The Italian's Baby of Passion: The Italian's Secret Baby / One-Night Baby / The Italian's Secret Child. Catherine Spencer

       ‘Well, we’ll just have to put our heads together, won’t we?’ he gritted.

      ‘I wouldn’t be seen dead with any part of my body within thirty feet of the corresponding part of yours!’

      His features tautened. ‘Listen, my tolerance levels on this are pretty high because I know you think I’m a bastard. That I can accept,’ he said heavily. ‘But we need…You’ve got to think of Sam,’ he reproached sternly.

      As if she had been thinking of anything else for three years! He didn’t have the faintest idea.

      ‘You’ve got to stop turning this into something personal.’

      Scarlet planted her hands on her hips and threw her head back. She was literally trembling with reaction.

      ‘Wanna bet?’ she drawled.

      ‘Right, you want personal…fine.’ He covered the space between them and grabbed the back of her head with one hand; with the other he framed her face. She looked at him with eyes wide and shocked; she smelt of flowery soap, shampoo, and warm woman, and Roman’s body reacted violently to the combination.

      ‘Is this the sort of personal you had in mind?’

      Even while he was saying it the voice in the back of his head was telling him he’d been looking for an excuse to do this ever since he’d met her. Once he started kissing her the voice wasn’t telling him anything, because his brain took a back seat.

      In the moment before her soft lips parted to allow his tongue to slide deep inside her warm mouth he heard, or rather felt, the broken whimper in her throat. The erotic little rasp sent a lick of heat through his blood and a corresponding jolt through his already rock-hard body.

      She melted into him like warm butter. There was no hint of resistance in the body he had drawn against his, just heat and softness and the promise of more. Greedily he accepted the sweetness so unexpectedly offered him and it was only several hot, frenzied heartbeats later that he lifted his head.

      The effort to do so was physically painful.

      They didn’t immediately step apart, just stood, bodies leaning into each other, breathing hard. Roman’s fingers were still meshed into the shiny strands of slightly damp hair on her head and she had hold of his shirt in both hands.

      When the drumming in his ears got quieter he could make out the words she kept repeating over and over. ‘Oh, my God…oh, my God…!’

      ‘Right, that was stupid,’ he said, leaning his chin against the top of her head. ‘But inevitable,’ he added half to himself. ‘Considering the level of attraction.’

      His comment succeeded in jolting Scarlet free from the sensual lethargy that had engulfed her. With a cry she tore free of him and backed away, her angry eyes fixed on his taut features.

      ‘The only thing that’s inevitable between us is mutual antipathy.’ She rubbed her hand across her reddened, swollen lips. The action was purely symbolic; she didn’t believe for a moment it would succeed wiping away the memory of his searing kiss.

      She had never been kissed that way before, not in a way that had made her crave more than air the pressure of someone’s lips on her own. It made her dizzy and breathless all over again to think of his tongue stroking inside her mouth.

      His eyes trailed across her face, lingering on the soft, swollen contours of her full lips. He shrugged. ‘If you say so,’ he said thickly.

      ‘Don’t use that patronising tone with me,’ she flared, wrenching her hungry gaze from his face. This wasn’t the time to indulge in a staring match. ‘And don’t treat me like a child.’

      As she glared straight ahead her eye-line was on a level with his powerful chest. A chest that moments ago her breasts had been crushed against, softness against iron hardness. Her body had been plastered so close to his that she had been able to feel the heavy thud of his heart mingled with her own. Her eyes lifted as she tried to drag her thoughts clear of the dangerous memories.

      Far from saving her, the retreat brought her eyes into direct contact with Roman’s dark, deep-set, very angry eyes. Her lashes came down but not before a wave of sheer sexual longing had nailed her to the spot.

      ‘Then don’t act like one,’ he advised, his manner clipped and impatient. ‘I don’t force myself on women.’

      Scarlet shook her head to clear the sensual fog that made it hard for her to think straight. ‘Hell, no, you’re irresistible,’ she husked sarcastically. ‘You don’t have to.’ Well, not with me, he doesn’t.

      The memory of her total surrender was terrifying. One kiss and she’d been his to do anything he wanted with. She had never relinquished control that way in her life and if the memory of it wasn’t enough to terrify her, the fact that she had liked feeling that way, that part of her wanted to recapture the feeling, was!

      His jaw tightened another notch in response to her sarcastic jibe. ‘You can’t pretend that you were some sort of unwilling participant.’

      Can and will, Scarlet thought, responding to his claim with a provocative shrug of her slender shoulders.

      ‘That you didn’t want to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss you,’ he continued between gritted teeth. ‘That neither of us wanted it to stop. You can’t pretend those things and expect me to treat you seriously, can you?’ By the time he had finished the incredulity in his voice had become scorn.

      She looked away from his relentless hard stare and gulped. It had been pretty foolish of her to assume that a man who possessed his vast experience of women would not know how she had felt.

      ‘Like you said, it was stupid.’ It was clearly pointless to keep up the illusion that she hadn’t kissed him back.

      A speculative expression slid across his dark features. ‘Possibly…’

      She shot him a startled look. ‘What do you mean, “possibly”?’ she demanded suspiciously. ‘There is no way we can go around kissing without it…’ Roman raised a quizzical brow as she stopped, flushing to the roots of her hair with mortification.

      ‘Not without it leading to other things,’ he finished for her smoothly. ‘I realise that.’

      Her chin lifted. ‘It’s not that I couldn’t have stopped.’ The question was when?

      ‘You just didn’t want to.’ A faint, strangled sound was the only thing that could get past the emotional thickness in Scarlet’s throat. ‘Neither did I,’ he added.

      Her eyes widened at his earthy admission.

      Their eyes locked. His were filled with a raw hunger that snatched the breath from her lungs. She felt dizzy, and her stomach dipped as though she’d just stepped into a bottomless black hole. The whooshing sound in her ears intensified the sensation of light-headedness.

      ‘You didn’t…?’ She flushed with mortification to hear the amazed delight in her voice.

      It doesn’t take much to please you, does it, Scarlet? A man saying he didn’t want to stop. As if that is such a life-changing occurrence? Of course he hadn’t wanted to stop. Men never did; it was in their nature. They took what was on offer.

       Well, I’m not on offer! Once more with a little more conviction, Scarlet.

      While she was still thinking he took action and a step that brought him closer, close enough for her to smell the warm male scent that rose from his body. The smile, the dangerous confident smile on his face kick-started her pulse. Now was the time to tell him she wasn’t interested, spell it out once and for all.

      She instinctively knew that with Roman saying no would be enough.

      She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out to break the silence. His movements were unhurried, deliberate even, but for Scarlet he seemed to