Taken for Revenge: Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride. Lee Wilkinson
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my ears were mistaken.’
Giving him a slightly unsure smile, Sorcha dropped her shoes onto the carpet and walked over to the coffee machine, where she fiddled around and poured two espressos, then put them both on his desk.
‘Here you are.’
‘Thanks.’
She watched him pick his up and sip it, and frowned. She had thought that he might have telephoned her last night when he’d finished working. She had been willing to slip over to the hotel to see him—but he hadn’t phoned.
And she had deliberately arrived at the office early this morning—but he had sauntered in after Rupert, and there had been back-to-back meetings all day. All she’d been able to do was look at him with a kind of helpless longing and growing frustration.
She felt as if she was doing a balancing act the whole time—trying to appear cool and not look as if she was some desperado whose world was going to cave in after he’d gone.
But even she had her limits—and surely, as his lover, a few rights, too? She drew a deep breath. ‘So, are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Wrong?’ Cesare put his cup down, and now Sorcha could see the shadows beneath his eyes and a pang of guilt suddenly hit her. ‘Why should anything be wrong?’
‘I just thought…’ Her words tailed off as she read something in his eyes she didn’t recognise.
He stood up and came towards her.
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘You thought that something might be wrong because for once I didn’t leap up and start tearing at your clothes when you snapped your pretty little fingers?’
‘But I thought that’s what you like to do!’ Sorcha stared at him. ‘You’ve never complained before.’
‘Of course I haven’t!’ he said, in a voice of dangerous silk. ‘Because what man in his right mind would complain when a woman is constantly demanding mind-blowing, erotic, no-strings sex and demanding that he keep it secret?’
‘Presumably you have your reasons,’ she said coolly.
Cesare stared at her in frustration. It was the fantasy that most men dreamed of—and he was fulfilling every sweet, sensational second of it.
He had tried telling Maceo about it over dinner in Rome last week, and the photographer had told him that if he was really complaining he needed to see a psychiatrist, because no-strings relationships were the only ones which worked—and did he think Sorcha might be interested in doing more modelling? Cesare had swallowed a mouthful of wine and told his friend to go to hell.
Cesare studied Sorcha thoughtfully. ‘We never spend the whole night together—never sleep together,’ he observed.
‘That might be a bit of a giveaway, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘Some bright spark like my mother or my brother might put two and two together and very cleverly come up with the answer of four!’
Cesare knitted his dark brows together. Maledica la donna! ‘And we never eat together,’ he observed.
‘That’s not true,’ she protested. ‘We often have a working lunch.’
Sure they did. Tongue sandwiches in a deserted lay-by.
‘And we had dinner with my family on Sunday—you know we did!’
‘Yes, I know that,’ he agreed dangerously. ‘And when we weren’t being forced to endure a hundred damned wedding photos which all looked the same—you spent the whole time studiously avoiding looking at me except when was absolutely necessary. I will tell you something, Sorcha—if anything is designed to alert them to the fact we’re having an affair, then that certainly is!’
‘Since when did you become such an expert in human behaviour?’ she demanded.
He stared at her. ‘Since I started dating—Dating?’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Let me rephrase that—since I started having sex with a woman who thinks no further than the nearest erogenous zone!’
She rushed at him with her clenched hand raised to pummel him in the chest, but he caught her easily by the wrist and brought her up close to him.
He could see her eyes dilating so that the green was almost completely obscured by ebony saucers of desire. And he could feel her breath warm against his skin—her lips so close that he could almost taste their sweetness. And how easy it would be. How ridiculously easy.
‘Oh, yes,’ he taunted. ‘You want me now, don’t you, Sorcha? You want me right now.’
‘You know I always want you,’ she answered in confusion. ‘Did you…did you start the row deliberately to….?’ But she saw the expression of contempt in his eyes and knew that her assessment had gone horribly, horribly wrong.
‘You think I wanted to inject a frisson of imaginary conflict into our relationship?’ he demanded incredulously, and he let her hand fall from his as if it was something contaminated. ‘Dear God!’
He walked away from her—away from her sweet allure and her dangerous kind of magic. He looked out of the window at the summer clouds blowing across the sky.
‘My wild little Sorcha, who is always up for sexual adventure,’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, anywhere and anyhow. God forbid that we should just go home to bed at the end of the evening, like any other couple!’
Incredulously, she stared at the formidable set of his back. ‘Is that what you want?’
He turned again and his face was expressionless. ‘It is too late for that, Sorcha—don’t you understand?’
She shook her head, as if trying to dispel the confusion. ‘No, I don’t understand!’
He shrugged. ‘We have forged the pattern of our relationship. It is what it is. We work and we have sex—and now that the work is coming to an end…well, it follows that the sex will, too.’
There was silence.
‘Is that all it’s been?’ she questioned painfully. ‘Sex?’
‘How would you describe it, then?’ he challenged softly.
And suddenly she realised what he was doing. ‘Why are you turning this around on me?’ she demanded, acknowledging how clever he was. Emotionally, he had pushed her away and sought refuge in sex, and now he was accusing her of compartmen-talising! She couldn’t win, she thought—or rather Cesare didn’t want her to. There would be only one winner in this scenario, and he was going to make sure it was him.
‘You’re the man who runs a million miles away from feelings!’ she stormed. ‘If I’ve acted this way, it’s only because that’s the way you intimated I should act. What’s the matter, Cesare—are you angry because I’ve actually gone along with it?’
‘That is enough!’ he gritted.
‘No, it isn’t! We never talk about the things which are going on inside, do we? Like we never talk about when you asked me to marry you—’
‘I don’t want to discuss it, Sorcha!’ His voice cracked out like a whip.
‘Well, I do! You wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain myself, to tell you that you were frightening me with your list of suitable qualities you desired in a wife. I was eighteen years old, for God’s sake, Cesare, and I really loved you. All I wanted was some love and affection in return—and you couldn’t give it to me.’
She waited, wanting some reaction, some denial, or even a furious justification—but there was nothing. His face was like ice, his expression frozen, and Sorcha let out a shuddering breath. Nothing had changed, not really. Back then he hadn’t been listening, and he wasn’t listening now.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, because she saw now that