Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

‘Of course I have.’

‘Really?’ His eyes burned into her, his lips curving around his cold, judgemental words. ‘And what course of action do you propose we take to halt the downturn?’

He was enjoying this, Sorcha realised furiously. In the same way that a policeman might enjoy interrogating a guilty suspect or a sadist might enjoy pulling the wings off a butterfly. And he would enjoy it even more if she allowed him to see that he was getting to her. So she wouldn’t.

It was easier said than done. She moved her shoulders edgily. ‘I’m looking into sales movements, distribution patterns, rises and falls in trading—you know. The usual thing.’

‘Yes. Precisely. Hashing over the past. The usual thing,’ he agreed, leaping on her phrase and repeating it with icy sarcasm. ‘But innovation is everything in business—you must know that, Sorcha. Working for the family firm doesn’t mean you have to undergo a common sense bypass.’

‘You think you’re very clever, don’t you, Cesare?’

‘I think that’s a given,’ he retorted softly. ‘But this has nothing to do with ego or brains, and everything to do with achievement!’

His eyes were blazing now, and even though he was revelling in the mutinous expression on her lovely face it was by no means what motivated him. Because—no matter what unfinished business there was between him and Sorcha Whittaker—this was all about pride, and a very different kind of pride from the one she had wounded by her refusal to marry him.

He had taken on this task and it was a challenge—and Cesare was a man who always rose to a challenge and conquered it.

The Whittaker scheme interested him only in the way in which an overfed cat might be mildly interested in a small mouse which had foolishly strayed into its path. But the venture afforded him the delicious opportunity to seduce the only woman he’d ever asked to marry. Turning around the ailing company was a purely secondary consideration, and he knew that he could easily afford to fail. In fact, lesser men might have got some perverse kind of pleasure from seeing her made broke.

But even if he hadn’t been loyal to Rupert, Cesare’s nature and his need to succeed were such that he would not tolerate failure—of any kind—and didn’t his relationship with Sorcha represent just that? Surely the ultimate satisfaction would be to bed her, win the praise of her family by reviving their fortunes, and make a packet for himself into the bargain? Put her for ever in his debt before walking away—this time for good, giving her the rest of her life to reflect on what she could have had. Yes. A perfect plan.

Prendere due piccioni con una fava.

To kill two birds with one stone…

He sighed. Si.

His raised his eyes, enjoying the frustration which she was failing to hide. ‘Rupert has been trying to drum up more trade—but you’ve got a brain in your head, Sorcha. Didn’t it occur to you to put it to use to try and work out why the products aren’t selling?’

‘You think it’s that easy?’

He shook his dark head. ‘Not easy, no. Simple, yes. Sit down.’

She hesitated, and then perched on the edge of the boardroom table instead of pulling out one of the chairs which stood around it. His eyes mocked her.

‘Demonstrating your equality?’ he murmured.

‘You wouldn’t know equality if it reached out and bit you!’

Laughing softly, he sat down in one of the soft leather chairs and leaned back to look at her, wondering if she would have chosen such a highly visible vantage point if she had realised the view it gave him of her derrière. Or that the material of her skirt was stretched so tightly over her bottom that he could see the faint outline of a thong.

His resulting erection made him wince. Serves you right, he thought, as he reached down into his briefcase. ‘I’ve been going back through the Whittakers advertising budget over the past year—’

‘It would be madness to cut the budget,’ she interjected quickly.

‘I’m not suggesting we do—please don’t put words in my mouth,’ he snapped. Put your breast in my mouth instead. His erection grew even harder as he pulled out a copy of a popular women’s magazine. ‘Take a look at this.’

She did as he asked, glad to have the opportunity to look away from that hard and fascinating face and concentrate on something other than the soft, warm coil of desire which was slowly unfurling in the pit of her stomach.

Why couldn’t she just be impartial to him—good looks or no good looks? She’d met men who were almost as hunky as Cesare—though it was true that they didn’t seem to have his inbuilt arrogance, or the ability to be in charge of a situation wherever he happened to be at the time.

She didn’t want to feel anything other than maybe a vaguely grown-up sensation of There’s the man I thought I was in love with—the man who asked me to marry him. She wanted to feel that thing you were supposed to feel when you looked at someone from a past which seemed very dim and distant—that she was looking at a complete stranger. So why didn’t she?

Trying to quell the tremble in her fingers, she flicked through the magazine he had given her. There was a big spread on a former weathergirl’s latest attempt to conquer her weight problem, with a few tantalising insights as to why she was attracted to violent men, there were gossip items and recipes, a problem page and a fashion shoot, and—amongst the other advertisements—an ad for Whittakers.

Sorcha had grown up seeing bottles of the family sauce plastered over various publications since the year dot, so it was no big deal—but she always felt a little glow of satisfaction when she saw one of their fullcolour promotions.

‘You mean this?’ She looked up at him. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘It’s good for what it is,’ he answered carefully.

‘Why are you talking in riddles, Cesare—am I supposed to be looking for anything in particular?’

He studied her lips and thought how he would like to wipe that nonchalant expression off her beautiful face with a long, hard kiss. ‘Does anything about it strike you as different?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really,’ he echoed, biting back his irritation. He leaned back further in his chair. ‘It’s the same advert you’ve been using for years.’

‘So what? It’s a good advert!’

‘I will tell you so what, cara,’ he said softly. ‘If companies do not change—then they die—that is a rule of life which applies to everything and everyone. And it shows a certain arrogance towards the general public if you treat them with contempt, not even wanting to bother to try and change.’

She stiffened. ‘You have the nerve to talk about arrogance?’

Cesare drew in a deep breath. He would have liked nothing better than to talk about arrogance, since it was the kind of subject which soon had women railing and then pouting and then sending out messages which would result in a silent little tussle, and then…then…But he couldn’t risk making love to her. Not yet.

‘We are going to be changing the campaign.’

‘Shouldn’t that be a question rather than a statement? Or have you been given carte blanche to do exactly what you want without running it past me first?’ she demanded.

He didn’t bother answering that, and the fact that she didn’t pick up on it meant that she was perceptive enough to realise that maybe she wouldn’t like the answer. ‘Granny cooking up home recipes on the kitchen table no longer strikes a chord,’ he said slowly.

‘But people relate to that! They think it really is greatgranny! The whole family business thing is what defines us! It’s what makes us different to all the other brands!’

‘I know that.’ He paused. ‘And that is why we’re planning to upgrade the company with a brand-new image—spearheaded by one of its very own family members. A new generation to front the Whittaker campaign. Imagine the publicity.’

‘And just which member of the family did you have in mind to front this new advertising campaign?’ The question sounded mechanical, because even as she was asking it she knew that there was just her, her mother and Rupert. Unless Cesare meant Emma, and she was away on her honeymoon.

He gave the ghost of a smile. ‘Oh, come on, Sorcha,’ he said softly. ‘You may not have impressed me with your business acumen so far, but there is only one person who can do it. You know that and I know that.’ His black eyes glittered. ‘And that person is you, bella donna.’

CHAPTER FIVE

SORCHA froze as she looked into Cesare’s dark, mocking face. ‘No.’

‘No?’ he echoed.

She clenched her fists. ‘If you want someone to front your new advertising campaign, you’ll have to look somewhere else.’

‘But we’ve already decided that it has to be a family member—your mother is the wrong age, your sister is the wrong marital status, and your brother is the wrong sex.’ His lips curved into a smile. ‘We want to reach out and capture the single person who is living on their own—to introduce a whole new market to a very traditional product.’

‘No, Cesare.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not a model!’

‘Ah, but that is the whole point—we don’t want a professional model,’ he murmured silkily, and he bent down to pick up a large black cardboard envelope from which he pulled a thick sheet of cartridge paper in the manner of a magician withdrawing a rabbit from a hat. He handed it to her.

Inside was a mock-up of an advertisement featuring a girl with bright strawberry blonde hair—drawn to look just like her, she realised with a sinking feeling. On the table in front of her were all the delicious ingredients of a sandwich in the making, with a bottle of Whittakers Hot n’ Spicy in the foreground.

The girl was sucking her finger, her eyes gazing wide and coquettish at the camera, and just one word was splashed across the top of the page. SAUCY!

‘Simple, but effective,’ said Cesare, and he felt weak with desire just imagining Sorcha sucking on his finger, and on…

‘Just imagine the publicity,’ he said huskily. ‘This could be big, Sorcha. Really big.’

‘And if demand increases—just how are you planning to meet it? Are you just going to magic up X amount of sauce from nowhere, Cesare?’

He gave her a narrow-eyed look of admiration. ‘Leave that to me.’

He spoke in a tone of voice which told her that nothing was going to be a problem—and, infuriatingly, she believed him. But he hadn’t taken into account the unpredictability of human nature had he? Or of women in particular? ‘You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?’ she breathed.

His smile was satisfied as he waited for the plaudits to come his way. ‘I’ve tried,’ he murmured.

‘Well, you should have consulted me, shouldn’t you?’ she questioned crisply. ‘Because I can’t do this.’

His smile vanished. ‘Why not?’

‘The rest of the family would never agree to me taking centre-stage.’

‘They already have.’

They already have.

‘Emma thinks it would be good for you.’

Emma thinks it would be good for you.

‘And your mother—’

‘Stop it!’ she screeched. ‘I don’t want to hear!’

It had taken a moment or two for her to register what had been niggling at her all along, but his words helped it to snap into crystal-clear focus.

Not only had he been brought in behind her back and then demanded that she be kept in the dark until it was too late to do anything to change it. But now—just as if they were engaged in some old-fashioned spy story—he had been briefing against her. It appeared that he had been masterminding a whole great scheme involving her—only she was the last person to know!

Sorcha glanced at the beautifully executed mock-up. This wasn’t something which he had just had an artist scribble up in a few minutes—this had all been carefully planned. She had been excluded, and the rest of the family had colluded with him. It felt like a betrayal in the most complete sense of the word.

‘You must have been working behind my back for weeks,’ she said in a stunned voice.

‘I thought it preferable if we presented it to you as a fait accompli.’

She looked at him, stunned. ‘You bastard,’ she said softly.

Cesare’s blood heated with an inevitable sense of triumph—because, in a way, wasn’t this exactly what he had wanted all along? For the precarious veneer of civility which had existed between them to be smashed by a simple word of contempt—leaving him free to give in to what he had wanted to do from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her again. And everyone knew that conflict made the best aphrodisiac in the world.

‘Is that what I am?’ he questioned as he walked towards her. Her eyes were filled with fury—and something else, too—or were they just mirroring what was in his? An unbearable hunger he had only just realised had been building away inside him all these years.

‘Then maybe I’d better start behaving like one.’ And with one unequivocal gesture he pulled her to her feet and into his arms.

She saw it coming—of course she did—but the pressure of his arms and the heat of his body drove everything from her mind—other than how much she had dreamed about this over the years, despite all her best efforts to suppress it. Sometimes in the middle of the cruel and indiscriminate night she had awoken to relive the achingly unfulfilled pleasure of his kiss—as someone stranded in the desert might remember how a glass of cool water tasted.

‘Bastard!’ she said again, but it came out on a shuddering breath of pleasure as he splayed his fingers possessively over her back. And this time something had changed. She was no longer eighteen years old, with a watchful mother lurking around in the house and a man who almost didn’t trust himself to touch her for fear that he would lose control. He was certainly trusting himself to touch her now.

She felt her knees weakening, so that instead of wrenching herself away from him she sank inexorably against him. It felt as if every taut muscle and sinew was imprinted against her. A body like rock and skin like silk—when had she learned to find that particular combination so utterly irresistible?

‘Damn you,’ she managed indistinctly. ‘Oh, damn you, Cesare di Arcangelo!’

‘But you don’t want to damn me,’ he taunted.

‘Yes, I do,’ she returned, and wondered how her voice could sound so reedy.

His gaze raked over her face and read the stark hunger in the emerald brilliance of her eyes. ‘You want this,’ he grated harshly. ‘We both want this.’

She told herself she would have denied it—but she would never know. Because the answer she had begun falteringly to frame was obliterated by the heady power of his kiss as he drove his mouth down hard on hers. And was this so very wrong? To give in to something it had nearly killed them to deny themselves in the past?

Hard and punishingly, he plundered her lips—and never had a kiss so overwhelmed him, leaving him weak and dizzy, like a man who had dragged himself out of the water after swimming too long.

Was that groan his? And that sigh—was that his too?

But even while his big body shuddered with unstoppable desire his response angered him. Which buttons did she always press which so weakened him—he, a man who neither needed nor wanted anyone? His anger transmuted itself into a desire to show her exactly that. To give her a coldly efficient demonstration of his sexual powers.

He dragged his mouth away from hers and brushed it over her neck. Her head tipped back as he did so, and the ponytail of her fiery hair dangled behind her. He wrapped it around his wrist like a bright, silken rope. His other hand reached for her breast, splaying possessively over the silk-covered curve and feeling the nipple peak and harden beneath his questing fingers.

‘Cesare!’ she cried.

‘What is it, cara? Is that good?’

‘It’s…It’s…Oh, Cesare.’ She wanted to call him darling—her darling—her sweet and wonderful and beautiful darling—Cesare. But he wasn’t her darling, was he? Not any more. He was just a proud and angry man who was setting her on fire with the mastery of his touch.

‘I should have done this years ago,’ he ground out, and pushed her back against the table, brushing aside all the papers and sliding her bottom onto the cleared space, scarcely aware of what he was doing, only that he was being driven on by a power greater than himself. ‘And then I could have rid myself of your face. Rid myself of your pale, beautiful body. Taken the memory of you and screwed it up into a tiny ball and tossed it onto the fire.’

That didn’t sound like affection—it sounded like the very opposite. Almost as if he despised her. Resented her. It should have killed her desire stone-dead—so why was it only escalating? ‘Maybe you should—’

‘Should what?’

‘Stop what you’re doing,’ she breathed.

‘But you don’t want me to stop, do you?’

‘Cesare—’

‘Do you? You would kill me if I stopped, wouldn’t you, my haunting green-eyed witch? You would rake those talons down over my bare back and draw blood, and then you would suck it off, like a vampire.’

‘Yes! No!’ No—no, of course she didn’t want him to stop, and the visual imagery of his words almost made her faint. He was right. She had wanted this to happen since for ever, and even before that. ‘Do it,’ she whispered. ‘Do it and get it over with. And then leave me with the peace that you so obviously crave, too.’

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he vowed furiously. ‘I intend to.’

The skirt was tricky, but there wasn’t a skirt in the world which would have defeated Cesare di Arcangelo. Never had his experienced hands trembled so much. He rucked it up over her knees, and then further still, to reveal hold-up stockings clinging to pale thighs, and he sucked in a ragged breath, his resolve almost leaving him, but not quite.

Now he could see the fine triangle of lace which hinted at the soft red-gold tangle of hair beneath, and he touched her there with ruthless precision—lightly grazing his finger against her moist heat so that she cried out.

‘Shut up!’ he bit out. ‘We don’t want any of the secretaries coming in. There is only going to be one woman coming, and it is going to be you, my beauty.’

‘Oh, Cesare,’ she whispered helplessly.

He skated his fingers over the cool silk of her inner thigh and she writhed restlessly, impatiently—Cesare knew then that he had her completely in his power, but that he must use that power wisely.

For once he gave her the orgasm her body was so badly craving might she not just turn around and tell him to go to hell?

His fingers stilled and she groaned.

Or would it make her more compliant if he satisfied her now?

He needed her co-operation just as badly as he wanted to have sex with her if his scheme were to succeed. Wouldn’t leaving her wanting him more make her much more acquiescent to his wishes? For hunger was one of life’s great motivators, and sexual hunger the most powerful of all…

He thought of all the times he had pulled back from the brink that long, hot summer, and it gave him the strength to resist pulling her panties right off and plunging into her there and then.

But she writhed her hips again, giving a little whimpering sound of something fast approaching pain, and Cesare knew that she was past the point of no return. His smile was cruel and triumphant as he acted quickly, swiftly disentangling from her to stride across the room and lock the door. And then he came back and began to unbutton her blouse, and suddenly his triumph became a kind of submission.

‘Oh, cara,’ he groaned as he peeled away the silk to reveal the twin thrust of her lush breasts encased in pure white lace. Like a virgin, he thought helplessly, and bent his head to suckle her through the lace, feeling her buck wildly beneath him.

Blindly, he felt for her again, his hand sliding up her skirt and finding her damp warmth, and suddenly he wanted to taste it. Taste her. He tugged at her panties and she lifted her bottom as he edged them down, over her knees and past her ankles, until they dropped to the floor.

She was positioned perfectly, he realised as he began to trace the tip of his tongue up over her stockings to where lace became skin and then beyond, where the skin was softest of all and exquisitely sensitive. And then the folds themselves—moist, warm, secret entrances to her most honeyed treasure. He felt the tip with a touch so light it was almost a whisper, and he felt her little shudder of disbelief. He moved his tongue, curling the very edge of it around her in a rapid little circular movement which had her groping wildly for his shoulders, tangling her fingers frantically in his hair and crying his name out until he shushed her.

Even before he felt a rush of sweet moistness against his lips he could sense her release, and he held her hips while she began to shudder against his mouth. And then he moved away to take her in his arms, pressing his fingers hard against her while she convulsed around them, and he kissed away her wild cry until—to his astonishment—the cry became real. And tears, great shimmering tears, began to roll down her cheeks. He felt them mingling with their merged mouths—so many different flavours of her—and heard the choking little noises she made as she tried to recover herself.

He drew back from her, his black eyes hooded—for he never trusted women’s tears. They turned them on and off at will, as weapons of manipulation, that was all. As a deterrent they could not have come at a better time, though, for they stilled his own sexual hunger so that he was able to rein it in—a feat of self-control which few other men would have been able to manage under the circumstances.

‘You cry?’ he demanded. ‘I do not please you?’

It was an absurd question to ask—for surely he must have known that he had? Sorcha felt hopeless—helpless, shaky and insecure, and completely out of her depth—as if he had scraped away the top layer of skin and left her raw and vulnerable, unsure what to do next. She shook her head.

He smoothed her hair away from her damp face and frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘That…That…’

She looked almost shy, he realised. Shy?

‘What?’

She felt the blush wash upwards from her neck and she opened her eyes, biting her lip. ‘It was just…Oh! With your tongue…Well, I mean, I’ve never…’

He held her still. Were his ears deceiving him. ‘Never?’ he demanded shakily.

She shook her head.

For a moment Cesare stilled, and then he buried his face in her hair, closing his eyes. It was like music to his ears, though he scarcely dared to believe it. Had she hungered for him so badly over all these years that there had been no other man for her?

He slid his arms around her waist and levered her back up, smoothing her hair and looking into her eyes. ‘You’re trying to tell me you’re a virgin?’

There was a split-second silence, and Sorcha was so tempted to lie. To tell him what he really wanted to hear—and wouldn’t that make it much easier to bear? Then the way that she’d reacted might have been a bit more understandable—if she’d loved and wanted and waited all that time for him to make love to her then who could blame her for what she had just allowed to happen?

But she couldn’t lie. Not to Cesare. And certainly not about something as important as that. She knew how highly he rated purity—wasn’t it the main reason he had asked her to marry him?

‘No, I’m not a virgin,’ she said quietly.

Now she had made him into a fool! Or had he only himself to blame for the sudden leap of hope he had felt? As if she wouldn’t have had a long line of lovers…not when he knew how instantly she reacted to a man’s touch.

His mouth curved. ‘Your lovers must not have been good lovers,’ he drawled. ‘If they did not know how much a woman likes to be eaten.’