Scandals Of The Powerful: Uncovering the Correttis / A Legacy of Secrets

‘Spend the weekend with me.’ He looked at her. Two nights with one woman was a big deal for his black heart, but two nights with Emily, he could do. Feelings were surfacing, ones that had been locked in a vault and entombed in cement. No-one got close. And yet she had. Though it unnerved him, the saving grace was that by Sunday she would be gone.

‘I can tell you everything you want to know about them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to spread the word, not just about the Correttis but they would be a very good place to start.’ And then he looked at her and gave her the other reason, the words unfamiliar to his lips. ‘I would like to spend time with you, to get to know you some more,’ Anton said, safe in the knowledge that soon she’d be gone. He released her then and took her hand as they walked out into the dark street. It had been evening when they had entered, and it was night-time now. Just a space of a few hours and yet so much for Emily had changed.

His car had been brought around and they drove in silence to her hotel, Emily wrestling with indecision. Tonight she had glimpsed not just wealth and glamour but the dizzying presence of Anton, and the combination was undeniably heady. She wanted the information he would give her, but in truth it played no part in the decision she was coming to. A holiday romance, Emily thought. A working-holiday romance....

Although the word romance did not really equate with Anton.

She sneaked a look at him, scarcely able to believe what she was considering, but in thirty years on this earth she hadn’t even come close to tasting the passion she already had tonight, had never been more intrigued by another. This was a man she so badly wanted to get to know.

He pulled to a halt at the foyer. The car door was opened and she turned in her seat to step out.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ Emily frowned because the engine was still idling and he was making no indication of getting out.

‘I’m not staying here.’

‘Oh!’ She had assumed, given it was where they had met, that he was. Emily had hoped for a drink in the bar to see where that led, for some time to make up her mind.

He had, in effect, driven her home, Emily realised.

‘I think you’re the guy my mother spent years warning me about.’ She tried to make a small joke but he just stared back at her.

‘Was she wasting her breath?’ Anton asked.

It was a good question. The choice now was completely hers. She pushed a foot towards the ground, went to remove herself from the car, but already she could taste the regret that would surely plague her forever if she denied herself this time. And in that moment Emily followed not her head but her heart.

She turned to his waiting eyes and with one smouldering look he confirmed her decision was the right one. Emily wanted wild and irresponsible. She wanted her weekend with this beautiful, sexy man.

‘Completely,’ was her response.

Nervous, unsure, hopelessly aroused, she pulled in her legs and closed the door and, most unexpectedly, a moment later she found herself laughing. He told her to put her belt on as the car pulled off, and he turned on the hidden sirens and lights. She was pressed back in her seat as he sped her through the dark streets of Palermo.

‘Do we need the siren?’ she shouted.

‘Unless you want me to stop and take you over the car.’

He took her hand and placed it where nature surely intended.

There was a moment where she considered tapping him on the shoulder and telling him that she did not do this sort of thing.

‘Anton, I—’

‘Don’t.’ He felt a decade younger; he felt as if he was living. She did not need to offer excuses. This night was theirs. ‘There is no explaining it.’

There was no explaining it and so she did not try. It was the most reckless night of her life, but the best one.

He turned the lights and sirens off as they left the town centre, but he drove at breakneck speed through the rocky hills to his vast home. Huge security gates opened and closed behind them as a garage door opened and they slid inside.

The garage alone was twice the size of her house and about ten times more luxurious. She could barely stand as she climbed out of the car and he walked around to take her hand. She’d had two sips of champagne, yet she felt as if she’d drunk the bottle.

He started to kiss her but she moved her head back. One taste and they’d be doing as he had teasingly suggested, but her willpower was rather lacking when Anton was around.

Just one taste....

CHAPTER FIVE (#u513e9808-37ee-5b1c-8569-ec733bef2466)

IT WASN’T a kiss; it was sex with their mouths.

His tongue was everywhere, his teeth on hers, his hands the only sensible part of them because he took off his jacket and removed his holster. The holster, he lowered to the floor. The jacket, he pulled condoms from and then threw onto the car as he lowered his mouth again, his hands lifting her dress, and not just to her hips. Their lips parted a moment as he tugged it over her head and then tore at her panties.

She had never known nor imagined anything like it. He’d felt huge beneath the fabric but exposed now there should surely be some apprehension—but instead there was only want. She took him in her hands and heard his moan of approval as she ran her finger over the tip and he tore open the wrapper.

Taking it from him, Emily slid it on. She wanted to pause, she wanted to taste, she wanted so many things, but with her orgasm building, there was time only for need. She thought he would lower her onto the car, but sensing her arousal, he lifted her onto him and Emily wrapped her legs around his hips and clung on. The second he was inside her it hit, but then, he had been turning her on since the elevator.

She lost her head and he took her hair, claiming her mouth as he pulled her hard down onto him. He stilled for just a moment, suckling her tongue as he held himself back from joining her in release, luxuriating in the feel of her hot centre pulsing around him, of her mouth tensing in orgasm and then slowly kissing him back as it faded.

He lowered her onto the bonnet and moved the jacket beneath her. Soon he would let himself join her in abandon, but not yet.

‘Anton.’ She wanted a moment. She could feel the warmth from the engine beneath her and the heat between her legs. He was looking down not at the sensuous coupling of their sexes but straight into her eyes, and it was more breathtaking than the sensual thrusting as he moved deeply within.

She was shocked by the tenderness that held her gaze as the guarded, remote man faded and she glimpsed firsthand what being made love to by Anton felt like. His eyes adored her, his passion blatant, another thunderbolt to her heart.

As if regretting revealing so much, he started to move faster, his hands pulling down her bra and exposing her breasts, his rhythm building, but he wanted again that elusive pleasure. He wanted to care.

Anton just gave in then, lowered himself onto her, wrapped his arm beneath her, and she found out then what it was like to be truly adored by Anton. She was sobbing as he thrust within her and she shattered into an orgasm that came from no place she had ever been. Heat seared not just from her centre; every muscle in her body seemed to contract as she arched into him. He was kissing her eyes, her cheeks, her ears, stunned at what had been unleashed. She was in the arms of the devil, yet he devoured her as if she were a saint. She bathed in his moans, in his caress, and then in the rush of still silence that warred with the pulse of his release within. She lay there spent beneath him, grateful for the hand that a little while later lifted her up.

He helped her into his jacket and, she noted, did not meet her eyes.

She teetered on legs that were a little unsteady and he tapped in a code that opened a door.

‘There’s no-one home, I hope.’

‘Just us.’

She was perhaps the worst investigative journalist in the world around Anton, because until that moment she hadn’t really questioned why he drove such a luxurious sports car. She had been more focused on Anton than the outside appearance of his house, but as she stepped into opulence, as the lights came on and unveiled a home more stunning than any she had been in, she realised there were questions she should surely ask.

She stood as he opened huge glass doors and looked out beyond the pool and to the ocean behind.

Anton’s wealth far outreached that of any detective she had ever come in contact with.

Or rather, any honest one.

CHAPTER SIX (#u513e9808-37ee-5b1c-8569-ec733bef2466)

‘I AM not corrupt.’ It was as if he could read her mind. ‘It is my own money.’ He looked over to her. ‘I worked for ten years in my father’s business and turned it around. One of the nice things about making a fortune is you can then do whatever work you choose. My job now is to flush out certain people. Because of my wealth I get closer than any of them like.’