Jacqueline Baird - Mediterranean Tycoons

In fact, she thought, given a year or so to get over Rion she might even accept Antonio’s offer to be his mistress …

Rising to her feet, she reached around to untie the halter neck of her dress and paused. For the first time in the three months since leaving Rion she realised she was beginning to think more positively of the future, even considering another man. That had to be a sign she was getting better.

She was about to unfasten the bow at the back of her neck when she heard a loud knock on the door.

Odd, she thought, it was after eleven, and she had not ordered anything from room service. She walked towards the door, not intending to open it until she’d asked who it was. But she never got the chance. The door opened and a man walked in, slamming the door behind him.

‘You!’ Selina exclaimed, her eyes widening in shock even as her traitorous heart leapt as she recognised Rion. His hair was longer and falling over his brow, she noted, and his usual sartorial elegance had slipped a little. The superbly tailored navy suit he wore no longer fitted so well. The jacket was loose across his chest and he looked leaner, his handsome features honed to an even more chiselled edge.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked, shocked rigid. Her insides were shaking. ‘And how did you get in?’ Stupid question. ‘Never mind. Just get out or I will call the manager.’ She didn’t like the ferocious look on his face and suddenly she was afraid.

‘Call away, but it won’t do you any good. I own this hotel, I have a key, and I want to talk to you.’

‘Own the hotel?’ she parroted, a host of conflicting emotions flooding through her. ‘But how did you know I was here?’ she demanded.

Rion ran his hands through his hair. It was that or grabbing Selina, and he didn’t trust himself to touch her after witnessing the scene between her and Antonio Soares in the foyer. But he could not take his eyes off her. Her glorious hair tumbled around her bare shoulders and the golden-brown shot satin dress she wore revealed a tempting cleavage. The satin slid sensuously over her shapely body to the floor. She looked beautiful and sexy and she was driving him out of his mind.

Rion shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to ease the fierce tension in his long body. ‘I decided to look you up.’

‘Look me up … Hunt me down, more like,’ Selina said, her voice rising incredulously. Her amber eyes flashed with temper, clashing with blazing black, but she was too angry to care. A few minutes ago she’d been congratulating herself on beginning to get over Rion, and now, like some evil genie, he’d popped back into her life.

‘What the hell for?’ She swore. ‘It is almost midnight in Brazil—halfway round the world from where you live, for heaven’s sake—and yet here you are. Are you crazy?’ she demanded furiously.

Rion grabbed her around the waist and hauled her hard against him. For an instant desire flared between them, and savagely she tried to crush it. But too late. She registered his eyes, glittering with an almost manic light.

‘Crazy, maybe—but it is you who have made me this way. And I’ll hunt you down to the ends of the earth if that is what it takes to get you back. Because I can’t stand the thought of you with someone else. Everything in me—everything I am—yearns for you,’ he declared harshly.

This was a Rion she had never seen before. He was like a man possessed. ‘You can’t just hunt—’

But he carried on as though she had not spoken, and being held against his body was making her temperature rise.

‘Do you think I haven’t suffered the torment of the damned since we parted? Knowing the truth almost unmanned me. You were mine first, and I don’t give a damn about any in between as long as you are mine last. As for Antonio Soares—I spoke to him downstairs and he won’t bother you again.’

‘Spoke to him? Bother me?’ She was turning into a parrot. ‘Antonio is a client—a friend , you Neanderthal,’ she shot back furiously, and tried to wriggle free. But he tightened his grip and with one hand stroked up her back, tangling his fingers in her hair and forcing her to look up into his dark face.

‘Where you are concerned I am. I can’t help myself. I lied when I told you I didn’t do jealous. I only need to see you smile at a man to be consumed by the green-eyed monster because I love you. I don’t expect you to believe me but I do.’

Selina blinked. Had she heard right …? No, it was impossible. She glared at him belligerently. ‘If this is another ploy to get me into bed you are wasting your time. Now, let me go.’

‘No. Never again, Selina.’ He lowered his head and kissed her with a possessive, seductive hunger that she fought to resist. But her traitorous body betrayed her and she felt her heart thud, the blood flow thicker in her veins. She raised her hands to push him away, but somehow her fingers involuntarily splayed across his broad chest and crept around his neck as she gave in to the sensual awareness Rion never failed to arouse in her and kissed him back.

Rion groaned and buried his face against her throat, inhaling the delicate scent of her skin. ‘Forgive me.’ He lifted his head. ‘I swore I wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t touch you until we’d talked and I’d explained.’ His anguished expression tore at Selina’s heart. ‘I know I don’t deserve you, but I do love you, Selina.’

Loved her? Was it possible? She raised a hand to feel his brow and brushed back a stray lock of hair. ‘Are you ill? Have you got a fever or something?’ She didn’t dare to believe in a penitent, loving Rion.

‘Only a fever for you. When I think of how brutally I cut you out of my life, divorced you without a word, I’m appalled. Discovering that my own sister was too frightened of me to tell me the truth makes me cringe inside. I never considered myself a vengeful person, and yet I took advantage of your grandfather’s will on the day of his funeral and used your generous heart, your caring for Anna, to get you back in my bed.’

‘You’re a ruthless man when you want something,’ Selina said bluntly. Though her lips throbbed sensuously from his kiss, and his confession was balm to her wounded heart, she was still not prepared to believe the seismic change from outraged macho male to supplicant lover.

‘I know. It is my character, I guess, but I am working to change it.’

A hint of a smile twitched Selina’s lips.

‘I can’t help it—the same way I can’t help wanting you. I love you, but I can’t find the words to describe my feelings. I have never had to try before,’ Rion said with a touch of his usual arrogance, pressing her closer to his long body.

The heat and the strength of him enveloped her.

‘To say I love you sounds so tame in comparison to what I really feel. That last day in my office, when I realised you had never betrayed me and I asked you to marry me again, that was the moment I finally recognised the limitless depths of my feelings for you … that I loved you.’

Five times he had mentioned love, and Selina was beginning to believe him. ‘You don’t have to tell me this,’ she said gently, noticing the lines of tiredness etched about his eyes, his mouth. Lifting a finger, she traced the contours of his lean, harshly handsome face. He was either ill or he did love her, and she knew which she’d prefer.

‘Yes I do. For a few glorious moments I was euphoric. Then in less than a minute I was in hell. When you told me you didn’t like the company I kept and why, and I realised what you did with your money … the Taylor Foundation … I had never been so horrified or ashamed in my whole life. Then I realised from your parting statement that I had in one careless comment made you forever associate me with that monster, Bratchet, and I had to let you walk away.’