His Virgin Bride: The Fiorenza Forced Marriage / Bought: For His Convenience or Pleasure? / A Night With Consequences

‘I won’t be changing my mind,’ Emma said, with perhaps not as much conviction as she would have liked. His evocative comments had unravelled her resolve to an alarming degree. Her body was on fire just thinking about the pleasure he was promising. She was in no doubt of his ability to be as good as his word. She could see the smouldering look in his dark eyes. She could still feel the imprint of his lips on hers. Her mouth was tingling even now, the tiny nerves beneath her skin leaping and jumping from the passionate pressure of his. What was it about this man that made her feel so out of control? Was it because she had decided he was off limits? Was some perverse part of her determined to have him in spite of her convictions?

He had made it more than clear what he wanted. He was attracted to her certainly, but only as a means to an end. Once he got what he wanted she would be discarded, just as he had discarded his numerous other mistresses.

It hurt Emma to realise how much she wanted it to be different. How had that happened in such a short space of time? She had hated him the first time she had met him and yet it was difficult to dredge up such intense feelings now. There was something about him that drew her in like a moth to a deadly flame. He intrigued her, he excited her and he made her feel things she had never felt before. She truly wondered if she would ever be the same now she had tasted his potent passion on her lips. Would every kiss she received from this point on be measured by the heat and fire of his? Would any future lover of hers fall short of his blistering benchmark? Would she always feel short-changed and frustrated as a result?

‘I’m going inside,’ she said, turning away again.

His hand stalled her. ‘Wait.’

Emma felt the steel bracelet of his fingers and suppressed a tiny shiver. She looked up at his face, her breath catching at the back of her throat at the intensity of his dark gaze as it meshed with hers. ‘I-I can’t do this, Rafaele…’ she said. ‘It’s not right.’

His thumb found her pulse, the drumbeat of her heart beating against his skin. ‘But you want to, don’t you, Emma?’ he asked softly.

Emma compressed her lips to stop them from trembling, her heart pumping so hard she could feel it against her sternum. It would be so easy to throw caution to one side and step into his arms. It would be so easy to press her still-swollen lips to the sculptured curve of his.

It would be all too easy to fall in love with him…

‘Go on, admit it,’ he said. ‘You want me just as much as I want you.’

She drew in a prickly breath. ‘I want a lot of things I can’t have, Rafaele,’ she said. ‘Wanting something doesn’t make it right.’

The hard look came back into his eyes. ‘Is it because of my father?’ he asked. ‘Do you still have feelings for him even though he is dead?’

Emma frowned at him. ‘Why must you persist with this?’ she asked. ‘Just let it go, for God’s sake.’

‘Damn it, Emma,’ he growled. ‘I hate the thought of you with him. It sickens me to my stomach. I cannot get it out of my mind. I keep seeing him pawing at you like some animal.’

She gave him an ironic look. ‘Isn’t that what you’ve been doing to me?’

His brows snapped together and his hand fell away from her wrist. ‘Is that what you think?’ he asked.

Emma wished she hadn’t said it. The anger was coming off him in waves. The air crackled with it, the tension building to an intolerable level. ‘No…no, of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, you should not,’ he said through tight lips. ‘You were with me all the way, Emma. You were hot for it.’

She felt her face fire with colour at his blunt crudity and her own traitorous transparency. ‘You know, I was really starting to like you earlier this evening, but now I think I will stick to my first impression of you,’ she said with a blistering glare.

He gave her a mocking smile, but anger was still glittering in his eyes. ‘And what might that be?’

She pulled in a tight little breath. ‘You’re an unscrupulous, selfish bastard who uses people without conscience.’

‘And do you know what my impression of you is, Emma?’ he threw back.

‘That’s hardly necessary considering you’ve used every available opportunity to tell me,’ she said with bitterness sharpening her tone. ‘A tart, a whore, a slut, the list goes on and on.’

‘You are a clever little cat with an eye on the main chance,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘You want it all, don’t you, Emma? That’s what you are counting on, isn’t it? That I will walk away before the year is up and by doing so hand you the lot.’

‘I don’t want you to walk away from what is rightly yours,’ she said. ‘I’m trying my best to do the right thing by you. I admit there are certain advantages for me, but I’m not interested in taking your inheritance from you.’

‘But you want the money.’

‘Yes, but not for the reasons you think,’ she said.

Rafaele looked into her grey-blue eyes and wondered if she was being straight with him. He wasn’t used to trusting people, but he found he wanted to trust her. She was getting under his skin in a way he had never believed possible.

He hadn’t thought a kiss could reveal so much. He had kissed a lot of women in his time, but no one had affected him quite as Emma did. The shy hesitancy of her responses had been totally enthralling. He could still taste her sweetness in his mouth. He could still feel the soft press of her slim body against his; it had left a branding outline on his flesh.

His desire for her was even now pulsing through his blood. He could feel it charging through his veins, making him hard at the thought of sinking into her velvet warmth. He had never wanted a woman more than this one. She awakened every primal desire in his body. Her sensual allure was totally bewitching, which was no doubt why his father had fallen under her spell.

But he wasn’t a fool like his father. He would have her on his terms and his terms only, even if it took him every bit of the next twelve months to achieve it.

‘What do you want the money for?’ he asked.

‘It’s for my sister, Simone.’

He frowned. ‘Your sister?’

She nodded. ‘She lost her husband when my niece was a baby. She has never dated anyone else until recently, but it turned out to be a total disaster. He left her with massive debts. He fraudulently used her name for a loan with a dodgy creditor who was making some nasty threats about repaying it.’ She gave a jagged little sigh and continued, ‘I sent the money I got when I married you to her.’

Rafaele kept his eyes on her. ‘It all seems rather convenient, does it not?’ he said. ‘It seems to me that my father’s death came at rather a good time for you and your sister.’

Her grey-blue eyes flared with shock or was it anger? He couldn’t quite make up his mind. ‘Are you suggesting I did something to hurry up your father’s death?’ she asked.

‘You stood to gain by it, though, did you not?’

Her face paled. ‘I told you, I had no idea what was in your father’s will. This is your home, Rafaele. I think deep down your father wanted you to have it.’

‘He went a strange way about it,’ Rafaele growled.

‘Yes, but sometimes the things we have to work the hardest for are the things we end up valuing the most,’ she said. ‘Perhaps your father was trying to tell you something.’

‘My father was always trying to tell me something,’ he said bitterly. ‘Like how I was the one who should have died that day, not Giovanni.’

Emma stared at him with wide, shocked eyes. ‘Surely he didn’t say that?’

He gave her a grim look. ‘He did not need to. It is true. I should have been the one to die.’

She put a hand to her chest. ‘Oh, Rafaele…’

‘I was the older brother, I was supposed to protect him, but instead I killed him.’

Emma felt her stomach give a sudden lurch. The atmosphere between them had changed. She hesitantly pressed him for more details. ‘W-what happened?’

His eyes looked soulless and bleak. ‘I was teaching Giovanni to play cricket… It was his turn to bat. I didn’t think I had thrown the ball too hard, I was always so careful, but somehow it hit him on the temple and he fell like a stone.’

Emma gasped. ‘No one could blame you for that. No one,’ she insisted hoarsely.

‘Perhaps some would say I was just a child myself and could not be held responsible,’ he said. ‘But I did not see it that way and neither did my father. I spent the next eight years apologising for my existence. Every time my father looked at me I saw the hatred and disappointment on his face.’