It Started With A Proposition: Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price. Miranda Lee
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He levered himself up onto his elbows and stared down at her.
‘Are you saying I could have made you pregnant just now?’
‘No. Pregnancy’s not my concern. I’m on the pill.’
‘I promise you I’m no risk to your health,’ Gino reassured her. ‘Look, are you hungry? I am.’
‘I’m starving,’ she confessed.
‘The Room Service menu’s over there, on that desk. In a leather folder. Check it out while I go run us both a bath.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I need to go to the loo first.’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
‘But I don’t—’ She broke off, thinking how she would have died rather than go to the bathroom in front of Chad. Yet when she’d lived with Gino they’d hidden nothing from each other.
But she wasn’t living with Gino any more, came the timely reminder. She was living by herself. An independent, grown-up woman who liked her privacy.
‘I’m sorry, Gino, but I’d prefer to use the bathroom alone.’
He stared at her in surprise, then shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
Jordan hurried, feeling slightly silly at her stance. She’d just let him touch her in very private places, let him strip her and have sex with her. Let him see her come.
Now she had suddenly gone all shy and precious with him. It seemed they couldn’t exactly take up where they’d left off after all. Ten years had gone by. She’d changed, even if he hadn’t.
Gino was waiting outside the bathroom door, totally naked, whilst she’d drawn on one of the hotel’s bathrobes.
‘All yours,’ she said, and bolted past him, not wanting to start staring again.
The Room Service menu was where he’d said it was.
And so was a plane ticket, lying next to it on the desk.
Jordan stared at it for a long moment.
Then she picked it up.
GINO found himself humming as he watched the tub fill, the bath gel having turned the water a pale green as well as providing some fragrant bubbles.
For the first time in years he felt light-hearted. And happy.
All because he’d found Jordan again.
It was as if the last ten years had been wiped away. He felt young again, and invincible. Jordan was still his woman—had been since the first day he’d set eyes on her.
She’d been working as a waitress back then, at an Italian restaurant not far from Sydney University, just across the road from the building site where Gino had been employed.
Although he’d been trying to opt out of everything Italian at that particular time in his life, the mouthwatering smell of his favourite pasta dishes had kept beckoning, and he’d finally given in to temptation and gone there for an evening meal.
Fate had sat him down at one of Jordan’s tables.
The sexual chemistry between them had been instant and electric. He’d stayed on, eating more than he needed, just so he could keep talking to the beautiful blonde waitress who hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him any more than he could her. He’d openly flirted with her, and she’d served him with a degree of attention which Gino had found both telling and seductive.
When she’d confided over his third cup of coffee that her flatmate had decided to drop out of university and go back home to live, leaving her to find the rent alone, Gino had grabbed the opportunity, saying he’d been looking for a place to live and asking would she consider having him as her flatmate?
His eyes must have told her that he wanted to be more than just her flatmate. So when she’d agreed to his moving in the next day, Gino had been a serious state of arousal even before he’d set foot in the place. He hadn’t lasted more than half an hour before he had kissed her. One thing had quickly led to another, with Gino thanking his lucky stars that he’d come into that restaurant.
His discovering that Jordan was only nineteen—and a virgin—had been a huge shock. But subsequently a huge delight.
She’d become his perfect fantasy lover—her youth and inexperience allowing him to live out his own fantasy role as the masterful older male. He’d been thrilled by her falling for him despite thinking he was just a labourer, wallowing in her acceptance of him as a man in his own right. He’d revelled in the sexual power he’d held over her. What man wouldn’t have? She was an incredibly beautiful girl, with a brilliant mind and a strength of character which was formidable.
Yet, in his arms, she was all sensual submission.
Not passive, though; Jordan was too passionate for passive.
He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her back then, quickly becoming addicted to the primal feelings she’d evoked in him. It seemed that hadn’t changed. He could not wait to carry her into this bath and for their lovemaking to begin again.
A loud rapping on the bathroom door had Gino whirling round, his heart lurching with instant worry.
He snapped off the taps, then wrenched open the door. There she stood, the object of his desire, her lovely face coldly furious, her hands jammed into the pockets of the white towelling robe.
‘I know I agreed that explanations could wait till the morning,’ she snapped. ‘But that was before I saw this.’
Gino’s stomach rolled over when she pulled her right hand from the robe pocket and held out his slightly crumpled plane ticket.
He’d forgotten that he’d left it on that damned desk, having emptied his suit pockets before changing clothes late this afternoon.
‘This ticket is for tomorrow morning,’ she swept on before he could say a word. ‘Very early tomorrow morning. Which rather puts paid to your claim that you’re up here for the weekend.’
‘I wasn’t going to take that flight, Jordan. Not after I ran into you. I was going to ring up and change it to Sunday.’
‘You still lied to me, Gino.’
‘I just twisted the truth a little.’
‘Twisted the truth?’ she repeated, with a caustic gleam in her eyes. ‘And how would you describe giving someone a false name? Because this ticket is made out to a Mr Gino Bortelli.’
‘Jordan, I—’
‘I take it that’s your real name?’ she interrupted savagely. ‘Bortelli? Not Salieri, like you told me ten years ago?’
Gino tried to keep calm, but a very true panic hovered in the wings of his mind. ‘Salieri is my mother’s maiden name. I took it temporarily when I came to Sydney for reasons of privacy.’
‘Reasons of privacy?’ she repeated scathingly. ‘Like, people might recognise you as what, exactly? A rock star in hiding?’
‘No, as Gino Bortelli.’
‘Sorry, Gino. But I’m none the wiser.’
‘My family are rather big in the construction business. I didn’t want any special favours when I first came to Sydney. I’d not long finished an engineering degree at university in Rome, and I—’
‘Excuse me?’ she snapped. ‘Are you telling me you’re a qualified engineer? I thought you were a labourer.’
‘That’s what I was working as when I first met you.’
Jordan