The Venadicci Marriage Vengeance. Melanie Milburne

had made her head spin. No amount of alcohol could affect her more than Vinn had already done, she decided. Her body was tingling all over with sensation, and her mind was running off at wayward tangents, imagining what it would feel like to be crushed by the solid weight of his body, his sensual mouth locked on hers, one of his strong, hair-roughened thighs nudging hers apart to—

      She jerked away from her thoughts, annoyed that she had allowed his potent brand of sensuality to get under her guard. What on earth was she thinking? He was the enemy. She knew exactly what he was doing and why. He was only marrying her to get back at her for how she had treated him in the past. He knew it would be torture for her to be tied to him. Why else would he insist on it? Never had she regretted her immature behaviour more than this moment. Why, oh why, had she been so shallow and cruel?

      Gabby’s older brother Blair had often pulled her up for her attitude towards Vinn, but in a way his relationship with Vinn had been a huge part of the problem. She had felt jealous that her adored older brother clearly preferred the company of the cleaner’s son to hers. Gabby had resented the way Blair spent hours helping Vinn with his studies when he could have been spending time with her, the way he’d used to do before Vinn had arrived with his mother.

      When Gabby had accidentally stumbled upon the realisation that Vinn suffered from dyslexia she had cruelly taunted him with it, mocking him for not being able to read the most basic of texts. But for some reason, just as he had when she had led him on so despicably that hot summer afternoon when she was sixteen, Vinn had never spoken to her brother or her parents about her behaviour. He had taken it on the chin, removing himself from her presence without a word, even though she had sensed the blistering anger in him, simmering just below the surface of his steely outward calm.

      Gabby could sense that anger still simmering now, in the way he looked at her from beneath that slightly hooded brow. Those grey-blue eyes were like mysteriously deep mountain lakes, icy cold one minute, warm and inviting the next, and they spoke of a man who had nothing but revenge on his mind.

      She had seen the way women were looking at him. He had such arrestingly handsome features, and his presence was both commanding and brooding—as if he was calculating his next move, like a champion chess player, prepared to take as long as he needed to move his king, making his opponent sit it out in gut-wrenching apprehension.

      Gabby felt another shiver of unease pass through her at the thought of being married to him. He had said he expected their marriage to be permanent. That meant there were issues to consider: children, for one thing. She was twenty-eight years old, and she would be lying if she said she hadn’t heard the relentless ticking of her biological clock in the two years since Tristan had died. Children had not been an option while she had been married to him. She would never have brought children into such a relationship. She hadn’t even brought a pet into the house in case he had used it against her in one of his violent moods.

      ‘You have gone very quiet, Gabriella,’ Vinn observed. ‘Is the thought of having an orgasm with me too hard for you to handle?’

      She gave him a withering look. ‘No, in actual fact I find it hard to believe it possible,’ she said. ‘I can’t speak for the legion of women you’ve already bedded, but I personally am unable to engage in such an intimate act without some engagement of emotion.’

      He gave a deep chuckle of laughter. ‘How about hate?’ he asked, reaching for his mineral water. ‘Is that enough emotion to get you rolling?’

      She put down her glass and signalled for the waiter to refill it.

      ‘Do you think that is wise?’ Vinn asked. ‘The amount of alcohol in that drink is enough to cloud anyone’s judgement.’

      Gabby put up her chin. ‘In the absence of the engagement of emotion, alcohol and a great deal of it is the next best thing,’ she said.

      His eyes narrowed to grey-blue stormy slits. ‘If you think I will bed you while you are under the influence, think again,’ he said. ‘When we come together for the first time I want you stone-cold sober, so you remember every second of it.’

      Gabby put her glass down with a sharp little clunk. ‘I am not going to sleep with you, Vinn,’ she said, and hoisting up her chin even higher, added imperiously, ‘For that privilege you will have to pay double.’

      Vinn smiled a victor’s smile as he reached inside his jacket for his chequebook. He laid it on the table between them, and the click of his pen made Gabby’s spine jerk upright, as if she had been shot with a pellet from the gold-embossed barrel.

      ‘Double, you said?’

      Gabby felt her stomach drop. Her mouth went dry and her palms moistened. ‘Um…I…I’m not sure. I…this…it…I…don’t…Oh, my God…’

      He wrote the amount in his distinctive scrawl, the dark slash of his signature making Gabby’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. ‘There,’ he said, tearing off the cheque from the book and placing it in front of her on the table. ‘Do we have a deal or not?’

      CHAPTER THREE

      GABBY looked at the amount written there and felt a shockwave of so many emotions rocketing through her that she felt her face fire up. Each one of them stoked the furnace, although shame had by far the most fuel. But then anger joined in; she could feel it blazing out of control, and not just on her cheeks, but deep inside, where a cauldron of heat was bubbling over, making her veins hot with rage.

      Vinn had deliberately made her feel like a high-end prostitute—a woman who would do anything for a price. But Gabby wasn’t going to be bought. She had been a fool before where a man was concerned, allowing duty and blinkered emotions to cloud her judgement. This time things would be different. If Vinn Venadicci thought he could lure her between the sheets of his bed with a bank vault full of dollar bills, he was in for a big surprise.

      With a coolness she was nowhere near feeling, Gabby picked up the cheque and, with the tip of her tongue peeping through her lips as she concentrated, she folded it, fold by meticulous fold, until she had made a tiny origami ship. She held it in the palm of her hand for a moment as she inspected it, and once she was satisfied she had Vinn’s full attention she reached for the glass of full-bodied red wine the waiter had recently set down beside him. She dropped her handiwork in, watching in satisfaction as it floated for a second or two, until the density of the wine gradually soaked through the paper and submerged it halfway below the surface.

      Gabby met Vinn’s grey-blue gaze across the table with an arch look. ‘I was going to say you could put your cheque in your pipe and smoke it, but then I realised you don’t smoke.’ She smiled a cat’s smile and added, ‘Salute.’

      Vinn’s lips twitched, but even so his eyes still burned with determination. ‘You might like me to swallow my offer, but I can guarantee you are going to be the one eating your words in the not so distant future, cara,’ he warned her silkily.

      She rolled her eyes and picked up her second cocktail. ‘I will go as far as marrying you to save my family’s business, but I am not going to be your sex slave, Vinn. If you have the urge to satisfy your needs I am sure there are plenty of women out there who will gladly oblige. All I ask is for you to be discreet.’

      He leaned back in his chair and surveyed her features for a beat or two. ‘Is that the arrangement you made with your late husband?’ he asked. ‘Or did you see to his needs quite willingly all by yourself?’