A Savage Betrayal

Sharply disconcerted by the even less anticipated response he was now making, Mina licked her dry lips. ‘I——’

‘You told me quite deliberately, you shameless…’ With a seething hiss, Cesare clenched his even white teeth and bit back whatever he had been about to call her. ‘You know how much I want you. You just stuck on a pricetag!’

Mina almost choked in an effort to swallow. Cesare had withstood that farrago of gruesome lies about her lover in the country? He might be within a death-defying inch of reaching out and choking the life out of her for her apparent promiscuity and greed but, on the brink of murder or otherwise, he was ready to embark upon financial negotiation for her sexual favours.

Mina had never been more appalled or more shattered. It was not a compliment, but Cesare wanted her that much? He had been so cool, so controlled last night. This afternoon he was neither. She had never seen him out of control before. Involuntarily she was fascinated by the play of vibrant, strong emotions across his rawly handsome features. He was fighting a very close fight between a desire to kill her and a desire to—oh!

A flush of heat prickling across her skin, every muscle tightening, Mina dredged her attention from the explicit sexuality of the all-male gaze roaming hotly over her.

‘I don’t think I’m really your type,’ she muttered weakly, beginning to wonder if she belonged in an asylum.

‘Someday, somehow, perhaps when I have sated this obscene craving for your body, I will take this out on your hide,’ Cesare swore, like someone making a blood oath over a grave. ‘I will punish you for this filthy negotiation that reduces me to the level of an animal!’

Dry-mouthed on the feeling that she had foolishly unleashed a whole lot more than she could handle in that brooding Sicilian temperament, Mina backed to the window, still refusing to look at him, not trusting herself, not trusting him, feeling with every fibre of her body the passion flaming reckless fingers of fire into the atmosphere between them. ‘Cesare…I didn’t mean to——’

‘To think I could have saved myself from this,’ he grated. ‘The first day when you walked into that interview I decided I could not possibly employ a woman whom I wanted to strip and fling onto the nearest bed!’

Helplessly her head flew up. She couldn’t believe her ears.

‘I gave you a nightmare interview…and you took it,’ Cesare condemned with lingering disbelief at such unfeminine strength of will and staying power.

‘You were trying to scare me off?’ Mina questioned in a tone of revelation.

‘I was a fool. I gave you the job.’

Mina’s mouth curved downwards. He had been lusting after her from the start but he hadn’t shown it. He had played a waiting game, doubtless entertaining himself with the prospect of her willing and grateful surrender at the end of his little game. Wham-bam, but not thank you, ma’am.

She had been as naïve as a lamb skipping into the slaughterhouse and she was exceedingly tempted to demand to know why he hadn’t taken precautions. Considering that she had dissolved into mindless joy at his first kiss and he had been the experienced partner, she was still astounded by his reckless disregard for the consequences. Only then did it occur to her, for the very first time, that where Susie was concerned she had absolutely no regrets about that night. She could not imagine life without her daughter.

‘But now, at least, I know the kind of woman I am dealing with!’ Cesare asserted with driven savagery.

Dragged back to the present, she discovered that Cesare was now so close that she could feel the heat of him. Her spine was already in contact with the window behind her. ‘You know nothing about me!’ she protested shakily.

‘You excite me—what else is important?’ he said thickly, regarding her with sizzling intensity from the vantage point of his greatly superior height.

Her breasts were stirring, swelling. A heady languor was sweeping through her limbs, a betraying twist of high-voltage sexual awareness curling low in the pit of her stomach. But she fought every treacherous sensation with all her might, wild colour burnishing her openly dismayed face. ‘You don’t even like me…you called me a thief and a confidence trickster!’ she gasped. ‘How can you still——?’