Bound By His Vow: His Final Bargain / The Rings That Bind / Marriage Made of Secrets

A reckless demon made her goad him. ‘You can’t afford me.’

‘Try me. I have my limit. If you go over it I’ll soon tell you.’

Eliza thought of the small house where Ewan and his mother lived in Suffolk. She thought of how much the bathroom needed renovating to make showering him easier for Samantha. She thought of the heating that needed improving because Ewan, as a quadriplegic, had no way of controlling his own body temperature. And then there were the lifting and toileting and feeding aids that always seemed to need an upgrade.

It all cost an astonishing amount of money.

Money Leo Valente was willing to pay her to be his mistress for the rest of the month.

Her heart tapped out an erratic tattoo. Maybe if she took the money it would make her feel less guilty about sleeping with him while she was engaged to Ewan. It would make it impossible to treat their relationship as anything but a business deal.

Well, perhaps not impossible…but unlikely.

He would have her body but she wouldn’t sell him her heart.

Eliza met his hardened gaze with her outwardly composed one even as her stomach nosedived at the extraordinary step she was taking. ‘I want two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

His brows lifted a fraction but, apart from that, his expression gave nothing away. ‘I’ll see that you get it within the next hour or two.’

‘So—’ she hastily disguised a tight little swallow ‘—it’s not…too much?’

He brought her up against the trajectory of his arousal, the shock of the contact sending a wave of heat like a furnace blast right through her body. ‘I’ll let you know,’ he said and sealed her mouth with the blistering heat of his.

CHAPTER NINE (#ulink_4f2e9850-766e-5ad0-bb02-d147e929f9cc)

WHEN ELIZA WOKE the following morning her body tingled from head to foot. She turned her head but the only sign of Leo having shared the bed with her was the indentation on his pillow beside her.

And his smell…

She breathed in the musk and citrusy scent of him that clung to the sheets as well as her skin. His lovemaking last night had been as spine-tingling as ever, maybe even more so. For some reason the fact that he was paying her to sleep with him had made her stretch her boundaries with him. It had been heart-stopping and exciting, edgy and wonderfully, mind-blowingly satisfying.

The door of the bedroom opened and he came in carrying a cup of tea and toast on a tray. He was naked except for a pair of track pants that were slung low on his lean hips. ‘I’ve already checked on Alessandra. Marella’s giving her breakfast downstairs.’

‘I’m sorry…’ Eliza frowned as she pulled the sheet up to cover her naked breasts. ‘I overslept…I didn’t hear her on the monitor.’

‘It didn’t go off.’ He put the tray down on her side of the bed. ‘I took it with me. She woke up while I was down making the tea.’

She pushed a matted tangle of hair off her face with a sweep of her hand. This cosy little domestic scene was not what she was expecting from him. It caught her off guard. It made her feel as if she was acting in a play but she had been given the wrong script. She didn’t know what was expected of her. ‘You seem to be having some problems with your human resources department,’ she commented dryly.

His dark glinting eyes met hers as he sat on the edge of the bed beside her. ‘How so?’

She gave him an ironic look. ‘Your housekeeper is acting as the nanny and your nanny is acting like the lady of the manor—or should I say lady of the villa?’

He trailed the tip of his index finger down the length of her bare arm in a lazy, barely touching stroke that set off a shower of sparks beneath her skin. ‘Marella enjoys helping with Alessandra. And I quite enjoy having you playing lady of the villa.’

Eliza shivered as that bottomless dark gaze smouldered as it held hers. ‘Wouldn’t lady of the night be more appropriate?’ she asked with a pert hitch of her chin.

A line of steel travelled from his mouth and lodged itself in his eyes. ‘What do you want the money for?’

She gave a careless shrug and shifted her gaze to the left of his. ‘The usual things—clothes, jewellery, shoes, salon treatments, a holiday or two.’

He captured her chin and made her look at him. ‘You do realise I would have paid you much more?’

Her stomach quivered as his thumb grazed the fullness of her bottom lip. ‘Yes…I know.’

He measured her gaze with his for endless, heart-chugging seconds. ‘But you didn’t ask for it.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

She gave another careless little shrug. ‘Maybe I don’t think I’m worth it.’

His thumb caressed her cheek as he cupped her face in his hand, his gaze still rock-steady on hers. ‘Why would you think that?’

Eliza felt the danger of getting too close to him, of allowing him to see behind the paper-thin armour she had pinned around herself. She had to stay streetwise and smart-mouthed. She couldn’t allow him to see any other version of herself.

The real version.

‘You get what you pay for in life, wouldn’t you agree?’ She didn’t pause for him to answer. ‘Say my price was a million pounds. I figure this way you only got a quarter of me.’

His gaze continued to hold hers unwaveringly. ‘What if I wanted all of you?’

Eliza felt a momentary flare of alarm in her chest. She had experienced his ruthless intent before. It was dangerous to be inciting it into action again. What he wanted he got. He wouldn’t let anything or anyone stand in his way. Hadn’t he already achieved what he’d set out to achieve? She was back in his bed, wasn’t she? And it didn’t look as if he was going to let her out of it any time soon. She held his look with a steady determination she wasn’t even close to feeling. ‘The rest of me is not for sale.’

His thumb moved back and forth over her cheek, slowly, mesmerizingly, that all-seeing, all-knowing gaze stripping away the layers of her defences like pages being torn from a cheap notepad. ‘So which part have I bought?’ he asked.

‘The part you wanted.’

‘How do you know which part I wanted?’

‘It’s obvious, isn’t it?’ She brazenly stroked a hand down his naked chest to the elastic waistband of his track pants, giving him her best sultry look. ‘It’s the same part I want of you.’

She heard him suck in a breath as her hand dipped below the fabric. She felt his abdomen tense. She felt the satin of his skin, the hot, hard heat of him scorching her fingers as they wrapped around him. Her body primed itself for his possession and she didn’t care how sweet or savage it was going to be.

She yanked his track pants down further and bent her head to him, teasing him mercilessly with her tongue. He groaned and dug his fingers into her scalp but he didn’t pull away, or, at least, not at first. She drew on him, tasting the essence of him, swirling her tongue over and around him, making little flicking movements and little cat-like licks until finally he could stand no more.

‘Wait,’ he gasped, trying to pull back. ‘I’m going to—’ He let out a short, sharp expletive as she went for broke. She had him by the hips and dug her fingers in hard. Her mouth sucked harder and harder, wanting his final capitulation the same way he went for hers—ruthlessly.

He came explosively but she didn’t shy away from receiving him. He shuddered and quaked, finally sagging over her like a puppet whose strings had been suddenly severed.

Eliza caressed her hands over his back and shoulders, a slow exploratory massage of each of his carved and toned muscles. He had loved her massaging him in the past. And she had loved doing it. He had carried a lot of tension in his body even back then. There was something almost worshipful about touching him this way, with long and smooth strokes of her palms and fingers, rediscovering him like a precious memory she thought she had lost for ever. ‘You’ve got knots in your shoulders. You need to relax more.’

‘Can’t get more relaxed than this right now.’

‘I’m just saying…’

He lifted himself up on his elbows and locked gazes with her. ‘We’re doing this the wrong way around. It’s not the way I usually do things.’