Lee Wilkinson - Taken for Revenge - Bedded for Revenge / Bought by a Billionaire / The Bejewelled Bride

For a moment there was another silence. ‘No.’

He raised his dark brows. ‘So, are you going to enlighten me, cara? ’

And—despite all her intentions—Sorcha suddenly found that it took a lot of courage to articulate her fears, to face up to the truth, no matter how bitter the reality.

‘Well, your position here is only temporary, and therefore if we embark on an affair it isn’t destined to last—it’s just a short-lived pleasure. We don’t want anyone building it up into something it isn’t.’ She shrugged. ‘And we don’t want other people projecting emotions on us when it finishes. If they don’t know about it—they can’t.’

‘You really have this all worked out, don’t you?’ he said admiringly.

‘Kind of.’ What choice did she have? What other way to protect herself against certain heartbreak?

She bent over to pick up her discarded bra and Cesare quickly shut his eyes in erotic agony. Was she deliberately tormenting him? Sliding the filmy lace garment over her breasts with all the sensual show of a stripper?

With a simmering fury he climbed out of bed, feeling as if she had wrong-footed him yet again.

‘So really,’ he said slowly, ‘this strategy of yours is designed to thwart any hurt pride?’

Sorcha nodded, turning away from the temptation of his magnificent naked body. ‘Surely you can understand that, Cesare?’

Pride? Oh, yes—he could understand that. He knew the pain and the comfort it could bring. If pride were a degree course at college, then Cesare would have picked up a first in it.

‘OKAY, Sorcha—if you could stand just over there. ’

Sorcha stood on the chalk cross the assistant was indicating while they held light meters up close to her face and wobbled sheets of white paper around the place. She had only been there half an hour, and already she was bored out of her mind. How did professional models manage it? she wondered, devoting yet more silent sympathy towards that breed of overpaid beanpoles, because at least it stopped her thinking about…

Wriggling her shoulders, she smiled at the assistant. She was not going to think about Cesare and the way he had assumed he could seduce her into doing any damned thing he pleased.

Still, at least in some things she had shown him that she had a mind of her own. Every time he had made love to her she had insisted on going home to sleep in her own bed, even though he had tried his best to make her stay. Even though he was…was…

She shivered and closed her eyes. Why remember the way his lips had trailed a slow path from neck to belly and beyond? The way he had made her cry out in surrender, her back arching helplessly as he gave a low laugh of triumph?

Why think about that now, when she was trying to be strong as she prepared to have her photo taken, trying not to melt when she thought about his dark, irresistible face?

That was why her need to sleep apart from him was so urgent—so necessary—for who could predict what would happen in those strange, unreal hours before dawn, when you were lying so close to a man who had been part of your heart for so long? How difficult she might have found it not to cradle him in her arms and tenderly stroke his thick black hair—to tell him that he made her feel whole again.

And was it her fierce resolve which made Cesare seek to demonstrate his power over her in different ways? That if he could not have her at night, then he would avail himself of every other opportunity which came his way? Did he take more than erotic delight in seducing her again and again at the office, despite her breathless protestations that it felt wrong?

‘It does not feel wrong to me, cara, ’ he had murmured as he’d pushed her back against the boardroom door and rucked her skirt up, and thrust into her long and hard and slow. ‘It feels oh…so…right.’

And Sorcha had sobbed softly into his shoulder as he brought her to another shuddering orgasm, telling herself that she had only herself to blame for this surreptitiousness. That she was the one who had demanded it be kept secret.

That morning he had picked her up from the house to drive her to the photo-shoot, and during the drive she’d seemed to be aware of him in a way she never had been before.

As if even the strip of hair-roughened wrist which showed beneath the crisp, starched shirt-cuff with its gleaming golden cufflink was of endless fascination to her. As though she could have studied his skin for hours and never tired of it.

Was that because his collecting her was about as close as they had come to replicating a date?

But there had been no kiss to greet her, just an atmosphere of simmering tension in the car, which Sorcha had tolerated until she’d been able to bear it no longer.

‘Is something wrong, Cesare?’

‘Wrong?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I want you so much that I can barely drive in a straight line—what could possibly be wrong?’

‘I thought you would have worn yourself out yesterday,’ she said tartly.

He shot her a glance. ‘So did I,’ he observed drily.

And in spite of everything, Sorcha’s heart leapt with longing. ‘Why don’t you stop the car and kiss me?’ she said softly.

‘Because we’re stuck on the M25, you’re about to be photographed by a genius—and time is money,’ he snapped frustratedly.

‘Well, you’re the one who booked it!’

‘Please don’t remind me!’

Sorcha stared at the jammed road ahead, and sighed. ‘Why don’t you tell me how you know the photographer?’ she said.

‘Are you trying to change the subject?’

‘What do you think?’

There was a silence.

‘Well?’ she prompted.

It was hardly a state secret, was it? ‘Maceo and I have known each other since we were kids,’ he said.

‘Schoolfriends, you mean?’

Cesare’s mouth twisted. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Not exactly…what? Neighbours?’

‘No. We met at judo lessons.’

‘And you’ve been friends ever since?’

‘Men don’t look at friendship in the same way as women,’ he answered slowly. ‘But, yes, we’re friends. Look, we’re here,’ he murmured, unable to hide his relief as they drew up outside the studio. ‘You go inside. I’ll see you in a while.’

Sorcha turned to look at him. ‘Lucky me,’ she said, and his eyes glittered in response.

‘That’s exactly what you said last night,’ he murmured. ‘Twice, I recall.’

‘Only twice?’ she retorted, and he laughed.

The assistant’s voice broke into her erotic thoughts. ‘Don’t bite your lip, Sorcha—there’s a good girl!’

‘Sorry,’ said Sorcha automatically. Good girl? How did models stand it?

The studio was situated in the heart of London, in a large, nondescript basement which seemed to be buzzing with life and people. As well as the assistant, there was a stylist and her assistant, plus two representatives from the ad agency which represented the Whittakers account.

Everyone in the place was wearing some kind of denim—apart from Sorcha, who had been given a ghastly gingham apron to wear to promote the sauce and had not been expecting an audience.

‘Can someone push that piece of tomato out of the way? Can you lift your head a fraction higher, Sorcha? No—a bit to the left!’

Sorcha’s smile didn’t falter, because she was determined to give it her best—even though she could very easily play the role of victim and claim that she had been forced into doing the shoot. Indeed, she could do it with such bad grace that she would be pronounced hopeless—and then the whole scheme would have to be rethought. Then there would be egg all over his gorgeous face.