His Sweet Revenge: Wedding Vow of Revenge / His Ultimate Prize / Bound by a Child

She could not imagine what kind of training he had gone through to learn this kind of self-control, but it awed her.

So did his sexual expertise. She thought she’d known all there was to know from a man experienced in the art of seduction, but Baron didn’t have a patch on Angelo.

He built her desire with caresses that touched everywhere and lingered nowhere. The fire crackled in the hearth beside them, the wind blew in the scent of the ocean to wash over their heated bodies and every nerve ending she possessed came to life with stunning power. Surge after surge of electric desire rushed through her until she panted and shook with need.

He palmed her breast, his big hand engulfing the swollen flesh. Her nipple, already beaded, now ached with the need for more stimulation. Only, the careful pressure of his hand muted by the layers of her top and bra was not enough. She arched up into his hand anyway, striving to increase the friction.

He rotated his palm. Sensation shot from her nipple straight to the core of her and she pressed upward, moaning.

“I want to touch your skin,” he whispered in an erotic growl.

“Yes.”

He unbuttoned her bodice, one small button at a time. He paused between each one to place a baby kiss on the skin revealed.

“Oh, Angelo…” Her fingers scrabbled in the carpet beneath, vainly trying to find purchase—something to anchor herself to with the storm of emotions raging through.

“This is a very sexy dress, sweetheart.” He spoke against her chest, the hot air from his mouth making her shiver in a response as far removed from being cold as possible.

“Thank you.”

“You may wear it again.”

She laughed at the sheer arrogance of his statement, the sound strangled.

Finally, he peeled the front of her bodice away from her body to reveal her white lace bra that conveniently hooked in the front. Had she worn this particular bra and panty set on purpose? Had she subconsciously hoped he would do exactly what he was doing, which was unlatching the bra with one-handed dexterity she couldn’t hope to emulate?

He took his time peeling back the bra cups, using each movement of the fabric to increase her arousal, while teasing her with what was to come.

Oh, gosh…this man knew exactly how to touch her.

He looked down at her naked torso framed by the white fabric of her dress with blatant male appreciation burning his gaze. “Bellisima, cara.”

“You sound so sexy when you speak Italian,” she said on a sigh. “What are you saying?”

“Most beautiful. And you are that, Tara.”

He hadn’t translated the cara, but even she knew what that meant. Darling. Was she darling to him?

She hoped so because the more time she spent with Angelo Gordon, the more she felt for him.

His fingertip traced circles on her breasts, first one and then the other…back and forth…first left…then right…but never touching the hard nubs that ached for his attention.

“Please, Angelo.”

“What do you want, cara? Tell me.” His voice was thick with passion, the subtle Italian accent coming out.

“I need you to touch me.”

“I am touching you.”

“More. I need more.”

“What more?”

“You know.”

“Perhaps I do, but just to be sure, I want to hear you say it.”

“No.” Suddenly she felt all too vulnerable. He was wringing a response from her that was greater than anything she’d ever known. “Don’t make me say the words.”

He lifted his hand away from her and met her gaze square on. “Why not?”

She had to suck in air before she could speak. “It gives you all the power.”

“No, it does not. Whatever you ask for, I will give. That puts the power directly in your corner.”

“You won’t make me beg?”

A feral grin slashed across his gorgeous face. “Only if you want me to.”

And he was just the man that could make her want such a thing.

“How could you possibly know I want you to?” Even Angelo was no mind reader.

“You won’t ask directly for something. You’ll say words like more and please and make me guess what more it is you want.” His voice was every bit as devastating as his touch—so rich and smooth and full of erotic promise.

“So, anything I ask for you will give me?”

“Anything.”

Baron had never given her that kind of power in bed. She couldn’t think of any other man who would. It took a tremendous amount of confidence and consideration to make the offer.

“Even if I ask you to stop?” she pressed.

“Especially if you ask me to stop.”

He really was putting the control in her hands. No man had ever done such a thing. He might seduce her body, but he wanted her to give permission with her mind before he did it. It was such a tantalizing concept, she shuddered in renewed need.

“I want you to touch my nipples.” Heat that had nothing to do with sexual arousal flooded her cheeks, but excitement at saying the words out loud also coursed through her body.

“Your wish is my command.” He rotated his fingertip on the very tip of her hardened peak.

Excitement crashed over her in wave after wave of incredible pleasure, but it still wasn’t enough.

“Harder, please.” Then remembering what he’d said, she husked, “Pinch it.”

He did, gently and then more firmly and she couldn’t help the soft animalistic sounds rasping out between her parted lips. He tortured her with soft then firm touches until the sensitive flesh throbbed with aching intensity and her breath was coming out in hitched little gasps. Then he moved to her other breast and did the same thing while her head thrashed back and forth on the plush carpet.

“You look like a sensual fantasy in the firelight.”

The words shocked her, so lost was she to her feelings. “I feel like a woman on the verge of ecstasy,” she breathed out.

His hand moved to the remaining buttons on her dress and started undoing them with the same enticing kisses between each button until her lace panties were revealed. He stopped then and brushed across the front of the lace and she jumped from the sensation.

He smiled. “Nice. They match your bra.”

“Yes.” Was that her voice—so husky it was practically a whisper?

He finished unbuttoning the dress, baring her completely to him but for the scrap of lace covering the heart of her.

Her legs parted of their own volition from the heat of his gaze.

He took the silent invitation with a speed that made her cry out as his fingers slid between the lace and her skin to dip into the warmth of her feminine center. His mouth moved down her body until it closed over one distended nipple and this time her cry was so harsh it made her throat ache.

He sucked and she whimpered.

His fingers did magical things to her sensitive flesh. She started gyrating against them, her hands gripping the back of his head and keeping him pressed to her breast in frenzied strength. A tension she hadn’t known in two years built and built until it broke over her like a tsunami wave.

There was no way she could contain it and she bucked against Angelo, crying out his name and demanding more with an abandon she had never felt before.

He kept up the nerve-racking touches until her body jerked with each light caress and shook from an overdose of pleasure.

She grabbed his wrist. “Stop!” she begged.

He did, cupping her with possessive tenderness that made her eyes sting.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SHE didn’t know how long they lay together like that before it occurred to her what she had just experienced had been very one-sided. And he hadn’t said a thing…had not demanded entry to her body or anything!

What kind of amazing man was he? Certainly, he was unlike any other she had known or heard about.

She reached down with the hand closest to him and brushed the back of her fingers along the rigid length of his erection.

A low sound of pleasure rumbled in his chest. “Mmm…that feels good, cara.”

“Do you want to make love, Angelo?”

“We are already making love, but if you are asking if I want to have intercourse…” He paused and she waited with bated breath for him to go on.

“Without a doubt, I want you, but I promised you. No seduction. After what just happened between us, it could be nothing but.”

He was right, but… “Maybe I’ve changed my mind…maybe I want to be seduced.”

“I don’t break my word, Tara.” Despite the obvious arousal of his body, his tone was absolutely firm.

She respected that. A lot. Only that didn’t mean he had to lay here like a statue in sexual agony.

She brushed her hand back and forth, loving the way his big body jerked from the small caresses. “I c…could please you in other ways.”

Angelo’s only response was a very primitive growl deep in his throat. Taking it as acquiescence, she turned on her side, pleased with the way he kept his protective and highly erotic hold on the apex of her thighs. It felt like they were connected intimately.

She undid his trousers and slipped her hand inside. He was big and hard against the silk of his boxers, tenting the fabric significantly. She gulped at the thought of making love completely, but sensed he would never hurt her, not this man who had been so careful to keep his word even when she tempted him not to.

She caressed him and he went even more rigid.

She reluctantly pulled his hand away from her and sat up to kneel beside him. She grabbed the waistband of his trousers.

He rolled onto his knees and then stood so she could slide his trousers down and then the boxers, taking care not to catch his hard length on the waistband.

Her breath expelled from her lungs in a long whoosh at the sight of his hard flesh so close to her face. “You’re um…very prepared.”

He chuckled. “I’ve never heard it put that way before.”

She leaned forward, but he reared back. “Please don’t. If you put your mouth on me, my good intentions are going to take a vacation and not come back until I’m buried deeply inside you.”

She nodded her understanding and stood. She let her dress slide from her body completely.

His eyes glowed his appreciation.

She smiled. “I want you to take off your shirt, too.”

“Hot?”

“You don’t know how much.”

She choked on a laugh before joining him on the carpet, this time with him on his back and her snuggled up beside him.

“That feels good.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You don’t have to. Just having your body beside mine is a turn-on.”

No beautiful Italian speech there, but she appreciated the sentiment and curled her fingers around him in reward. “Amazing. You’re so soft.”

“Soft?” he choked out.

“I mean your skin…like silky velvet. Can there be such a thing?”

“If you say it is, I believe you. Right now, I would believe anything you want me to.”

She laughed. “I doubt it, but you just keep saying stuff like that.”

He didn’t laugh. He moaned as she started stroking him. She listened to the hitches in his breathing pattern to determine how he liked to be touched. It was the most incredible experience she’d ever had, having this powerful man put himself at her mercy.

“Tara…”

“Yes, cara, yes! Don’t stop.”

She didn’t and he erupted with a masculine shout that rang in her ears. Her body went stiff against him as if sharing an echo of his ecstasy. She’d never felt anything like it and collapsed against his side as if she’d found her own completion.

Eventually, they snuggled in front of the fire for a long time before he got up and carried her into the bedroom. As she had suspected, they ended up sharing a bed.

Tara saw Angelo off at the airport with the promise to have an answer to his proposal by the following weekend.

She couldn’t believe she was making him wait, even harder to believe he was letting her.

He’d made it clear he wanted her decision now, but he hadn’t pushed for it. It had to be obvious she wanted him enough to risk pretty much anything…even marriage. But he had agreed to wait for her decision and that made her feel really good.

Baron had always insisted on having his own way, so had most of the men her mother had lived with.

Angelo wasn’t like that. He wanted her compliance sure, but not at the cost of her self-respect and that meant the world.

Not wanting to make the same mistake with Angelo, she had with Baron, she spent a good portion of her off-hours that week researching him. Everything she found, which wasn’t much…the man was very private, pointed to him being the opposite of Baron.

He was absolutely ruthless when taking over a company and making it profitable, but he was also known for his ability to turn all a company’s assets to a profit, including its current workforce. He gave regularly to charities, was honest as far as she could tell, and as Ray had told Danette, Angelo was not a playboy.

In fact, there was almost nothing that she could find about him in the social columns. He didn’t have much of a personal reputation at all.

Everything she could find on him was related to his almost supernatural ability to make money and turn a dying company into something great.

She’d searched for information on his father’s company, but without knowing its name, she’d had no luck. And its loss was never referred to in the articles written about him now. Except for what he’d told her, his past was shrouded in mystery.

His present was filled with business, but his life was not littered with people he’d used and discarded once he’d gotten what he wanted from them.

The turnover rate in his corporate headquarters was very low. Another good sign, if she needed one. He was a trustworthy man.

Thursday evening, she stood in the grocery checkout line, tiredly waiting for her turn. It had been a long day, an even longer week. She’d missed Angelo more than she’d thought possible. How could someone become so necessary in such a short time? She’d lain awake every night wrestling with her inexplicable desire to acquiesce to his marriage proposal. It made no sense and yet, her heart told her she needed the man.

She didn’t trust that organ, but found its promptings impossible to ignore…thus her sleep deprived exhaustion.

She yawned behind her hand while the checkout clerk argued with the man in front of her over the sale price on a can of chili. Someone had to be sent to verify the price listed on the shelf.

Knowing that nothing was going to happen until the matter had been resolved, she let her gaze roam over the magazines and weeklies displayed at the check stand. Her eyes skimmed the headlines, noticing two Elvis sightings and one alien baby claim before she was arrested by a picture that looked like…no it couldn’t be.

But it was.

A full color image of Angelo kissing her in an obviously heated embrace in Danette’s pool filled the front of one of the weekly tabloids. The headline read, Tempting Tara Takes Another Rich Lover…

Would she never be rid of that awful nickname? Darn it, she wasn’t the one who had done the tempting in her relationship with Baron, or the one with Angelo for that matter.

The tag line under the photo was worse. Will going to bed with the boss put this former model on the fast track to success in corporate America?

She grabbed the tabloid with a jerk that almost tore its front cover and yanked it open. She flipped the pages with angry flicks until she found the article. It was a two page spread with more pictures. Lots of them. Every one insinuated sexual intimacy between her and Angelo.

One showed them coming out of their hotel room at the coast. Angelo’s arm was around her, his body language and expression possessive. The implication was unmistakable, but the editorial copy spelled it out anyway.

Like two years before, she was painted as a money-grubbing whore, only this time with her eye to the main chance at Primo Tech. An unnamed source in the management training department was quoted as saying it looked like Tara was hoping to gain her promotions via an avenue even older than hard work and perseverance.

It was all there…her affair with Baron, further speculation on her being the other woman when he courted his oil heiress. There was even some nonsense about how he’d been keeping her under surveillance since the breakup and innuendo that she might be at fault for the rumored possibility of imminent divorce.

Tara’s stomach somersaulted and it took a full minute of shallow breathing before she was sure she wouldn’t lose what little she’d eaten that day. She’d skipped lunch, trying to get ahead at work so she could take a half day off on Friday and keep her weekend free. Angelo was due in early the following afternoon.

Had he seen the article? She had no way of knowing. Surprisingly he had not called her all week. She had expected him to at least attempt to sway her decision with frequent phone calls, but he hadn’t. She only knew when he was due back because he’d told her before leaving when to expect him.

Her gaze re-focused on the article. How many people had seen it?

The weekly didn’t have the highest circulation in the country, but it was a national publication.

She couldn’t believe this was happening all over again and it made her furious. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she was being painted as a scheming tramp who used her body to get ahead instead of relying on her brains. That made Tara angriest of all. She’d graduated at the top of her class and was darn good at her job. She didn’t need the company owner’s patronage to get a promotion.

She was perfectly capable of securing one on her own merits, thank you very much.

The whole situation would be ludicrous if it didn’t hurt like a knife to the gut. Twisting that knife was the knowledge that whoever had sold the picture and information to the tabloid had been at Danette’s party. And one of her co-workers had been willing to be quoted, if anonymously, saying something extremely nasty. Betrayal burned through her.

She didn’t know who she worked with that felt that way, but only one person had gone around taking picture after picture at the party. Ray…the budding journalist.

He’d told her he was a serious journalist and that photography was only his hobby. The weekly was hardly an impressive example of journalistic solemnity and those photos had been paid for, which made the little hobby a job.

An ugly, despicable job…but one that could not be denied. Her stomach cramped again as an even less palatable thought assailed her. Had Danette known about it?

Two years ago, a couple of models that Tara had thought were friends had betrayed her to the press. One going so far as to tell out and out lies about her, exacerbating the piranha like media frenzy feeding off of her misfortune. That had hurt almost as much as Baron’s rejection.

So, maybe Tara was being hopelessly naïve now, but she simply could not accept that Danette had been in on Ray’s scheme. Danette was too forthright and she had too many stars in her eyes when she talked about Ray.

Which meant she was probably hurting as much as Tara was right now…if she’d seen the article.

It wasn’t fair. The rat. The absolute rat! She’d like to see him right now and she’d cut off his tail.

“Miss, it’s your turn!”

She looked up, realizing from the expression on the faces around her that was not the first time the checker had told her to move forward. Apparently the big chili controversy had been settled.

She tossed the weekly down in front of the checker. “I’ll take this, too.”

He nodded, his expression bored and then finished ringing her up. She paid and left, anger and hurt sizzling through her in alternating waves.

Those waves took on monumental proportions when she got to work the next day to discover she was being fired. She was told the order came from Angelo’s office in New York, but she refused to believe it. First of all, the man was too smart to fire a woman he’d slept with over getting caught out by the media.

Such an action put both him and his company too much at risk for retaliation and a sexual harassment lawsuit, if the woman in question was in the least bit dishonest.

The human resources manager assigned to the task of letting her go had finally admitted that Angelo was currently in Puerto Rico dealing with a natural disaster emergency that had affected one of his supply plants. Apparently even phone communication was iffy.

Which explained why he hadn’t called all week.

When he didn’t arrive that afternoon, or call, she tried his office. His secretary confirmed that he was calling in only sporadically for messages. Tara left one, bothered by his absence and her inability to get ahold of him. And she had to admit that an emergency like the one he faced in Puerto Rico wasn’t something he could dismiss or delegate.

She’d made a decision not to be hampered by her past in every judgment she made. That meant continuing to believe in the tycoon she missed more than she wanted to.

At least until he proved himself unworthy of her trust.

Wanting to get one issue of trustworthiness resolved, she tried to call Danette, but got her friend’s home voice mail instead and was forced to leave a message.

The phone rang the next morning and woke her out of a fitful sleep. She’d spent too many dark hours thinking about her best friend and the man who wanted to marry her.

Hoping it was Danette, she grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Tara?”

The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“Yes?” Her voice came out scratchy and she cleared her throat.

“I need to see you, darling.”

“Who is this?” she demanded, her sleep fuddled mind sure of one thing.

The voice at the other end of the line was not one of the two men in her life with a right to call her by endearments: Angelo and her stepfather, Darren.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the sound of my voice. I haven’t forgotten anything about you, Tara. I never could. Not the sweet way you smell, or the taste of your lips—”

“I am not in any mood for obscene phone calls,” she inserted with speed, recognition finally enlightening her rapidly wakening mind.

Baron’s laugh was seductive and low, like he thought she was flirting with him. “How about a visit? Would you prefer I say these things in person?”

“No! Are you in Portland?” she asked, worried that might be the case and wondering how he’d gotten her number.

“Not yet, but I can be. We need to talk.”

“We finished talking two years ago.”

“Tara, I’m divorcing my wife.”

“How fortunate for her,” she quipped, unable to help herself. Did he really think she cared?

“I understand your bitterness, darling. I made a terrible mistake two years ago. I want to make it right.”

“You don’t know the meaning of making things right. You did me one favor two years ago, Baron. You walked away. I’m not about to let you undo possibly the only good deed of your life. You’re a user. You suck other people dry and smile while you’re doing it.”

She had no idea how she’d ever loved this man, but after one week in Angelo’s company, the difference between the two types of tycoons was crystal clear to her.

“I don’t want you in my life. I don’t want you calling me and I swear that if you show up in Portland stalking me, I’ll go to the authorities for a restraining order.”

“Tara, you’re angry, but you don’t understand—”

“You’re wrong,” she interrupted again, not wanting to hear a single line of his con story. He’d deceived her before with that tone and his too believable excuses, but never again.

“I’m not angry. I’m disgusted you could think for one second I would want to hear from you again after the way you used me and then threw me to the wolves in the press with a steak tied around my ankle.”