Mistress To a Latin Lover: The Sicilian's Defiant Mistress / The Italian's Pregnant Mistress / The Italian's Mistress

Maximos was huge, thickly muscled, a hundred times stronger than her but he wasn’t violent, didn’t need to resort to violence. Not when his touch had been so effective—enslaving. He’d owned her, controlled her just by knowing her body, knowing her response. One touch on her breast, one kiss on the side of her neck, one leg between her own and she was gone. Lost. His.

Now with his hand wrapped around her arm he was dragging her out of the room, dragging her like a madman down the narrow corridor to an even narrower, darker hall at the back.

They turned a corner, and then another and they were alone, very alone, in a very dim corridor.

Maximos pressed her against the wall, pressed his body into hers, his knee parting her legs so wide she felt splayed, exposed. “He’s the wrong man for you, Cass. The absolute wrong man.”

“No,” she flung back even as his body covered hers. “You were the wrong man. But this time I have it right.”

Maximos leaned hard against her, his chest roughly crushing her breasts, his shoulders pinning her to the wall. “He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”

“And you do?”

“A hell of a lot better, yes!”

She laughed out loud, and her laughter was like pouring gas oline on a fire. His eyes blazed, his body seething with rage. He was too angry. She’d never seen him like this. Never seen him anything close to this but she wasn’t afraid, just defiant. “He warned me about you. Emilio said you’d say horrible things.”

“He’s playing you, Cass. Playing you just to get back at me.”

“Or maybe I’m playing him, because I love being alone with him…naked with him.”

Maximos’s control shattered. His hand snaked into her hair, grabbing thick strands close to her scalp. “How is he in bed?”

“Fantastic. The most selfless, devoted lover you could ask for.”

“I hear a challenge in there.”

His hand wrapped tighter, twisting the long strands between his fingers. This was war. Out-and-out war. “You hear right.”

“There’s no way you could have with him what you had with me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. As you love reminding me, what we had was just sex, and I can get great sex from many different men.”

“Wrong. What we had was different.”

“Not that different.”

“Emilio couldn’t possibly give you what you really need.”

“Odd, because I’ve become his slave in the bedroom.”

She was dousing the fire with more and more gasoline, and Maximos’s anger scorched her, stunning in its strength and fury. He leaned into her, not with the shoulder bone but the muscle, and suddenly his hand covered her breast. “This was mine,” he said.

“Not anymore,” she retorted.

His hand slid down to cover her belly. “And this, this was mine.”

“It’s his now.”

“He doesn’t know how to touch you.”

“You’d be surprised,” she answered, tensing as he leisurely stroked her hip, then boldly put his hand between her legs, touching her intimately, possessively, his palm covering the apex of her thighs.

Maximos leaned closer still, his mouth near her ear. His deep voice rumbled suggestively through her. “And this was mine, most definitely all mine. Mine to do with as I pleased. However I pleased.”

The heat of his hand against the warm core of her sent shock waves through her. Her legs trembled. “No.”

But he didn’t remove his hand. He pressed his palm up, rocking the pad of his palm against her softness, against the growing dampness, rocking against the sensitive, small ridge where every nerve ending seemed to ache. “Say what you want, but I know you, Cass, I know he could never pleasure you, the way I know how to pleasure you.”

“Wrong. He pleases me more,” she said breathlessly, aware of his body covering hers, pinning her against the wall. He was big and hard and his stubble-roughened jaw scraped her brow. “He pleases me better.”

“You want me to make you suffer, don’t you?”

She was torn between fascination and fear. This wasn’t the Maximos who’d been her perfect, and very discreet, lover. He was like another man altogether, a man she’d suspected existed but hadn’t seen until now. “You can try.”

“Have you ever been unfaithful to him?”

The heat was growing inside her, consuming, destructive. Explosive. She felt wound tightly, too tightly. “No.”

“You’re getting close now.”

“Then let me go.”

“So you can run back into his bed?”

The idea of Emilio ever really touching her disgusted her. “Maximos.” Her voice broke, and she didn’t know what she wanted from him—love? Forgiveness? Mercy?

But he was in no mood for mercy and his name spoken with such desperation seemed to only push him beyond the point of reason.

He reached for the hem of her narrow skirt, grabbed at the fabric, bunching the black silk into folds to find her bare thigh beneath.

Her mouth parted in a silent gasp, desire flooding her, need and memory. And when his hand slid between her thighs to pluck aside the scrap of her thong panty, his palm pressed warm and hard against her body. Cass grabbed at him, grabbing for help, for relief, for something to explain the dark mad passion she’d fallen into.

The problem was, and always had been, that his touch made her feel. Not just physically, but emotionally. His touch made her want him, need him, love him. And as he rubbed his palm slowly across her, his fingers trailing, teasing, she shuddered. This shouldn’t be happening, this wasn’t supposed to be happening, yet he was right. He knew her, knew how to arouse her, control her with just a touch.

Her shudder riveted him, his gaze locked on her face, fixed on her parted lips, watching the tip of her tongue press against the edge of her teeth.

She felt helpless. And he knew it.

And he acted on it. Still watching her with that fierce possessive ownership he’d always displayed toward her, he caressed her along the seam of her, along the tender lips and then between she panted, overwhelmed by sensation.

He was teasing her, tracing her, toying with her and her legs buckled. She arched against his hand, against the maddening touch which reminded her of everything and yet gave too little.

And then he slowly slid his finger inside her, slowly drawing out the desire, building on the pleasure. More, she thought wildly, blindly, more.

But he wasn’t going to be rushed, and he refused to hurry. He touched her slowly, almost lazily and her skin beaded damp, her muscles clenched in concentration. She wanted more, needed more and she pressed herself forward, pressing against his hand.

A flicker of triumph shone in Maximos’s dark eyes and with a deep, deliberate stroke of his finger he showed her how she loved to be touched. Showed her that he knew her body better than she did. Showed her how much she still wanted him