of his, hot, liquid pleasure diluting the fear. Far from resisting, she kissed him back passionately, her desperation as powerful as his, her demands every bit as urgent.
For most of her adolescence she’d fantasised about this. Even after that terrible night, when her world had darkened and her attitude towards him had irrevocably altered, perversely she’d still thought about it.
But of all the dreams she’d had, none of them had come close to the reality.
His mouth drove every thought from her head except one…
That if she had to choose a moment to die, this would be it.
Through a haze of desire she heard a snigger from the watching men. ‘Now, that’s just greedy,’ one of them complained.
Her head still spinning from the kiss, Jessie didn’t even realise Silvio had released her until he stepped forward out of the shadows. There was an air of menace attached to that simple, understated movement and she shivered as she watched, frightened and fascinated at the same time. He didn’t speak or bluster—instead, he was terrifyingly cold, his spectacularly handsome face displaying not a single flicker of emotion as he confronted the men. And that, Jessie thought numbly, said everything there was to be said about Silvio Brianza. A lone warrior.
Her legs were threatening to give way, although whether it was from desire or fear she was no longer sure. All she knew was that she wanted to shout a warning. She wanted to warn him not to die for her, but her lips had been paralysed by the touch of his mouth and she couldn’t think of anything except how it had felt to be kissed by him.
And then she realised that this scenario wasn’t playing out the way she’d anticipated. Instead of attacking Silvio, the group was falling back. They’d lost the fierce bravado of a pack intent on a kill and instead they were just staring at him.
Water dripped from the gutter down the back of her neck and Jessie shivered as she tried to work out what was happening.
Why would six men retreat from one?
Confused, she glanced at Silvio and realised that he was standing in the faint shaft of light created by the final flickers of an exposed bulb presumably intended to provide light to the dank corners of the filthy alleyway.
And suddenly she realised what they’d seen. The distinctive scar that ran down one cheek—the only blemish in a face so insanely perfect that if it hadn’t been for that one single flaw, his features could have been the work of Michelangelo.
Jessie strained her ears to hear what was being said but the relentless drip of water from the surrounding roofs all but drowned out the words he was speaking and the eerie darkness made it impossible to read his lips.
At one point Jessie thought she heard someone mutter something that sounded like ‘The Sicilian’, but she couldn’t be sure and they obviously had no interest in including her in the conversation.
Just when she was wondering whether she could slip away unnoticed, they all turned to look at her.
Jessie stood welded to the spot and for one crazy moment she wondered whether Silvio was going to join them. Strip away the expensive clothes and he had the credentials. He’d lived his early life among people like these. He’d led the most feared gang of all.
Those dangerous dark eyes fixed on her and for a fraction of a second he was a stranger to her. She saw what the others had seen. And what she saw was frightening.
Jessie sucked in a breath, reminding herself that, whatever their differences, this man would never hurt her physically.
Emotionally? Emotionally he’d achieved what a childhood lived rough hadn’t managed to accomplish.
He’d broken her into tiny pieces.
Her eyes slid to the scar, her breathing stopped and they stared at each other. The tension in the air shifted and morphed into something different, something a thousand times more dangerous.
Without breaking eye contact, Silvio strolled towards her.
He was frighteningly calm and Jessie wanted to warn him not to turn his back on the men, but she didn’t dare snap the tension that held them all immobile.
As he reached her he lifted a hand and stroked her hair away from her face, the gesture oddly out of place in such a tense situation. His touch was both deliberate and possessive, as if he was making a statement about their relationship, and she didn’t understand that because they didn’t have a relationship any more.
It had been smashed in that grimy room exactly three years earlier, over her brother’s lifeless body.
Then his hand dropped. ‘Andiamo. Let’s go. Get in the car,’ he commanded, and Jessie obeyed, not because she wanted to get in the car, but because she was as mesmerised by his aura of authority as the gang members. He dominated this godless, lawless environment with the sheer force of his presence and Jessie slid into the sumptuous warmth of the Ferrari, feeling as though she were stepping into another world. Moments later he joined her and she wasn’t sure whether the deep growl came from the engine or the depths of his throat. All she knew was that she’d been wrong about his mood.
He wasn’t calm.
He wasn’t calm at all.
Forced into close proximity by the confines of the car she could tell that he was struggling with a raging anger and that knowledge unsettled her because in all the years she’d known him, she’d never seen him like this. Never seen that icy control slide. Not once. Not even that night when their relationship had hit rock bottom.
‘Silvio—’
‘Don’t say a word.’ He cut her off before she could even begin her sentence, his voice strangely thickened, his knuckles white on the wheel. He didn’t glance in her direction. Instead he kept his eyes fixed on the road, speeding through the back streets of London as if he were competing for a Formula 1 title.
Jessie was tempted to point out that there wasn’t a lot of point in rescuing her from one threat only to kill them both in a car wreck, but she kept her mouth shut.
Why him?
Why did it have to be him who had rescued her?
Now that the immediate danger had passed, her thoughts were impossibly confused. The adrenaline rushing around her body had been diluted by another hormone and the only thing in her head was that kiss. Her body was still trembling from the pressure of his mouth against hers and the more she remembered of her wild, crazy response, the more appalled she was. Had he noticed her reaction? She shrank in her seat, hoping that he’d been too distracted to register just how enthusiastically she’d played her part.
Disgust slithered over her bones and settled in the core of her like a cold, hard stone.
Had she no shame?
How was it possible to respond like that to someone you’d spent three years hating? Her brain was like a slide show—one minute she was remembering the breath-stealing moment when his dark head had lowered to hers, the next she was seeing her brother’s face.
Shocked, confused and ripped apart with self-loathing, Jessie realised that the one thing she wasn’t thinking of was the six men who had just tried to kill her.
