Seduction: The Billionaire's Bride of Vengeance

The brunette seemed startled but not displeased.

‘Would you mind, Kara?’ Nicole said, still looking faintly embarrassed.

‘Of course not. Off you go and have some fun. I’ll leave a key to the back door in the usual spot. But I won’t fret if you don’t use it. If your bed’s still empty in the morning, I’ll tell Mother you’ve gone out on a breakfast date with a handsome hunk you met at the wedding. Nice to finally meet you, Mr McClain.’

She flashed him a saucy little smile, making him wonder what Nicole had said about him to her.

Obviously something.

‘Au revoir, sweetie,’ she finished up and, with a flamboyant wave, whirled around her plump but not unattractive frame to head back to the reception.

By this time, Russell and Nicole weren’t alone on the deck, several more people having made their way outside.

‘Come on,’ Russell said, sliding a captive arm around her waist and guiding her along the deck towards a set of steps which would take them down to the car park.

‘Where … where are we going?’ she asked breathlessly as he hurried her towards his car.

‘Not to a club, that’s for sure.’ Or to his apartment, despite it being the closer of his two current residences. He’d moved a few things into the Belleview Hill mansion yesterday and slept in Alistair Power’s king-sized bed for the first time last night. Once again, however, the experience had lacked the feeling of satisfaction he’d been anticipating.

Russell could see, however, that sleeping there tonight with his enemy’s daughter by his side would be a whole different ball game. Now, that would feel like real revenge, of the highly personal kind that he’d always coveted.

He zapped the car unlocked, reefed open the passenger door and had her inside in record time.

‘This is crazy,’ she said after he’d climbed in behind the wheel. ‘We hardly know each other.’ And she shot him an oddly fearful look which didn’t compute with her being drunk, or drugged, or directed by materialistic ambition.

She seemed genuinely alarmed at her own behaviour, which was as puzzling as it was a possible problem. Russell didn’t want her having second thoughts at this stage.

He shoved the key in the ignition, then leant over the gear stick to take her face in his hands once more.

‘What is there to know but this?’ he murmured, and kissed her again. Softly this time and seductively, savouring the low moan of surrender she made when her lips flowered open under his.

Now that he had her where he wanted her, Russell wasn’t about to let her get away. He pressed her hard against the leather seat and kept on kissing her, at the same time letting his right hand slide slowly down her neck till it reached the valley between her breasts.

Once there, he quite deliberately lifted his mouth away so that he could watch her eyes when his hand moved underneath her dress and over her naked breast. He wanted to see her reaction, wanted to watch for signs of anything fake.

Not that it really mattered. If she was pretending desire for the sake of greed, then the outcome would not change: he would still bed her tonight.

But having Nicole Power mindless with desire for him would be an added bonus. How ironic would that be? How brilliantly satisfying!

His hand moved and her eyes flung wide open, her back stiffening when his fingers found their goal.

Her nipple was hard, like a river pebble.

‘No, don’t,’ she whimpered when he rolled it round and round with his fingertips.

He ignored her feeble protest and kept doing it till her mouth gasped open and her eyes glazed over. At that point he pushed the silky green material aside to totally expose her breast, then bent his head to put his mouth where his fingertips had been.

Her practically jackknifing from the seat told Russell all he needed to know. There was absolutely no pretence in her responses. She was his, to do with as he pleased. His to explore and exploit. His to win and maybe even to wed.

Did he want to go that far? Did he want to see her walk down the aisle in white the way Megan had that day? Did he want to see blind adoration in her eyes as well as the mindless desire he’d just glimpsed in her beautiful green eyes?

There was only one answer to those questions.

An unequivocal yes.

CHAPTER NINE

NICOLE squeezed her eyes tightly shut against the sensations bombarding her body.

Oh, yes, she thought wildly when he sucked harder on her nipple. Yes!

Her hands closed into tightly balled fists by the sides of the seat, her bag having long slipped out of her grasp. She pressed her back against the leather and lifted her chest higher for him, inviting his mouth to take in more of her breast.

His sudden desertion dragged a groan from deep in her throat, her eyelashes fluttering open to stare up into the darkly silhouetted face looming over her.

‘As much as I’d like to ravage you right here and now,’ he said thickly, ‘ I think it best that we wait till I get you home.’

A stunned Nicole just sat there as he returned to the driver’s seat and started up the engine, several seconds passing before she realised her left breast was totally exposed, its peaked nipple still glistening with his saliva.

‘Leave it like that,’ he growled when her hand moved to cover herself up.

‘I … I can’t,’ she said, shocked by the suggestion. ‘Someone might see me.’ And she quickly pulled her dress back into place.

‘As you wish, beautiful,’ he said as he sped off.

As I wish?

Nicole’s eyes darted across to the man behind the wheel, her gaze landing on his hands first. Big they were, and strong.

What she wished was that they were on her body again. His mouth, too, on her breasts and between her legs.

Nicole shuddered at how thrilling she found that thought. How thrilling she found him, wickedly thrilling.

Oh, yes, he was wicked all right.

But oh, so passionate. The things he’d said to her back at the yacht club, the things he’d done to her just now in this car …

She was still thinking about those things when his car zoomed down into the harbour tunnel and she realised where he was taking her: to her old home in Belleview Hill. But now it had become his, for twenty million dollars …

This last thought brought her back to some semblance of sense, reminding Nicole of her recent vow never to have anything to do with rich men. Not only were a lot of them corrupt and amoral, but most were also arrogant and spoiled and far too used to getting their own way.

Russell McClain was undoubtedly all of those things. Just look at the company he kept! Hugh Parkinson was a roué, if ever there was one. As for James Logan … Nicole hoped Megan would be happy with him, but she doubted it.

So what on earth was she doing going home with him?

Nicole had never been a one-night-stand kind of girl. In the past, she’d thought of herself as a prize for the man who was pursuing her, a prize worth waiting for. She’d been taught by her once-bitten mother to put tickets on herself in that regard, to not give herself cheaply and easily.

Which she hadn’t.