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‘I still want you, Jordan. That hasn’t changed. But I want you to come to me willingly. I don’t want to force you, or even to seduce you. I want what we once had together. You—eager to surrender yourself to me. I don’t want you to hate me in the morning. And I don’t want to hate myself.’
Jordan just stared at Gino, his amazing and highly unexpected turnaround bringing a fierce frustration which found its voice in anger.
‘I don’t think you know what you want, Gino,’ she said sharply. ‘Look, if it makes you feel any better, then I have come here willingly. It’s not because you blackmailed me. You have some kind of hold over me. I admit it. You turn up out of the blue, crook your finger, and silly Jordan comes running. But don’t delude yourself into thinking we can recapture what we once had. For one thing, I don’t love you any more. How could I possibly love a man who has me investigated behind my back? But, yes, I still lust after you. You were right in what you said at that table tonight. You know what I like. You know all my dark little secrets.
‘So here I am,’ she added, reaching up behind her back and pulling the zipper down. ‘Doing what I vowed I’d never do. But not because of your threat to tell Chad. I’m hoping that once I’ve had my fill of you tonight I’ll be able to walk away in the morning and make a decent life for myself with a man who cares about me and wants to marry me.’
Gino watched, appalled but cripplingly aroused, as she peeled her dress off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor, leaving her standing there in her underwear.
Not prim and proper underwear, but sexy underwear. A black satin teddy, with suspenders attached to shiny flesh-coloured stockings.
Her glittering blue eyes held his boldly whilst she kicked off her shoes and then unflicked each suspender. With a haughty toss of her lovely blonde hair she moved over to the coffee table and put one foot up, rolling the stocking down to her toes before snapping it off.
Gino’s gut crunched down hard at the thought that she might have performed like this for Stedley. Though if she had, then what was she doing here?
No, it’s only with me that she’s like this. She’s virtually said as much.
The other stocking followed, then the pearls, which she tossed aside as carelessly as the nylons. When she hooked her fingers under the thin satin straps of the teddy Gino’s stopped breathing altogether. His blood, however, was still roaring round his veins, engorging his flesh to titanic proportions.
She actually smiled as she peeled the garment down her body. A slow siren’s smile.
‘Don’t look so gobsmacked,’ she said, when she finally stood there in the nude. ‘This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’
Gino’s hand gripped the stem of his glass with such force that it was a miracle it didn’t snap.
‘No,’ he ground out. ‘Not quite. Put the shoes back on.’
Now it was her turn to look gobsmacked.
‘That’s the way I pictured you when I was eating dinner tonight. That’s what I want. For starters,’ he added, all qualms gone over how he was going to treat her tonight. He’d tried to do the right thing, but she wanted none of it. This was what she wanted. To have her fill of him. And he was more than happy to oblige!
Jordan swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. She should never have started stripping in front of him, never have taken him on.
It had only been a matter of time before her recklessness backfired on her.
Gino no longer looked shocked. His expression was cold and implacable.
‘Do it!’ he ordered.
Jordan’s feet found her shoes. The height of the heels changed the way she stood. The sharp angle of her feet made her straighten her shoulders and suck in her stomach, those actions thrusting her breasts forward and upwards.
Gino’s black eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down, his heavily hooded gaze as hard as it was exciting.
Had he known she would feel different standing there in the nude with her high heels on? More exposed? More…aroused?
Yes, of course he knew. He knew she was standing there, trembling inside with anticipation of what would come next. Knew that she thrilled to his commands and his demands.
‘That’s better,’ he said, a dark triumph in his eyes. ‘Now come over here…’
CHAPTER TWELVE (#ulink_1b5f0abe-4ff0-581e-afd5-bc72f461430b)
JORDAN walked slowly towards him, each step bringing a heightened awareness of her female body.
By the time she stood before him her lips had fallen apart and her heartbeat had quickened, her chest rising and falling, her belly stretched tight with tension.
‘Here,’ he said, and held his glass to her lips. ‘You look like you could do with a drink.’
He tipped up the glass and watched her drink it all down.
The champagne fizzed into her stomach, her head spinning—but not because of the alcohol.
Jordan could not recall ever being this excited. Or this mesmerised. This was different from ten years ago. Different from last Friday night.
Tonight, she accepted dazedly, was going to be an experience which would change her life for ever.
When he tossed the empty glass onto one of the sofas, then ran the back of his right hand across the hard tips of her breasts, a violent tremor rippled down her spine.
‘Do you know how sexy you look?’ he murmured, as he trailed his fingers down over her tautly held stomach. ‘But you’d look even sexier if you moved your legs apart a little.’
When she just blinked, he smiled a rather cold smile. ‘I thought we’d agreed on total surrender for tonight? Total surrender means doing as you’re told when you’re told. Of course if you’ve changed your mind about wanting your fill of me, that’s your choice. Get dressed and leave. I won’t stop you. But if you decide to stay, then we do things my way.’
The ruthlessness in his voice shocked her. But it turned her on at the same time.
‘You seem to have lost your tongue,’ he went on. ‘But, since you’re still here, I take it you agree with my conditions for tonight?’
Jordan swallowed, then licked her parched lips.
‘That too,’ he said, his coal-black eyes fixed on her mouth. ‘But later—after we’ve had a relaxing bath. You stay right where you are till I run the water.’
‘Gino—no,’ she choked out, her excitement already at fever pitch.
‘No, what?’ he shot back.
‘Don’t leave me like this. I can’t bear it.’
He glared at her with something akin to hatred. But then his eyes dissolved in a blaze of molten desire. With a tortured groan he caught her to him, his arms enfolding her into a rough embrace, his mouth brutal in its possession of hers.
She melted against him with a naked moan, glorying in the savagery of his kiss. If he’d been tender with her she might have started crying. This way she could lose herself in his wild passion, as well as her own.
The buttons on his shirt were pressing painfully into her chest. But she didn’t care. She welcomed the pain…and the madness.
Soon his tongue in her mouth wasn’t enough. She needed him inside her. Needed to be filled as only he had ever filled her.
Somehow she freed her mouth from his, her breathing like a marathon runner nearing the end of a race.
‘Do it to me,’ she cried.
His eyes glowered down at her, then glittered in a way which sent a shiver running down her spine. ‘Here?’
‘Yes,’ she practically sobbed.
He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her off her feet, turning her round and carrying her over to the floor-length window. There, he stood her in the centre of it, her bottom and shoulders pressed up against the cool glass.
Jordan gasped when he lifted her arms upwards and outwards.
‘Take hold of the curtains,’ he ordered her. ‘And don’t let go.’
Her hands trembled as they clasped the edges of the velvet swags. What must she look like, standing there like some pagan sacrifice? Could she be seen from the windows of the building opposite? Were people watching them?
‘Move your legs further apart,’ Gino ordered, as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside.
Jordan closed her eyes, then did as she was told. Her hands clutched tighter at the velvet, so tight that it was a wonder she didn’t bring the curtains down around her.
The sudden feel of Gino’s breath on her face had her eyelids fluttering back open.
‘I want you to watch, my love,’ he murmured, leaning down to run his tongue-tip around her startled mouth. ‘And to witness. Everything.’
‘I…I am not your love,’ she cried, shuddering when one his hands slipped between her legs.
‘You are tonight.’
‘No,’ she denied, even as she trembled with desire.
‘This tells me differently,’ he murmured against her panting mouth. ‘This tells me that tonight you are mine.’
His eyes held hers as his hand continued with its most devastatingly intimate exploration. Jordan tried to fight the feelings his skilful touch evoked, tried not to melt at his watching her like that. But it was a futile effort. Her whole body stiffened as it rushed towards a climax.
Gino’s abandoning her barely a breath before her release brought a perverse cry of protest.
‘Patience,’ he growled, and went back to undressing in front of her.
Jordan’s shoulders sagged, her upper arms beginning to ache. But the sight of Gino naked had her spine straightening again.
‘You like what you see?’ he taunted as he came back to her.
Jordan could no longer speak. She just wanted him inside her. She didn’t care who might be watching them—didn’t care about anything but his flesh filling hers.
It did. Quite roughly. Surging up into her body with such force that she was momentarily lifted off the floor. His hands lifted to press against the glass on either side of her head, his mouth grazing her hair as he thrust into her, his chest rubbing against the tips of her breasts.
Jordan had never experienced a coupling so passionate or so primitive. Not even with Gino himself, all those years ago.
It spun her out of her head, out of her body. She was there, but not there. Gino had said he wanted her to watch and to witness everything. That was exactly what it felt as if she was doing: being both participant and observer.
Is that really me there, spread naked against the window, keeping myself a willing captive for this man?
I am doomed, she thought hysterically. Doomed!
‘Gino,’ she cried out as she came. ‘Oh, Gino…’
Gino heard her call out his name. Felt her flesh start spasming around his.
What little was left of his control shattered, his mind exploding along with his body, his thoughts spinning out into the stratosphere.
She had to still love him to let him do such things to her, he reasoned wildly in the heat of the moment. Had to. The girl he’d known all those years could not have changed that much.
And if she loved him, then she didn’t love Stedley. She was just marrying him because she was getting older and wanted children. Women always wanted children.
He could give her children, if that was what she so desperately wanted. They could work something out—some arrangement: they could be lovers, or live together. He hadn’t given any deathbed promise that he would not live with a girl who wasn’t Italian.
Some common sense had returned, however, by the time she let go of the curtains and began to sag downwards.
She didn’t necessarily have to love him to enjoy what he’d just done to her, he conceded, as he withdrew and scooped her up into his arms. She wasn’t the same girl she’d been ten years ago. She’d changed.
He’d changed, hadn’t he?
She’d told him how it was earlier: this was all about sex. A fatal-attraction kind of sex which had nothing to do with love, but with need: a dark, driving need which obsessed and possessed.
Gino gritted his teeth. He already felt obsessed and possessed.
Jordan had expressed the hope that one night with him would cure her of her need.
As Gino carried her into the bedroom he vowed to make sure that it did not.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#ulink_135461bf-536a-5a05-bcd8-759c4af088ad)
JORDAN shivered when Gino lowered her onto the cool satin quilt, goosebumps breaking out all over her body.
‘I’ll go run us that bath now,’ he said, as he slipped off her shoes and then wrapped the quilt tightly around her.
‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he added, giving her a soft peck on her forehead before heading for the bathroom.
Jordan stared after him, her slightly fuzzy mind at a loss to understand his sudden change of attitude. Where had the ruthless lover of a few moments ago gone? Was his tenderness for real? Or just a ploy to seduce her into further compliance?
‘Won’t be too long,’ he said jauntily as he walked back through the bedroom, returning with the ice bucket and two champagne glasses. A second trip out to the sitting room had him collecting the two plates of delicacies.
‘Can’t have you passing out from thirst and hunger, can I?’ he remarked with a wicked smile as he headed back to the bathroom.
Any fuzziness in Jordan’s head immediately cleared. Not true tenderness. A seductive ploy.
How silly of her to start hoping for anything different.
‘All done!’ he announced, on his third return to the bedroom. ‘Just one more thing needed, my love. You.’
Jordan did her best not to swoon when he threw back the quilt, then scooped her up from the bed. But having her naked flesh held tight against Gino’s was not conducive to calm.
The bathroom looked both romantic and decadent at the same time, what with the candles, the champagne and the spa filled to the brim with fragrant-smelling bubbles.
‘You’d better put your hair up,’ he suggested. ‘Or it’ll get wet.’
