Elizabeth Power - Blackmailed For Her Baby

‘I was going to ring you,’ she said.

‘When? Tonight?’ His eyes were steel-hard, his voice sounding blatantly unconvinced. ‘Or tomorrow—after the hangover?’

Well, of course, he would think that, Libby despaired.

He looked like an avenging angel, from the flawless sheen on his coat to the striking force in his unrelenting features. There were raindrops glistening on his black hair, she noticed now, watching, mesmerized, as one fell from the thick strands to meet the startling contrast of his immaculately white collar.

She opened her mouth to speak, to assure him that not a drop of alcohol had passed her lips, but he cut across her protest, saying smoothly, ‘You forget. I know you, Libby.’ There was a cruel reminder in his softly spoken words. ‘Perhaps even better than Luca did.’

‘That’s what you think,’ she argued bitterly, and from the way his mouth pulled down one side knew exactly what he was remembering. Hadn’t he stumbled upon her here in England, five months pregnant, supposedly caring for her father, but instead living it up with friends in his father’s country club? He hadn’t listened to her excuses then, so she didn’t see any reason why he would listen to them now. ‘What did you want anyway?’ she asked wearily, turning her back on him.

He watched her clearing up glasses, stoop to pick up a cushion, toss it onto a chair.

He’d come back to apologise, he reflected with self-chastening mockery. To apologise for the way he had spoken to her today. It had been unwarranted, he’d decided afterwards, especially offering to pay her to accompany him back to Italy. Knowing the manager of the hotel where she was supposed to be tonight, he had tried to ring her there, and been relieved to learn that she hadn’t attended the party after all. She had gone up a few notches in his estimation then and, as he’d made his way to her apartment, he’d been doubly ashamed of his behaviour, but his desire to make amends, he realised grimly now, had been far too premature!

The wide scoop-neck of her top had been pulled down on one side—probably by that inebriated lout who had been manhandling her, he thought—while her hair lay like a twist of fire against the pale silken slope of her shoulder. He felt a kick in his gut from watching the sway of her marginally curved hips as she went through into the kitchen, his eyes resting on her small, tight denim-clad bottom, his teeth clamping together from the host of temptations that he knew had once ensnared his brother.

‘We parted on a rather unfortunate note,’ he answered her from the kitchen doorway. ‘It was my intention to rectify that.’ After all, he could hardly persuade her to go back with him with threats and insults, he’d assured himself earlier, but that was before he had come up here, seen first-hand what little feeling this girl really had. ‘In the circumstances,’ he breathed, his anger with her spilling over from mere disillusionment into something hot and irrationally possessive, ‘it seems all I have to apologise for is spoiling your fun!’

That it had even occurred to him to apologise for anything was unimaginable to Libby. The great Romano Vincenzo contrite? Even the thought of it was laughable.

A bitter little smile touched her mouth as, finding his proximity in the doorway of her small kitchen too unsettling, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

She wanted to move away from him back into the larger room, but one darkly clad sleeve was stretched across the doorway, effectively blocking her way out.

Libby swallowed. ‘C-could you let me pass, please?’

His eyes, probing into the wary depths of hers were far, far too disturbing. ‘Of course.’ She caught a waft of his cologne as he dropped his arm and she inhaled sharply, every nerve cell honing to his scent, his warmth, the closeness of his strong, hard body. But he didn’t move and without looking at him she made to brush past him, stifling a small startled cry as his arm came up unexpectedly again, trapping her there against the doorjamb.

‘Let me go!’

He laughed softly at her proud, indignant features. ‘I wasn’t aware that I was holding you.’ His other hand came to rest disconcertingly just above her other shoulder.

Breath locking in her lungs, Libby darted a cautious glance up at him. Her heart was pumping as fast as if she had been running hard. ‘You’ve got nothing to gain from this.’

She didn’t know why she said it, every nerve tingling with apprehension and something far more complex as he turned her towards him, surveying her with a twist of cruel mockery on his lips.

‘On the contrary,’ he murmured, gazing down into her flushed and guarded features, ‘I think I’ve got a great deal to gain.’

His thumb moved caressingly over the bared, heated flesh of her shoulder, his touch so light—just a whisper of sensation—that she might have been imagining it if it hadn’t been for the way her breasts ached from her sick reaction to it, or for the shaming impulses that seemed to be causing implosions throughout her body, weakening her bones from a dark and shattering desire.

She wondered what it would be like to be pressed against his hard warmth, feel that devastating mouth—all that she could focus on now—clamped over hers; the startling realisation that he was drawing her towards him causing her mouth to part on a small gasp, her head to drop back in involuntary invitation to him so that his face went out of focus as he dipped his head and her wild and reckless craving became reality.

Sensation piled upon sensation as his mouth came down hard over hers, hostility meeting desire in one sizzling cauldron of hot, ungovernable expression.

He hadn’t shaved since this morning and the angry graze of his jaw was a delicious friction against her soft skin as his mouth plundered hers with punishing thoroughness.

Libby groaned into his mouth, her mind despairing even as her body welcomed it, welcomed the arms that were suddenly tightening like steel bands around her, bringing her shockingly alive to the whipcord strength of him beneath his impeccable clothes and to the startling awareness of just how turned on he was.

Her errant, adolescent dreams about him, she realised, hadn’t prepared her for this! Nor had she imagined she could know such…wanting…

With another small groan—induced only by desire now—she leaned into him, mind and body yielding together in some crazy sacrifice to an irrational need.

She hated him—and yet she wanted him!

Her limbs weakening with that acceptance, she clutched at his broad shoulders like someone clinging to a precipice, her red-tipped nails curling desperately against the dark, damp fabric of his raincoat.

Driven by her response, Romano felt his body hardening with an urge that made it almost hurt. It would be so easy to forget himself; to take her and all that her gloriously feminine body promised. He had wanted this girl for far longer than he cared to remember; wanted her so much she was the only woman who had ever made him disgusted with himself for entertaining such thoughts about her, especially while she was married to his brother. While he had had to bear it in silence, ignore the way her big doe eyes swept coyly away from him like some shy little virgin’s whenever he spoke to her on some occasions, while on others they had seemed to challenge his with a sophistication well beyond her years!

But now there was no reason for restraint.

He jerked her against him, catching the small, stifled cry she uttered as though she was fighting her own battle between rejection and desire. But the thought of Luca and the mercenary way this girl had behaved was already cooling his ardour. Was he being extremely unwise even considering taking her back with him?