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

She was still crying out helplessly against his shoulder when Cesare followed, with one final deep thrust which sent him spinning off into a place of unbearable sweetness. It seemed to take him a long time to return to earth.

After it was over he lay back against the bed, staring upwards at the ceiling of a bedroom that wasn’t his, oddly shaken by what had just happened. But that was because he had waited so long, he told himself—and now that the wait was over the hunger and the passion would die a natural death.

He turned to look at Sorcha. Her bright hair was tumbled across his pillow and her skin was rose-pink. But her eyes were closed.

‘Are you sleeping?’ he questioned softly.

Behind the sanctuary of her closed lids, Sorcha composed herself before opening them. Act like you don’t care, she told herself.

‘No.’

His eyes narrowed as he searched her face, but it was blank, like an unpainted canvas—as if she felt nothing. Yet how could that be? Even if she no longer had any great affection for him, he was experienced enough to know that her orgasm had been of the bone-melting variety. Cesare prided himself on giving a woman pleasure—indeed, it often inspired an almost slavish devotion in his lovers. Compliments were his due, and always effusive. Always. But not, it seemed, from Sorcha. He traced a finger along her shoulder and she shivered. ‘You liked that, cara?’

Keep it real, she told herself. Protect yourself. He must know how good he is. ‘It was…’ Sorcha shrugged. ‘It was okay.’

For a moment his face darkened. ‘You mean you were faking it?’ he demanded in disbelief.

Sorcha started laughing. ‘I’m not that good an actress.’

He relaxed. ‘Ah, I see—you are teasing me?’

‘Aren’t you used to being teased, then, Cesare?’

He pulled her closer. ‘Not,’ he said silkily, ‘at moments like these.’ Women tended to idolise him. His ego was vast, but it was not self-delusion which made him sometimes feel like a trophy—not when he knew that women sometimes boasted of having been his lover. Lately he had found the very obvious conquests a bore. He looked down at Sorcha’s bright hair. Yet she had been the easiest conquest of all. Or had she? He felt a twist of inexplicable pain.

‘You have had many other lovers?’ he demanded.

She turned her face towards him and her green eyes were serious. ‘Do you ask every woman that?’

‘Of course I do not. But it is different with you.’

‘Why?’ she whispered.

Because I wish I’d been the first. Because I cannot bear the thought of another man doing to you what I have just done. ‘Just curiosity.’

‘But it’s none of your business, is it?’ she asked sweetly. ‘I haven’t asked you how many women you’ve had.’

Cesare felt wrong-footed. ‘That is different,’ he said stubbornly.

‘Another thing that’s different? My, my, Cesare—where were you when women got the vote?’

He could feel a mixture of exasperation and frustration, because she still hadn’t answered his question. ‘You were right,’ he said suddenly. ‘We could never have been married. For I could never have tolerated a woman with strong opinions such as yours, which often do not coincide with my own.’

‘Then everything has turned out for the best, hasn’t it? Of course if we’d married my opinions would have been different,’ she said. ‘Because you would have helped form them.’

‘And you think that would have been such a terrible thing?’ he demanded, even though deep-down he admired her independence of thought.

There was a pause. She knew that there was an easy answer to give—but what would be the point? This—whatever it was they had between them—was not destined to last, so why not be honest at least? ‘Well, yes—I do. Because then all I would have been was an extension of you—with no intellectual freedom of my own.’

It was one of the things he now found so exhilarating about her company—this feisty and challenging mind she had developed. But surely to admit that—even to himself—would represent a loss of face? ‘And that is why you will never find a husband!’ he stormed.

Sorcha stared at him, and then started laughing. ‘I can’t believe that a sophisticated man of the world just came out with something as crass as that!’ But her laughter died when she saw the sudden dark look of intent on his face.

‘In the bedroom a man is just a man, cara mia—and his response is rather more…primitive. And that is the double-edged sword—because the kind of man who turns you on is precisely the kind of man who will not tolerate your need for independence and freedom.’

‘Cesare…’ She wanted to say Don’t. But she couldn’t, because her body was craving his once more. And maybe he was right—maybe she was doomed to want what she could never have. An alpha-man who could never accept the woman she really was.

‘Nothing to say, cara?’ Luxuriously, he splayed his hands over the silken globes of her bottom and bent his mouth to her ear. ‘Then let me say it for you…In the end, all the things you claim to want count for nothing, because you cannot resist the demands of your body. And though the spirit is willing, the flesh is very weak. If I had asked you objectively whether you wished to find yourself in my bed, you would have answered no—and yet here you are. It must distress you sometimes to acknowledge that your sexual drive is so strong.’

She stared up at him, the hurt shimmering in her eyes. ‘You think I react like this with every man? That I let anyone do what you did to me in the office this afternoon?’

A slow smile of satisfaction spread over his face. ‘You mean it is just me?’ he murmured.

Sorcha felt as if she’d walked into a silken trap and he had nearly tricked her into giving him the answer he wanted.

Suddenly she wanted to hurt him back—to lash out at him the way he’d been doing ever since he’d come back into her life.

‘You want to slot me in as yet another of your damned stereotypes, don’t you?’ she stormed. ‘Where once I was your precious virgin, now I’m a loose woman. But how loose? That is the question. How many men will you decide I’ve slept with, Cesare? Ten? Twenty? A hundred?’

‘Stop it, Sorcha,’ he said suddenly, as the mental pictures her angry words conjured up became unbearable.

‘Then stop judging me by your archaic standards! Do you want to know how many?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t?’

His eyes glittered. ‘I just want to know if any of them were as good as me.’

She stared at him. ‘You are unbelievable.’

‘So I’m told. I’ll take that as a no.’ He kissed her and then lifted his head, an arrogant thrill curving his lips as he stared down at her rumpled, rosy beauty. ‘I want to see you smile. Ah, that is better.’ He stroked his hand down over her waist and felt her shiver. ‘Now I’m going to make love to you. And then…’

Sorcha swallowed as he traced his tongue along the curve of her jaw. He was tormenting her, teasing her, and yet she didn’t want him to stop it, because his soft cajoling was more enticing than anything else. ‘Then?’ she whispered.

Cesare touched the tip of his tongue to her ear. ‘I think we must discuss the campaign.’

Sorcha stared at him.

‘I’ve made an appointment for you to see an old friend of mine,’ he murmured. ‘He has an exhibition starting in London.’ His eyes glinted. ‘He used to be one of the world’s most famous photographers until he gave it up. But he’s agreed to do this job as a favour. It is,’ he finished with satisfaction, ‘a very great honour.’

For a moment he might as well have been speaking in his native Italian. Sorcha jerked her head away and blinked at him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The new face of Whittakers. You.’ He nodded to himself.

She sat upright in bed, bright hair streaming down over her bare breasts, suddenly finding that rage was a far easier emotion to live with than willing surrender. ‘Excuse me, but I don’t actually remember agreeing to do it.’

‘Really?’ He slid his hand between her legs. ‘I thought you just had.’

Sorcha covered his hand with hers and halted its sensuous progress. ‘Let’s make one thing clear, Cesare,’ she said. ‘The sex is separate. I’m with you now because I want to be. Not because I’m allowing myself to be seduced into agreeing to have my photo taken.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you’re refusing to do the job?’

She gave him a demure smile. Oh, but she was enjoying this. Why didn’t some enterprising person write a book on how empowering it was to defy a man who thought it his right to issue commands and have them instantly obeyed?

‘That’s not what I’m saying at all, Cesare,’ she said patiently. ‘I’ll do it because I can see the sense in it. And if it works I’ll be the first to pat you on the back—since that is so clearly what you like. But my decision has absolutely nothing to with your skill as a lover.’ She saw the incredulous look in his black eyes and resisted a smile of triumph. ‘And now—if you don’t mind—I’d like you to drive me home.’ She slid her legs over the side of the bed in a graceful movement which he followed with a kind of helpless hunger.

‘Home?’ he repeated, in a voice of strained disbelief.

‘Please.’

‘Do you mind telling me why?’ he demanded.

Hearing the outrage in his voice, Sorcha lifted her head and steeled herself to meet the hot and sensual challenge which sizzled from his black eyes, reminding herself that sex appeal as powerful as Cesare’s was a very dangerous thing. It made you want to mould yourself against his silken olive skin and be made love to until the stars faded from the sky. But that would be a disaster—and a recipe for tip-tilting her emotions so much that she wouldn’t be able to think straight. And wasn’t it bad enough already?

She recognised that she was still vulnerable around him. That just because she had had mind-blowing sex with him it didn’t mean her heart had been granted some sort of special immunity from his spell. ‘We’ll have to be careful,’ she said.

Cesare’s eyes narrowed. ‘Careful?’

Sorcha bit her lip. Did he think she was talking about contraception? Was that the only level his mind operated on? ‘I want to keep this secret,’ she elaborated. ‘I don’t want anyone finding out, and I assume that you don’t either.’

‘Oh, do you?’ he questioned dangerously.

She had thought that this would please him. But the glitter in his eyes did not look like pleasure, and the steely note underpinning his stern voice did not sound like pleasure. ‘Surely you agree with me, Cesare? For one thing it’s highly unprofessional for two people working together to be…’ She struggled to think of a suitable description, but the only one which came to mind wasn’t even true. ‘Intimate.’

There was a pause as he weighed up her words. ‘But that’s not the real reason you want to keep it secret, is it, Sorcha?’ he asked softly. Yet inside Cesare was reeling. He was the one who usually laid down conditions within a relationship. Never before had a woman dared to impose her rules on him, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

For a moment there was another silence. ‘No.’

He raised his dark brows. ‘So, are you going to enlighten me, cara?’

And—despite all her intentions—Sorcha suddenly found that it took a lot of courage to articulate her fears, to face up to the truth, no matter how bitter the reality.

‘Well, your position here is only temporary, and therefore if we embark on an affair it isn’t destined to last—it’s just a short-lived pleasure. We don’t want anyone building it up into something it isn’t.’ She shrugged. ‘And we don’t want other people projecting emotions on us when it finishes. If they don’t know about it—they can’t.’

‘You really have this all worked out, don’t you?’ he said admiringly.

‘Kind of.’ What choice did she have? What other way to protect herself against certain heartbreak?

She bent over to pick up her discarded bra and Cesare quickly shut his eyes in erotic agony. Was she deliberately tormenting him? Sliding the filmy lace garment over her breasts with all the sensual show of a stripper?

With a simmering fury he climbed out of bed, feeling as if she had wrong-footed him yet again.

‘So really,’ he said slowly, ‘this strategy of yours is designed to thwart any hurt pride?’

Sorcha nodded, turning away from the temptation of his magnificent naked body. ‘Surely you can understand that, Cesare?’

Pride? Oh, yes—he could understand that. He knew the pain and the comfort it could bring. If pride were a degree course at college, then Cesare would have picked up a first in it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘OKAY, Sorcha—if you could stand just over there.’

Sorcha stood on the chalk cross the assistant was indicating while they held light meters up close to her face and wobbled sheets of white paper around the place. She had only been there half an hour, and already she was bored out of her mind. How did professional models manage it? she wondered, devoting yet more silent sympathy towards that breed of overpaid beanpoles, because at least it stopped her thinking about…

Wriggling her shoulders, she smiled at the assistant. She was not going to think about Cesare and the way he had assumed he could seduce her into doing any damned thing he pleased.

Still, at least in some things she had shown him that she had a mind of her own. Every time he had made love to her she had insisted on going home to sleep in her own bed, even though he had tried his best to make her stay. Even though he was…was…

She shivered and closed her eyes. Why remember the way his lips had trailed a slow path from neck to belly and beyond? The way he had made her cry out in surrender, her back arching helplessly as he gave a low laugh of triumph?

Why think about that now, when she was trying to be strong as she prepared to have her photo taken, trying not to melt when she thought about his dark, irresistible face?

That was why her need to sleep apart from him was so urgent—so necessary—for who could predict what would happen in those strange, unreal hours before dawn, when you were lying so close to a man who had been part of your heart for so long? How difficult she might have found it not to cradle him in her arms and tenderly stroke his thick black hair—to tell him that he made her feel whole again.

And was it her fierce resolve which made Cesare seek to demonstrate his power over her in different ways? That if he could not have her at night, then he would avail himself of every other opportunity which came his way? Did he take more than erotic delight in seducing her again and again at the office, despite her breathless protestations that it felt wrong?

‘It does not feel wrong to me, cara,’ he had murmured as he’d pushed her back against the boardroom door and rucked her skirt up, and thrust into her long and hard and slow. ‘It feels oh…so…right.’

And Sorcha had sobbed softly into his shoulder as he brought her to another shuddering orgasm, telling herself that she had only herself to blame for this surreptitiousness. That she was the one who had demanded it be kept secret.

That morning he had picked her up from the house to drive her to the photo-shoot, and during the drive she’d seemed to be aware of him in a way she never had been before.

As if even the strip of hair-roughened wrist which showed beneath the crisp, starched shirt-cuff with its gleaming golden cufflink was of endless fascination to her. As though she could have studied his skin for hours and never tired of it.

Was that because his collecting her was about as close as they had come to replicating a date?

But there had been no kiss to greet her, just an atmosphere of simmering tension in the car, which Sorcha had tolerated until she’d been able to bear it no longer.

‘Is something wrong, Cesare?’

‘Wrong?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I want you so much that I can barely drive in a straight line—what could possibly be wrong?’

‘I thought you would have worn yourself out yesterday,’ she said tartly.

He shot her a glance. ‘So did I,’ he observed drily.

And in spite of everything, Sorcha’s heart leapt with longing. ‘Why don’t you stop the car and kiss me?’ she said softly.

‘Because we’re stuck on the M25, you’re about to be photographed by a genius—and time is money,’ he snapped frustratedly.

‘Well, you’re the one who booked it!’

‘Please don’t remind me!’

Sorcha stared at the jammed road ahead, and sighed. ‘Why don’t you tell me how you know the photographer?’ she said.

‘Are you trying to change the subject?’

‘What do you think?’

There was a silence.

‘Well?’ she prompted.

It was hardly a state secret, was it? ‘Maceo and I have known each other since we were kids,’ he said.

‘Schoolfriends, you mean?’

Cesare’s mouth twisted. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly…what? Neighbours?’

‘No. We met at judo lessons.’

‘And you’ve been friends ever since?’

‘Men don’t look at friendship in the same way as women,’ he answered slowly. ‘But, yes, we’re friends. Look, we’re here,’ he murmured, unable to hide his relief as they drew up outside the studio. ‘You go inside. I’ll see you in a while.’

Sorcha turned to look at him. ‘Lucky me,’ she said, and his eyes glittered in response.

‘That’s exactly what you said last night,’ he murmured. ‘Twice, I recall.’

‘Only twice?’ she retorted, and he laughed.

The assistant’s voice broke into her erotic thoughts. ‘Don’t bite your lip, Sorcha—there’s a good girl!’

‘Sorry,’ said Sorcha automatically. Good girl? How did models stand it?

The studio was situated in the heart of London, in a large, nondescript basement which seemed to be buzzing with life and people. As well as the assistant, there was a stylist and her assistant, plus two representatives from the ad agency which represented the Whittakers account.

Everyone in the place was wearing some kind of denim—apart from Sorcha, who had been given a ghastly gingham apron to wear to promote the sauce and had not been expecting an audience.

‘Can someone push that piece of tomato out of the way? Can you lift your head a fraction higher, Sorcha? No—a bit to the left!’

Sorcha’s smile didn’t falter, because she was determined to give it her best—even though she could very easily play the role of victim and claim that she had been forced into doing the shoot. Indeed, she could do it with such bad grace that she would be pronounced hopeless—and then the whole scheme would have to be rethought. Then there would be egg all over his gorgeous face.

As a way of getting back at Cesare it would be a masterly move. But getting back at him for what? For being autocratic? Because that was him—he was right—it was part of what attracted her to him as well as what ultimately made them incompatible.

She couldn’t punish the man just because he was making her feel stuff she didn’t want to feel. You couldn’t hold someone else responsible for your mood—because in the end that was all down to you.

There was a bustle and a buzz, and Sorcha looked round to see what all the fuss was about just as a man dressed entirely in black walked into the studio with Cesare directly behind him.

‘Is that the photographer?’ Sorcha whispered.

‘You don’t know?’ The assistant looked at her as if she had just been beamed down from another planet. ‘That’s Maceo di Ciccio,’ she said. ‘And that’s Cesare di Arcangelo with him—oh, but you know him, don’t you? Didn’t he bring you here?’

‘He certainly did,’ said Sorcha pleasantly.

Cesare gave her a cool look, and she sent him an equally cool one back, which made his eyes narrow in mocking response. But Sorcha knew that she was playing with fire. That the feelings she had had for him all those years ago hadn’t just faded away into nothing. He still amused her and he still stimulated her, on far more than just a physical level—and that was where the danger lay.

Men were good at keeping things purely sexual, and women were notoriously bad at it. Even worse, sex brought out an emotional response in women which had the capacity to make them weak as kittens.

Well, that’s not going to be me, she thought fiercely.

She watched as the photographer was greeted with reverence by all his acolytes, and Sorcha couldn’t help thinking that Maceo di Ciccio was on the wrong side of the camera.

He was wearing black jeans and a fine cashmere sweater. His face was rugged—with harsh angles and slanting black eyes—but although his mouth was soft and sensual, there was an almost cruel curve at the edge of his lips. With his ruffled black hair, he looked a little like a buccaneer—the kind of man who would just go all out to get what it was he wanted. And, looking like that, she didn’t imagine he had to try very hard.

Cesare watched while an assistant held a light meter under Sorcha’s chin, and he wondered where his expected feeling of triumph had gone. He had got his way, because she was here—even though she didn’t look as if she particularly wanted to be—and he had been enjoying some mind-blowing and no-strings sex with her into the bargain!

So what was the cause of the black mood which had enveloped him since he’d got out of bed that morning? Alone, after she’d damned well made him drive her home at some godforsaken hour. As usual.

And that was the irony—because he liked to sleep alone. He liked to wake up when he wanted, rather than have some female slipping out from beneath him, disturbing him while she went into the bathroom to clean her teeth and brush her hair in order to achieve that just-got-out-of-bed look.

Sometimes in the cold, cruel light of day it wasn’t easy to make conversation, and the easy talk of the night before became stilted and formal. At night you had the cloak of darkness and the comfort of wine to take the edge off uncomfortable silences.

She had tied him up in knots yet again, and he damned well resented it!

‘But she is beautiful,’ Maceo suddenly murmured in Italian at his side. ‘You told me she was a witch.’

Cesare looked at her, and a sudden unease prickled at his skin. ‘Witches can be beautiful,’ he drawled. Ignoring his friend’s assessing expression, he leaned back against the wall to watch as Maceo walked across the studio towards her.

‘Ciao, bella,’ said Maceo softly, and Sorcha got the sudden intimation of being in the presence of a creative genius. Pulling off the cashmere sweater to reveal a black T-shirt beneath, he handed it to a waiting assistant and narrowed his eyes. ‘So you are Sorcha, si?’

‘Yes, that’s me.’ Sorcha smiled nervously. ‘Um, you do know I’m not a professional model? In fact, I’ve never done anything but family snapshots in my life.’

‘I can tell—but that is perfect,’ he murmured. ‘Just as you are perfect. I am not looking for the professional model, with her face just so, who tosses her head back—so…!’

He gave an exaggerated flick of his dark head and Sorcha giggled.

‘That is good,’ he said softly. ‘I want you to laugh, for you must be….how do you say? Saucy! Si, for that is what Cesare wishes. For the sauce!’

All the assistants laughed sycophantically.

Across the other side of the studio, Cesare felt his face turning to stone. Since when had Maceo decided to ham up his Italian side—and why? Especially when Maceo’s English was as good as his own. But he answered his own question when he saw Sorcha responding as if he was God’s gift to women. Couldn’t she see through all that hand-waving stuff?

Apparently not. Because now she was nodding her head energetically at something that the photographer was saying to her. Usually the two men formed a strong mutual admiration society, but suddenly Cesare felt like withdrawing his membership.