Bound To The Billionaire: Captive in His Castle / In Petrakis's Power / The Count's Prize

His breathing was ragged when he finally tore his mouth from hers, and the savage glitter in his eyes echoed the harshness of his voice. ‘Madonna, I think you must be a witch. You are driving me crazy.’ His lip curled with self-disgust. ‘My cousin has serious injuries, the extent of which are not fully known, yet all I can think about is how goddamned beautiful you are and how badly I want you.’

Jess was shaken to hear him admit he was attracted to her. But rather than feeling triumphant that a man as gorgeous and sexy as Drago desired her she was afraid of where their mutual awareness might lead, and terrified that she would be unable to resist him if he kissed her again.

‘Let me go,’ she pleaded huskily. ‘If you help me get to England I’ll repay you the cost of my flight, and I promise I’ll come back to visit Angelo.’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight until I find out what happened to my cousin’s inheritance.’

The door to Angelo’s room suddenly opened, making them spring apart. But not quickly enough to escape Drago’s mother’s keen scrutiny. Jess’s mouth felt swollen and her breasts ached with a sweet heaviness. A glance downwards revealed that her nipples were plainly visible, jutting beneath the fine material of her blouse. She hastily crossed her arms in front of her, blushing furiously when Luisa stared at her and then at her son.

‘Angelo would like to see you,’ she said to Jess. ‘If you are not busy?’ she added, in a tone as dry as a desert.

‘I’ll come and sit with him,’ she mumbled. She felt humiliated by the look of disdain in Luisa Cassari’s eyes, but Drago seemed indifferent to his mother’s disapproval. He was reading a message he had received on his phone and then glanced briefly at Jess.

‘I need to go to the office for a couple of hours. When you have spent some time with Angelo my bodyguard will take you back to the palazzo.’

As he spoke the stocky man who had met them at the airport the previous day walked down the corridor towards them. Fico planted himself outside Angelo’s room and crossed his arms over his massive chest.

‘He doesn’t speak a word of English,’ Drago murmured. ‘And he is under strict orders to escort you from the hospital straight to my house.’

Anger surged through her. ‘In other words he’s my jailer?’

He gave a laconic shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. I’ll see you at dinner tonight.’

‘I can’t wait,’ Jess muttered sarcastically. As she turned away from him and marched into Angelo’s room she was unaware of a flare of amusement and grudging admiration in Drago’s eyes.

Much later that night, Drago strode through the Palazzo d’Inverno, his solitary footsteps echoing hollowly on the marble staircase. It was not the first time he had instructed the household staff not to wait up for him, nor the first time he had missed dinner because he’d had to deal with a crisis at work.

No doubt Jess would have been glad of his absence this evening, he mused. She had already left the hospital with Fico by the time he had arrived to visit his cousin and meet with Angelo’s medical team. The young man’s injuries were serious, and he faced a long road back to recovery, but thank God he had not suffered brain damage. The brain scan had revealed severe bruising, and there was the worry of his memory loss, but there was every reason to hope that the amnesia would be short-lived. Once Angelo’s memory had returned hopefully he would shed some light on the matter of his missing inheritance fund and confirm if he had given the money to Jess—something she strenuously denied.

Madonna! How had she crept into his mind again? Drago asked himself angrily. He had accused her of being a witch. Perhaps she really was a sorceress and had cast a spell on him? Even during the emergency board meeting he’d chaired to discuss a problem that had arisen with a new project in China he had struggled to keep his thoughts from wandering to the sassy, sexy redhead who was currently a guest or a prisoner at his home, depending on your viewpoint.

Jess had made her feelings very clear, he thought wryly. She had antagonised him until he had kissed her, but when she had kissed him back his anger had turned to scorching desire. For the rest of the day he had been able to taste her on his lips, and the lingering scent of her perfume still tormented him. Guilt assailed him that Jess dominated his thoughts, but he was relieved to know for certain that she and his cousin were not lovers. Angelo had given him a curious look when Drago had asked him about his relationship with Jess, but had explained that they were simply friends.

The chef had left a platter of cold meats and salad in the fridge for him. Drago carried his supper up to his room, his footsteps slowing as he walked past Jess’s bedroom and saw light filtering beneath the door. Ignoring the temptation to check if she was awake, he carried on into his suite of rooms, flicked on the TV and forced himself to eat even though he had no appetite—at least not for food, he acknowledged, aware of a tightening sensation in his groin as an image of Jess lying naked on his bed flooded his mind.

Muttering a curse, he put down the plate and headed into the en suite bathroom, hoping that a shower would help to relieve his tension.

Jess felt too wound up to sleep. She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling which, like in the first room she had occupied, before her ill-fated attempt to climb down from the balcony, was decorated with elaborate artwork. But even though the fresco depicting the goddess Aphrodite was beautiful she was bored with studying it—just as she was bored with watching television when all the programmes were in Italian.

Her mind returned to wondering why Drago had not returned to the palazzo for dinner. Not that she had wanted to spend time with him, and she certainly hadn’t changed into a gorgeous green silk dress from the Cassa di Cassari collection because she had hoped to impress him, but she had felt strangely lonely sitting on her own at the huge polished dining table. And that really did not make sense, because after growing up in the children’s home constantly surrounded by other kids she liked her own company.

Drago had probably gone to visit a girlfriend. It was inconceivable that a man as devastatingly handsome and sexy as he was did not have a lover—or maybe more than one. Good luck to them, she thought as she sat up and thumped her pillows. Any woman who took him on would have to cope with his arrogant and bossy nature.

A sudden crash, followed by a shout, shattered the silence. The sounds had been loud, even through the walls that separated her room from Drago’s, and the deathly quiet that followed seemed ominous to Jess’s overactive imagination. Curiosity got the better of her and she slid out of bed.

The door to Drago’s suite was shut. She knocked, but received no answer, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned the handle and found that the door was unlocked. Her bare feet made no sound on the carpet as she crossed the sitting room. The door leading to his bedroom was ajar, and as she cautiously peeped round it she inhaled an overwhelmingly strong scent of aftershave.

Just then he emerged from the en suite bathroom, and the sight of his blood-soaked chest caused her to give a sharp cry.

‘Santa Madre!’ He stopped dead, clearly shocked to see her. ‘What are you doing, flitting around the house as noiselessly as a wraith?’

‘I heard a crash…’ Jess could not tear her eyes from what she now realised was a blood-stained towel wrapped around the hand that he was holding against his chest. ‘What have you done?’

He glanced down at his front and said wryly, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I cut my hand on some glass and it’s made a bloody mess—literally. I knocked a bottle of cologne into the sink and then compounded my clumsiness by trying to pick up the shards of glass. The damned cut won’t stop bleeding. Can you look in the bathroom cabinet for a bandage?’ He gave her an intent look when she hesitated. ‘Does the sight of blood bother you?’

No way was Jess going to admit that it was not the blood that bothered her but the sight of Drago’s naked, olive-skinned chest as he shrugged off his stained shirt. Her gaze was drawn to the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles, and followed the path of wiry black hair that arrowed down his torso and disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers.

She swallowed, and replied in a faintly strained voice, ‘No. When I was a kid I regularly used to patch my dad up after he’d had some accident or other while he was drunk. Once he fell through a neighbour’s greenhouse and was cut to ribbons.’

Drago frowned. ‘How old were you when that happened?’

She shrugged. ‘Eight or so. Sit down while I dress the wound,’ she bade him, when she had followed him into the bathroom and found a medical box in the cupboard.

He sat on the edge of the bath and unwound the towel to reveal a deep cut across his palm. ‘I’ve kept pressure on it and elevated my hand. The bleeding seems to be easing.’

‘I don’t think it needs stitching,’ Jess said after she had inspected the wound. ‘You’re lucky.’

‘Sì.’ He could not disguise the weariness in his voice. ‘I don’t fancy another trip to the hospital tonight.’

She threw him a quick look. ‘Is that where you’ve been? I wondered why you weren’t at dinner.’

‘Why, cara, you almost sound as though you missed me,’ he drawled.

‘Of course I didn’t. Why would I miss my jailer?’ Aware that she was blushing, she concentrated on her task. ‘At least the cut will have been sterilised by the cologne,’ she murmured as she began to bandage his hand. ‘It smells like a sultan’s harem in here.’

‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’

Drago subjected her to a leisurely inspection that for some reason made her feel hot and shivery at the same time.

‘I’m sure you would be a sultan’s favourite concubine, with your creamy skin and fiery hair,’ he said softly.

Startled by the sudden change in his voice, from teasing to husky and achingly sensual, Jess caught her breath. Her eyes flew to his, and saw the undisguised hunger in his glittering stare. ‘Of course I’ve never been in a harem,’ she choked. ‘I would never be a man’s plaything. I believe in equality between men and women.’

Nothing on earth would make her confess her secret fantasy of being swept into the arms of a handsome, powerful man and being seduced on silken sheets. In the fantasy she fought against his dominance at first, but she could not resist the skilful touch of his hands and mouth as he aroused her and tormented her until she begged for him to possess her.

Her dream lover had never had a face—until now. She darted a glance at Drago’s chiselled features and felt her stomach dip. He was all her fantasies rolled into one, she acknowledged ruefully. His hard-boned masculine beauty was made even sexier by the shadow of dark stubble on his jaw. She stared at his mouth, remembering how it had felt on hers when he had kissed her, and unconsciously she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, as if she could recapture the taste of him.

The atmosphere in the bathroom altered subtly and the sexual tension was almost palpable. Drago was conscious of the slow thud of his heart, and even more aware of the throbbing ache in his groin, the urgent drumbeat of desire flooding through his veins. It had started with the brush of Jess’s fingers on his skin as she’d wrapped the bandage around his hand. The contrast of her pale fingers against his darkly tanned flesh had made him imagine her naked in his arms, her smooth white limbs entwined with his hair-roughened thighs.

But in all honesty it had started before that—when she had appeared in his room looking utterly delectable, wearing a nightgown from the Cassa di Cassari collection that was little more than a wisp of white silk and lace. She was an intriguing mixture of virginal innocence and sensual siren, with her crushed-berry lips and those startling green cat’s eyes.

As she leaned over him to tend to his hand he breathed in the delicate rose-scented fragrance of her skin, and the brush of her silky hair against his bare shoulder inflamed his senses. From the first moment he had seen her in London he had felt a primitive hunger to possess her and claim her as his woman. He was no Neanderthal; he was a twenty-first century guy who believed in equality between the sexes as much as she did. But his desire for her was a pagan force he had no control over.

He had never wanted any woman the way he wanted Jess, Drago acknowledged. The gentle concern in her eyes as she tied the bandage on his hand called to something deep inside him. Since the death of his father he had been the carer and protector of his family, always strong and in control. Tonight that control was slipping away from him. He was not thinking about his suspicion that she was involved with his cousin’s missing inheritance fund, or that she had once been convicted of fraud. All he could think of was that her glorious red-gold hair felt like silk when he brushed it back from her face, and her rose-flushed cheek was velvet-soft beneath his fingertips.

Driven purely by instinct, he threaded his fingers through her hair and drew her head towards him. He was still sitting on the edge of the bath, and her petite stature meant that her face was level with his and her lips were tantalisingly close. She did not resist or pull away, but he could hear the catch of her breath and see the pulse at the base of her throat beating frantically. For a few seconds they remained poised while anticipation built to an intolerable level. Their eyes locked and held, until with a harsh groan Drago slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her with slow deliberation that quickly flared into a firestorm of passion.

Drago’s tongue probed expertly between Jess’s lips to coax them apart—although in truth he did not need to do much coaxing, she acknowledged ruefully. From the moment he had captured her mouth she had been lost, and with no thought in her head to deny him she parted her lips and heard him give a low groan as he explored her inner sweetness.

He was the man of her fantasies. The only man she had ever allowed to breach her defences since Seb. The memory of that disastrous relationship made her stiffen and question what she was doing. Drago had openly stated that he mistrusted her. Why, then, was she allowing him to kiss her? And why was she responding to him?

Because she could not help herself, whispered a little voice inside her head. Because the very first time she had seen him she had felt that she belonged in some deep and fundamental way to him. Her sensible self knew it was ridiculous; she did not need to belong to anyone, and she knew how dangerous it was to want to be cared for. She had fallen for Seb because she had been lonely and desperate to be loved. But he had abused her trust and she had vowed never to risk her heart again.

Drago finally broke the kiss and Jess knew she should pull out of his arms and end the madness. She knew it, but she could not do it. He trailed his lips over her cheek, her throat, and she shivered with pleasure when he found the sensitive place behind her ear.

‘Cara, you are so beautiful,’ he said raggedly, and his deeply sensual voice made her shiver again with a fierce, sharp need that started low in her belly and radiated through her so that every nerve-ending on her body felt acutely sensitive.

He captured the pulse throbbing at the base of her throat and then brushed his mouth along her collarbone. Her heart stopped when he slid the strap of her nightgown over her shoulder. Her breasts ached with a sweet heaviness, and when he brushed his fingers over the swollen peaks of her nipples, straining beneath the silk, she jerked as if an electrical current had shot through her.

He gave a husky laugh, but there was no amusement in eyes that were as black as jet and glittering with predatory intent. ‘I know. It’s the same for me too. The wanting. The hunger clawing in my gut.’

His jaw tightened and Jess sensed he was fighting an internal battle with himself, as if he resented his desire for her.

‘When you opened the door of your flat in London I took one look at you and knew I had to have you,’ he admitted in a driven tone.

‘Drago…’ Jess gave a keening cry when he tugged her nightgown lower and bared one of her breasts.

He stared at her, tension in every sculpted line of his face, his skin stretched tight over his sharp cheekbones. ‘No games,’ he said harshly. ‘If you don’t want this then go—now.’

He did not try to persuade her to stay with words and promises that they both knew would be false, and Jess was glad of that. She had been fooled by promises once before and her heart had been broken as a consequence. She was not a vulnerable seventeen-year-old any more, she reminded herself. She had grown up and discarded her silly dreams. Sexual desire was a perfectly natural feeling, and there was nothing wrong with wanting to give in to its demands. As long as she remembered to keep her head screwed on her heart would be in no danger.

CHAPTER SIX

‘WE BARELY KNOW each other.’ An instinct for self-protection made Jess cling to the last shreds of her sanity and offer a valid reason why she should walk away from Drago. ‘And what you think you know about me isn’t the truth,’ she added, unable to hide the bitterness in her voice.

‘Maybe it isn’t.’ As he uttered the words, Drago accepted that he did not know what to think about her.

He had evidence that she had been convicted of fraud, but it had happened a long time ago, when she had been a teenager. A mistake in her past did not mean she was inherently untrustworthy, his mind argued. Madonna, was he making excuses for her because he needed to justify his desire for her? He still did not understand what her true involvement with his cousin was, but she had fiercely denied knowing anything about Angelo’s missing inheritance fund.

He did not know what to believe, and right now—shocking though it was to admit it—he did not care about his cousin, or the money, or anything that had happened in Jess’s past. All he cared about was that she was half-naked and so exquisitely lovely that simply looking at her made him harder than he had ever been in his life. His hand actually shook as he reached out and slid the other strap of her nightgown down her arm, until her small, firm breasts with their dusky pink nipples were revealed to his hungry gaze.

‘It’s true we don’t know many details about each other, but from the moment we met we were both aware of the chemistry that exists between us. No other woman has ever made me feel this out of control,’ Drago admitted roughly. ‘Say something, damn it,’ he growled, feeling his blood pound through his veins when she simply stared at him with her stunning green eyes. Witch’s eyes, trapping him in her spell.

He didn’t care. Nothing mattered but the feel of her silken skin as he clasped her shoulders and pulled her to him. Nothing mattered but the honeyed taste of her as he lowered his head and captured her mouth in a potent kiss that demanded a response she gave so willingly that he could not restrain a husky groan when he felt her lips part obediently, allowing him to thrust his tongue between them.

Jess’s heart thudded hard against her ribs when Drago suddenly stood up from the edge of the bath and scooped her into his arms as if she was a rag doll. She felt as boneless as one, she thought ruefully. One kiss was all it had taken to turn the sharp-tongued firebrand Jess Harper she prided herself on being into a trembling mass of nervous excitement. Drago was going to make love to her, and she was not going to stop him.

He carried her through to his bedroom. As her gaze fell on the four-poster bed, with its opulent gold silk drapes and sheets, the dull ache in the pit of her stomach became an insistent throb and she was conscious of molten warmth between her thighs. He placed her on the bed and stared down at her with a brooding intensity in his black eyes that was just as arousing as if he had touched her.

‘I want to make love to you slowly—indulge in leisurely foreplay and prolong the pleasure until one of us begs for release,’ he bit out. ‘But I am so turned on that there isn’t a chance in hell of that happening, mia bella.’

His taut voice revealed that he was hanging onto his self-control with supreme effort. Amazed that she could have such an effect on him, Jess touched the nerve jumping in his cheek. Her heart leapt when he turned his head so that his mouth grazed her fingers.

‘I want you too,’ she whispered.

It was what Drago wanted to hear, and his body reacted predictably. But the faint hesitancy he heard in her voice made him hold back from ripping off her nightgown and pushing her legs apart so that he could take her hard and fast, as the blood pounding in his veins urged him to do. She was not behaving as he had expected her to. His previous sexual encounters had always been with experienced women, who knew how to please him and were not shy about stating what pleased them. But Jess was clearly waiting for him to take the lead.

She looked incredibly sexy, stretched out on the bed with her fiery hair spread over the pillows, her small, pale breasts with their tightly puckered pink nipples practically begging for the ministrations of his tongue. And yet at the same time he sensed an innocence about her that made him think that she had not had many lovers.

Why the idea should make him want to grin he did not know, but as he smiled at her and watched her lips curve in a tentative response he felt a curious tug on his insides, and he forced himself to relax and slow the pace a little.

‘Show me how much you want me,’ he murmured as he bent his head and slanted his mouth over hers. Her immediate response stoked his desire, and he groaned and deepened the kiss until he felt tremors run through her body and realised that he was shaking too.

He heard the faint catch of her breath when he stroked her breasts, and the soft moan she gave as he flicked his thumb-pads across her nipples made him want to drag her beneath him and seek the release he craved. She was so sweetly responsive, and yet he sensed she was surprised by his caresses, as if the sensations she felt when he kissed her and touched her body were new to her.

From then on Drago forgot his own needs and concentrated on arousing Jess. He breathed in the delicate fragrance of her skin as he kissed her throat, the creamy slopes of her breasts, and finally closed his lips around one taut, dusky peak and then its twin. Her nightgown was bunched up around her waist, and he pushed it over her hips and placed his hand over the slight mound of her womanhood, hidden from his gaze beneath the fragile barrier of white lace knickers. She gave an involuntary movement and tried to clamp her legs together, but released her breath on a shivery sigh when he gently eased her thighs apart and slid his fingers beneath her panties. With delicate precision he dipped a finger into her moist opening and felt her buck her hips as he probed deeper into her honeyed sweetness.

Jess trembled as Drago continued his intimate exploration. She had never experienced such intense pleasure as he was eliciting, with his wickedly inventive fingers and with his mouth as he bent his head to her breasts and lashed her swollen nipples with his tongue. Sex with Seb had been very different, she thought ruefully. The few times she had slept with him he had seemed far more intent on his own pleasure than hers, but she had been so besotted with him that she’d felt grateful for any small sign of affection from him.

She was jolted from her thoughts of the past when Drago stood up from the bed and stripped off the rest of his clothes. Black silk boxers followed his trousers to the floor, and the sight of his naked, hugely aroused body stole her breath.

Feeling a little nervous now, she circled her lips with the tip of her tongue in an unknowingly provocative gesture and blurted out, ‘Oh, heavens.’