Notorious: Ruthlessly Bedded by the Italian Billionaire / Bound by the Marcolini Diamonds

‘I adapted to circumstances. Isn’t that what you wanted of me?’

‘You saw a chance to extract yourself from the situation and you took it,’ he fired at her.

‘I’m not what he wanted,’ she retorted fiercely. ‘I couldn’t be, could I? You should have foreseen that, Dante. You disappointed him.’

‘No. I have never disappointed my grandfather,’ he declared with vehement conviction. ‘One of his wishes didn’t come true. You don’t look like Antonio. That was unavoidable, but you can and will supply everything else he needs from you.’

‘I said I’d try.’

He crossed the room to where she stood at the foot of the bed, towering over her with intimidating power. ‘You were trying to twist your way out of this. Don’t try it again or I’ll make you pay for it.’ His eyes bored into hers. ‘Believe me, I’ll make you pay for it.’

She believed him.

He was as much tied to this deception as she was, and failure was unacceptable.

Dante Rossini didn’t fail.

The force of the man in such close proximity made her quake inside. It was like being blasted by an electric energy that jangled her nerves, kicked her heart into a faster beat, tore at her muscles, leaving them quivering. She stared back at him, refusing to let him see any weakness in her, silently fighting her lonely fight to survive him as well as everything else.

‘Nothing more to say?’ he mocked.

She swallowed convulsively, trying to get some control over her throat muscles. Her mouth was as dry as the Sahara Desert, making it impossible to speak, so she simply shook her head. He didn’t want to hear anything she might say, anyway.

The threatening tension on his face slowly relaxed. The laser-like heat in his eyes simmered down. His mouth actually quirked into an ironic little smile.

‘On the whole, you did quite well out there. Not the warm response I told you to give, but the emotional tears were good. Nonno was moved by them. He liked your independent stance, too.’

The approval, coming straight on the heels of his attack, turned Jenny’s mind to mush.

‘Just don’t hold that line too hard,’ he went on. ‘You’ve made your point. You’re not about to suck up to a grandfather who hasn’t been a grandfather to you. That’s okay. It’s an attitude he respects, but soften it with kindness. And courtesy.’

She nodded.

He huffed an exasperated sigh. His eyes snapped with annoyance. ‘We’re back to the silent treatment, are we?’

It goaded her into a challenging glare and reactivated her vocal chords. ‘Less grief for me if I remain a submissive doll who doesn’t buck your authority.’

‘Huh!’ he scoffed. ‘Submissive is the last word I’d apply to you! I’m not fool enough to believe something meek and mild resides in the fortress you’ve built around yourself. You can fly the white flag as much as you like but I know …’

He stepped closer, raising her tension level to screaming point. His hand gripped her chin, fingers pressing into the curve of her cheek, and his eyes were glittering with heat again, not angry heat, not threatening heat, more a very male sexual heat wanting supremacy over a woman. He was touching her, touching her aggressively, and she was paralysed with panic.

‘I know rebellion is seething behind it,’ he said with arrogant certainty. ‘And maybe the best way to quell it is to storm your defences and seduce you into wanting to stick with me.’

His fingers slid into her hair. His other arm scooped her body hard against his. She had no time to react with any physical or vocal protest. His mouth covered hers, and the shock of his kiss, of being enveloped by the heat and strength of his powerful body, completely robbed her of any resistance. He invaded her mind, possessed it with a host of sensations.

She’d never been kissed like this before, never been held by a man like him, never experienced such an explosion of excitement. His mouth ravished hers, his tongue sweeping over her palate, making it tingle with intense pleasure, driving her own tongue into a duelling response. He had read her character rightly. Submission was not in her nature. Every primitive instinct she had was suddenly triggered, dictating a need to fight back, to do to him what he was doing to her.

The self-discipline that had ruled her life for so long broke into an angry passion. He held her body by force. She flung her arms around his head, hands burrowing fiercely into his thick hair, holding him just as forcefully. Her lower body ground against his. Her breasts thrashed his chest. No control. Every action was driven by a wild urge to assert herself, not surrender to his dominance, make him feel what he was making her feel.

The arm around her back tightened, his hand pressing down, grasping the fleshy curve of her bottom, lifting her into intimate contact with the erection she had aroused. Part of her mind registered danger. The rest of it revelled in her power to seduce him out of his formidable control.

He’d taken her out of the life she knew. She wanted him to pay for that, screw up his puppet plan, storm him with crashing waves of feeling, drag the devil into the deep blue sea he’d plunged her into. Awash with incoherent emotion, she was barely aware of him moving, carrying her with him. His mouth was locked on hers, kissing with ravaging intensity. Only when he’d tumbled her backwards onto the bed, did it break away.

Her eyes snapped open. He was kneeling over her, breathing hard, a dark confusion on his face. Words flew off her tongue in a silky taunt. ‘Not what you wanted, Dante?’

His eyes blazed with the desire to crush her spirit, grind it so far down she’d be enslaved to his will. Never, she silently shot at him, exhilarated by the contest between them.

A knock on the door startled them out of the intense connection with each other. Dante cursed under his breath, backed off the bed, hauled her to her feet. ‘This will keep,’ he muttered savagely, releasing her to head for the door, putting respectable distance between them.

Jenny’s legs were too tremulous to walk anywhere. She sucked in air to get a blast of oxygen through her scattered brain and sat back down on the bed, needing recovery time and wanting to hide any crumpling of the duvet where she had lain on it. Her heart was pumping with horror at what she had almost done with Dante Rossini, horror at her own mad elation over it.

They were supposed to be cousins. She bit down on a bubble of hysterical laughter. If this deception fell apart it would be his fault. He’d started it. He’d forced it. And be damned if she’d take the blame for it!

Another knock on the door.

He opened it. ‘Anya?’ he said in a tone so cold, it automatically denied there’d been any boiling heat in this room.

Anya … the woman he usually housed in this suite for his sexual convenience … here to smooth away his travel fatigue.

The hysterical laughter bubbled up again and Jenny clamped down on it, pride insisting on an appearance of absolute decorum. She sat up straight, hands in her lap, her mind seething with curiosity over how Dante was going to handle this deception, dealing with his current girlfriend after he’d just been conducting a sexual assault on his cousin. Was he incredibly adept at switching himself on and off?

She was curious, too, about the type of woman who usually attracted him. No doubt someone as fabulous as him in the looks department, she thought cynically, determined not to feel in any way jealous. This was not her world and she wasn’t about to forget that reality.

‘Excuse me, Dante,’ Anya pleaded in a honeyed voice. ‘Some of my toiletries were left in the bathroom. I’ve come to collect them.’

She didn’t give him the chance to deny her entry, sliding into the room as she spoke, obviously keen to get a look at the cousin for whom she had been evicted from this suite. Anya Michaelson was a honey all over. Men probably flocked to her like bees. She had a glorious mass of silky blonde hair. Her figure was sensational, voluptuous curves barely encased in a bright yellow mini-dress. Perfect long legs gleamed as though they’d just been rubbed with scented oil. And the face she turned to Jenny was strikingly beautiful: flawless skin, stunning blue eyes, a full-lipped mouth with a very sexy pout.

‘Sorry to break in on you like this,’ she directed at Jenny, the blue eyes gobbling up every detail of her appearance, sharply assessing the attraction of the woman Dante was supposedly protecting. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

She was already crossing the room, heading for a door which had to lead to an ensuite bathroom.

‘Say hello to Isabella, Anya.’

The whip-like command from Dante stopped her in her tracks. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed apologetically. ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’ A row of perfect white teeth was flashed at Jenny. ‘Hello, Isabella. Don’t you love Capri?’

‘Not particularly,’ Jenny answered, bridling at the condescending tone.

‘Well, you’ve just arrived. I’m sure it will grow on you. Excuse me while I remove my things, won’t you? I expect we’ll be meeting properly over lunch.’ She threw an appeasing smile at Dante. ‘Pardon me, caro. A careless oversight by one of the servants, not being thorough in checking what might have been missed.’

‘Make sure you collect everything, Anya. I don’t want you returning,’ he said balefully.

She kissed her fingertips and tossed it at him, sashayed into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind her, not so much for an easy exit, Jenny thought, but to eavesdrop on any conversation in the bedroom.

No satisfaction for Anya on that score.

Jenny didn’t even look at Dante, let alone speak to him. She rose from the bed and, finding her legs much steadier now, strolled over to the glass doors on the other side of the room to him. Outside was another colonnaded walkway, shading the area between this wing of the villa and the stone wall running along the cliff edge, beyond it the sea. She pretended to take in the view, her mind ferociously engaged on far more internal territory.

The sexuality Dante had aroused in her was still tingling through her body, making it feel vibrantly alive. Part of her wanted to pursue this experience with him, but what self-respect was there in that? The blonde bombshell in the bathroom represented his world—the beautiful people with money to burn. No doubt he’d poured out his famous charm to acquire her.