Italian Deception: The Salvatore Marriage / A Sicilian Seduction / The Passion Bargain. Michelle Reid

don’t understand why you’re doing this,’ she breathed unsteadily.

      He laughed; it wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘Maybe I’m curious as to how much you’ve learned since you moved on to pastures new.’

      ‘Stop it,’ she whispered.

      But he wasn’t going to stop anything. ‘Did you tempt him as you used to tempt me, Shannon?’ he questioned curiously. ‘Did you tease him into showing you yet another way to reach that mind-blowing final thrill?’

      Her arm came up between the glare of their eyes, fixed and warring, and she let fly with her hand. He caught it before it landed its blow, hard fingers closing around her slender wrist to keep the hand suspended a small half-inch from his face.

      ‘We both know that the thrill was all you ever really wanted from me,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘but did you think you’d exhausted all my possibilities? Wrong, darling.’ He dared to kiss the tips of her clawing fingers. ‘We never so much as scratched the surface. You have no idea what delights you have missed out upon.’

      ‘Shut up!’ she choked. He was twisting the truth around to suit his own version of what he believed and she felt so hurt that she actually began to shake from head to toe in response.

      Those unremitting eyes held her captive, and his hand gave a tug to bring her hard up against his solid frame. ‘I still cannot look at your mouth without remembering how it feels to have it fixed on some intimate part of my anatomy,’ he murmured, his deep voice pulsing inside her head. ‘I remember each brush of your lips, each sensuous flick of your sexy tongue. There,’ he said huskily. ‘Does it make you feel better to know that I am still as obsessed with you as you are with me, Shannon, hmm?’

      ‘I am not obsessed with you—I despise you!’ she hissed. ‘Or am I supposed to have forgotten the way you slaked yourself in me after you alleged my so-called other lover had been there before you, or the way that you slid out of my body still heaving from the whole wild experience only to turn on me like an animal? You spat names at me that I wouldn’t call any woman!’

      His face went white, and her heart was pounding, not with desire but with a rage two long years in the festering that was suddenly blazing hotly inside.

      ‘I apologised,’ he bit back.

      Did he really? Well, it can’t have been such a sincere apology because she couldn’t even bring it to mind! ‘What you did to me went beyond apologies,’ she told him. ‘And do you know what made it worse? You didn’t care about me enough to listen to what I had to say before you dealt out your punishment. I was judged and found guilty without even the right to a fair trial! Well, I’ll tell you something …’ Her breasts were heaving, the words shooting from her on the crest of her rage. ‘I will let you right off the hook if you like—because I accept the blame. I did it. I took another man to your bed, Luca, and I can’t tell you how very much I enjoyed the experience!’

      ‘That’s enough!’ he barked.

      He was right and it was. On a sickening wave of dismay Shannon tugged her wrist free from his grasp and reeled dizzily away. She’d spoken lies—all lies. Why had she done that? she asked herself painfully. Why did she always have to tell him what he wanted to hear?

      Behind her the silence was throbbing like the heavy beat of a drum. Inside she was quietly tearing apart at the seams. In her heart she was weeping at all the bitterness, and in her head she was feeling so ugly she never wanted to look at herself again.

      ‘Do I win my pass out of here now?’ she asked with a dullness that saw off her anger.

      For an answer he spun on his heel and strode away.

      Shannon wilted on a combination of shocked horror at what they had thrown at each other and a sinking sense of relief because she had finally driven him to let her out of here. Pulling herself together, she went to gather up her bags, then took in a deep breath before following him.

      The moment she stepped back into the kitchen she knew she had not won anything. Luca was playing the domesticated man again and filling the kettle. His overcoat had gone, and his jacket and tie. As she stood there her eyes couldn’t resist following the ripple of muscle across broad, tense shoulders.

      ‘Take your coat off, dump the luggage,’ he said without turning.

      ‘Luca—for goodness’ sake …’ she pleaded yet again. ‘Just let me out of here so I can find a hotel room somewhere.’

      ‘Tea or coffee?’ was all she got by return.

      ‘Oh,’ she groaned, covering her now-throbbing eyes with a trembling hand. ‘Can’t you understand?’ she cried in a last-ditch attempt to make him see reason. ‘I just can’t stay in this apartment with you!’

      It was no use. The rigid stretch of cotton barely flexed in response as he stood there waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘You’re nothing but an unfeeling monster,’ she told him as her weary body gave up on the whole stupid fight.

      ‘Tea or coffee,’ he repeated.

      ‘Oh, choose which you like,’ she sighed, and on an act of surrender sank into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, dropped her bags to the floor, then placed her elbows on the table so she could bury her face in her hands.

      Another silence rained down around them after that, broken only by the soothing hiss of the kettle as it came to the boil. Shannon kept her face hidden and Luca—well, she was aware that he was standing there, leaning against the worktop and looking at her, but—what the heck? Let him get his fill of her defeat if that was how he got his kicks these days. She didn’t care any more, didn’t care about anything but getting a warm drink inside then finding a bed she could sleep in.

      Observing the weary way she was sitting there with her face buried in her hands, Luca bit his teeth together and angrily asked himself what the hell he’d thought he was doing orchestrating that little scene. Since when did a reasonably sophisticated man of thirty-four taunt an ex-lover with the kind of remarks he had just poured out?

      One that needed an escape for all the burning grief that was trampling his insides, he acknowledged heavily.

      And Shannon was not just an ex-lover. She was the woman he’d loved. The woman he’d believed he could spend the rest of his life with. Walking into his own home and seeing what he had seen was going to burn in his head for ever.

      ‘I never did manage to discover who the other man was.’

      ‘What—?’ Her face came out of her hands, red-rimmed eyes staring at him as if he had just spoken to her in Greek. ‘It makes you a sad kind of man that you even bothered to try,’ she threw back in derision. ‘Forget the tea,’ she added, dragging herself to her feet again. ‘I’ll just take the bedroom.’

      With that she hauled up her luggage and walked out of the kitchen.

      Luca let her go, angry with himself for saying something else he had not meant to say. He stood there listening to her footsteps taking her down the hallway, listened to a door being opened, and a grim smile touched the corners of his mouth because he’d recognised the door as belonging to what she believed was one of the guest bedrooms. She’d picked it out deliberately knowing that their old bedroom was at the other end of the hall.

      Standing there tense, hands braced on the worktop, he waited for her to realise the mistake she’d made. Sure enough a few seconds later the door closed and her footsteps continued to the room next door. He hadn’t slept in their old bedroom since the day she’d taken another man to it. He would have walked out of the apartment and never come back if it hadn’t been too big a step for his pride.

      A few seconds later and the next door she had chosen shut with a telling slam. Only then did he let the air leave his body.

      He must be mad—crazy to continue to let her get to him like this. What had gone should be forgotten. He wanted to forget, so why was he standing here feeling as bad as he’d felt two years ago?

      He