Harlequin Presents February 2013 - Bundle 2 of 2: Dealing Her Final CardUncovering the Silveri SecretBartering Her InnocenceLiving the Charade

by Jennie Lucas

  ‘I hate you,’ she said, confirming it, her lips tight around the words, baring her sharp white teeth, and that was fine. That was good, because for a moment she’d blindsided him with that impromptu striptease and he’d felt a glimmer of...something...that had hovered and curled around uncomfortably in his gut. But hatred he could work with.

  Hatred would make her submission all the more satisfying.

  And then he would dump her and she could hate him even more.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, slamming open a drawer and rummaging through the contents until he found what he was looking for, shaking a packet free one-handed from the box. He tore it open with his teeth and had it on in record time, spreading her thighs wider to find her centre.

  Slick and hot. Oh God.

  He calmed himself long enough to stay poised at her entrance, his thumb working at that sensitive nub, watching the hatred in her amber eyes muddy with need, sensing the panting desperation of her breathing. Oh yes, she hated him all right.

  ‘I’m so glad we understand each other,’ he said, and he drove into her in one long exquisite thrust.

  She cried out, her back arching on the desk like a bow, her hair rioting around her head, her eyes stuttering closed.

  Hate was definitely underrated, he thought, as he braced her hips and drew slowly back, feeling involuntary muscles protest around him, try to keep him, seeing her eyes flicker open, confused and bereft and wanting more.

  He gave her more. The second lunge took him deeper. She cried out again and this time when she bowed her back, he scooped her up from the desk so that she was sitting astride him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her legs curled around him and as he lifted her hips and let her fall, it was his turn to groan.

  She needed no help to find the rhythm. She damn near set about setting it. She might have looked stunned before, but now she squirmed her bottom in his hands and braced herself on his shoulders, levering herself higher, letting herself take him in, increasing the speed, driving it, while her mouth worked at his throat, sharp teeth finding his flesh, every nip and bite timed to perfection, agony melding with ecstasy.

  She was like a wildcat in his arms, untamed and unleashed, and it was all he could do to hang onto her while she used her body against him—all he could do to hang on, full stop.

  Until she pumped him one too many times and any vestige of control vanished as he exploded inside her, the fireworks of her own orgasm ricocheting, magnified, through his.

  Gasping and sweat-slicked, he hung on, her limbs heavy now, her head low on his chest, carrying her through an adjoining door to his suite. Awkwardly he pulled back the covers and then eased her onto the bed, where she closed her eyes and sighed into the mattress.

  No tears, he thought, no recriminations? Half expecting both. That was a bonus. Though there probably wasn’t a whole lot more to say after I hate you.

  Unless it was I still hate you. He smiled as he headed for the bathroom, already contemplating round two. He could think of worse ways to spend the night. That first coupling had been so fast and furious, already he was contemplating the pleasures to be had in other, slower, methods. Next time he would take his time. Explore her body in more delicious detail. Next time he would be the one to set the pace.

  He caught a glimpse of his neck and shoulder in the mirror, shocked at first at the marks of her teeth standing out bright and red. He smiled as he fingered them, the skin tender where she had left her brand. He remembered her biting him, but nowhere near this many times. Foremost in his mind had been the ecstasy. She was a tigress all right. Wild and untamed, and as unexpected as her surprise arrival tonight.

  But then not entirely a surprise. Clearly he’d hit on the one thing that she held dear.

  She’d surprised him with her vehemence. She’d been so prepared to walk away from her mother—to let her face the consequences of her overspending and be thrown out onto the streets if it came to that. He’d misjudged the relationship between mother and daughter badly. But then he’d only really had Lily’s side of it to go by and in Lily’s world, it was all about Lily.

  But suggesting Lily ask her first husband to help, that had been a stroke of genius. Finally he’d found the one person Valentina did care about—the one she would do anything to rescue—even if it meant sacrificing herself to his bed.

  Everyone had their price, it was said. He had just found Valentina’s.

  He padded back from the bathroom to find her curled kitten-like into a ball in the centre of his bed, her breathing even and deep and fast, fast asleep.

  So much for round two.

  Bemused, he climbed in alongside. She stirred and murmured something in her sleep and he wasn’t planning on holding her but she curled herself against him and settled back into her dreams on a sigh.

  It wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He wasn’t used to holding anyone when he slept. He wasn’t used to anyone sleeping on him. Certainly not a woman he wasn’t done with yet. He willed away an erection that was more wishful thinking than opportunity and tried to relax. She was warm and languid and, for all her muscled leanness, she was soft too, and in all the right places.

  Relax? Fat chance.

  But at least he could think about what might happen when she woke up.

  One month she’d agreed to stay.

  It had seemed more than ample when she’d suggested it. He’d only ever planned to keep her long enough that she thought she was safe, that maybe he might provide the answer to all her needs. Long enough to feel secure and so comfortable in her position as Venice’s first lady that she wouldn’t see it coming. Her public humiliation.

  And then he remembered what had happened in his study and how she had turned the tables on him and milked him for all he was worth. And the thought of thirty nights of Valentina hating him and proving it every night in his bed—or on his desk for that matter—seemed nowhere near long enough.

  * * *

  She came to gently, slowly, with the strange feeling she was still moving, and for some vague period of half-sleep, she believed herself back on the plane.

  Until logic interceded and she realised that last-minute bargain economy seats on passenger planes did not come complete with sublime mattresses and pillows big enough to land that plane on.

  Venice.

  She sat up in bed, realising she was hearing the chug of a passing vaporetto rather than the constant hum of jet engines, and she remembered the argument with her mother, and an explosive session on Luca’s desk. And then—nothing.

  She dropped her head into her hands.

  What had she done?

  She lifted the covers. Of course she would be naked. And of course it had been no dream. She’d performed some kind of amateur striptease in front of him. She’d offered herself as a conscientious objector instead of him taking her as an unwilling sacrifice. And she remembered a desk and the feel of him inside her.

  How could she ever forget the feel of him inside her, the sense of fullness and completion and the exquisite side effects of friction?

  In three years she hadn’t forgotten and nothing, it seemed, had changed. Her memories were true.

  But she couldn’t for the life of her remember a bed. Luca’s bed, she recognised, not only by his lingering scent and the presence of a jet-black hair on the pillow, but the sheer masculinity of the room, as if he’d stamped his personality on it by the sheer force of it. She’d slept in his bed and he’d slept alongside her and, surprisingly, that act seemed even more intimate than the one they’d shared on the desk.

  But where was he now?

  A robe lay on the coverlet. Silky and jade-coloured. She snatched it up and wrapped it around her in case he suddenly appeared. Strange, to feel shy after what she’d done last night, but she wasn’t practised in negotiating a deal while taking off her clothes. S
he’d never expected to seal one in such a way. But last night fury had given her courage to do what she had done; rage had given her purpose. This morning she was still angry with both her mother and with Luca, but now there was wonderment too at her brazen behaviour. Not to mention a little fear, for what she might have let herself in for.

  One month of sleeping with Luca Barbarigo. Thirty nights of sex with a man who knew how to blow every fuse in her body and then some. Thirty whole nights after three years of abstinence—she shivered—it was almost too much to think about. It was almost, so very almost, delicious.

  The silken robe whispered against her breasts. Her nipples tightened into buds. She could not let him see her like this. He’d think she was primed and ready for a second course. He might even be right to think that.

  But Luca didn’t arrive and the only sounds she heard were the sounds of Venice coming from outside the windows. The only movement she felt seemed to come from the very foundations, the gentle sway of time and tide.

  And only then did she notice the clock on a mantelpiece. Three o’clock?

  She’d slept the entire day?

  She padded from the bed and located the bathroom, and then found the study through another door with no sign of her pack and no trace of anything that had happened last night, the floor cleared of abandoned clothing, the desk restacked with pens and phones and files and so neat that she wondered for a moment if she’d dreamed it all. But no, there was no dreaming the tenderness of muscles rarely used. No dreaming the sense of utter disbelief—wonderment—at what had occurred.

  For her hastily concocted plan—a plan made in fury and rage—a plan that in the cold light of day seemed impossible and unimaginable—had come off.

  She’d come to Luca Barbarigo not as his victim, but as his seducer. Laying before him her own terms, not being forced blindly to accept his. And she seemed to recall it working. Or so she’d thought before sleep had claimed her. Some seductress she’d turned out to be.

  She was still searching when there was a knock on the door, and Luca’s manservant swept in a few seconds later, bearing a steaming tray laden with both coffee and tea, together with an assortment of rolls and pastries. If he was unfamiliar with finding women in his master’s bedroom, it didn’t show.

  She clutched the sides of her robe more tightly around her. She needn’t have bothered. His eyes avoided landing anywhere near her. She shoved aside the niggling thought that this wasn’t the first time, but there was no point dwelling on it. Her deal was for one month. She didn’t care who filled his bed all the other nights of the year.

  ‘Would the signorina like anything else?’ he asked, putting down the tray and moving towards the window. ‘Signore Barbarigo said you would be hungry.’

  It’s so long since I’ve eaten, she wanted to add. ‘That looks perfect,’ she said, because the contents of the tray looked more than adequate, but also because clearly somewhere along the line she’d been promoted to something a little higher than something that the cat had dragged in.

  ‘Where is the signore—Luca, I mean?’ as the man swept rich vermillion curtain after rich vermillion curtain open, splashing light into the room with every broad sweep of his hands.

  ‘Signore Barbarigo is of course, at his offices at the Banca d’Barbarigo.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, but the sound came out wrong. She hadn’t meant to sound disappointed. She’d meant to sound relieved. Hadn’t she? It wasn’t as if she expected him to hang around and wait until she woke up. After all, he’d got what he wanted, hadn’t he? And he knew she wasn’t going anywhere for at least a month. He knew where to find her when he wanted her.

  The thought rankled, even though she’d known what she was letting herself in for.

  ‘If there is nothing else?’

  The valet was standing at the door, ready to take his leave. ‘Actually there is.’ She felt herself colour when she remembered where she’d left them. ‘I can’t seem to find my clothes.’

  ‘The clothes you were wearing last night?’

  And left scattered indecorously across the study floor? He didn’t have to finish the sentence so she chose to answer it with another question. ‘And my bag. I couldn’t find it.’

  He showed her into an adjoining dressing room and pushed against a panel in a stuccoed wall that she’d assumed was just a wall, revealing a closet secreted behind. And there, tucked away, was her pack, with yesterday’s clothes folded neatly on a shelf. ‘Your clothes have been laundered and pressed. Unfortunately the brassiere could not be saved.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she said too brightly, secretly mortified as she remembered the snap and tear when Luca had all but wrenched it from her, while Luca’s valet seemed not to blink an eyelid at the carnage.

  ‘The rest of your wardrobe should be here shortly.’

  She frowned, searching for meaning. ‘But I left nothing at my mother’s.’

  ‘The signore has organised a delivery for you. I am expecting it at any time.’

  A delivery? To replace one plain old bra that had seen better days? He needn’t have bothered, she thought, rummaging in her pack after the valet had departed. It wasn’t as if she travelled without a spare.

  Half an hour later she emerged from the bathroom wearing a floral miniskirt that she loved for the way it flirted around her legs and a cool knitted top and found the delivery man had been. Or men, plural, because it must have taken an entire team to cart the lot filling the dressing room wardrobe.

  A veritable boutique was waiting for her, dresses of all descriptions, from day dresses to cocktail dresses to ball gowns. She flicked through the rack, many of the items still in transparent protective sleeves, along with racks of shoes—one pair for every outfit, by the look of it—and the drawers filled with lingerie of every imaginable colour.

  And not a T-shirt bra in sight.

  So much for imagining Luca wanted to replace her bra. He wanted to replace her entire wardrobe. She almost laughed. Almost. Because it was ridiculous.

  Not to mention unnecessary.

  More than that. It was downright insulting.

  She pulled open the bedroom door and called for the valet. Who the hell did Luca Barbarigo think he was?

  * * *

  She was writing an email to her father on her clunky old laptop, pounding at the space bar that only worked when it wanted to, when the double doors to the living room opened. She didn’t have to turn her head to know it was Luca. The way her heart jumped and her skin prickled was enough to tell her that. And the way heated memories of last night and a certain desk jumped to centre stage in her mind, she was grateful to have something to focus on so she didn’t have to look at him until she’d wiped all trace of those pictures from her eyes. She banged her thumb once again on the space bar, trying to appear unmoved, while feeling the weight of his gaze on her back.

  ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘I’m trying to get this space bar to work. It sticks all the time.’ She pounded on the key again, hoping it covered the thump of her heart and this time it worked and she managed to rattle off another few words before she noticed her fingers were on the wrong keys and she’d written nonsense.

  ‘No. Not, what are you doing. What are you wearing?’

  The correction took her by surprise. She forgot the email and looked down at her simple outfit and then around at him. She almost wished she hadn’t. The dark business suit and snowy white shirt made him look powerful. The five o’clock shadow darkening his olive skin turned that power into danger. Or was that just the way his eyes narrowed as they assessed her? She might just as well be a butterfly pinned in a display cabinet, being examined for the colour of its wings. Being found wanting.

  ‘Just a skirt and top.’ And she half wondered whether he was still seeing her in those jeans, as she edged them down over her h
ips. Had he been expecting to find her wearing them again? Had he been hoping for a repeat performance? She shivered in anticipation—suddenly half hoping... ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘What happened to the clothes I ordered? Did they not arrive?’

  Oh. She’d forgotten the clothes. She swivelled out of her chair and stood, keeping hold of the desk behind her, solid and strong. Sitting down he loomed too tall and imposing, but standing up wasn’t as easy as it looked. Not when it looked as if the Furies were about to descend upon her. ‘They came.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you wearing something from that collection?’

  She hitched up her chin. ‘How do you know I’m not?’

  He snorted. ‘Believe me, Valentina, it shows.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with what I’m wearing, anyway?’

  ‘Nothing, if you want to look like a backpacker. Go and get changed.’

  ‘Excuse me? Since when did you tell me what to wear?’

  ‘Ever since you agreed to this deal.’

  ‘I never—’

  ‘You made your conditions known last night, if I recall rightly. I remember nothing about choosing what you wear being one of them. In which case...’

  ‘You can’t make me—’

  ‘Can’t I? I have a dinner reservation in one hour. At one of the most exclusive restaurants in Venice. Do you expect to accompany me wearing those rags?’

  ‘How dare you?’ They weren’t rags to her. Maybe nothing in her wardrobe cost more than fifty dollars, maybe they weren’t weighed down in designer labels, but they were hardly rags. She bundled up her outrage and fired it straight back. ‘Anyway, those clothes you had delivered...’

  ‘What about them?’

  She allowed herself a smile. ‘I sent them back.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘You heard me. I sent them back. I didn’t ask for them, I didn’t want them, so I told Aldo to send them back.’

  Luca stormed to the door. ‘Aldo!’ he yelled, his booming voice echoing around the palazzo, before turning around and striding across the room, eating up the length of it in long powerful strides, wheeling around when he reached the end. ‘I can’t believe you would do such a stupid thing.’