Signed Over To Santino. Maya Blake

enough to fell a lesser man. He’d chosen to absorb the experiences as the hard lessons he’d needed to forge his path in life. So what if being termed a bastard by the man whose blood ran through his veins had left an imagined hole in Javier’s life for a long time? He’d learned with time that he could live without the soft trappings of family and endless entanglements of relationships that were, more often than not, fraught and tedious. The ideal family life he’d envied from afar as a child had proved to be nothing more than a cluster of blood relations fighting over what remained of a once prestigious aristocratic name.

      He’d achieved more in his lifetime than his so-called ancestors had managed in several generations.

      But the rejection still hurt...

      Javier shrugged tense shoulders, ferociously denying the voice in his head, and looked up as Carla murmured in her sleep.

      Clinically, he examined her, forcing himself to assess what had drawn him so inexorably to her. She certainly wasn’t his type. Slim and far too delicate where he preferred his women curvy and vivacious.

      Yet, from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he’d been captivated by the combination of ethereal beauty that comprised silky caramel-streaked chocolate hair, vivid green eyes and a figure that begged for masculine hands, his hands, to mould and possess.

      And despite everything that had happened—her deliberate, callous insults and her flaying rejection the morning after their passionate night together—he couldn’t help the rush of heat to his groin as he lingered on her full mouth and the steady rise and fall of her breasts.

      He surged to his feet, disgusted with himself for ogling a sick, bedridden woman.

      But Carla Nardozzi wasn’t just any woman. She epitomised the very thing that Javier had struggled all his life to effectively deny.

      She’d rejected him because he hadn’t been good enough. Not once, but twice, she’d looked upon him as if he hadn’t been worthy to address her.

      The family he didn’t want or need had been allowed to get away with treating him like that.

      She would not.

      And before their association was over, he would make sure she took back every dismissive word, every scathing look and gesture she’d spurned him with.