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

As soon as the band stopped playing the redhead returned to the table, accompanied by her dancing partner. After a brief conversation with Jordan, the redhead and the man headed for the exit, arm in arm.

When Jordan started downing her almost full glass of wine with considerable speed, obviously intending to leave also, Gino decided it was time to make his presence known.

The distance from his table to hers seemed endless, his chest growing tighter with each step. Just before he reached the table Jordan put down her empty wine glass then bent to her left, to retrieve her bag from the adjoining chair.

She actually had her back to him when he said, ‘Hello, Jordan,’ the words feeling thick on his tongue.

She twisted back to face him, her chin jerking upwards, her lovely blue eyes widening with surprise.

No…not surprise. Shock.

‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gino!’

Shock, but not bitterness, he noted. Nor hatred.

Relief flooded through him.

‘Yes,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘It’s me. Gino. May I join you? Or are you here with someone?’

‘Yes. No. No, not any more. I—’ Jordan broke off, a puzzled frown forming on her small forehead. ‘You’ve almost lost your Italian accent!’

Trust her to notice something like that, Gino thought ruefully, as he sat down at her table. She’d always been an observant girl, with a mind like a steel trap.

When he’d first met her he’d not long been back from a four-year stint at the university in Rome, his Italian accent having thickened during his extended stay.

This reunion was going to be more awkward than he’d ever imagined. For how could he explain her observation without revealing just how much he’d deceived her all those years ago?

He had no option but to lie.

‘I’ve been back in Australia for quite a while.’

‘And you didn’t think to look me up?’ she threw at him.

‘I couldn’t imagine you’d want that,’ he said carefully. ‘I thought you’d have moved on.’

‘I have,’ she said, and tossed her head at him.

A very Jordan-like gesture, but it didn’t have the same effect as it had when her hair was down.

‘You became a lawyer, then?’ he asked, pretending he didn’t already know.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Your mum must be very proud of you.’

‘Mum passed away a few years back. Cancer.’

Another reason for her to look sad and lonely. ‘I’m so sorry, Jordan. She was a nice woman.’

‘She liked you, too.’ She sighed, looking away for a moment, before looking back at him. ‘So what are you doing nowadays?’

‘I’m still working in the construction business,’ he replied, hating himself for keeping up with the deception. But what else could he do? This wasn’t going to go anywhere. It couldn’t. This was just…closure.

Yet as he looked deep into her eyes—such lovely, expressive blue eyes—it didn’t feel like closure. It felt as it had felt the first day he’d met her.

The temptation to try to resurrect something here was intense. So was his escalating curiosity about her love-life. Okay, so she wasn’t married. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a lover, or a live-in boyfriend.

‘You’re not married, I notice,’ he remarked, nodding towards her left hand, which was empty of rings.

‘No,’ she returned, after a slight hesitation.

Gino wondered what that meant. Had she been married and was now divorced?

‘And you?’ she countered, her eyes guarded.

‘I might get around to it one day,’he said with a shrug.

‘You always vowed you wouldn’t marry till you were at least forty.’

‘Did I?’

‘You very definitely did.’

Gino decided to stop the small talk about himself and cut to the chase.

‘What are you doing here alone, Jordan?’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ she returned sharply. ‘I was with a work colleague, but she ran into an old boyfriend of hers and he asked her out to dinner. They’ve just left.’

‘You didn’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind? We only came in for a drink. It’s high time I went home, anyway.’

‘Why? It’s only early. Is there someone special waiting for you at home? Boyfriend? Partner?’

Anger flared into her eyes. ‘That’s a very personal question, Gino. One which I don’t feel inclined to answer.’

‘Why not?’

Her eyes carried exasperation as she shook her head at him. ‘You run into me by accident after ten years and think you have the right to question me over my personal life? If you were so interested in me, then why didn’t you look me up when you came back to Australia?’

‘I’ve been living in Melbourne,’ he said, by way of an excuse.

‘So? That’s only a short plane trip away.’

‘Would you have really wanted me to look you up, Jordan? Be honest now.’

Her face betrayed her. She had wanted him to. But no more than he’d wanted to himself.

‘You could have written,’ she said angrily. ‘You knew my address. Whereas I had no idea where you were, other than in Italy.’

‘I thought it better to make a clean break—leave you free to find someone more…suitable.’

She laughed. ‘You were being cruel to be kind, then?’

‘Something like that.’

She stared at him, her eyes still furious.

Gino had forgotten how worked up she could get when she thought someone wasn’t being straight with her. Jordan had no tolerance of lies—or liars.

Gino conceded he’d dug a real hole for himself all those years ago. Not that it mattered what she thought of him. What mattered was whether she was happy or not.

The evidence of his eyes was troubling. She looked tired, and stressed, and frustrated. If she did have a live-in lover—or a boyfriend—he wasn’t making her very happy.

‘So there’s no special man in your life right now?’ he asked.

She glanced away for a second, then looked back at him. ‘Not right now. Look, I—’

‘Would you dance with me?’ he asked, before she could bolt for the door.

The band had started up again, a bluesy number with a slow, sensual rhythm.

Jordan stared at him. But not so much with anger now. With a type of fear, as if he’d just asked someone scared of heights to step with him to the edge of a cliff.

Maybe she thought he was coming on to her.

He wasn’t. He just wanted to find some way to get past her defences, to have her open up to him about her life.

She was a good dancer, he knew, but so was he. They’d loved going dancing together.

‘For old times’ sake,’ he added, standing up and holding his hand out to her.

She stared at it for a long moment, as if it was a viper about to strike.

Finally she rose, taking off her jacket and draping it over her bag on the chair before placing her hand in his.

How soft it was, he thought as he drew her onto the polished wooden dance floor. Soft and pale, with long, elegant fingers and exquisitely kept nails.

She’d always had a thing for painted nails, he recalled. Both fingers and toes. Her favourite colour had been scarlet, but she’d had bottles and bottles of nail polish, of every imaginable shade.

Tonight her fingernails were painted a deep cream, matching her blouse.

Now that her jacket was off, he could see she still had a lovely figure, despite being thinner: her breasts were still pert, her waist was tinier than ever, and her stomach athletically flat.

His mother would have said she didn’t have good childbearing hips—the way Italian girls did—but Gino had always found Jordan’s slender shape extremely attractive. He loved her tight little butt and her long slim legs, loved her blonde hair and her pale soft skin.

Naked, she looked like an angel.

‘Put your arms up around my neck,’ he suggested, after he swung her round to face him.

‘You always were a bossy man,’ she replied, but did as he wanted, her fingertips like velvet as they slid under the collar of his leather jacket and settled on the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck.

Gino swallowed when he started to respond. This was not what he’d intended when he’d asked her to dance. But he seemed powerless to stop himself from becoming excited.

Planting his hands on her hips, he kept his lower half a decent distance from hers—not an easy thing to do once she started swaying to the slow, thudding beat of the music.

His good intentions, Gino suspected, were doomed to failure.

‘You are real, aren’t you?’ she said suddenly. ‘Not some figment of my imagination.’

‘I’m very real,’ he said drily. Just as his arousal was.

Her head tipped charmingly to one side as she looked up at him.

‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘And you’re not fat at all.’

He tried not to laugh. If only she knew…

‘Why would I be fat?’ he asked.

‘Lots of men gain weight after they turn thirty. What are you now? Thirty-five?’

‘Thirty-six. You’ve lost weight.’

‘A little.’

‘You’re still very beautiful.’

Her eyes stabbed his with reproach. ‘Don’t, Gino.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t sweet-talk me.’

‘You used to like me sweet-talking you.’

‘I used to like you doing a lot of things.’

He wished she hadn’t said that. Her words were sparking memories which would have been better kept buried.

And they in turn sparked something he’d been trying to deny all day, struggled to control ever since he’d asked her to dance. Which was that he still wanted her—despite the years which had passed, despite everything. He wanted to take her upstairs to his hotel room right now and strip her of those sexless clothes, wanted to take down her hair and just take her, as he had ten years ago.

She’d been a virgin back then, a fact he hadn’t realised till it was too late. Her innocence had shocked him at the time, but her passion had quickly banished any qualms.

That passion was still there: he could see it in her blazing blue eyes and flushed cheeks.

And it was still overriding his conscience.

‘Some things don’t change,’ he growled.

‘Everything changes, Gino. Nothing stays the same.’

‘Is that so?’

His hands shifted, one sliding up her spine, the other downward to her tailbone, giving him the leverage to press her close.

As their bodies made more intimate contact a wave of dark desire ripped through Gino, obliterating what little was left of his conscience.

‘This hasn’t changed, beautiful,’ he whispered huskily.

CHAPTER FOUR

JORDAN stiffened, then tried to stop dancing altogether. But he would have none of it, keeping her body jammed tight against his as he moved his hips from side to side.

Impossible to ignore his arousal.

Gino was impressively built. Her mind flashed back to the first time he’d made love to her. Or tried to. She’d never forgotten the shocked look on his face when he’d realised she was a virgin. She’d begged him not to stop, and he hadn’t, his initial penetration punching a pained cry from her lips.

She’d gloried in the experience, impatient to do it again as soon as possible. Afterwards he’d run them both a bath and lain her on top of him in the warm water, caressing her body. Then he’d dried her and carried her back to her bed, where he’d made love to her again, not stopping till she’d fallen into a deep sleep.

He’d given her tender body time to recover from his initial onslaught. Next morning, when he’d entered her, she’d welcomed him with a wild, wanton need. She’d climaxed swiftly and noisily.

After that, she’d always come whenever he was inside her.

Feeling his rock-hard flesh pressing into her stomach reminded her of how that felt: Gino being inside her.

Jordan suppressed a groan, burying her head under his chin to hide her flushed face from his eyes.

‘I’m up here for the weekend,’ he murmured, his lips in her hair. ‘I’m staying here at this hotel.’

Jordan’s head jerked back, her eyes disbelieving as she stared up into his darkly handsome face. ‘You’re staying here? At the Regency?’

‘It is fate, is it not?’

Jordan shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in fate. Things are not predestined, Gino. People have free will. And choices.’

‘And what would you choose, Jordan, if I asked you to come up to my room with me?’

Jordan’s lips fell open. The arrogance of him! And the presumption!

But, oh…the passion. It blazed down at her from his beautiful black eyes, reminding her of his extraordinary virility and amazing sexual stamina. When they’d lived together it had been nothing for Gino to make love to her for hours on end, with only the shortest of breaks in between. He’d claimed he couldn’t get enough of her, and his actions had backed up his words.

Gino had never been the first one to go to sleep. She’d been the one who usually pegged out, exhausted but happy.

‘What for, exactly?’ she snapped, even as she quivered inside at the thought of going up to his room with him. ‘An old-times’-sake shag? Sorry, but I don’t do one-night stands, Gino. I never did. You must remember that.’

‘I remember everything about you,’ he said, his voice vibrating with the most seductive emotion. ‘And I’m not after a one-night stand. I want you to stay the whole weekend with me. I also want the opportunity to talk to you. To explain why I didn’t come back for you all those years ago.’

Jordan’s wildly galloping heart skittered to an unsteady halt. ‘You…you wanted to come back for me?’

‘Of course. I loved you, Jordan. Never doubt that.’

The last of Jordan’s resistance began to crumble right then and there.

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to talk tonight. Tonight is for us, Jordan. You and me together again, as we once were. Don’t say no. Say si. Si, Gino. As I taught you all those years ago.’

Jordan’s head whirled. That was another way she’d been different with Gino than with any other man since. The way he’d been able to make her submit to his will. Not like some whipped slave, but willingly and wantonly. She had wallowed in the role of being his woman. Wallowed in his possessiveness and his protectiveness. With him she’d always felt safe and secure, and totally, totally loved.

She’d been devastated when he left, devastated and despairing. That year she’d failed her exams and had to resit.

She hadn’t had another boyfriend during her remaining years at university. Then, when she had eventually started dating again, she’d gone out with sweet, gentle men who were, perhaps, just a little weak. Men she could dominate and dump, once things got too serious.

Because she wasn’t going to marry any of them. How could she, when she didn’t love them?

Then Chad had come into her life. Smiling, charming, successful Chad, who’d impressed her with his intelligence and sophistication.

Sex with him was quite good.

She’d thought she loved him—till he’d proposed and she had suddenly been faced with a lifetime of sleeping with him.

If she were brutally honest, there was something irritatingly clinical about Chad’s lovemaking—as if he was following a textbook on sex. Sometimes she faked her orgasm, so that he wouldn’t ask her if she’d had one.

Gino had never asked her. He’d known she had.

Jordan trembled at the thought of how many times she would climax if she went up to his hotel room with him.

‘Come on,’ he decided for her. ‘Let’s go.’

Taking her arms from around his neck, he grabbed her left hand and began pulling her towards the exit.

‘My things!’ she protested, and indicated the table where, hopefully, her bag and jacket would still be on that chair.

They were.

He scowled as he watched her draw her jacket on. ‘Why do you wear such unflattering clothes?’

Her eyes flicked over his outfit. Tight black jeans, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket. He’d always been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. They suited Gino’s tall, macho body.

‘Female lawyers wear clothes like this to work,’ she said. She didn’t add, Especially ones who looked like her. The law was still a man’s world, no matter what feminists liked to think. Even women clients preferred a male lawyer.

‘You look better in a dress,’ he returned, taking her elbow and steering her towards the exit. ‘Or at least a skirt. You should never wear trousers, Jordan.’

Heat flooded her body as she recalled how, after Gino had been living with her for a while, he’d forbidden her to wear underwear. She’d fought him over that. At first. But he’d managed to convince her, and she’d started going round with nothing on under her clothes. Which was why she’d worn dresses and skirts back then, and not jeans or trousers.

Oh, heavens, she felt hot, so hot.

Thankfully, the air outside the bar was much cooler. Jordan scooped in some calming breaths as Gino urged her along the marble-floored arcade which led to the hotel foyer proper. If she was going to do this she would rather do it with a clear head, not because she was mindlessly turned on.

But it was no use. She was mindlessly turned on.

She tried warning herself that he might have become a heartless womaniser, was just spinning her a line to get her into bed for the night.

But she wasn’t convinced. He’d seemed so sincere just now. Sincere and very passionate.

At the same time Jordan was desperate to find the answers to all those questions about Gino which had plagued her for the last ten years.

He’d promised to explain everything in the morning.

Meanwhile…

It was the meanwhile which was sending her into a spin.

Was she really going to do this? Go to bed with Gino within ten minutes of running into him again?

Her heart fluttered wildly as her eyes raked over him. He was everything she remembered. And more…more handsome, more mature…and even more masterful.

She would not have believed herself capable of being seduced so quickly these days, even by Gino.

But seduce her he had, in no time flat.

Jordan knew that if she spent the night with her wickedly sexy former lover then it would be Chad who’d be history. She’d had a slim chance of forgetting Gino when he’d been safely consigned to the past. No way could she forget him now.

Still, maybe she wouldn’t have to forget him this time. Maybe they really could take up where they left off.

Oh, she hoped so.

‘What are you doing up here in Sydney?’ she asked, almost running to keep up with him. ‘And why are you staying here? This is a very expensive hotel.’

‘Don’t ask questions, Jordan,’ he returned, his tone impatient. ‘Not right now. Leave it till the morning.’

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. In truth, she didn’t want to talk. But she didn’t want to think, either. And silence encouraged thinking.

Thinking brought doubts and worries. She could imagine what Kerry would think if she saw her now. She’s say she was insane!

When they reached the bank of lifts, one of them was empty and waiting. Gino took no time steering her inside, inserting his key card and pressing the tenth floor. The moment the doors closed he pulled her forcefully into his arms.

‘I can’t wait another second,’ he growled, his mouth already descending.

What was it that made one man’s kiss different from another?

Jordan had once tried to analyse this when other men’s kisses never did for her what Gino’s had done.

Now she knew: it was not just a matter of technique, or the sensual shape of his mouth. It was the passion behind those kisses, that all-encompassing hunger which came not just from his lips and tongue, but from his whole body.

Jordan was panting by the time he wrenched his mouth away.

His black eyes blazed down at her. ‘I should never have left you,’ he said. ‘Never!’

The lift had stopped by then, and the doors slid open. Two couples were waiting there to get in, all glammed up for a Friday night on the town. The women glanced at Gino as they exited, the men at Jordan.

She cringed a little when she saw her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite. She looked dishevelled—some strands of hair falling down, her mouth devoid of lipstick, her eyes dilated and glittering with desires as yet unsatisfied.

Gino enfolded her hand in his and drew her along a carpeted hallway, stopping in front of room number 107.

As he bent his head to insert his key card again, Jordan noticed that his hair was shorter than he’d once worn it. She wondered if he was still a construction labourer. Maybe he was a foreman by now.

Another thought popped into her mind as he opened the door and waved her inside. Surely he must have a girlfriend back in Melbourne. Men like Gino didn’t live celibate lives.

As jealous as this idea made her, Jordan held her tongue, not wanting to spoil the moment with any upsetting truths. All she needed to know for now was that he wasn’t married and that he still desired her. As she still desired him.

But do you still love him? came the intriguing question as Gino followed her into the hotel room, kicking the door shut behind them.

Jordan was no longer a romantic teenager. She’d learned in the decade post-Gino that falling in love did not come as easily when you’d seen more of life. And of men.

When Gino curled his hands over her shoulders and leant her back against him Jordan realised she didn’t care if she still loved him or not. Her desires had moved past the point of no return. She was Gino’s woman again. At least for tonight. No, for the whole weekend.

An erotic shiver rippled down her spine as he eased her jacket off her shoulders.

‘Do you wish to go to the bathroom first?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ she choked out.

Her jacket gone, he turned her round and began unbuttoning her blouse. When her nipples tightened within her bra, she closed her eyes.

‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded.

She obeyed him, if a little reluctantly.

‘Now keep them open. I want you to see that it is Gino making love to you.’

‘You think I wouldn’t know it was you, even with my eyes closed?’

His smile was almost smug. ‘You have not forgotten me?’

‘I remember everything about you, Gino,’ she said, echoing his words down in the bar.

His eyes smouldered as he stripped the blouse from her body, then her bra.

‘Then you will remember I am not always a patient lover.’

Jordan’s mouth went dry.

Sometimes, when he’d come home from work, he’d lifted her skirt and taken her swiftly, standing up. No foreplay. Just his flesh filling hers whilst he told her how he’d thought about doing this to her all day.

His impassioned words had excited her as much as his actions, sending her over the edge within a shockingly short space of time.

She shuddered at the thought that this was what he was going to do to her now. Though he couldn’t, could he? Not with what she was still wearing.

‘You should not cover your beautiful body with clothes such as these,’ he told her, as he unzipped her pin-striped trousers and pushed them down over her hips. When they pooled onto the floor she stepped out of them, leaving her standing there in nothing but cream cotton panties, beige knee-high stockings and sensible black pumps.

‘Ridiculous,’ he growled, his top lip curling at the sight of her. ‘Get them off. Get everything off!’

She might have done as he ordered if he hadn’t started undressing himself, tossing aside his black leather jacket and reefing the white T-shirt over his head in a flash.

The sudden baring of his chest kept her rooted to the spot, her heart thudding as her eyes washed over him. He was leaner than he had been ten years ago—leaner, yet still utterly gorgeous.

‘Do you want me to do it? Is that it?’ he asked as he unzipped his jeans and shoved them down, taking his underpants with them.

Jordan swallowed. ‘What?’

Gino shot her a frustrated glance before sitting down on the edge of the bed and yanking off his shoes and socks.