It Started With A Proposition: Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price

‘Yes,’ she practically sobbed.

He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off her feet, turning her round and carrying her over to the floor-length window. There, he stood her in the centre of it, her bottom and shoulders pressed up against the cool glass.

Jordan gasped when he lifted her arms upwards and outwards.

‘Take hold of the curtains,’ he ordered her. ‘And don’t let go.’

Her hands trembled as they clasped the edges of the velvet swags. What must she look like, standing there like some pagan sacrifice? Could she be seen from the windows of the building opposite? Were people watching them?

‘Move your legs further apart,’ Gino ordered, as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside.

Jordan closed her eyes, then did as she was told. Her hands clutched tighter at the velvet, so tight that it was a wonder she didn’t bring the curtains down around her.

The sudden feel of Gino’s breath on her face had her eyelids fluttering back open.

‘I want you to watch, my love,’ he murmured, leaning down to run his tongue-tip around her startled mouth. ‘And to witness. Everything.’

‘I…I am not your love,’ she cried, shuddering when one his hands slipped between her legs.

‘You are tonight.’

‘No,’ she denied, even as she trembled with desire.

‘This tells me differently,’ he murmured against her panting mouth. ‘This tells me that tonight you are mine.’

His eyes held hers as his hand continued with its most devastatingly intimate exploration. Jordan tried to fight the feelings his skilful touch evoked, tried not to melt at his watching her like that. But it was a futile effort. Her whole body stiffened as it rushed towards a climax.

Gino’s abandoning her barely a breath before her release brought a perverse cry of protest.

‘Patience,’ he growled, and went back to undressing in front of her.

Jordan’s shoulders sagged, her upper arms beginning to ache. But the sight of Gino naked had her spine straightening again.

‘You like what you see?’ he taunted as he came back to her.

Jordan could no longer speak. She just wanted him inside her. She didn’t care who might be watching them—didn’t care about anything but his flesh filling hers.

It did. Quite roughly. Surging up into her body with such force that she was momentarily lifted off the floor. His hands lifted to press against the glass on either side of her head, his mouth grazing her hair as he thrust into her, his chest rubbing against the tips of her breasts.

Jordan had never experienced a coupling so passionate or so primitive. Not even with Gino himself, all those years ago.

It spun her out of her head, out of her body. She was there, but not there. Gino had said he wanted her to watch and to witness everything. That was exactly what it felt as if she was doing: being both participant and observer.

Is that really me there, spread naked against the window, keeping myself a willing captive for this man?

I am doomed, she thought hysterically. Doomed!

‘Gino,’ she cried out as she came. ‘Oh, Gino…’

Gino heard her call out his name. Felt her flesh start spasming around his.

What little was left of his control shattered, his mind exploding along with his body, his thoughts spinning out into the stratosphere.

She had to still love him to let him do such things to her, he reasoned wildly in the heat of the moment. Had to. The girl he’d known all those years could not have changed that much.

And if she loved him, then she didn’t love Stedley. She was just marrying him because she was getting older and wanted children. Women always wanted children.

He could give her children, if that was what she so desperately wanted. They could work something out—some arrangement: they could be lovers, or live together. He hadn’t given any deathbed promise that he would not live with a girl who wasn’t Italian.

Some common sense had returned, however, by the time she let go of the curtains and began to sag downwards.

She didn’t necessarily have to love him to enjoy what he’d just done to her, he conceded, as he withdrew and scooped her up into his arms. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago. She’d changed.

He’d changed, hadn’t he?

She’d told him how it was earlier: this was all about sex. A fatal-attraction kind of sex which had nothing to do with love, but with need: a dark, driving need which obsessed and possessed.

Gino gritted his teeth. He already felt obsessed and possessed.

Jordan had expressed the hope that one night with him would cure her of her need.

As Gino carried her into the bedroom he vowed to make sure that it did not.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_135461bf-536a-5a05-bcd8-759c4af088ad)

JORDAN shivered when Gino lowered her onto the cool satin quilt, goosebumps breaking out all over her body.

‘I’ll go run us that bath now,’ he said, as he slipped off her shoes and then wrapped the quilt tightly around her.

‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he added, giving her a soft peck on her forehead before heading for the bathroom.

Jordan stared after him, her slightly fuzzy mind at a loss to understand his sudden change of attitude. Where had the ruthless lover of a few moments ago gone? Was his tenderness for real? Or just a ploy to seduce her into further compliance?

‘Won’t be too long,’ he said jauntily as he walked back through the bedroom, returning with the ice bucket and two champagne glasses. A second trip out to the sitting room had him collecting the two plates of delicacies.

‘Can’t have you passing out from thirst and hunger, can I?’ he remarked with a wicked smile as he headed back to the bathroom.

Any fuzziness in Jordan’s head immediately cleared. Not true tenderness. A seductive ploy.

How silly of her to start hoping for anything different.

‘All done!’ he announced, on his third return to the bedroom. ‘Just one more thing needed, my love. You.’

Jordan did her best not to swoon when he threw back the quilt, then scooped her up from the bed. But having her naked flesh held tight against Gino’s was not conducive to calm.

The bathroom looked both romantic and decadent at the same time, what with the candles, the champagne and the spa filled to the brim with fragrant-smelling bubbles.

‘You’d better put your hair up,’ he suggested. ‘Or it’ll get wet.’