makes you say these things?’ she fired at him fiercely as she pressed the towel to her front.

‘Think about it.’ His fingers took possession of her chin to lift it upwards so he could dab the water from her cheeks. ‘What’s in it for me to make up a story as off-the-wall as this?’

He was right—what was there in it for him? ‘You mean—you really don’t remember me… at all?’

He drew the black arches of his eyebrows together. ‘The way you put it a few minutes ago probably described it best—I remember you but I don’t remember you.’ The slanted half-smile he offered was as rueful as the answer itself. ‘You are playing the starring role in some knock-out flashbacks, Cassie Janus. They hit me like a door that flings open in my head then slams shut again before I can get a proper glimpse at what is being shown to me. A couple of them have hit me like lightning bolts,’ he grimaced, ‘one of which stretched me out like a corpse at your feet.’

The mention of his corpse made Cassie shudder.

‘You need to get out of that wet dress,’ he said briskly, misreading the shudder for a shiver.

‘No, I’m all right. Just a bit w-wet,’ she dismissed impatiently.

He’d explained it all so casually but really there was nothing casual about it. He didn’t remember her but he did remember her. The whole confusing evening began to make a mad kind of sense.

‘H-how badly injured were you?’ She was frowning again, already scanning him for signs of injury, as the idea of Sandro lying in a car wreck somewhere, hurt and unconscious, was so horrible to her that she couldn’t stop herself from checking him out. The olive-toned skin stretched over his perfect bone structure with no signs of scarring or puckers or dints anywhere that she could detect. Dropping her gaze lower, she even checked out the unblemished skin at his throat then was scanning his arms and his chest as if she were equipped with X-ray vision and could see through his shirt. She did not notice how still he had gone, or that the long fingers holding up her chin had lifted away and now hovered a bare inch from her cheek, or that his eyes had narrowed.

Then she heard his low and very husky, ‘If it helps you, cara, just say the word and I will take my clothes off so you can check me out more thoroughly….’

CHAPTER FIVE

CASSIE JUST FORGOT how to breathe.

He wasn’t joking. He didn’t even sound sardonic. A fire leapt into life deep down in her abdomen as belatedly she picked up the tension possessing his very still frame.

Sexual tension.

Looking up, she saw it burning out of the centre of his eyes like a flickering amber signal, felt its fierce heat prickle the surface of her skin, turning her own eyes a darker shade of green.

She wanted to say something cutting and dismissive—needed to say it—but the words wouldn’t form in her head. He’d told her only a few minutes ago that he ached to kiss her again and she’d chosen to ignore the warning; now she felt like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of the car that was about to run her over. She parted her lips to utter a protest but made the mistake of running the tip of her tongue over the quivering, damp surface of her upper lip. As if he’d been standing there waiting for exactly that kind of sign from her, Sandro uttered a groan which seemed to scrape the very walls of his chest then moved his hovering fingers, spearing them into the silken fall of her hair to hold her head.

It was like a rabbit hit by a head-on collision. If he’d let go of her Cassie knew she would have folded down in a puddle of her own shattered emotions as he lowered his head and took driving possession of her mouth.

Nothing after that moment made a single ounce of sense to her as pure sensation took her over, springing life into every nerve-end to fling her like a fool to a place she’d believed she never wanted to visit again.

Why with him—why this man? she tried asking herself as her fingers released their grip on the towel so they could leap up to clutch at his shirtfront, her fingernails digging into warm, solid muscle as she gave herself up to his hot, deep, hungry kiss.

One single night spent in his arms six long years ago and her body remembered him with this strength and intensity. He felt so big and strong and so desperately familiar to her—as if she’d never been parted from him at all! Her heart was pounding madly, her head was spinning, her senses surging wildly out of control. It was she who gave in to the overwhelming force of it by abandoning herself to the hardening length of his long body and straining against him.

Sandro was trying to fight it. He should not be doing this, he tried telling himself. It was neither fair nor right. And he still felt really rough, though he had been trying to hide it. He felt as if his nice, tidy world was being ransacked by this beautiful creature called Cassie Janus, and he didn’t need the added invasion of this ravaging race of sexual desire to cause him yet more havoc right now.

He even tried to draw back from it, tried to push her out to a safer distance. But this had been an evening of uncontrolled experiences, he admitted as her fingers stroked along the width of his shoulders then buried themselves in his nape so she could cling more tightly to him. With a throaty growl which did not sound very lover-like he closed his arms more firmly around her and lifted her right off her feet so he could delve deeper into the kiss.

He felt the hard tips of her breasts pierce his chest through his shirt and make an instant hot-wire connection with the burn taking place between his hips. Like that, he turned and carried her out of the bathroom. Like that, he found his way by sheer instinct into his bedroom and rolled them both down on the bed. He’d never experienced anything this powerful with any woman. He’d never wanted one as much as this. As she arched beneath his resting weight he shifted sideways and felt the urgent tremor in his fingers as he reached behind her to deal with the zip on her dress.

The structured bodice slithered down her writhing body, exposing the creamy white thrust of her breasts. Cooler air hit her heated skin and at last Cassie made a wild snatch for sanity, wrenching her pink, bruised, kiss-swollen mouth free so she could push out a trembling protest—

‘Sandro, no, we can’t do this!’

She didn’t think he heard her. There was something almost bemused about the intense blackness in his eyes as he honed in on her exposed breasts. She squirmed beneath him as he folded his long fingers around one smooth, full mound then lowered his mouth to capture its taut, screamingly sensitive peak. Even as she cried out he was driving her so wild with pleasure she could only manage a grateful little whimper when eventually he reclaimed her mouth. Within seconds she was lost in it, drugged by her own uncontrollable desire for more of him—and more.

His shirt fell apart with the aid of her own urgent fingers, her hands feverish and greedy as they made contact with hair-roughened pectoral muscles moulding his powerful frame, and he shuddered, murmuring something hot into her mouth. The strength of her own hunger shocked her even as she sank into it like some sex-mad slave. She stopped trying to fight what she was feeling, she stopped trying to ignore the wild sensations he was creating as he stroked her skin. Desperate to touch him wherever she could do, she just couldn’t keep still, slender limbs tense and restless as they moved against him. She was vaguely stunned to realise that all their clothes had disappeared. When he ran a seeking caress down the taut flatness of her stomach and stroked those long fingers into the hot, moist crevice between her thighs she just lost it altogether, gasping and trembling and urging him on with anxious strokes of her own restless fingers and helpless little words of need he answered in rich, dark Italian breathed like fire onto her receptive skin.

And she knew—still knew she should be stopping this, if only she had the strength of will. But she didn’t have that strength and his sinfully pleasurable caresses were drawing her senses together in a twisting, squirming coil that forced her to whisper, ‘Oh, God, Sandro, please…’

He arrived above her like a dark knight powered by a desire that slammed her hectic breath back down into her lungs. His eyes were burning flames of passion, the flesh covering his face tightly drawn. And his breathing was fast, his heartbeat uneven, the groan he uttered just before he recaptured her mouth more a warning that his control had fled. He drove into her with a single, long, deep stroke that dragged a quivering cry from her and a shuddering groan from him.

‘Per Dio,’ he groaned as her tender muscles stretched then tightened in a sensual ripple along his full length.