wanted to compromise me.”
He gave a soft, sexy laugh.
“Compromise is not the word to describe what I wanted of you.” His arms went around her. “What we wanted of each other.”
“Let go,” Anna said.
“That’s what you said on the plane.”
“Exactly. And I’m saying it again. Let—”
“You said it only after the lights came on.” His arms tightened around her; she could feel every inch of him against her. “Until then, you were as turned on as I was.”
“That isn’t true! I wasn’t—”
His gaze dropped to her lips. She could almost feel the warmth of his mouth on hers, taste those remembered kisses.
“The hell you weren’t.”
His voice was husky. Hot with masculine warning. He was aroused. The hard ridge of his erection was against her belly.
Desire, urgent and primitive, shot through her blood. He was the enemy. He was everything she despised, a damnable aristocrat, a man who obviously thought he could treat a woman as if he owned her. He was her father’s and her mother’s enemy, for heaven’s sake …
But what did that matter when her body throbbed with need?
They could finish what had started hours ago.
Alone. Here, with no prying eyes to see them, no one to interrupt a joining of eager bodies.
Anna shuddered. A whisper of sound sighed from her mouth. Her lashes fell, veiled her eyes as she rose toward him …
His arms opened, dropped to his sides.
She blinked. Looked up. Saw that his face was stony, his mouth cruel.
“Now,” he said calmly as he took a step back, “now, signorina, you have been compromised.”
Her hand balled into a fist at her side. She wanted to hit him. Hard. Leave an imprint on that smug, cold, handsome face.
“You did that once,” he said coldly. “I would advise you not to do it again.”
Anna took a steadying breath. And laughed, though it took everything she possessed to choke out the sound.
“You’re so easy, Your Highness. Oh, sorry. Does the news come as a shock? Do you honestly believe one look from you turns my knees to water?”
Draco narrowed his gaze.
What he believed was that she was lying. To him. To herself. If he wanted her, he could have her. Now. Here. But he didn’t. Damnit, he didn’t. What he wanted was to get everything to do with Cesare Orsini out of his life.
“Enough of these games,” he growled. “What is your name? And what do you want?”
“I want you to face facts.” Anna’s voice was steady. Amazing, because her pulse was ragged. “No matter what you claim, I can make an excellent case for you knowing my identity all along.” She smiled brightly. “So if you want to talk about compromising one’s legal position …”
“An excellent speech. Unfortunately, it’s also meaningless. I didn’t know your name on that plane. I still don’t.”
Anna gave a negligent shrug. “He said, she said. Stuff like that is bread and butter in courts of law.”
“Which brings me to the second reason your little speech is meaningless.” He smiled. “This would never get adjudicated in a court of law.”
“I’m an attorney.”
Another quick smile, this one pure venom. “Not in Italy.”
Damnit, he was quick, and he was right. She had no legal standing here. She’d tried telling that to her father. You want a lawyer, find one who’s Italian, she’d said, but Cesare had been adamant. This was a family matter. A personal matter. He didn’t need a stranger to speak for him, for Sofia. He needed her.
“So,” the Prince of All He Surveyed said, “we have a—what would you call it? A situation. I am the rightful owner of land your client would like to claim is his.”
“The land in question belongs to my client’s wife. She is the rightful owner.”
Draco shrugged, walked to his impressive desk, hitched a hip onto its edge.
“I agreed to meet with Cesare Orsini’s representative as a courtesy.”
“You agreed,” Anna said coolly, “because you know you have a problem on your hands.”
She wasn’t wrong. There were those in the judiciary who would be more than happy to see a Valenti prince trapped in endless legal wrangling over a mess like this. The land was indisputably his, but thanks to the way things worked in Sicily, it could take years to put the case to rest.
Assuming there was a case, and there wouldn’t be.
He knew enough about Cesare Orsini and men like him to understand they had only two methods of settling debts.
One involved blood.
The other …
Draco sighed. His plane was back in service; his pilot was already en route to Rome so he could fly him back to Hawaii, the sea, the sun and the warm bed of his mistress—a woman who would not play hot then cold, as this one did.
“Very well.” He went behind the desk, sat down in a chair, pulled open a drawer, took out a gold pen and a leather checkbook. “How much?”
“I beg your pardon? How much what?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m tired of playing games. How much does Orsini want?”
“To buy his land?”
A muscle knotted in Draco’s jaw. “The land is not his to sell.”
The woman gave him a smile that would have sent a diabetic to the hospital. She was going to drive him crazy!
“I am not offering to buy it, I am offering—”
“A payoff?”
“Compensation. What does your client want to end this insane charade?”
Anna tossed her briefcase on a chair and strolled to the enormous desk. It was probably very old, and obviously hand carved. Mythological griffins dove on falcons, falcons dove on rabbits, wolves sank their fangs into the hindquarters of stags and brought them to their knees.
The history of the landed gentry, she thought coldly. She knew a lot about that history. She’d made a point of studying it when she’d first realized her father’s true profession, hoping against hope that understanding the old Sicilian antagonisms would help her understand him.
What
