Billionaire's Secret

‘Get out! If we don’t get out, we’ll die.’

Nicolo was asleep, and having a nightmare, Sophie realised. She was reluctant to return to his room but his harrowing cries made her turn back.

This time she entered his room and walked across to the bed. As she drew closer she saw that he was lying on his back, one arm thrown across his face. In the moon shadow she could make out his long dark hair on the pillow.

‘Nicolo, wake up.’

He groaned again.

Desperate to rouse him, Sophie touched his shoulder. ‘Nicolo …’

She let out a startled cry when he suddenly gripped her wrist and gave a forceful tug. Caught off balance, she fell on top of him.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nicolo—it’s me, Sophie.’

‘Sophie?’ His deep voice was slurred.

‘Sophie Ashdown—remember me? You’ve been dreaming….’

There was silence for a few moments. ‘I grew out of wet dreams a long time ago,’ he drawled finally. ‘This is no dream. You feel very real to me, Sophie.’

To Sophie’s shock he tightened his hold on her wrist and moved his other hand to the small of her back, pressing her down so that she was acutely conscious of his muscular body beneath her. Only the sheet and her nightdress separated them. Sophie could feel the hard sinews of his thighs. She caught her breath as she felt something else hard jab into her stomach. Nicolo was no longer caught up in a nightmare; he was awake, alert—and aroused.

She hurriedly reminded herself that it was a common phenomenon for males to wake up with an erection and it did not mean that Nicolo was responding to her in a sexual way. The same could not be said for her body, however.

‘For goodness’ sake, let me up,’ she said sharply, frantically trying to ignore the throb of desire that centred between her legs. To Sophie’s horror she felt a tingling sensation in her nipples and prayed that Nicolo could not feel their betraying hard points through the sheet.

The pale gleam from the moon highlighted the hard angles of his face and the cynical curve of his mouth. Trapped against him, Sophie breathed in the spicy tang of his aftershave. It was a bold, intensely masculine fragrance that evoked an ache of longing in the pit of her stomach. Nicolo was the sexiest man she had ever met and she was shocked by her reaction to his potent masculinity. ‘You were having a nightmare,’ she insisted. ‘I was trying to wake you. What other possible reason would I have for coming to your room in the middle of the night?’

She flung out a hand and by lucky chance found the switch on the bedside lamp. Nicolo blinked in the sudden brightness and his brows lifted in surprise when he saw the pewter vase in her other hand.

‘Were you were planning to do some flower arranging, or knock me out with that thing?’

Sophie flushed, wondering how she had forgotten she was holding the vase. ‘I thought you were being attacked by a burglar,’ she muttered.

‘And you came to defend me? I’m touched.’

The mockery in his voice was the last straw. Using all her strength, she jerked out of his grasp and slid off him.

Nicolo sat up, and the sheet slipped down his body. His sardonic smile faded when he heard her swiftly indrawn breath, and following her gaze he glanced down at his chest covered in mottled red scars that ran from his hip up to his neck.

His eyes narrowed as he saw Sophie recoil from him. ‘I apologise if my appearance revolts you,’ he said harshly. ‘Perhaps you’ll think twice in future about stealing into a stranger’s bedroom without invitation.’

She swallowed, desperately trying to disguise her shocked reaction to the sight of the terrible scarring that covered the left side of his torso and the whole of his arm.

‘I didn’t steal in here. I heard you shout out in your sleep and was concerned and came to wake you.’

He gave a grim laugh. ‘And you discovered a monster. I hope the sight of my ugliness doesn’t give you nightmares.’

‘You’re not a monster,’ Sophie said shakily. ‘I’m not revolted by your scars. But I hadn’t realised the extent of your injuries. You must have been in agony in the aftermath of the fire.’

Nicolo instinctively rejected the sympathy he could see in her hazel eyes. He despised pity. In the almost two decades since he had been burned, countless women had seen him naked. He had grown used to witnessing the horror in their eyes when they saw his scars and he told himself he did not give a damn that Sophie looked sickened by the sight of his damaged body.

‘I don’t want your concern,’ he growled. ‘I suggest you get out of my room before the sight of you in your very fetching night attire makes me forget that I’m a gentleman.’

His mocking taunt reminded Sophie that she was only wearing a peach satin nightdress. Her nightwear was not especially revealing, but the gleam in Nicolo’s eyes made her feel as if she’d shimmied into his room wearing nipple tassels and a thong! Flushing, she crossed her arms defensively over her breasts.

‘If you were a gentleman you wouldn’t have thrown me out of the house like a bag of rubbish,’ she said tightly. She marched over to the door, but the memory of his desperate groans during his nightmare made her hesitate. ‘Do you need anything to help you sleep?’

His low, sexy laugh sent a frisson of awareness through Sophie. ‘What did you have in mind, Miss Ashdown?’

‘A mallet,’ she said through gritted teeth, and stalked out of the room before she gave in to temptation and hit him over the head with the pewter vase.

After Sophie had gone Nicolo switched off the bedside lamp and stared into the darkness, trying to clear his mind of the remnants of his dream. His nightmares were not so frequent now, unlike the months and years following the fire when he had suffered almost nightly flashbacks.

Sophie had been right to guess that his injuries had been agonising. It was impossible to explain the intense pain of third-degree burns that turned flesh into raw, weeping wounds, or the gut-wrenching agony of surgical dressings being changed. He had been in hospital for months and had undergone several skin grafts. Even after he had been allowed home he’d had to wear compression bandages and take high doses of antibiotics to prevent his burns becoming infected, as had happened to his friend Michael.

Nicolo closed his eyes and pictured the smiling face of the young man who had been a fellow patient at the specialist burns unit. Michael Morris had been amazingly cheerful, despite having suffered burns to eighty per cent of his body. He had been Nicolo’s inspiration. But Michael had developed an infection and septicaemia and his sudden, shocking death had plunged the thirteen-year-old Nicolo into the depths of despair. He had cried like a baby when one of the nurses had told him that Michael had died.

Muttering a curse, Nicolo sat up, switched the lamp back on and picked up a book from the bedside table. Goddamn Sophie Ashdown, he thought grimly. Her arrival had unsettled him and her curiosity about the fire had opened a door in his mind that he usually kept bolted shut.