Castellano's Mistress of Revenge. Melanie Milburne

prenuptial?’ she asked, frowning as her fingers took the envelope from him.

      ‘Without the nuptials,’ he said, his eyes diamond-hard. ‘No marriage, no children.’

      Ava felt her insides twist in pain. Watching her sister go through the agony of not being able to conceive had made her acutely aware of how much she longed to have a baby of her own. To hear Marc state so implacably that he wanted no children struck at the heart of her. She was twenty-seven years old, which was still young enough not to panic, but with her younger sister’s fertility problems she couldn’t quite quell the worry that she too might not be able to conceive naturally.

      ‘I can assure you I would not for a moment think of bringing a child into such an arrangement as this,’ she said, turning away from Marc to put the envelope to one side.

      Ava heard him move behind her and froze. She silently prayed for him not to touch her in case she betrayed herself. The skin along her bare arms crawled with anticipation of his warm, gliding hands. How many times had he embraced her from behind in the past? His hands would move slowly from her hips to her breasts, cupping her, his mouth nuzzling on the sensitive skin of her neck until she would turn in his arms and offer herself to him.

      Her mind exploded with images of them together. The passion he had ignited in her was something she had never experienced before even though she had not been a virgin when they had met.

      When his hands came to rest on her hips she shuddered. ‘You find my touch abhorrent, or is it that you are still hungry for it?’ he asked, his warm hint-of-mint breath skating past her ear.

      If only he knew! she thought as her heart rammed against her sternum like a giant pendulum inside the body of a too small clock. ‘I told you…I…I want some time to think about this,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even.

      He turned her around to face him, his eyes boring into hers. ‘You haven’t got time to think about it, cara,’ he said. ‘You have debts up to your diamond-studded ears.’ He fingered one glittering earlobe. ‘Did he buy these for you?’

      Ava’s breath caught in her throat like a scrap of silk on a savage thorn. ‘Y-yes…’

      His hands fell to his sides as he commanded, ‘Take them off.’

      She frowned again, her stomach nosediving in alarm. ‘What?’

      His mouth was bracketed by lines of steel. ‘Take them off and everything else he gave you. Now.’

      Ava pressed her lips together to contain her pulsing panic. Was this really her Marc? The man she had fallen in love with so deeply and irrevocably? He was a stranger to her now, a terrifying stranger with not just revenge on his mind, but the total humiliation of her as well.

      She would not give in to him.

       She would not.

      She tightened her hands into fists by her sides, holding his glacial glare with a feisty flash of her own. ‘No.’ Her voice came out too thready and soft, so she repeated it. ‘No. Absolutely not.’

      His pupils flared, his mouth flattening even further. ‘I will give you one minute, Ava, otherwise the deal is off. Keep in mind the massive debts your husband left behind. At last count it was in the hundreds of thousands.’ He set the timer on his watch, his dark gaze holding hers challengingly. ‘Your minute starts now.’

      She swallowed back her anguish, the determination in his eyes making the base of her spine rattle in fear. ‘D-don’t do this, Marc…’

      A nerve flickered at the side of his mouth. ‘If you will not do it then I will do it for you,’ he warned.

      Ava believed him well capable of it. Her hands began to tremble as she tried to remove the earrings, her fingers fumbling uselessly until she felt terrifyingly close to tears. She soldiered on, glaring at him bitterly, hating him with such intensity she could taste the acridity of it in her mouth. Finally she got the studs out and placed them on the coffee table to her right.

      ‘Now the rest,’ he said, standing with his feet apart, his arms folded across his chest in an authoritarian stance that boiled her blood.

      Still glaring at him, she took each of her dress rings off and put them beside the earrings. ‘There,’ she said, arching one of her brows at him. ‘Happy now?’

      His black eyes stripped her mercilessly. ‘Keep going.’

      Ava’s heart lurched against her chest wall. She sent the point of her tongue out over her lips, buying for time, wondering if he wanted her to crumble emotionally, to beg and to plead with him to stop.

      She would not do it.

      She would not bend or break, she would not cry, she would not beg.

      She raised her chin and locked gazes with him. Bluegrey warred with black-brown for a pulsing moment. ‘All right, then,’ she said with a devil-may-care lift of one shoulder as she loosened the catch on her watch. She slipped it off her wrist and placed it beside the earrings and rings.

      She straightened and, giving him a challenging look, slipped off her shoes, kicking them to one side before she reached for the zipper at the back of her skirt. She told herself she had stood undressed in front of hundreds of people before while she had been modelling. This would be no different; besides, he had seen it all before. Her body was no secret to him. He knew every curve and contour and every secret place.

      The tension in the air was palpable.

      Ava slid the zipper down, the metallic sound thunderous in the crackling silence. The fabric slipped to the floor and she stepped out of its circle, her fingers going to the hem of her pull-on top.

      Marc’s eyes followed her like a night-vision searchlight. She felt the heat of it scorch her flesh as her top joined her skirt on the floor. She stood before him in a black, French, lace push-up bra and knickers, her chin high, her right hip tilted in a model-like pose. ‘I bought these myself,’ she said with a defiant look.

      His lips flickered, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘Prove it.’

      Ava clenched her teeth, fighting to keep her cool. He wanted her to fall apart, she had to remember that. He wanted her pride any way he could get it. ‘I don’t have the receipt any more, so I am afraid you will have to take my word for it,’ she said, pushing up her chin to disguise its wobble.

      ‘Your word?’ His top lip lifted in a mocking curl. ‘Since when should I take as gospel the word of a gold-digger?’

      ‘I am not a gold-digger,’ she said with quiet but steely dignity.

      The timer on his watch beeped, informing her the minute was up.

      Ava felt her stomach slip as Marc’s gaze hit hers. ‘Well?’ he said.

      She had never felt so naked and exposed in her life and yet she was still wearing more than most people wore on the French Riviera beaches she could see from the villa windows.

      ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ she asked, knowing it would be exactly the question a gold-digger would ask, but she was beyond caring. Serena was more important than her pride at this point. What her sister had suffered recently was far worse than anything Marc Castellano could do to her.

      He named a sum that lifted her brows. ‘Th-that much?’ she asked in a croak.

      He gave her an imperious smile, the black holes of his pupils flaring with passionate promise. ‘I am going to make you earn every penny of it, Ava. I don’t suppose you have forgotten how good we were together, hmm?’

      Ava felt her cheeks flame with colour. She remembered everything: every touch, every kiss, every incendiary caress and every earth-shattering orgasm that had left her quaking in his arms time and time again. ‘You want some sort of medal for being able to perform an act that humans, even the most base of animals, have been doing for centuries?’ she asked with a cutting look.

      He