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

Sorcha stared at him, and then started laughing. ‘I can’t believe that a sophisticated man of the world just came out with something as crass as that!’ But her laughter died when she saw the sudden dark look of intent on his face.

‘In the bedroom a man is just a man, cara mia—and his response is rather more…primitive. And that is the double-edged sword—because the kind of man who turns you on is precisely the kind of man who will not tolerate your need for independence and freedom.’

‘Cesare…’ She wanted to say Don’t. But she couldn’t, because her body was craving his once more. And maybe he was right—maybe she was doomed to want what she could never have. An alpha-man who could never accept the woman she really was.

‘Nothing to say, cara?’ Luxuriously, he splayed his hands over the silken globes of her bottom and bent his mouth to her ear. ‘Then let me say it for you…In the end, all the things you claim to want count for nothing, because you cannot resist the demands of your body. And though the spirit is willing, the flesh is very weak. If I had asked you objectively whether you wished to find yourself in my bed, you would have answered no—and yet here you are. It must distress you sometimes to acknowledge that your sexual drive is so strong.’

She stared up at him, the hurt shimmering in her eyes. ‘You think I react like this with every man? That I let anyone do what you did to me in the office this afternoon?’

A slow smile of satisfaction spread over his face. ‘You mean it is just me?’ he murmured.

Sorcha felt as if she’d walked into a silken trap and he had nearly tricked her into giving him the answer he wanted.

Suddenly she wanted to hurt him back—to lash out at him the way he’d been doing ever since he’d come back into her life.

‘You want to slot me in as yet another of your damned stereotypes, don’t you?’ she stormed. ‘Where once I was your precious virgin, now I’m a loose woman. But how loose? That is the question. How many men will you decide I’ve slept with, Cesare? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?’

‘Stop it, Sorcha,’ he said suddenly, as the mental pictures her angry words conjured up became unbearable.

‘Then stop judging me by your archaic standards! Do you want to know how many?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t?’

His eyes glittered. ‘I just want to know if any of them were as good as me.’

She stared at him. ‘You are unbelievable.’

‘So I’m told. I’ll take that as a no.’ He kissed her and then lifted his head, an arrogant thrill curving his lips as he stared down at her rumpled, rosy beauty. ‘I want to see you smile. Ah, that is better.’ He stroked his hand down over her waist and felt her shiver. ‘Now I’m going to make love to you. And then…’

Sorcha swallowed as he traced his tongue along the curve of her jaw. He was tormenting her, teasing her, and yet she didn’t want him to stop it, because his soft cajoling was more enticing than anything else. ‘Then?’ she whispered.

Cesare touched the tip of his tongue to her ear. ‘I think we must discuss the campaign.’

Sorcha stared at him.

‘I’ve made an appointment for you to see an old friend of mine,’ he murmured. ‘He has an exhibition starting in London.’ His eyes glinted. ‘He used to be one of the world’s most famous photographers until he gave it up. But he’s agreed to do this job as a favour. It is,’ he finished with satisfaction, ‘a very great honour.’

For a moment he might as well have been speaking in his native Italian. Sorcha jerked her head away and blinked at him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The new face of Whittakers. You.’ He nodded to himself.

She sat upright in bed, bright hair streaming down over her bare breasts, suddenly finding that rage was a far easier emotion to live with than willing surrender. ‘Excuse me, but I don’t actually remember agreeing to do it.’

‘Really?’ He slid his hand between her legs. ‘I thought you just had.’

Sorcha covered his hand with hers and halted its sensuous progress. ‘Let’s make one thing clear, Cesare,’ she said. ‘The sex is separate. I’m with you now because I want to be. Not because I’m allowing myself to be seduced into agreeing to have my photo taken.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you’re refusing to do the job?’

She gave him a demure smile. Oh, but she was enjoying this. Why didn’t some enterprising person write a book on how empowering it was to defy a man who thought it his right to issue commands and have them instantly obeyed?

‘That’s not what I’m saying at all, Cesare,’ she said patiently. ‘I’ll do it because I can see the sense in it. And if it works I’ll be the first to pat you on the back—since that is so clearly what you like. But my decision has absolutely nothing to with your skill as a lover.’ She saw the incredulous look in his black eyes and resisted a smile of triumph. ‘And now—if you don’t mind—I’d like you to drive me home.’ She slid her legs over the side of the bed in a graceful movement which he followed with a kind of helpless hunger.

‘Home?’ he repeated, in a voice of strained disbelief.

‘Please.’

‘Do you mind telling me why?’ he demanded.

Hearing the outrage in his voice, Sorcha lifted her head and steeled herself to meet the hot and sensual challenge which sizzled from his black eyes, reminding herself that sex appeal as powerful as Cesare’s was a very dangerous thing. It made you want to mould yourself against his silken olive skin and be made love to until the stars faded from the sky. But that would be a disaster—and a recipe for tip-tilting her emotions so much that she wouldn’t be able to think straight. And wasn’t it bad enough already?

She recognised that she was still vulnerable around him. That just because she had had mind-blowing sex with him it didn’t mean her heart had been granted some sort of special immunity from his spell. ‘We’ll have to be careful,’ she said.

Cesare’s eyes narrowed. ‘Careful?’

Sorcha bit her lip. Did he think she was talking about contraception? Was that the only level his mind operated on? ‘I want to keep this secret,’ she elaborated. ‘I don’t want anyone finding out, and I assume that you don’t either.’

‘Oh, do you?’ he questioned dangerously.

She had thought that this would please him. But the glitter in his eyes did not look like pleasure, and the steely note underpinning his stern voice did not sound like pleasure. ‘Surely you agree with me, Cesare? For one thing it’s highly unprofessional for two people working together to be…’ She struggled to think of a suitable description, but the only one which came to mind wasn’t even true. ‘Intimate.’

There was a pause as he weighed up her words. ‘But that’s not the real reason you want to keep it secret, is it, Sorcha?’ he asked softly. Yet inside Cesare was reeling. He was the one who usually laid down conditions within a relationship. Never before had a woman dared to impose her rules on him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

For a moment there was another silence. ‘No.’

He raised his dark brows. ‘So, are you going to enlighten me, cara?’

And—despite all her intentions—Sorcha suddenly found that it took a lot of courage to articulate her fears, to face up to the truth, no matter how bitter the reality.

‘Well, your position here is only temporary, and therefore if we embark on an affair it isn’t destined to last—it’s just a short-lived pleasure. We don’t want anyone building it up into something it isn’t.’ She shrugged. ‘And we don’t want other people projecting emotions on us when it finishes. If they don’t know about it—they can’t.’

‘You really have this all worked out, don’t you?’ he said admiringly.

‘Kind of.’ What choice did she have? What other way to protect herself against certain heartbreak?

She bent over to pick up her discarded bra and Cesare quickly shut his eyes in erotic agony. Was she deliberately tormenting him? Sliding the filmy lace garment over her breasts with all the sensual show of a stripper?

With a simmering fury he climbed out of bed, feeling as if she had wrong-footed him yet again.

‘So really,’ he said slowly, ‘this strategy of yours is designed to thwart any hurt pride?’

Sorcha nodded, turning away from the temptation of his magnificent naked body. ‘Surely you can understand that, Cesare?’

Pride? Oh, yes—he could understand that. He knew the pain and the comfort it could bring. If pride were a degree course at college, then Cesare would have picked up a first in it.