Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.

He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’

CHAPTER FIVE

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.