Castellano's Mistress of Revenge

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  ‘Open your eyes,’ Marc growled at her.

  Her eyes sprang open, the nettle-like sting of tears blurring her vision. ‘Don’t do this, Marc,’ she said, close to pleading. ‘The past can’t be changed by manipulating things now.’

  His eyes blazed like twin black bowls of flame as he grasped her chin between two of his fingers, his touch like a blistering brand on her skin. His eyes drilled into hers, holding hers in a duel she could never hope to win. She lowered her lashes, but he countered it by pushing her chin even higher. ‘I swore I would one day make you pay for what you did to me, Ava, and that day has come,’ he said. ‘This villa is mine and everything in it, including you.’

  She swallowed convulsively as she tried to pull out of his hold. ‘No…no!’

  His fingers bit into her flesh. ‘Yes and yes, ma belle,’ he said. ‘Do you not want to hear my terms?’

  Ava fought for control of her emotions. She bit the inside of her lip, tasting blood and the bitterness of regret. ‘Go on, then,’ she said, dropping her shoulders slightly.

  His fingers relaxed their hold, his thumb moving in a slow caress over the pillow of her bottom lip until every nerve-end was tingling. Ava was mesmerised by his touch. It was so achingly gentle after his flaying words. She felt herself melting, the stiffness going out of her limbs, her body remembering how it felt to press up against his hard, protective warmth.

  After a moment he seemed to check himself. His hand dropped from her mouth and his eyes hardened to black coal again. ‘You will be my mistress,’ he said. ‘I will pay you an allowance for as long as we are together. But I would like to make one thing very clear from the outset. Unlike the way you manipulated Cole into marrying you, I will not be offering the same deal. There will be no marriage between us. Ever.’

  Ava felt her heart contract in pain at the bitterness in his tone. He had spoken the words like a business plan. But then, what had changed? Hadn’t he said much the same five years ago? No marriage, no kids, no commitment. And she had been foolish enough to accept it…for a time.

  Ava drew in a breath that scalded her throat. ‘You seem very convinced I will accept your offer.’

  ‘That is because I know you, Ava,’ he said with a sardonic light in his gaze. ‘You need money and a lot of it.’

  ‘I can find work.’ Pride pulled her shoulders back even farther. ‘I’ve been thinking of returning to modelling.’

  A determined look hardened his eyes to black ice. ‘One word from me and there’s not an agency the length and breadth of Europe who would take you on.’

  Ava wished she had the courage to call his bluff. But after a five-year hiatus in her modelling career at Douglas’s insistence she didn’t like her chances of being picked up by her old agency, let alone anyone else.

  ‘I can find other work,’ she said with a defiant look.

  ‘Not the sort of work that will pay you enough to regularly top up your sister’s bank account.’

  Ava felt her eyes widen. ‘You know about that?’

  He gave her an enigmatic look. ‘You know the saying—keep your friends close but your enemies closer. I am making it my business to find out everything there is to find out about you, Ava.’

  Ava felt as if he had pierced her heart with a long metal skewer. She felt the barb of it right to her backbone; it reverberated throughout her body, making her want to hug her arms around herself, to stop the pulse of pain. But somehow she stood firm, her eyes holding the black fire of his.

  ‘Please keep Serena out of this,’ she said hollowly.

  ‘There will be no need for her to know anything other than we are together again,’ he said.

  Ava wondered how the news would affect her sister. Serena had out of fierce loyalty never mentioned Marc’s name in her presence over the last five years. She had also kept the secret of Ava’s real relationship with Douglas Cole quiet, so quiet her husband, Richard, was to this day unaware of it. Serena had been too terrified Richard’s conservative family would be totally scandalised by her near-brush with a prison term that only Ava’s actions had rescued her from experiencing.

  But returning to Marc on the terms he had outlined was unthinkable to Ava. How would she bear his daily quest for revenge? How could she face that hatred day after day?

  She looked up at him again, shocked at how cold and ruthlessly calculating he had become. He had certainly been no angel in the past—yes, he had been strong-willed and proud and had arrogantly insisted on his own way, but he had never been cruel. But what hurt most was that it was her choice to marry Douglas that had brought about the change in him. Of course Marc would think it had been deliberate, but then, unbeknown to her, Douglas had planned it that way.

  She twisted her hands, unconsciously fingering the amethyst ring on her finger, a peace offering Douglas had given her during the last months of his illness. ‘I need some time to think about this…’

  Marc’s eyes flashed like fast-drawn daggers. ‘You’ve had six weeks.’

  Ava blinked at the savage bite of his words. ‘You surely don’t expect me to accept this outrageous offer without some careful consideration, do you?’

  His mouth was curled upwards in a sneer. ‘It didn’t take you too long to consider moving on with another man after you walked out on me. Within a month you were living with Cole as his wife.’

  ‘I am sure you moved on with your life just as quickly,’ she said with a fiery flash of her eyes. ‘In fact you are rarely out of the Press with a starlet on your arm.’

  ‘I admit I do not live the life of a monk,’ he said, ‘which brings me to another condition of mine on the arrangement.’

  ‘I haven’t agreed to it yet.’

  ‘You will.’

  Ava ground her teeth at his imperious manner. ‘Let me guess,’ she said, glaring at him resentfully. ‘You want me to be faithful to you while you get to do whatever you like with whomever you like.’

  His dark eyes gleamed. ‘You are well trained, I see. Perhaps your time with Cole has finally taught you how to behave.’

  She tightened her lips until they went numb, anger bubbling inside her at his assumption of her as a gold-digger. It was so unfair. Why couldn’t he leave the past alone? To come to her now, after all this time, was going to achieve nothing but more heartache for her. It had broken her heart to walk away from him the first time. It had taken every bit of willpower and self-respect to do so. Living as his mistress had been so bittersweet and in the end she had chosen the bitter over the sweet. He had flatly refused to promise her anything but a short-term affair. The concept of marriage was anathema to him; now it seemed more so than ever.

  Marc took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her. ‘I have drawn up a legal document for you to sign,’ he said. ‘It states how much money I am willing to pay you to cohabit with me. By signing it you will be unable to claim support when our relationship is terminated.’

  ‘A prenuptial?’ she asked, frowning as her fingers took the envelope from him.

  ‘Without the nuptials,’ he said, his eyes diamond-hard. ‘No marriage, no children.’

  Ava felt her insides twist in pain. Watching her sister go through the agony of not being able to conceive had made her acutely aware of how much she longed to have a baby of her own. To hear Marc state so implacably that he wanted no children struck at the heart of her. She was twenty-seven years old, which was still young enough not to panic, but with her younger sister’s fertility problems she couldn’t quite quell the worry that she too might not be able to conceive naturally.

  ‘I can assure you I would not for a moment think of bringing a child into such an arrangement as this,’ she said, turning away from Marc to put the envelope to one side.

  Ava heard him move behind her and froze. She silently prayed for him not to touch her in case she betrayed herself. The skin along her bare arms crawled with anticipation of his warm, gliding hands. How many times had he embraced her from behind in the past? His hands w
ould move slowly from her hips to her breasts, cupping her, his mouth nuzzling on the sensitive skin of her neck until she would turn in his arms and offer herself to him.

  Her mind exploded with images of them together. The passion he had ignited in her was something she had never experienced before even though she had not been a virgin when they had met.

  When his hands came to rest on her hips she shuddered. ‘You find my touch abhorrent, or is it that you are still hungry for it?’ he asked, his warm hint-of-mint breath skating past her ear.

  If only he knew! she thought as her heart rammed against her sternum like a giant pendulum inside the body of a too small clock. ‘I told you…I…I want some time to think about this,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even.

  He turned her around to face him, his eyes boring into hers. ‘You haven’t got time to think about it, cara,’ he said. ‘You have debts up to your diamond-studded ears.’ He fingered one glittering earlobe. ‘Did he buy these for you?’

  Ava’s breath caught in her throat like a scrap of silk on a savage thorn. ‘Y-yes…’

  His hands fell to his sides as he commanded, ‘Take them off.’

  She frowned again, her stomach nosediving in alarm. ‘What?’

  His mouth was bracketed by lines of steel. ‘Take them off and everything else he gave you. Now.’

  Ava pressed her lips together to contain her pulsing panic. Was this really her Marc? The man she had fallen in love with so deeply and irrevocably? He was a stranger to her now, a terrifying stranger with not just revenge on his mind, but the total humiliation of her as well.

  She would not give in to him.

  She would not.

  She tightened her hands into fists by her sides, holding his glacial glare with a feisty flash of her own. ‘No.’ Her voice came out too thready and soft, so she repeated it. ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  His pupils flared, his mouth flattening even further. ‘I will give you one minute, Ava, otherwise the deal is off. Keep in mind the massive debts your husband left behind. At last count it was in the hundreds of thousands.’ He set the timer on his watch, his dark gaze holding hers challengingly. ‘Your minute starts now.’

  She swallowed back her anguish, the determination in his eyes making the base of her spine rattle in fear. ‘D-don’t do this, Marc….’

  A nerve flickered at the side of his mouth. ‘If you will not do it then I will do it for you,’ he warned.

  Ava believed him well capable of it. Her hands began to tremble as she tried to remove the earrings, her fingers fumbling uselessly until she felt terrifyingly close to tears. She soldiered on, glaring at him bitterly, hating him with such intensity she could taste the acridity of it in her mouth. Finally she got the studs out and placed them on the coffee table to her right.

  ‘Now the rest,’ he said, standing with his feet apart, his arms folded across his chest in an authoritarian stance that boiled her blood.

  Still glaring at him, she took each of her dress rings off and put them beside the earrings. ‘There,’ she said, arching one of her brows at him. ‘Happy now?’

  His black eyes stripped her mercilessly. ‘Keep going.’

  Ava’s heart lurched against her chest wall. She sent the point of her tongue out over her lips, buying for time, wondering if he wanted her to crumble emotionally, to beg and to plead with him to stop.

  She would not do it.

  She would not bend or break, she would not cry, she would not beg.

  She raised her chin and locked gazes with him. Blue-grey warred with black-brown for a pulsing moment. ‘All right, then,’ she said with a devil-may-care lift of one shoulder as she loosened the catch on her watch. She slipped it off her wrist and placed it beside the earrings and rings.

  She straightened and, giving him a challenging look, slipped off her shoes, kicking them to one side before she reached for the zipper at the back of her skirt. She told herself she had stood undressed in front of hundreds of people before while she had been modelling. This would be no different; besides, he had seen it all before. Her body was no secret to him. He knew every curve and contour and every secret place.

  The tension in the air was palpable.

  Ava slid the zipper down, the metallic sound thunderous in the crackling silence. The fabric slipped to the floor and she stepped out of its circle, her fingers going to the hem of her pull-on top.

  Marc’s eyes followed her like a night-vision searchlight. She felt the heat of it scorch her flesh as her top joined her skirt on the floor. She stood before him in a black, French, lace push-up bra and knickers, her chin high, her right hip tilted in a model-like pose. ‘I bought these myself,’ she said with a defiant look.

  His lips flickered, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘Prove it.’

  Ava clenched her teeth, fighting to keep her cool. He wanted her to fall apart, she had to remember that. He wanted her pride any way he could get it. ‘I don’t have the receipt any more, so I am afraid you will have to take my word for it,’ she said, pushing up her chin to disguise its wobble.

  ‘Your word?’ His top lip lifted in a mocking curl. ‘Since when should I take as gospel the word of a gold-digger?’

  ‘I am not a gold-digger,’ she said with quiet but steely dignity.

  The timer on his watch beeped, informing her the minute was up.

  Ava felt her stomach slip as Marc’s gaze hit hers. ‘Well?’ he said.

  She had never felt so naked and exposed in her life and yet she was still wearing more than most people wore on the French Riviera beaches she could see from the villa windows.

  ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ she asked, knowing it would be exactly the question a gold-digger would ask, but she was beyond caring. Serena was more important than her pride at this point. What her sister had suffered recently was far worse than anything Marc Castellano could do to her.

  He named a sum that lifted her brows. ‘Th-that much?’ she asked in a croak.

  He gave her an imperious smile, the black holes of his pupils flaring with passionate promise. ‘I am going to make you earn every penny of it, Ava. I don’t suppose you have forgotten how good we were together, hmm?’

  Ava felt her cheeks flame with colour. She remembered everything: every touch, every kiss, every incendiary caress and every earth-shattering orgasm that had left her quaking in his arms time and time again. ‘You want some sort of medal for being able to perform an act that humans, even the most base of animals, have been doing for centuries?’ she asked with a cutting look.

  He suddenly snagged one of her wrists and pulled her up against him, his chest to her pounding chest and his strong, immovable thighs to her weak, trembling ones. ‘Don’t push me too far, Ava,’ he said in a low growl. ‘I am this close,’ he held up his index finger and thumb a pinch distance apart, ‘to walking out of here and leaving you to face your sugar daddy’s creditors.’

  Again Ava desperately wanted to call his bluff. She would have if it hadn’t been for Serena. A vision of her shattered sister, holding the ultrasound picture of the baby she had lost, was the only thing that stopped her. ‘All right,’ she said on an expelled breath. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Marc’s hold loosened, but he didn’t release her. Instead his thumb found her thundering pulse, stroking over it in a rhythmic motion that was as powerful as a drug. ‘I will release a Press statement for tomorrow’s papers,’ he said into the silence. ‘We will begin living together as of now.’

  Ava looked up at him in wide-eyed trepidation. ‘So…so soon?’

  His eyes went to her mouth before returning to hers. ‘I have waited five years to have you where I want you,’ he said.

  She gave him an embittered look. ‘Where might that be?’ she asked. ‘In the palm of your hand, begging for mercy?’

  He traced a long finger over each of the upper curves of her breasts before dipping into the valley of her cleavage, the nerves beneath her skin going off like miniature explosives. ‘I think you know exactly whe
re I want you,’ he said in a tone that was rough and deep and sensually, sinfully dangerous.

  Ava felt her body quiver at the thought of him plunging into her, claiming her as his.

  Not in love.

  Not in mutual attraction.

  But in lustful, hate-filled revenge….

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN SPITE of the warmth of the room Ava felt her skin rise in goose pimples. She rubbed at her upper arms, trying so hard to hold her ground. Her head was aching with tension, her mind trying to stay clear and focused while the earth seemed to be shifting beneath her feet. The air was fizzing with Marc’s hatred, high-voltage waves of it zapping at her, making her skin pepper all the more.

  ‘Are you cold?’ Marc asked.

  She kept her mouth rigid with anger. ‘What is that to you?’

  He held her glare for a pulsing moment. ‘Have you had dinner?’ he asked.

  ‘No, and if you think I am going to dine with you dressed like this you can think again,’ she said with a lift of her chin.

  He smiled as his gaze raked over her again. ‘Delightful as that sounds, no—I will not take you out in public like that. As of this evening your body is for my eyes and my eyes only.’

  Ava found it hard to stand still for the rage that was rumbling through her like seismic activity preceding a massive earthquake. ‘You know there are probably street workers who come much cheaper than me,’ she said, goaded beyond caution.

  ‘Yes, but I want you,’ he said with a devilish gleam in his black-as-night gaze. ‘We have unfinished business, do we not?’

  Ava glared at him. ‘Any business we had ended five years ago. I thought I had made that perfectly clear.’

  His top lip lifted in disgust. ‘Oh, yes, by moving out of the apartment I had set up for you without even telling me to my face. I came home to find the place empty apart from a note.’