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

Had she thought that he might come in here this morning and brush her lips with his when there was a quiet moment, murmur that he’d like to see her alone in his office? And what would she have said? Well, yes, obviously.

But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

He hadn’t made a single indication that he still wanted her. Not one. No accidental brushing against her arm. No manoeuvring to get them alone together. Nothing. Had he decided while he’d been away that it was better if the affair ended?

‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ Cesare was saying. ‘Enjoy Berlin, Rupert.’ He looked up as Sorcha stood up. ‘Would you mind staying behind for a moment, Sorcha?’

Her heart slammed against her ribcage and a wave of dizziness swept over her. ‘Of course.’ She waited until everyone had trooped out of the room and looked at him expectantly, wondering if her face hid her terrible fear that it was all over. ‘What is it?’

‘No ideas about what might be on my mind?’

She was about to say, I’m not really in the mood for riddles, when something in his eyes stopped her. ‘This is a…well, it’s a bizarre situation, isn’t it? You coming back after everything that’s—’

He cut across her words with a ruthless statement. ‘You still want me.’

It was not a question.

There was a pause as she looked at him.

‘Yes.’

‘And yet you do not take the initiative?’ He walked over to the window and leaned against it, his legs slightly apart, hands resting on his narrow hips. ‘You do not ring me while I am away, or send me a text. Or even come into work early this morning, knowing that I am back.’ Waiting for you.

His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘What’s the matter, Sorcha? For all your professed love of equality and independence are you really one of those little-girl lovers who have to be seduced? Perhaps to absolve them from any guilt that they might feel?’ His black eyes glittered. ‘So that if a man starts to kiss them and touch them they feign a little resistance—and when they can resist no more and give in…Well.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then they have no one to blame but the man.’

‘Who’s talking about blame?’ Sorcha shifted uncomfortably. ‘Not me.’

‘So how long are we going to keep up this ridiculous charade of pretending that we don’t want something when we’re dying to give in to it? You want me, Sorcha. So why the hell don’t you come over here and have me, before time runs out?’

‘Before time runs out?’ she echoed. ‘What do you mean?’

He laughed. ‘Are you crazy? Do you think that I’m going to carry on staying at that…hotel, keeping an eye on your little company, when I have plenty of my own to run? Do you think I’m here for keeps—to be your lover whenever the whim takes you?’

Sorcha winced. It was funny the games that your mind could play on you. She had always known he would go, and yet some part of her had imagined him staying here, frozen in some kind of time warp, until some kind of resolution had been made. Except that there wasn’t going to be a resolution. They were just two very different people who happened to be overwhelmingly attracted to each other.

The best sex he’d never had.

For Sorcha it was different, because she had grown to realise that Cesare meant more to her than that. He always had done. The love she had felt at eighteen had been real enough, but as fragile and as tender as her age. He had frightened her then, with his lack of emotion, and that was why she had hit out blindly and rejected him. Deep-down she had known that it had been the right thing to do—but hadn’t she always regretted that it had ended the way it had?

She knew that she had wounded his pride, and maybe he would never forgive her for that, and yet she wanted to get closer to him and didn’t know if that was possible. No one was saying they could go back—but couldn’t they build on the huge and obvious attraction between them? Didn’t men relax their guard when they had sex with a woman? Even a man as formidable as Cesare?

And now he had told her that his time here was limited—it was down to that old thing of choice again. Should she live for the moment and remain his lover? Or should she opt for her own kind of pride and withdraw gracefully while she still had the opportunity to do so?

She turned her back on him and Cesare felt the sharp tang of disappointment. But he would get over it. There was no way he was going to beg. Until he saw her walk over to the door and lock it, and then come back towards him, unbuttoning her blouse as she did so.

His eyes narrowed in question. ‘Sorcha?’ He swallowed with difficulty.

‘What?’ The final button freed, she took the blouse off and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. ‘Can’t have it creased for my meeting this afternoon, now, can I?’ she questioned innocently.

‘Sorcha—’

He made to move, but she stayed him exactly where he was with an imperious gesture. Her hand reached round to unclip her skirt and then to slide the zip down. She stepped out of it, folded it, and hung it next to the blouse.

She turned to face him wearing nothing but a lacy bra, panties, silk stockings and a suspender belt. And high heels. Cesare swallowed. Oh, those heels! Briefly, he closed his eyes.

‘Have you missed me?’ she questioned.

‘Yes.’

‘Then come away from the window,’ she told him, ‘and show me how much.’

For a moment he honestly wasn’t sure whether he could move, but somehow he managed it. Loosening his tie, he began walking towards her, and something in his eyes made hers widen.

‘Cesare?’ she questioned uncertainly.

He gave a low laugh. ‘What’s the matter, Sorcha?’ he murmured as he stood in front of her. ‘Bitten off more than you can chew?’ And he took her unprotesting hand and ran it along the hard ridge of his erection, shuddering as he did so.

‘Feel in my back pocket,’ he suggested silkily.

She did, kneading his buttock as she extracted a condom. ‘Do you always come prepared?’ she questioned unsteadily.

‘I don’t always come,’ he murmured, wryly remembering their first rather one-sided encounter on the boardroom table.

‘Then I’d better make sure you do today,’ she whispered.

‘Oh, Sorcha.’

The way he said her name made her want to dissolve. She wanted to kiss him—tiny, tender kisses on every centimetre of his silky olive skin—but she suspected that kissing wasn’t part of this erotic scene they seemed to be making up as they went along. And kissing made her weak—whereas seduction was giving her power.

She undid his belt and unzipped him, carefully freed him—easing him out into the palm of her hand—and he moaned.

‘Shhh. I don’t want anyone to know what we’re doing.’

He found the fact that she had told him to be quiet unbearably erotic—almost as erotic as her kicking off her own tiny panties, pushing him down to the floor and then straddling him.

‘How’s that?’ she questioned disingenuously as she lowered herself down to sheath his silken steel column.

He shook his head, unable to speak, unable to do anything except helplessly lie there while she rode him. Oh, sweet heaven…

He began to cry out as sweet release seized him, and she lowered her head to capture his mouth, her lacecovered breasts covering him with their warm curves as she kissed him. And still she thrust her hips towards him, so that as his pleasure began to fade out her own orgasm swept her away, and she arched her body like a bow.

He caught her bottom and anchored himself to it, watching as she threw her head back and moaned—silky hair tumbling all the way down her back.

When it was over, they stayed exactly where they were—controlling their unsteady breathing, staring at one another in quiet disbelief.

‘What’s Italian for “wow!”?’ mumbled Sorcha.

‘It’s the same.’ He stroked his hand over her waist reflectively, and then lifted his arm to glance at his watch. ‘Better move, baby,’ he murmured, with the lightest of smacks on her bottom. ‘I have a phone call to make.’

‘Sure.’ Somehow Sorcha kept her face composed, even if his words made her feel like a discarded hooker.

But you shouldn’t start a no-strings office affair unless you could accept it for what it was.

Sex.

CHAPTER TEN

‘HOW about some coffee?’

Cesare looked up from the paperwork he’d been working his way through at his desk, and his eyes narrowed as they focussed on Sorcha.

‘What?’ he questioned, and rubbed at his temples.

‘Coffee,’ said Sorcha, wondering why she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she just wanted to shake this whole situation to make it the same as it had been before he’d left for his long trip to the new factory, the States and Italy. But she couldn’t. And it wasn’t.

In the bittersweet days since he’d returned Sorcha thought he’d been distancing himself from her—despite the red-hot satisfaction of their sex-life. Was it just a kind of preparation for his eventual departure? Or was it just her paranoia?

Cesare stifled a yawn. He had worked late last night, after everyone else had gone home, and then done a conference call with LA. And since he’d arrived that morning he’d been ploughing through a pile of papers with Sorcha on the other side of the table until she had disappeared into the private cloakroom a few minutes ago.

Now she had reappeared, and it seemed that she had taken off her shoes and stockings. Cesare saw the glint in her shimmering green eyes and guessed from their hungry expression and from the way she was walking that her panties must have come off too.

She wasn’t just offering him coffee, that was for sure.

‘I’d love some,’ he replied blandly.

Sorcha frowned. ‘Coffee?’

He leaned back in his chair and studied her, rubbing his eyes. ‘That was what you were offering me, cara—unless my ears were mistaken.’

Giving him a slightly unsure smile, Sorcha dropped her shoes onto the carpet and walked over to the coffee machine, where she fiddled around and poured two espressos, then put them both on his desk.

‘Here you are.’

‘Thanks.’

She watched him pick his up and sip it, and frowned. She had thought that he might have telephoned her last night when he’d finished working. She had been willing to slip over to the hotel to see him—but he hadn’t phoned.

And she had deliberately arrived at the office early this morning—but he had sauntered in after Rupert, and there had been back-to-back meetings all day. All she’d been able to do was look at him with a kind of helpless longing and growing frustration.

She felt as if she was doing a balancing act the whole time—trying to appear cool and not look as if she was some desperado whose world was going to cave in after he’d gone.

But even she had her limits—and surely, as his lover, a few rights, too? She drew a deep breath. ‘So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’

‘Wrong?’ Cesare put his cup down, and now Sorcha could see the shadows beneath his eyes and a pang of guilt suddenly hit her. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’

‘I just thought…’ Her words tailed off as she read something in his eyes she didn’t recognise.

He stood up and came towards her.

‘What?’ he demanded. ‘You thought that something might be wrong because for once I didn’t leap up and start tearing at your clothes when you snapped your pretty little fingers?’

‘But I thought that’s what you like to do!’ Sorcha stared at him. ‘You’ve never complained before.’

‘Of course I haven’t!’ he said, in a voice of dangerous silk. ‘Because what man in his right mind would complain when a woman is constantly demanding mind-blowing, erotic, no-strings sex and demanding that he keep it secret?’

‘Presumably you have your reasons,’ she said coolly.

Cesare stared at her in frustration. It was the fantasy that most men dreamed of—and he was fulfilling every sweet, sensational second of it.

He had tried telling Maceo about it over dinner in Rome last week, and the photographer had told him that if he was really complaining he needed to see a psychiatrist, because no-strings relationships were the only ones which worked—and did he think Sorcha might be interested in doing more modelling? Cesare had swallowed a mouthful of wine and told his friend to go to hell.

Cesare studied Sorcha thoughtfully. ‘We never spend the whole night together—never sleep together,’ he observed.

‘That might be a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘Some bright spark like my mother or my brother might put two and two together and very cleverly come up with the answer of four!’

Cesare knitted his dark brows together. Maledica la donna! ‘And we never eat together,’ he observed.

‘That’s not true,’ she protested. ‘We often have a working lunch.’

Sure they did. Tongue sandwiches in a deserted lay-by.

‘And we had dinner with my family on Sunday—you know we did!’

‘Yes, I know that,’ he agreed dangerously. ‘And when we weren’t being forced to endure a hundred damned wedding photos which all looked the same—you spent the whole time studiously avoiding looking at me except when was absolutely necessary. I will tell you something, Sorcha—if anything is designed to alert them to the fact we’re having an affair, then that certainly is!’

‘Since when did you become such an expert in human behaviour?’ she demanded.

He stared at her. ‘Since I started dating—Dating?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Let me rephrase that—since I started having sex with a woman who thinks no further than the nearest erogenous zone!’

She rushed at him with her clenched hand raised to pummel him in the chest, but he caught her easily by the wrist and brought her up close to him.

He could see her eyes dilating so that the green was almost completely obscured by ebony saucers of desire. And he could feel her breath warm against his skin—her lips so close that he could almost taste their sweetness. And how easy it would be. How ridiculously easy.

‘Oh, yes,’ he taunted. ‘You want me now, don’t you, Sorcha? You want me right now.’

‘You know I always want you,’ she answered in confusion. ‘Did you…did you start the row deliberately to….?’ But she saw the expression of contempt in his eyes and knew that her assessment had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

‘You think I wanted to inject a frisson of imaginary conflict into our relationship?’ he demanded incredulously, and he let her hand fall from his as if it was something contaminated. ‘Dear God!’

He walked away from her—away from her sweet allure and her dangerous kind of magic. He looked out of the window at the summer clouds blowing across the sky.

‘My wild little Sorcha, who is always up for sexual adventure,’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, anywhere and anyhow. God forbid that we should just go home to bed at the end of the evening, like any other couple!’

Incredulously, she stared at the formidable set of his back. ‘Is that what you want?’

He turned again and his face was expressionless. ‘It is too late for that, Sorcha—don’t you understand?’

She shook her head, as if trying to dispel the confusion. ‘No, I don’t understand!’

He shrugged. ‘We have forged the pattern of our relationship. It is what it is. We work and we have sex—and now that the work is coming to an end…well, it follows that the sex will, too.’

There was silence.

‘Is that all it’s been?’ she questioned painfully. ‘Sex?’

‘How would you describe it, then?’ he challenged softly.

And suddenly she realised what he was doing. ‘Why are you turning this around on me?’ she demanded, acknowledging how clever he was. Emotionally, he had pushed her away and sought refuge in sex, and now he was accusing her of compartmen-talising! She couldn’t win, she thought—or rather Cesare didn’t want her to. There would be only one winner in this scenario, and he was going to make sure it was him.

‘You’re the man who runs a million miles away from feelings!’ she stormed. ‘If I’ve acted this way, it’s only because that’s the way you intimated I should act. What’s the matter, Cesare—are you angry because I’ve actually gone along with it?’

‘That is enough!’ he gritted.

‘No, it isn’t! We never talk about the things which are going on inside, do we? Like we never talk about when you asked me to marry you—’

‘I don’t want to discuss it, Sorcha!’ His voice cracked out like a whip.

‘Well, I do! You wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain myself, to tell you that you were frightening me with your list of suitable qualities you desired in a wife. I was eighteen years old, for God’s sake, Cesare, and I really loved you. All I wanted was some love and affection in return—and you couldn’t give it to me.’

She waited, wanting some reaction, some denial, or even a furious justification—but there was nothing. His face was like ice, his expression frozen, and Sorcha let out a shuddering breath. Nothing had changed, not really. Back then he hadn’t been listening, and he wasn’t listening now.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, because she saw now that she had been wasting her time in ever thinking that they could build something new on the rocky foundations of the past.

‘Sorry?’ He was angry. How dared she do this to him? Why should he subject himself to unnecessary emotional pain, when it was easier just to lose himself in the silken-soft sweetness of her body? And, oh, when he was far away from England he would find himself another woman—one who wouldn’t torture him like Sorcha did with all this stuff.

He gave a cool smile—which concealed the decision being made—and he felt a familiar sense of liberation from having made it.

‘Cesare?’ she whispered tentatively.

‘Lock the door,’ he ordered.

Sorcha did as he asked, but something was different—or rather, he was different. He drew down the blinds and shut the world out so that the light in the office was muted and it was as if they had created their own private world.

And then he took complete control—as if he was giving her a masterclass in seduction. The Latin lover personified, he skimmed his fingertips over her skin, lowering his head to graze his lips over her neck, carrying her over to the leather couch at the far end of the room and laying her down on it.

Her bright hair was tumbled all over her flushed face and he reached down to brush a wayward lock away. Sorcha’s eyes suddenly shot open, for something had changed and she couldn’t work out what it was.

‘Cesare?’ she whispered again

‘Shhh.’

He kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyelids, and then her lips, and it was easy to let her misgivings melt away beneath the expert skill of his touch. She shut her eyes tight as he stroked her and murmured soft words in his native tongue into her ear, and she had to bite back her own desire to tell him how much she—

Her eyes snapped open as he entered her, and he stilled.

‘What is it?’

Sorcha swallowed. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered. She tangled her fingers in his thick dark hair as he moved again, and the sweetness of the act was enough to push crazy and stupid thoughts out of her head.

I don’t love you, she thought brokenly. I don’t want to love you.

Afterwards, they lay there, with Sorcha struggling to get her thoughts back on some kind of normal track, but she felt as if she were trying to wade through treacle as she battled to tell the difference between what was real and what was fantasy.

You don’t love him.

He lifted her off him and began pulling on his clothes again. ‘I’m catching a flight to Rome this evening,’ he said.

‘But you’ve only been back a few days!’

‘I need to have one last look at those figures. And get a few things straight in my mind.’ He gave a brisk, slightly efficient smile—she had seen him use it with the secretaries, but never with her. Never with her.

‘The company is doing just fine,’ he continued. ‘The new factory is up and running—in fact, the relaunch has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.’

He spoke in the gentle tone of a doctor who was delivering a horrendous prognosis to a patient—a mixture of kindness and resignation. She wanted to grab hold of his broad, strong shoulders and yell, I don’t care about the company—what about us?

But something in his eyes stopped her. Was it a warning? That they could do this in one of two ways—and if they chose the dignified way to end it, then they needed the assistance of their old friend.

Pride.

‘You’re leaving, aren’t you, Cesare?’ she questioned, using every effort of will to prevent her voice from breaking.

‘You knew I had to leave some time.’

Of course she had. ‘And…what will you do?’

‘I’ll go home to Panicale. I don’t want to miss the harvest this year.’

Something in the way he said it made her heart heavy. Her lips framed the question she hardly dared ask, and yet some masochistic urge compelled her to. ‘You sound like a man who has a yearning to settle down.’

‘Well, of course I do, Sorcha—doesn’t everyone? One day I want a family of my own, as I imagine you do, too.’

She saw a glimpse of his future and saw that she had no place in it. So this really was the end. Sorcha swallowed down an impending sense of terrible loss.

She thought about the tips Maceo had given her when he’d been taking her photo. That if you pretended you felt something hard enough, then it would look real to the outside world. And if that was what Cesare really thought of her, then railing against it wasn’t going to change his mind.

‘What time’s your flight?’ she asked.

Cesare’s face did not betray one flicker of reaction, and indeed he convinced himself that the brief twist of his heart was merely surprise at her response. Why, he should applaud her poise and her cool control. How many times had he told a lover that he was leaving only to have her sobbing and begging and pleading with him not to go, or to take her with him?

His mouth curved into a mocking smile. For once, he had met his match—and the irony was that what made them so alike was the very thing which would ensure they had no future together.

‘At eight.’ He lifted his arm to glance at his watch. ‘I want to go and say goodbye to the staff at the factory.’

‘Do you…?’ She gave him a tentative smile, but she wasn’t going to put him in the awkward position of having to reject her. She injected her question with just the right amount of levity. ‘Do you want me to come and do the waving hankie thing?’

It occurred to Cesare that Sorcha Whittaker really must be his nemesis if she could make such a flippant comment when he was walking out of her life for good. Did he really mean so little to her that her beautiful mouth could curve into that cool and unfeeling smile? Damn her…damn her!

He hadn’t intended this, but he knew that he had to do it one last time. Reaching for her, he snaked his arm round her waist and very deliberately brought her up close, so that she could feel the hot, hard heat of his new erection, and he saw her pupils dilate with surprise and pleasure.

‘No need for that,’ he murmured. He unzipped himself and sheathed himself in protection for one last time. ‘Because when I remember you, I want to remember you just like…this.’

Sorcha was glad that he entered her with that great powerful thrust, and glad when he began to move inside her, so that she could pretend her stifled cry was one of pleasure rather than pain.

Maybe it was better this way.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘IS SOMETHING the matter, dear?’

Sorcha put the post down on the breakfast table and looked at her mother with a smile which felt as heavy as her heart. ‘Wrong? No, of course not. Why should there be?’