Blackmailed For Her Baby. Elizabeth Power

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      She didn’t know why she said it, every nerve tingling with apprehension and something far more complex as he turned her towards him, surveying her with a twist of cruel mockery on his lips.

      ‘On the contrary,’ he murmured, gazing down into her flushed and guarded features, ‘I think I’ve got a great deal to gain.’

      His thumb moved caressingly over the bared, heated flesh of her shoulder, his touch so light—just a whisper of sensation—that she might have been imagining it if it hadn’t been for the way her breasts ached from her sick reaction to it, or for the shaming impulses that seemed to be causing implosions throughout her body, weakening her bones from a dark and shattering desire.

      She wondered what it would be like to be pressed against his hard warmth, feel that devastating mouth—all that she could focus on now—clamped over hers; the startling realisation that he was drawing her towards him causing her mouth to part on a small gasp, her head to drop back in involuntary invitation to him so that his face went out of focus as he dipped his head and her wild and reckless craving became reality.

      Sensation piled upon sensation as his mouth came down hard over hers, hostility meeting desire in one sizzling cauldron of hot, ungovernable expression.

      He hadn’t shaved since this morning and the angry graze of his jaw was a delicious friction against her soft skin as his mouth plundered hers with punishing thoroughness.

      Libby groaned into his mouth, her mind despairing even as her body welcomed it, welcomed the arms that were suddenly tightening like steel bands around her, bringing her shockingly alive to the whipcord strength of him beneath his impeccable clothes and to the startling awareness of just how turned on he was.

      Her errant, adolescent dreams about him, she realised, hadn’t prepared her for this! Nor had she imagined she could know such…wanting…

      With another small groan—induced only by desire now—she leaned into him, mind and body yielding together in some crazy sacrifice to an irrational need.

      She hated him—and yet she wanted him!

      Her limbs weakening with that acceptance, she clutched at his broad shoulders like someone clinging to a precipice, her red-tipped nails curling desperately against the dark, damp fabric of his raincoat.

      Driven by her response, Romano felt his body hardening with an urge that made it almost hurt. It would be so easy to forget himself; to take her and all that her gloriously feminine body promised. He had wanted this girl for far longer than he cared to remember; wanted her so much she was the only woman who had ever made him disgusted with himself for entertaining such thoughts about her, especially while she was married to his brother. While he had had to bear it in silence, ignore the way her big doe eyes swept coyly away from him like some shy little virgin’s whenever he spoke to her on some occasions, while on others they had seemed to challenge his with a sophistication well beyond her years!

      But now there was no reason for restraint.

      He jerked her against him, catching the small, stifled cry she uttered as though she was fighting her own battle between rejection and desire. But the thought of Luca and the mercenary way this girl had behaved was already cooling his ardour. Was he being extremely unwise even considering taking her back with him?

      Confusion registered in her emerald eyes as he steeled himself to draw away from her. What was he thinking of? Could he not do without this added complication right now?

      ‘Since it was your clear intention to wind up in someone’s bed tonight,’ he none the less felt compelled to taunt softly, ‘perhaps you should make it mine? I can give you pleasure if that’s what you’re so hungry for, Libby. And I think I can guarantee you more satisfaction than you’d have found in the arms of that drunken lout who was here just now.’

      Libby couldn’t move—couldn’t think—aware only of one long, tanned finger making light, sensuous circles over her bare shoulder and the tap, dribbling into the sink, that someone must have used and neglected to turn off properly.

      All she could focus on was what Romano—her late husband’s brother and the man she despised—was suggesting, while her brain made unwilling comparisons with the man who had been there earlier. Romano Vincenzo wouldn’t force himself on a woman the way Steve Cullum had. He wouldn’t need to. He would be subtle, using his voice and his lips and hands with such articulated skill…

      Reminding herself again of just who he was, head dropping back against the doorjamb, she was determined not to let him see how much his suggestion had fazed her. Heart pounding in her breast, her temples throbbing from her headache and her outlandish response to him, somehow she managed to query pointedly, ‘Are you propositioning me?’

      His smile was without warmth. ‘And wind up in the same bitter-sweet trap as my brother?’

      So he wasn’t. He was only playing with her, she realised. Weighing her reactions—which had probably been behind the reason for that kiss—just to see how easily he could get his brother’s scheming little widow into his bed! And she had fallen into his trap! Even if he had been more than a little out of control himself. Those black eyes still glinted with hot primal desire, yet behind it burned open hostility too.

      With a surprising degree of force she pushed at the arm that was blocking the doorway and got herself out of his disturbing sphere, catching his soft laughter as she wrestled with the fact that even touching him like that gave her a whole host of unwelcome responses to deal with.

      ‘We’ll leave the day after tomorrow.’

      His change of subject was so abrupt that it unbalanced her for a moment, shaken as she was from the shaming way she had responded in his arms.

      ‘What?’ Swinging to face him, she couldn’t stop herself wondering what woman wouldn’t fall victim to his dark attraction. Even now his stark masculinity was making her stomach muscles curl like brittle leaves.

      ‘I gathered from that comment you made about ringing me that you have decided to heed my request and come back with me. Or am I being naïve in presuming that you’ve even allowed it any headroom with so much else going on in your life?’

      An angry retort sprang to her lips, but wisely she bit it back. It would have been futile anyway, she told herself on a frustrated little sigh.

      Wearily she said, ‘Yes, I’m coming.’

      ‘Good.’ He strode away from her, turning in the doorway to assess her; her bright, dishevelled hair, the dark half-moons under her emotion-strained eyes and her cheeks, which she knew were flushed from more than just a pounding headache. ‘Get a couple of good nights’ sleep. I wouldn’t want my nephew to see any remaining traces of the good-time girl in his mother.’

      Tight-lipped, Libby swung away from him, her arms clutched tensely around herself to stem the urge to hit him rather than take any more of his jibes.

      ‘And cara…’ the endearment was so out of character at that moment and so sexily soft, she thought she was imagining it as she turned round with her arms still locked around her and met the cruel mockery on his lips. ‘…turn off that tap.’

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