Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Passionate Bargains: The Perfect Cazorla Wife / The Russian's Ultimatum / Once a Moretti Wife

He’d imagined their unborn child a thousand times, imagined how different a parent he would be from his own father. Not for his child the feeling of being worthless. His children’s achievements would be celebrated, their failures whether minor or major understood and forgiven, their opinions valued. He would have shown his father what being a father was really about. It was everything his father hadn’t been.

‘Take control of the project if you must,’ Charley said, a tremor racing through her voice. ‘Be the big alpha man you are and throw your weight and money around as you always do. So long as the centre reopens in four months’ time I don’t care how it’s done, but there is no need to go through a charade of us being back together.’

He clenched his hands into fists, straining not to react to her inflammatory words. Taking control of situations where he was the most suitable person to take charge was not akin to throwing his weight around. She made him sound like a tyrant, which, he was certain, was deliberate. His wife might be uneducated but she was not stupid. Regardless, he would keep his cool even if she couldn’t.

‘I fail to see what your issue is,’ he said, channelling his composure. ‘You were happy to tell your bank manager the barefaced lie that we’re back together when it suited you. This arrangement suits me but in this case it will not be a lie. For four months you will live with me as my wife and then you will be free to resume your life. But this time our marriage will end on my terms.’

Already he could taste the satisfaction that would bring. It might even taste as sweet as having his wife back in his bed.

The wildness he’d sensed in her from that first look had translated into the bedroom. Making love to her had always been out of this world. Whether it was hard and fast or slow and sweet, their passion for each other had been unquantifiable.

‘This is your pride talking, isn’t it? Because I had the nerve to leave you? You want to humiliate me?’

‘Not at all,’ he answered with deliberate smoothness, counteracting the vibrations emanating from her delectable frame. A charge flickered through his loins to see her face become the same colour it rose to when in the throes of passion. ‘You want my help and I’m prepared to give it to you but in return I want payment—and the only form of payment you are in a position to make is with your body.’

She pushed her chair back as if she’d been scalded and got to her feet. ‘You want me to prostitute myself?’

‘I’m merely requesting that you, my wife, return to the marital bed for a fixed period and in that period you make yourself available to me wherever and whenever I require.’

The charge in his loins tightened at the thought of her doing whatever pleased him. All those years when he’d done everything in his power to please her, in bed and out...now the tables had turned and it was her subjugation he required. For a limited time.

Yes, four months should serve him perfectly. During their marriage they’d spent a substantial amount of time apart, the distance always stoking the flames of lust so when they were together they made the most of every minute. This time, he would keep her by his side continuously so the lust they shared would finally be slaked and he could walk away from her without a backwards glance. Just as she had walked away from him.

Charley’s legs felt wobbly. Everything felt wobbly. She hadn’t touched a morsel of food, knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow it past her throat.

‘In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never hated you.’ Her body trembling, she forced her eyes to keep their gaze on his cool, unflinching stare. ‘I hate you right now, more than I thought it was possible to hate another human being.’

He rose and, although he smiled down at her, his eyes were like ice. ‘I don’t care for your hate any more than I care for your love.’ He reached out a hand and slipped it under the open top buttons of her blouse to rest on her collarbone.

She didn’t want to react to the feel of his warm fingers on her skin...

She held her breath, his touch setting off a charge within her, certain he must be able to feel the hammering of her heart.

It was the first time he’d touched her in so, so long.

His voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I am willing to give you what you want. Are you willing to give me what I want? Because, let us speak frankly, it’s the only thing you’re any good at.’

If his thumb hadn’t found the exact spot on her neck that always sent tingles of need and delight rippling through her, Charley might have reacted to his words a little quicker. As it was, it took a few moments for them to sink in and when they did she wrenched his hand away and pushed at his chest.

‘How dare you reduce me to nothing but a plaything? I’m not a sex toy.’

The ice in his eyes melted into a gleam, as if he’d accepted a challenge. He reclosed the gap between them, trapping her against the table. ‘You never had a problem being my sex toy before.’

Heat streamed through her at the feel of him pressed against her, all the memories she’d spent six hundred and thirty-five days trying to forget pouring into her mind.

She had lusted after him from their first conversation.

He’d been like no one she’d met before. Outrageously handsome, ridiculously wealthy...everything a young woman of twenty could wish for in a man. Prince Charming had come to life and it was her slipper he wanted. Was it any wonder her head had been turned?

And the sex... Never had she imagined such carnal responses existed within her, the same responses that were flashing back to life now, at the time when she needed her head clear to deal with what he was demanding of her.

It had been her own misfortune that she’d mistaken lust for love and married him. What they’d shared should never have been more than a summer fling.

As hard as she’d tried to fit in—and she’d tried so hard—she didn’t belong in his world. She was a badly educated south-east London girl; elocution lessons paid for by her husband had knocked most of her mild cockney accent out of her. She’d come from a broken family where finances were erratic. Raul had grown up with wealth and social standing and had all the arrogance such an upbringing instilled.

They couldn’t have been more wrong for each other if they’d got a computer program to determine their worst matches.

But the computer would have got their desire for each other right.

‘That was when I loved you,’ she said hoarsely. For love had grown from the lust, a greater love than she’d ever imagined could exist. Leaving him had been easy. Staying away had been almost unbearable.

And now that love had twisted into hate. But the desire was still there, however deeply she’d thought she’d buried it. ‘If you ever felt anything for me you wouldn’t ask for such a...a despicable thing from me.’

‘Oh, I still feel a great deal for you.’ He swept his fingers up her neck, pressing even closer.

She smothered the gasp that wanted to break out at the feel of his hardness against her.

Take control, Charley. Don’t show your weakness for him.

‘You can’t force me.’ The words she’d intended to come out forcefully were expelled with a whisper. Every inhalation brought him into her tight lungs, that masculine smell that had become as familiar to her as the scent of her home.

Her body remembered. His scent made it sing with delight.

He laughed softly into her ear and traced his fingers up her side. ‘I don’t need to force you.’

As if proving his point, he cupped her breast over her blouse and ran a thumb over a nipple straining against the suddenly restrictive bra she wore. The heat that had pooled low within her deepened, and she pressed her thighs together in denial.

He could demand all he wanted, but she would never give herself to him willingly, not now he was showing his true colours, the colours her love-blinded eyes had forgiven for far too long.

Mortified at her lack of self-control, she tried to wriggle out from beneath him but he was too strong.

‘See, cariño,’ he said, smothering her hands in his own and resting them on the table by her sides, his grip unyielding. ‘The desire between us is as strong as it ever was, however much you try and deny it. When I ask you to open yourself for me, your head might want to say no but your body will be begging for it.’

That his words were true only served to shame her further, which she knew for certain was his intention. She’d humiliated him by leaving him and this was the price he was forcing her to pay.

The worst of it was, her treacherous body was eager to pay the price.

‘I hate you.’

‘I know.’ He dipped his head and nipped her earlobe. ‘Imagine how incredible it will be, all that hate fuelling all that lust.’

Sensation filled her, every crevice of her coming alive at his touch and the whisper of his breath on her skin.

Two years without this...

Somehow she managed to pull her hands free from his grasp, fully intending to use them as weapons to push him off her. Instead, working of their own accord, they hooked around his neck to pull him in for her hungry lips to connect with his. She had no sane comprehension of what she was doing, instinct taking over to seize what her body so desperately wanted.

In that instant, any sort of rationality dissolved from her mind.