Power: Marchese's Forgotten Bride / Ruthlessly Bedded, Forcibly Wedded. Michelle Reid

really ill.

      ‘Are y-you all right?’ she asked when she couldn’t stand his stillness any longer.

      ‘Sí…’ It was low and husky and it ran down through her like a hotline wired to her hips and thighs.

      Cassie drew in some air, let it out again then, moistening her lips, which still felt hot and swollen after that terrible kiss, she gave in to the need nagging at her and reached out with a tentative hand and gently placed it on his knee.

      ‘Sandro, please,’ she begged huskily. ‘You’re frightening me.’

      I’m frightening myself, Alessandro thought in an attempt to dry-humour himself out of this thick cloud which kept on blanketing him after each lightning strike. He managed to lift a limp hand and dropped it down on top of her hand as she would have withdrawn it from his knee. Small and fragile though her fingers felt to him, they seemed to possess a power of their own because he felt his energy begin to seep back through him.

      ‘I suppose, Cassie Janus, you are wondering if this alcoholic requires a couple of shots of hard whisky to supplement his wine-soaked blood.’

      ‘It isn’t a joke,’ she rebuked him sharply. ‘And stop saying my name like that.’

      ‘Like what?’ Opening his eyes, he looked at her pale, strained, heart-shaped face with its beautiful emerald eyes darkened by concern for him.

      ‘Like you’re mocking me.’

      Alessandro allowed a wry smile to stretch his lips. ‘And here I sit believing I was mocking myself.’

      ‘And you talk in riddles…’ Sliding her hand out from beneath his and retreating into the seat, Cassie put as much distance as she could between them then sat staring out at London’s night glitter, recognising famous landmarks which put them right in the centre of one of the city’s most prosperous districts.

      No cheap inner-city housing here, she thought dully. No dismal tenement blocks taken over by developers and crammed to their doors with as many apartments they could pack into them. Her own rented apartment shared the floor with two other tenants. She had two tiny bedrooms, a cramped living-dining room, a rabbit hutch for a kitchen, and the tiniest bathroom in the world. The hallway was not much bigger than the vestibule at the bottom of the restaurant steps back there where Sandro had—

      Oh, don’t go there, she groaned silently, shutting off her brain with a painfully tight swallow.

      ‘You wear no wedding ring…’

      ‘What?’ Startled, she jumped, her head twisting round on her slender neck to find he was studying her hands.

      ‘No rings,’ he repeated.

      ‘No. Why should there be?’ she demanded defensively, her fingernails coiling into her palms.

      ‘I did not say it as a criticism, merely as an observation.’

      Her guarded gaze fluttered down to where his long-fingered hands lay relaxed on his lap. ‘You wear no rings, either.’

      ‘I am not the proud parent of twins.’

      As if he’d reached across the gap between them and grabbed her by her throat, Cassie gave a choking gasp then froze. She’d forgotten the twins! How could she have done that? How could she have let herself forget that this man—this cold, heartless man—had rejected both her and her children before they’d even been born?

      ‘I am presuming that you are not married,’ he prompted in the same even tone.

      He’d shifted his attention to her face now, carefully shielded eyes watching her expression in a way that made Cassie wish she knew what was going on inside his head.

      ‘No,’ she husked out.

      ‘So who is taking care of them while you’re out tonight—a live-in boyfriend perhaps?’

      Her heart began to beat like a hammer drill. Where the heck was he intending to go with this line of questioning? ‘No,’ she said again.

      ‘Then who?’ he persisted.

      ‘M-my neighbour.’

      ‘So where is their father?’

      Feeling as if he was reeling her in like a fish, ‘Stop it, Sandro!’ she hissed, her control just snapping.

      ‘Stop what?’ he questioned with skin-shaving innocence.

      ‘Toying with me again!’

      ‘I’m not toying with you,’ he denied and even added a half-convincing frown.

      ‘Then what are you doing? You know about the twins because I told you about the twins!’

      He dared to look shocked. ‘I don’t recall—’

      ‘What—again?’ Cassie pealed out.

      The car came to an elegant standstill. Twisting her gaze back to the window, she saw they’d stopped outside the entrance to a block of fancy apartments. The stark comparison to the apartments she’d just been thinking about clawed like a mockery down her spine.

      Well, if he thought she was going in there with him he had another think coming, she determined. She’d taken more than enough of his madness tonight without having to deal with the pride-crushing effect of seeing how well he lived, while his children…

      The chauffeur opened her door for her. Blinking up at him for a second, Cassie pushed out a stifled, ‘Thank you,’ then scrambled out of the car. The night air was chilly and she’d started shivering as she bent her head to open her tiny evening purse.

      ‘What are you doing?’ Sandro arrived beside her.

      ‘I need my mobile to ring for a taxi—’

      The hand that took the purse from her was smooth and slick. ‘Not before we talk.’

      As she stared up at him in gasping protest, he then took possession of her wrist with a grip like a velvet manacle and started trailing her towards the apartment-block entrance.

      ‘But I don’t want to go in there with you,’ she told him furiously. ‘I want my purse back and I want to go home!’

      ‘Stop panicking,’ he drawled. ‘It’s only ten o’clock. Your babysitter cannot be expecting you back yet.’

      ‘That has nothing to do with it.’ She tried a tug on her wrist. ‘I have a right to decide for myself what I—’

      His soft curse cut her off mid-sentence, sending her eyes shooting up to his face in alarm because she thought he was about to suffer another of those weird dizzy fits. But his expression was angry, not creased by pain. And when she followed the direction in which he was looking, Cassie saw through the plate-glass doors into the foyer a man standing leaning against the reception desk, chatting sedately to the security guard seated on the other side.

      As the doors in front of them swung open like magic she saw recognition hit the stranger’s face as he straightened up and smiled. He was young, smart and Italian if his dark good looks were anything to go by. Sandro bit out something in Italian which turned the other man’s smile into a frown. A heated discussion struck up between them, which seemed to involve Sandro asking curt questions and the younger man replying with some firm questions of his own. The whole cut-and-thrust argument held Cassie fascinated and the porter engrossed. He seemed to understand them but Cassie didn’t. When the stranger glanced at her and said something about her, Sandro exploded with a volley of words and a flick of his hand which she loosely translated as ‘Keep your nose out of my business and get lost’.

      Next Sandro was trailing her across the foyer and into the waiting lift. As the doors slid shut, Cassie had a final view of the other man’s frowning impatience.

      ‘Who is he?’ she couldn’t resist asking.

      ‘My brother,’ he answered.

      Cassie