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‘You have an original way of proposing, I’ll give you that.’
‘You wish me to go down on one knee and declare undying love?’
The sarcasm caught Sam on a raw nerve she hadn’t known she had and she covered her reaction with a display of flippancy. ‘Why not? I could do with a good laugh.’
Cesare ignored her mumbled facetious retort and turned his head so that all she could see was the pure, perfect lines of his patrician profile. ‘Laughing would not be out of the question. You are dwelling on the negative aspects of this marriage, but there are some more positive ones. Let us be serious for a moment.’
The suggestion filled Sam with deep foreboding.
‘You are an ambitious woman. I could help you.’
‘If I’m going to get anywhere it will be on my own merits!’
‘So we will leave nepotism aside for one moment. Marriage to me would give you the luxury of being able to pick and choose your next career move—on your own merits—or, on the other hand, should you wish you could take time out and spend time with the baby. The point is the choice would be yours.’
‘You’re a good salesman,’ she conceded, her expression abstracted as she dropped to her knees beside his chair. ‘But the thing about pacts with the devil is that they sound terrific until you read the small print and then you realise you’ve signed your soul away. So what do you get out of it? Why marriage?’
‘The devil—surely that is typecasting?’
Sam ignored the dry interruption. ‘Surely it would be a whole lot simpler to just make some financial provision for the baby?’
‘Possibly,’ he conceded. ‘But the legal rights of a father when he is not married to his child’s mother are, as I understand it, virtually non-existent, and I, cara, wish to have an equal say in how our child is raised.’
‘So that’s what this sudden desire to get married is about?’ It was totally irrational to find his motivation hurtful. It wasn’t as if she wanted him to love her or anything.
‘Partly,’ he admitted. ‘It is not a bad thing either that with a wife in the background I will hopefully not attract those women who wish to hold my hand while I cross the road.’
‘So that will be my job.’
‘No, I don’t think I’ll change the present arrangement, Paolo does not want to marry me. Besides, I suspect you would be more likely to lead me under a bus.’
‘Don’t give me ideas,’ she growled before she subsided into thoughtful silence. Although she could not seriously consider his crazy suggestion, she was starting to fully appreciate the vulnerability of her situation. Losing her job this way had served to emphasise the fact that she just couldn’t take anything for granted.
What if anything happened to her?
What if she became ill or worse…? What would happen to her baby then?
There was always her brother and his wife, but the young couple were struggling financially themselves and the last thing they needed was her adding to their problems.
‘What are you thinking?’ Cesare probed as the silence stretched and he struggled to hide his growing impatience. It frustrated him that he could not see her face.
‘You usually seem to know.’ Sam chewed on her lower lip and thought that sometimes he knew what she was thinking before she did. ‘Who is Paolo?’
‘Paolo is my driver and sometimes bodyguard should the need arise.’ Irritated by the diversion, Cesare added, ‘We are not discussing Paolo.’
‘And has it ever arisen?’ Sam found the idea that Cesare would ever be in a position where he needed someone to watch his back alarming.
‘Will you stop changing the subject?’
‘I was interested.’ She didn’t add that anything about him interested her. It might give him the wrong idea—or the right idea?
‘And I was thinking that if I’d not seen that article and I’d decided not to tell you about the baby and anything happened…’
‘Happened?’
‘Well, things do.’ She heaved a sigh and studied the pattern on the rug beneath her knees as she settled back onto her heels with a frown. It was a depressing thought and not one she, as a natural optimist, thought about often, but she couldn’t escape facts. Cesare’s comments had simply brought worries she already had into sharper focus. ‘People get run over and killed crossing the road every day of the week.’
The prosaic observation caused a bone-deep chill to settle over Cesare as his imagination provided flashing images of pools of blood on a road, a warm body growing cold and stiff… A choking sound dragged from some place deep inside him.
The strange noise sent a chill down Sam’s spine and brought her head up with a snap. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, deeply alarmed by the grey tinge to his normally vibrant skin. The Stygian blackness of his unseeing stare as he looked back at her suggested the things he was seeing in his head were not pretty.
‘Oh, you’re thinking the baby would have ended up in care,’ she said, seizing on what she believed was the cause of his visible distress. ‘Don’t worry, my brother and his wife would never let that happen.’
‘Madre dio, woman, will you focus and stop prattling?’ He raised a hand to his head; the pressure in his skull had grown to an explosive level as the truth he had been trying hard to avoid stared back at him.
Sam’s eyes flashed; she was offended by the snarling brusqueness of his tone. ‘I suppose when you make a decision you draw up a chart, work out statistical probabilities, weigh up the pros and cons all very scientifically,’ she retorted sarcastically.
‘Actually I am a great believer in following my gut instinct.’
And Cesare’s gut instinct was telling him right now to kiss her. Open her mouth and taste the sweetness that was on offer within.
He followed up the throaty statement so quickly that Sam had no hint of his intention until his fingers curled around her chin. She didn’t think of resistance as he tilted her face to one side to allow himself full access to her mouth. She just thought, Please—please kiss me!
Then he did. His mouth was on hers and his lips were moving with slow, sensual expertise that raised the feverish temperature of her overheated blood to a bubbling simmer.
He drew back fractionally, breathing hard—or was that her…? Sam struggled to separate herself from him, not just physically, but emotionally too, and failed.
Intense-sounding words of Italian fell harshly from his lips as he bent his head and kissed her again with a driving possessive hunger she felt all the way down to her toes. Like a firework display, desire exploded inside her, driving the last shred of resistance or sense to the farthest foggiest recesses of her lust-soaked brain.
The kiss ended and her heavy lids half lifted, a sigh of sheer longing snagging in her aching throat as she traced his lean dark face.
They were so close she could see the fine texture of his skin, the lines radiating from the corners of his eyes and bracketing his sensual mouth, the scar on his forehead that disappeared into his thick, glossily dark hairline.
She lifted a hand to trace the physical evidence of the accident that had robbed him cruelly of his sight. She felt as if a hand had reached into her chest, icy fingers tightening around her heart as she thought of him hurting, waking up alone and in the dark.
His long, tapering fingers skimmed her face, drawing it up to his as he breathed, ‘Open your mouth for me, cara.’
And she did, a little growl vibrating in her throat as she drew herself up onto her knees and wrapped her arms around his neck. She met his tongue with her own, breathing in the scent of him, the taste of him as her breasts were crushed against the hardness of his chest and her fingers slid over muscles that were hard and perfectly formed.
It was Cesare who drew back so abruptly that Sam fell back, only just stopping herself from tumbling onto her bottom with her hands.
She stared at him, eyes round, her pupils still hugely dilated, panting as she tried to suck air into her lungs.
She was filled with shame. ‘That was…that shouldn’t have happened.’
‘But you knew it would, we both knew it would…’
She opened her mouth to deny this ludicrous claim and stopped. She pulled herself up onto her heels and sighed.
Cesare spoke. ‘You know, if we’re going to keep on ripping each other’s clothes off every time we’re in the same room I think we should get married.’
Embarrassed colour flared in Sam’s cheeks as she smoothed down her top. ‘I have my clothes on,’ she replied with dignity. And so did he, she thought as her glance drifted to the V of golden skin visible where the top button of his shirt was unfastened. Her stomach quivered.
‘That situation can be changed.’
She sucked in an audible outraged breath, which seemed a bit crazy considering that he knew every inch of her body intimately… She tried not to think about how intimately. He was obviously of the same opinion as his rumble of laughter was wicked and warm.
‘You’re blushing, aren’t you?’
Her eyes widened. ‘How do you know?’
‘You have a very eloquent range of gasps and I can feel the changes in your body temperature from here.’ Without warning he reached out and placed his open hand against her chest. ‘From here it is easier—I can feel your heart trying to beat its way out. It’s ironic—I’m blind and I’ve never come across a woman who is easier to read than you. How do you go through life showing so much?’
Sam stared mesmerised at his fingers splayed against her breast and shook her head. Sometimes the truth was the worst thing to say and this was one of those times. She knew it yet still she said it.
‘It’s only with you.’
His eyes darkened as he rasped, ‘Come here.’
Sam’s heart was hammering so loud it blocked out everything else as without thinking she raised herself up on her knees and leaned in to him until their faces were almost touching.
His fingers speared deep into her bright hair as he inhaled the fragrance that came from the silky skein. ‘This is a side to the arrangement which would be most pleasurable for us both, cara,’ he husked, resting his nose beside hers.
‘The kissing…?’
His expression was solemn but his eyes fierce as he explained, ‘Obligatory for married people.’ He kissed the side of her mouth before dropping his head to trail a line of delicious damp kisses down her neck.
‘Oh, God!’ she groaned. ‘I don’t know why you can do this to me.’
‘That makes two of us, but who cares?’
Sam couldn’t approve of this reckless attitude and she said so, but he didn’t seem to take her seriously—possibly because she was already unfastening the buttons of his shirt with shaking but determined fingers.
A deep sigh of pleasure escaped her throat as the material parted and his gleaming torso was revealed to her greedy gaze. ‘You are just so beautiful… What?’ she asked suddenly in hoarse protest as he grabbed both her wrists and lifted her hands from his warm skin.
‘Marry me, Samantha.’
Her disbelief was tinged with indignation. ‘Are you trying to blackmail me?’
‘You mean will I withhold my favours if you don’t say I do?’ He laughed, but underneath the laughter the tension that pulled the skin taut against the magnificent bone structure of his face was visible. ‘Good idea, cara,’ he admitted. ‘Only one problem—I’m really not endowed with that sort of self-denial.’ Not where she was concerned anyway.
‘I don’t even like you,’ she whispered against his mouth.
‘Liking has nothing to do with it,’ he rasped, tracing the shape of her full upper lip with his tongue before sliding it deep inside her mouth. A groan was wrenched from Sam’s chest as she opened her mouth to increase the sensual penetration. ‘Why fight it?’
Sam wasn’t. Fighting was the very last thing she wanted to do. ‘Is this supposed to be the clincher? You think you can kiss me into agreeing to marry you? Cesare, you’re really not that good.’
But he was!
She found her fingers in his hair and kissed him on the mouth, the pent-up hunger she had been carrying around for weeks finding some release, but not enough.
‘There are more powerful, primitive instincts at work here. We have a sexual connection.’
‘I don’t want a sexual connection!’ she wailed.
His lips curved into a fleeting smile, but his expression remained intent as, with his heavy lids half closed, his fingers slid under her top.
‘But you do want this, don’t you?’ he slurred, lifting the cotton top she wore and skating lightly across the smooth skin of her midriff before moving to cup one breast through the thin light lace covering of her bra. His thumb moved across her nipple; the seductive motion of his lips on her neck made her head spin. She felt on fire, out of control and loved it.
She watched him as he peeled the top over her head and flung it to one side.
He bent his head and, with one arm wrapped around her narrow ribcage, applied his mouth first to one straining breast, pulling the nipple into his mouth, and then administering the same exquisite torture to the other. Sam clung to him, her fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders as her head fell back.
Fingers splayed across her spine, he brought her upright until their faces were almost touching. There was a fine mist of sweat over his skin and he was breathing as hard as she was. ‘Marry me,’ he said thickly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SAM lifted a hand and ran it down the hard curve of Cesare’s jaw.
‘Couldn’t we just go to bed?’ she suggested hopefully.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a wolfish smile as he ran a finger slowly down the curve of her cheek. ‘You’re offering me some sympathy sex, cara?’
‘I’m offering you me.’
He gasped, and she could feel a shudder run through his hard lean frame.
‘I don’t seem to have any pride where you’re concerned. I’m utterly shameless.’ She had never imagined that she could surrender herself so unconditionally to any man, let alone a man like Cesare.
She was totally unselfconscious but at the same time more aware of her femininity than she had ever been in her life. Everything about this man was a contradiction and so were her feelings for him. The antagonism and attraction she felt for him bled into one confusing, powerful, all-consuming entity.
‘You’re utterly delicious,’ he contradicted thickly. ‘I have been thinking about being inside you.’
The erotic image his words created in her head made the ache low in her pelvis intensify. She stared into his eyes, she saw her reflection, saw the predatory glow and felt an equally primal response clutch like a tight fist deep inside her. Reckless desire tugged like a silken thread at Sam’s senses as she watched her bra go the same way as her top. She shivered as the cool air touched her overheated skin.
‘Then do it,’ she whispered.
‘Marry me.’
‘Will you stop saying that? People don’t make decisions just like that,’ she protested, pressing her lips to his throat and tasting the salt of his skin.
‘Forget people. We’re not people, we’re us. We made a baby, Samantha. He needs us.’
He made a compelling argument. Feelings struggled and warred inside her; her sex-soaked brain wouldn’t work. On one level what he was saying made sense and it was attractive, on another it terrified her witless!
‘What about me? Doesn’t it matter what I need?’
‘You need me.’ And right now he needed her. The hunger roared in his blood like a furnace, drowning out the nagging edge of guilt over his manipulation of the situation.
