Love's Revenge: The Italian's Revenge / A Passionate Marriage / The Brazilian's Blackmailed Bride. Michelle Reid

giving his rock-solid shoulder yet another prompting push.

      ‘If I open my eyes, Catherine, you will intensely regret it,’ he warned very grimly.

      She was no fool; she recognised that tone. On an angry flurry of naked flesh, she flung herself onto her back, to lie seething in silence.

      Naked. Her heart stopped beating as a new kind of shock went rampaging through her.

      So it had not been a dream and Vito had undressed her! The man’s self-confessed arrogance knew no bounds! she decided as she sent one of her hands on a quick foray of her own body to discover just how naked she was.

      She was very—very naked.

      ‘Did you know you have developed a habit of talking in your sleep?’ he said suddenly.

      Catherine froze beside him. She heard a very muddled and very disjointed echo of words being spoken by her that should have taken place in the privacy of her head.

      Regretful words about Marcus.

      ‘Shut up,’ she gasped, terrified of what was coming. ‘He must be quite something, this man you weep for.’ He ignored her advice in the dulcet tones of one readying for battle. ‘To reach the frozen wastelands where your heart lies hidden. Maybe I should take the trouble to meet him, see what he’s got that I never had.’

      ‘Why bother?’ she slashed back. ‘When you would never find the same qualities inside yourself if you searched for ever.’

      ‘Is he good in bed?’

      Her next gasp almost strangled her. ‘Go to hell,’ she replied, turning her back towards him.

      As an act of dismissal it had entirely the opposite effect, because Vito’s arm had scooped around her and rolled her back before she even knew what was happening.

      And suddenly he was leaning right over her, all glinting eyes and primitive male aggression. ‘I asked you a question,’ he prompted darkly.

      Her mouth ran dry, the tip of her tongue slinking out to moisten parted lips that were remaining stubbornly silent because she was damned if she was going to tell the truth—that she had never even been tempted to go to bed with Marcus—just to soothe Vito’s ruffled ego! Luxurious dark eyelashes curled down over shimmering eyes as he lowered his gaze to observe the nervous action—and completely froze it as an old, old sensation went snaking through her.

      He was going to kiss her. ‘No, Vito,’ she breathed, but even she heard the weakness in that pathetic little protest.

      It was already too late. His mouth claimed hers with the kind of deeply sensual kiss that could only be issued by this wretched man. It was like drowning in the most exquisite substance ever created, she likened dazedly as she began to sink on a long, spiralling dive through silken liquid kept exactly at body heat so it was impossible to tell what part of the kiss was hers and what part was his.

      The man, his closeness, even the antipathy that was pulsing between them, was so sexual that she found herself thinking fancifully of lions again. Her skin came alive, each tiny pore beginning to vibrate with an awareness that held her trapped by its power and its intensity.

      Whether it was she who began to touch him first or whether Vito was the one to begin their gentle caresses, she didn’t know—didn’t really care. Because the heat of his flesh felt so exquisitely wonderful to her starved fingertips, and where he touched she burned, and where he didn’t she ached.

      She tried to drag some air into lungs that had ceased working, felt the tips of her breasts briefly touch his hair-roughened breastplate, felt her nipples sting as they responded to the contact and moaned luxuriously against his mouth.

      With a sensual flick of his tongue, Vito caught that little moan, took possession of it as if it belonged to him. And as his hands worked their old magic on her flesh with the sensual expertise of a master, he watched in grim triumph as, bit by bit, she surrendered herself to him.

      ‘Does he make you feel like this, cara?’ he grated with electric timing across the erect tip of one pouting nipple. ‘Can he send you this far, this fast?’ he demanded as his fingers, so excruciatingly knowing, slid a delicate caress over her sex.

      She shuddered, moaned again, flexed and unflexed muscles that were moving to their own rhythm. ‘Vito,’ she breathed, as if her very life depended on her saying that name.

      ‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘Vito,’ he repeated in rough-toned satisfaction. ‘Who touches you—here—and you go up in flames for me.’

      She went wild then. Three years of abstinence was no defence against what he could do for her. She moved for him, breathed for him, writhed and begged for him.

      His laugh of black triumph accompanied the first deep penetrating thrust of his body. But Catherine was too busy exalting in the power of his passion to care that he seemed to be taunting her surrender. And as Vito gritted his teeth and began to ride her his eyes remained fixed on her shuttered eyelids, because he knew her so well and did not want to miss that moment when those eyelids flicked upwards just before she shot into violent orgasm.

      Then let him see if she was shocked to find his dark face bearing down on her instead of her damned lover’s face! ‘Me,’ he muttered tautly as he grappled with his own soaring need to surrender. ‘Vito,’ he gritted.

      Why? Because despite what he was telling himself the very last thing he needed right now was Catherine shattering his ego by expecting it to be another man making her feel this good!

      So he repeated his name. ‘Vito, cara.’ And kept on repeating it with each powerful thrust of his powerful frame, ‘Vittorio—Adriano—Lucio—Giordani,’ in the most seductive accent ever created.

      Her answering whimper caught him in mid-thrust. Her eyes flicked open. She looked straight at him. ‘Pidoccio,’ she said, then shot into a flailing orgasm.

      They lay there afterwards, sweat-soaked, panting, utterly spent. He on his back, with his arm covering his face, she on her side, curled right away from him. ‘Louse,’ she whispered again—in English this time.

      She was right and he was. So he didn’t deny it. ‘You are my wife,’ Vito stated flatly. ‘Our separation is now officially over. So take my advice and be careful, cara, who you dream about in future.’

      That was all. Nothing else needed to be added to that. Catherine had unwittingly struck at the very centre of his pride when she’d mumbled mixed-up words about Marcus in her sleep. The experience just now had not been performed for mere sexual gratification’s sake, but in sheer revenge.

      Naples was shimmering beneath a haze of heat that made Catherine glad they were taking the coast road towards Mergellina then on to Capo Posillipo, where most of the upper echelons of Neapolitan society had their residences.

      Vito was driving them in an open-top red Mercedes Cabriolet that must be a recent buy judging by the newness of the cream leather. And driving alfresco like this beat air-conditioned luxury any day, to Catherine’s way of thinking. She could feel the breeze in her hair and the sun on her skin, and if it hadn’t been for the man beside her she would have been enjoying this. The views were every bit as spectacular as she’d remembered them to be. And Santo was safely strapped into the rear seat, happily singing away to himself in whichever language took his fancy.

      The three of them must look the perfect family, she mused. But they weren’t.

      In fact she and Vito had hardly swapped three words with each other since they got up this morning. He’d risen first, rolling out of the bed and striding off to the bathroom very early—but then he always had been an early riser. Catherine had stayed huddled where she was, listening until she’d heard Santo go down the stairs before she made any attempt to stir herself.

      She’d needed her son as a buffer. Catherine freely acknowledged that. At least with Santo there she could try to behave with some normality. But Vito had been as withdrawn and reticent as she had been, as if his