Mediterranean Millionaires. Lynne Graham

pitch of nervous anticipation, both wanting and not wanting, burning quivers of need still shimmying through her slender frame because he had roused her to a point beyond bearing.

      Scorching dark eyes met hers with frowning force. ‘You’re very tight. We could try this in another position—’

      ‘No…just do it!’ she gasped in wild embarrassment.

      He was skilful and smooth, but that slow, deep plunge into her silken softness and the final piercing of the barrier of her virginity caused fleeting tears to well into her eyes. He stayed very still then, allowing her to adjust to the invasion. ‘I’m sorry…I hated hurting you.’

      Ripples of heat and stimulation pulsed from the hot, secret heart of her again. Newly sensitised, she quivered, her body angling up to his in an invitation that spoke louder than any words. With a ragged laugh of gratification he moved again and a whimper of excitement escaped her because he felt amazing. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs. Exquisite sensation built and the knot of ravenous need in her was tightened and tightened as he set up a raw, sensual rhythm. Delirious with pleasure, she abandoned herself to his dark, driving passion. At the height of a shattering climax she screamed in ecstasy before she tumbled down and down and down in a release from her physical body that was so powerful that she was not quite sure she was conscious for several minutes afterwards.

      Angelo kissed her and she stiffened, for once the fog of pleasure had seeped away she was gripped by a stark sense of shame and denial. She felt horribly emotional and tearful. How could she have let herself enjoy it? How could she have let herself down like that? Where was her pride? She was attempting to block out those disturbing thoughts when she registered that Angelo was removing her wrist-watch.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she mumbled unevenly, lying as still as a corpse under him as if to underline the fact that he was holding her entrapped.

      Impervious to the hint intended, Angelo murmured lazily, ‘Giving you a present, passione mia.’

      Her smooth brow indented. ‘A present?’

      She lifted her hand to examine the new watch in shock and dismay. Gold, diamonds, a famous designer name. Painful early memories of similar expensive gifts surfaced. Revulsion ripped through her and she struggled with desperate fingers to take it off again but the intricate clasp defeated her. ‘No, thanks, I don’t want it. Look…how do you get this off?’

      Angelo rested his stubborn jaw on the heel of his hand and surveyed her with deceptively sleepy tawny eyes. ‘I want you to wear it—’

      ‘What for?’ Her Delft-blue eyes flashed into direct contact with his narrowed gaze for the first time and the angry distaste etched there startled him. ‘So that you can kid yourself that you’re really a kind, generous guy? Or so that you can belittle me by paying me in jewellery for what I just did with you? Well, I may be stuck living in your stonking great status symbol of a mansion and forced to wear the fancy clothes that you paid for but—’ Gwenna had to pause just to draw breath.

      ‘But?’ Angelo encouraged, outraged that his generosity could be twisted into an insult and rejected.

      ‘I refuse to wear jewellery you give me.’

      Angelo, confounded by her behaviour and furious with her, finally released her from his weight. ‘You will if it pleases me. Consider it part of the role you took on of your own accord.’

      ‘And do I have that role all to myself?’ The question flew off Gwenna’s tongue before she even realised that she intended to ask it. But just as quickly she accepted that she had to know, she simply had to know, whether or not she was one of a crowd.

      His stunning dark gaze veiled; he was a veteran at facing down awkward questions from the women in his life. ‘No comment.’

      Gwenna read only one meaning into that unrevealing response. And she felt as if he’d punched a hole right through her and sent the ground beneath her feet crashing away. He wasn’t even willing to be faithful to her? That new knowledge was like a jagged iceberg settling in her stomach and his unapologetic attitude was a humiliating slap in the face. How much lower could he make her sink? She was appalled by his attitude.

      Distaste sliced through her. ‘Then, I suppose what we just did is the equivalent of a one-night stand.’

      His lean bronzed face was grim as he pulled himself up against the pillows. ‘I don’t do those,’ Angelo growled with incredulous bite.

      ‘Perhaps I can only face thinking about this arrangement one day at a time.’ Gwenna had already been stripped of virtually everything she valued. Everything he said merely heightened the frightening sense that she was no longer in control of her own life.

      Suddenly all the bewildered misery and anger and hurt she had been holding back just broke free of restraint and overflowed. ‘For goodness’ sake, I don’t even like you! You’ve taken my home, my garden, my very history from me and marooned me in a city where I don’t belong. You’ve even taken Piglet!’ she launched in a wild, almost incoherent surge of condemnation, scrambling out of bed to shoot into the bathroom at speed and noisily bolt the door behind her.

      Angelo heard her sob and he sprang out of bed. Outrage powering him, he pulled on his boxers. So, let her cry, get it out of her system. She was overwrought. He always gave women in tears the widest possible berth. I don’t even like you!

      ‘Gwenna…’ Angelo reached the bathroom door without having taken a conscious decision to move in that direction and knocked once. ‘Open this door.’

      Her eyes wet, Gwenna sucked in a ragged breath and turned on the bath taps to drown him out. Womanising louse, all sweet-talk one moment, ice-cold, heartless and utterly immoral the next. How could she have just sleepwalked into becoming the mistress of such a man?

      Angelo rapped on the door again. ‘I want to know you’re okay. And I want to know right now.’

      Blocking him out because she had absolutely nothing left to say to him, Gwenna slid into the warm bathwater. The hint of an intimate ache between her thighs made her pale and, reaching hurriedly for the soap, she washed with helpless urgency. Tears inched down her quivering cheeks and she dashed them away with a furious hand. Why was she crying? She never, ever cried!

      Angelo tried the handle one more time and then pulled on his clothes in haste. He kicked the door at the weakest point beneath the lock and it burst open, slamming back against the wall. She was in the bath, drenched blue eyes enormous with fright, honey-blonde waves of hair cloaking her and trailing in the water.

      ‘I’m sorry if I scared you but you should have unlocked the door,’ Angelo murmured with measured quietness. ‘I was concerned.’

      Trembling, Gwenna stared at him, absorbing the sight of his shirt hanging loose, disclosing a muscular wedge of bronzed hair-roughened chest. Shock was rippling through her. He had called her bluff. He had kicked in the door. She couldn’t believe he had done that. She tipped up her chin to snatch a glance at his lean strong face and then hurriedly jerked her head away, out of breath and more tense than ever.

      Angelo crouched down by the side of the bath. ‘Look at me…’

      ‘Do you have to be so intimidating?’ she muttered tautly, sitting knees to chin in the water, naked and cornered.

      ‘I’m trying bloody hard not to be!’ Angelo flared back at her. ‘Stop cringing…you don’t have to be afraid of me.’

      Gwenna dropped her head. How could she not be afraid?

      ‘I would never harm you.’

      Gwenna thought about the kind of harm that had a more lasting effect than mere bruises.

      Frustration was roaring through Angelo. She wasn’t listening to him. She often gave him the impression that she was only giving him part of her attention. Not in bed though, he reminded himself with grim satisfaction. But the rest of the time? Either he got the feeling she was holding back or she was lost in her own little world and he didn’t like either sensation.