Lynne Graham - A Savage Betrayal

Mina lifted her free hand and hit him a crack across one hard cheekbone that numbed her fingers. And then she froze, appalled by the violence that had roared up inside her from a place she didn’t know. She had never struck another human being before.

‘Relax…you were the best I ever had.’

Mina went white, her lower lip wobbling. Cesare hadn’t even flinched from that ringing slap. Disorientatingly, he smiled, and that smile chilled her to her bones. It was like the smile on the face of a tiger after drawing first blood. He knew she had lost control and he was triumphant, even amused. With a soft laugh, he released her wrist.

Her breath sobbed in her throat as she made a frantic attempt to get out of the car, but the door wouldn’t open.

‘It’s locked,’ Cesare said gently, and fired the engine.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Back to your pathetically poor bed-sit. Presumably chosen to yank at Haland’s heart-strings. He must be very naïve,’ Cesare delivered. ‘Ain’t no way what you’ve got on your back fits the poverty-stricken image you’re striving to put out for his benefit.’

‘The suit is borrowed,’ Mina said jerkily, and she didn’t even know why she was bothering to make that trivial explanation. Her nerves felt like elastic cruelly stretched and ready to snap.

‘Sure it is,’ Cesare mocked. ‘Fits like a glove, too. You just happen to have a best friend as short as you are?’

Mina pressed an unsteady hand against her throbbing temples. ‘How do you know where I live?’

‘I know.’

‘Please let me out of this car.’

‘So that you can scarper? One false move in that direction, cara, and you’ll live to regret it for the rest of your life.’

‘Stop threatening me!’

‘Beginning to feel those claustrophobic prison walls closing in around you, cara ?’ he chided.

‘Since there is not the remotest chance that I could be in danger of going to prison for something I haven’t done,’ Mina stressed in the sudden fury that finally broke through layer after layer of shock, ‘I’m not too bothered!’

‘Liar…you’re shaking in your child-sized shoes. But it ought to be a relief to escape the shackles of the cleanliving, do-gooding role you’ve been playing for Haland’s delectation. Not that you appeared to enjoy having your image dented this evening,’ Cesare reminded her without remorse.

‘What you said was unforgivable!’

‘I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I was tempted to tell him a whole lot more but I would have looked tacky then,’ he conceded wryly.

‘I am not resigning from my job.’

‘Then I bring the roof down on you. I withhold my donation to Earth Concern’s excellent work in the field of environmental awareness——’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Mina exclaimed in horror.

‘And I explain that I cannot place such a large sum of money in the control of a charity employing a woman I know to be untrustworthy and dishonest.’

Mina bent her head, utterly shattered by the speed of that unflinching assurance.

‘I should think you would be as welcome at the office as a blizzard in July after that.’

‘I could sue you for defamation of character!’ Mina threw at him wildly.

‘And the evidence I would produce would throw the case out of court on the first day and leave you facing other, even less palatable options. I’d nail you to the wall—why risk marking that beautiful skin?’

He could not have evidence of something she hadn’t done! But evidently someone in Falcone Industries, someone at board level had been insider dealing. Cesare had found evidence and mistakenly traced it back to her. Was that some horrible accident or was it possible that the real guilty party had deliberately laid a false trail which implicated her? Was she being paranoid? Her flesh chilled at the idea that four years ago somebody she worked with might well have set her up as a target to protect his own back.

In the thundering silence Cesare pulled the Ferrari into the kerb and killed the engine. ‘Where do you go at weekends?’ he murmured lazily.

Mina went rigid, her golden head spinning round, stricken amethyst eyes wide before she hurriedly veiled them.

Cesare lounged back in his seat, his vibrantly handsome features hard as marble in the shadows. ‘Every weekend…every vacation,’ he spelt out, toying with her by revealing how much he already knew about her movements. ‘Do you have a husband tucked away somewhere—a partner in crime?’

‘Don’t be r-ridiculous!’

‘A lover, then,’ Cesare decided with complete impassivity. ‘He’s out. I won’t be giving you weekends off——’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

Or the freedom to sneak into other beds. Though I doubt that you’ll have the energy. You’ll be fully occupied keeping me happy, and I’m not that easy to live with round the clock,’ Cesare mused, quite untouched by the stunned look on her face. ‘I’m low on patience, high on demand——’

‘I’m not going to be living with you,’ Mina mumbled in a choked voice.

‘I don’t care what you call it, but you are most certainly going to be the leading feature in my bed every night.’ Cesare rested his ebony head back with indolent grace and appraised her with eyes that glittered diamond-hard, his relaxation emphasising his innate confidence that he had the whip-hand.

‘You’re off your trolley!’ Mina snatched in a jagged breath, outrage taking over. ‘I’d throw myself off a cliff before I’d let you touch me again!’

‘I don’t think so…’

‘I know so!’ Mina launched back.

‘You got something else to trade for my silence?’ Cesare enquired smoothly as he slanted a sardonic smile at her.

As the ramifications of that question sank in, Mina’s shattered gaze clung to his cool gold one. ‘You’re trying to blackmail me,’ she whispered in horror.

‘Has to be the knock-on effect of the low company I’m keeping.’ Cesare cast her an intent look, unconcerned by her accusation. ‘And it’s not one quarter as sordid as what you did to me. You traded sex for information and profit. You sold me out for the requisite thirty pieces of silver. What does that make you? You used me——’

‘I wouldn’t use anyone like that!’

‘Pay-back time, cara. Don’t bother working out your notice for Haland. That’s over and he’ll never know what a narrow escape he had, thanks to my intervention. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at eight. OK,’ he positively purred, and it wasn’t a question. ‘You can go and get your beauty sleep now.’

Mina swallowed hard and began to slide out of the car, but Cesare moved too and reached for her before she could register what he intended. He tugged her back across the seat as if she were a doll. ‘Come here…’

‘Get your hands off me!’ she exploded.

‘I want something on account first.’

Anchoring long fingers into her silky hair, Cesare held her fast, sweeping her upturned face with heavily lidded golden eyes.

‘Let…go…of…me,’ Mina told him breathlessly.

‘Take up the weight training—you’re likely to be in dire need of it.’ His accented drawl had thickened and fractured, spilling out warning flares into an atmosphere already vibrating with fierce tension.

‘No…’ she mumbled, clashing unavoidably with the scorching charge of his heated gaze.

‘Never say no to me,’ Cesare intoned huskily. ‘When you slam a door in my face, I kick it down.’

She had forgotten—oh, dear God, how could she have forgotten?—how he could make her feel. It was terrifying… It was as though a physical force-field enclosed her, locking out every brain-wave. Her own heartbeat pounded in her eardrums. Excitement, raw and dangerous, leapt through every single skin-cell. Her breasts were already stirring beneath the thin barrier of her bra, her nipples pinching into sudden painful tightness.