CHAPTER FIVE

      JULIUS STRODE OUT of the villa in search of fresh air. Of common sense. Control. Where the hell was his control? He was furious with himself for allowing that toffee-eyed little temptress to trigger his hormones. Why hadn’t he kept to his plan? He owed her nothing. What did he care if she went to prison? It was where she belonged. Why had he allowed her to manipulate his conscience?

      Or maybe it wasn’t his conscience she’d manipulated...

      He was disgusted with himself for wanting her like he had wanted no other woman. He was annoyed he had allowed her to needle him to the point where he was as close to breaking as never before. How could he have allowed that to happen? He wasn’t the sort of man who put sex before sense. This was nothing but a game to her.

      She could tease and taunt him all she liked. She could walk around his villa scantily clad. She could flash her delectable cleavage at him. She could wiggle her hips and pert bottom. She could pout her sexy little mouth at him all day long. She could swim in his pool stark naked for all he cared.

      He would not let her win this.

      He had been tricked by her chameleon-like behaviour. The way she’d fooled him by her charitable act of taking over the cooking while Sophia had rested, after she’d been so adamant she wasn’t going to take orders from him or anyone.

      What was true about her and what were lies?

      She was a smart-mouthed, streetwise siren. Flirting with him, teasing him, daring him, goading him until his blood ran so hot and fast through his veins it scorched him. He was burning for her. Throbbing with the ache to have her. He had never felt desire like it. It was like a storm in his body. A powerful combustion of energy that built each time he was near her. It was brooding inside him even now. The pressure of high arousal. The ache of unreleased desire was a burning ache he couldn’t tame or dismiss. It consumed his thoughts as well as his flesh. Wicked, damning thoughts of what he would like to do to her—craved to do to her.

      His brain was racing with a constant loop of hot images of them having sex like jungle animals. No ‘finesse’ sex. Hard and fast sex. ‘Any position’ sex.

      Holly Perez was the most dangerous woman he had ever met. With her bedroom eyes and wily ways, she threatened everything he stood for. She made him feel things he had trained himself not to feel. Emotions were things he controlled. Desires were something he properly channelled. He did not rush into mad flings and one-nighters with strangers, especially ones with a criminal past.

      He had standards. Principles. He was a good citizen who paid his taxes on time. He never coloured outside the lines. Damn it, he didn’t even park outside of them. Call him conservative, or even obsessive, but rules were things he respected because for most of his life his parents had disregarded them. Rules provided structure in a disordered world. He liked order. He liked predictability. Planning was his forte. He didn’t do things on the fly. He wasn’t spontaneous. He wasn’t a risk taker. He left that sort of thing to his brother, Jake, who loved to live life in the fast lane. Julius was only happy in the fast lane if he knew exactly how fast it was, how long, how wide and how long he would have to be in it.

      He did the calculations and then he acted.

      And right now his calculations told him in big neon flashing letters: Holly Perez was danger personified.

      But for all that something about her got to him...not just physically, but on an entirely different level. He felt something for her. Something he hadn’t expected to feel. He was drawn to her. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. He couldn’t forget her touch. The way she moved. Even the sound of her laughter—the tinkling-bell sound that made his spine shiver. She was blatant, brazen and in-your-face, yet beguiling. He’d seen a glimpse of vulnerability down at the lake. And when he’d asked her about the scar on her arm. For just a moment he had seen a flicker of something behind the mask she wore. He couldn’t help feeling there was more to her than met the eye. Yes, she made him uncomfortable. Yes, she was a flirt. But he had some sort of responsibility towards her, didn’t he?

      It was only for a month. He would be away for part of that with work. He would hardly have to have contact with her if he chose not to.

      And right now the less contact he had with her the better.

      Julius was back in his office trying to work when his phone rang. He was in two minds to ignore it when he saw it was his brother calling. ‘Jake,’ he said heavily.

      ‘Whoa, bro, you sound a little tense there, man,’ Jake said. ‘So I take it you’ve already heard the news?’

      Julius sat upright in his chair. ‘Heard what news?’

      A list of possibilities went through his head in the nanosecond that followed. His father had had another heart scare. His parents were splitting up. Again. His sister was finally going on a date after losing her childhood sweetheart to cancer when she was sixteen. No, he thought; Miranda was too intent on martyrdom. Jake was getting married... No. That would never happen.

      ‘A skeleton has come out of Dad’s closet,’ Jake said.

      ‘Another one?’ Julius asked, thinking of the veritable cast of mistresses and hook-ups his father had dallied with over the years in spite of ‘working at his marriage’. Not that his mother, Elisabetta, could stand in judgement. She’d had a fling or two herself. ‘How old is she this time?’

      ‘Twenty-three.’